The Year of Rice and Salt

Here were the accounting rooms and the offices. The chandler's big office door was closed, but voices came through it. Kiyoaki approached, heard men speaking Japanese: ' I don't see how we could coordinate our efforts, how we could be sure it was all going off at once '

The door flew open and Kiyoaki was seized by the neck and dragged into the room. Eight or nine Japanese men glared at him, all seated around one elderly bald foreigner, in the chair of the honoured guest. The chandler roared, 'Who let him in here!'

'There's no one downstairs,' Kiyoaki said. 'I was just looking for someone to ask for a '

'How long were you listening?' The old man looked as if he was ready to hit Kiyoaki with his abacus, or worse. 'How dare you eavesdrop on us, you could get rocks tied to your ankles and thrown in the bay for that!'

'He's just one of the folks we plucked