We Have Fed Our Sea

3

The other man, Ohara, was good, third-degree black. But finally his alertness wavered. He moved in unwarily, and Seiichi Nakamura threw him with a foot sweep that drew approving hisses from the audience. Seeing his chance, Nakamura pounced, got control of Ohara from the waist down by sitting on him, and applied a strangle. Ohara tried to break it, but starving lungs betrayed him. He slapped the mat when he was just short of unconsciousness. Nakamura released him and squatted, waiting. Presently Ohara rose. So did the winner. They retied their belts and bowed to each other. The abbot, who was refereeing, murmured a few words which ended the match. The contestants sat down, closed their eyes, and for a while the room held nothing but meditation.

Nakamura had progressed beyond enjoying victory for its own sake. He could still exult in the aesthetics of a perfect maneuver; what a delightful toy the human body is, when you know how to throw eighty struggling kilos artistically through the air! But even that, he knew, was a spiritual weakness. Judo is more than a sport, it should be a means to an end: ideally, a physical form of meditation upon the principles of Zen.

He wondered if he would ever attain that height. Rebelliously, he wondered if anyone ever had, in actual practice, for more than a few moments anyhow… It was an unworthy thought. A wearer of the black belt in the fifth degree should at least have ceased inwardly barking at his betters. And now enough of all the personal. It was only his mind reflecting the tension of the contest, and tension was always the enemy. His mathematical training led him to visualize fields of force, and the human soul as a differential quantity dX — where X was a function of no one knew how many variables — which applied just enough, vanishingly small increments of action so that the great fields slid over each other and — Was this a desirable analogue? He must discuss it with the abbot sometime; it seemed too precise to reflect reality. For now he had better meditate upon one of the traditional paradoxes: consider the noise made by two hands clapping, and then the noise made by one hand clapping.

The abbot spoke another word. The several contestants on the mat bowed to him, rose, and went to the showers. The audience, yellow-robed monks and a motley group of townspeople, left their cushions and mingled cheerfully.

When Nakamura came out, his gi rolled under one arm, his short thick-set body clad in plain gray coveralls, he saw the abbot talking to Diomed Umfando, chief of the local Protectorate garrison. He waited until they noticed him. Then he bowed and sucked in his breath respectfully.

“Ah,” said the abbot. “A most admirable performance tonight.”

“It was nothing, honorable sir,” said Nakamura.

“What did you… yes. Indeed. You are leaving tomorrow, are you not?”

“Yes, master. On the Southern Cross, the expedition to the dark star. It is uncertain how long I shall be away.” He laughed self-deprecatingly, as politeness required. “It is always possible that one does not return. May I humbly ask the honorable abbot that—”

“Of course,” said the old man. “Your wife and children shall always be under our protection, and your sons will be educated here if no better place can be found for them.” He smiled. “But who can doubt that the best pilot on Sarai will return as a conqueror?”

They exchanged ritual compliments. Nakamura went about saying good-by to various other friends. As he came to the door, he saw the tall blue-clad form of Captain Umfando. He bowed.

“I am walking back into town now,” said the officer, almost apologetically: “May I request the pleasure of your company?”

“If this unworthy person can offer even a moment’s distraction to the noble captain?”

They left together. The dojo was part of the Buddhist monastery, which stood two or three kilometers out of the town called Susa. A road went through grainfields, an empty road now, for the spectators were still drinking tea under the abbot’s red roof. Nakamura and Umfando walked in silence for a while; the captain’s bodyguard shouldered their rifles and followed unobtrusively.

Capella had long ago set. Its sixth planet, I1-Khan the giant, was near full phase, a vast golden shield blazoned with a hundred hues. Two other satellites, not much smaller than this Earth-sized Sarai on which humans dwelt, were visible. Only a few stars could shine through all that light, low in the purple sky; the fields lay drowned in amber radiance, Susa’s lanterns looked feeble in the distance. Meteor trails crisscrossed heaven, as if someone wrote swift ideographs up there. On the left horizon, a sudden mountain range climbed until its peaks burned with snow. A moonbird was trilling, the fiddler insects answered, a small wind rustled in the grain. Otherwise only the scrunch of feet on gravel had voice.

“This is a lovely world,” murmured Nakamura.

Captain Umfando shrugged. Wryness touched his ebony features. “I could wish it were more sociable.”

“Believe me, sir, despite political differences, there is no ill will toward you or your men personally—”

“Oh, come now,” said the officer. “I am not that naive. Sarai may begin by disliking us purely as soldiers and tax collectors for an Earth which will not let the ordinary colonist even visit it. But such feelings soon envelop the soldier himself. I’ve been jeered at, and mudballed by children, even out of uniform.”

“It is most deplorable,” said Nakamura in distress. “May I offer my apologies on behalf of my town?”

Umfando shrugged. “I’m not certain that an apology is in order. I didn’t have to make a career of the Protector’s army. And Earth does exploit the colonies. There are euphemisms and excuses, but exploitation is what it amounts to.”

He thought for a moment, and asked with a near despair: “But what else can Earth do?”

Nakamura said nothing. They walked on in silence for a while.

Umfando said at last, “I wish to put a rude question.” When the flat face beside him showed no reluctance, he plowed ahead. “Let us not waste time on modesty. You know you’re one of the finest pilots in the Guild. Any Capellan System pilot is — he has to be! — but you are the one they ask for when things get difficult. You’ve been on a dozen exploratory missions in new systems. It’s not made you rich, but it has made you one of the most influential men on Sarai.

“Why do you treat me like a human being?”

Nakamura considered it gravely. “Well,” he decided, “I cannot consider politics important enough to quarrel about.”

“I see.” A little embarrassed, Umfando changed the subject:

“I can get you on a military transport to Batu tomorrow, if you wish. Drop you off at the ‘caster station.”

“Thank you, but I have already engaged passage on the regular interstellar ferry.”

“Uh… did you ask for the Cross berth?”

“No. I had served a few watches on her, of course, like everyone else. A good ship. A little outmoded now, perhaps, but well and honestly made. The Guild offered me the position, and since I had no other commitments, I accepted.”

Guild offers were actually assignments for the lower ranks of spacemen, Umfando knew. A man of Nakamura’s standing could have refused. But maybe the way you attained such prestige was by never refusing.

“Do you expect any trouble?” he asked.

“One is never certain. The great human mistake is to anticipate. The totally relaxed and unexpectant man is the one prepared for whatever may happen: he does not have to get out of an inappropriate posture before he can react.”

“Ha! Maybe judo ought to be required for all pilots.”

“No. I do not think the coerced mind ever really learns an art.”

Nakamura saw his house ahead. It stood on the edge of town, half screened by Terrestrial Bamboo. He had spent much time on the garden which surrounded it; many visitors were kind enough to call his garden beautiful. He sighed. A gracious house, a good and faithful wife, four promising children, health and achievement, what more could a man reasonably ask? He told himself that his remembrances of Kyoto were hazed, he had left Earth as a very young boy. Surely this serene and uncrowded Sarai offered more than poor tortured antheap Earth gave even to her overlords. And yet some mornings he woke up with the temple bells of Kyoto still chiming in his ears.

He stopped at the gate. “Will you honor my home for a cup of tea?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” said Umfando, almost roughly. “You’ve a family to… to say good-by to. I will see you when—”

Fire streaked across the sky. For an instant Il-Khan himself was lost in blue flame. The bolide struck somewhere among the mountains. A sheet of pure outraged energy flared above ragged peaks. Then smoke and dust swirled up like a devil, and moments afterward thunder came banging down through the valley.

Umfando whistled. “That was a monster!”

“A… yes… most unusual… yes, yes.” Nakamura stammered something, somehow he bowed good night and somehow he kept from running along the path to his roof. But as he walked, he began to shake.

It was only a meteorite, he told himself frantically. Only a meteorite. The space around a giant star like Capella, and especially around its biggest planet, was certain to be full of cosmic junk. Billions of meteors hit Sarai every day. Hundreds of them got through to the surface. But Sarai was as big as Earth, he told himself. Sarai had oceans, deserts, uninhabited plains and forests… why, even on Sarai you were more likely to be killed by lightning than by a meteorite and — and — Oh, the jewel in the lotus! he cried out. I am afraid. I am afraid of the black sun.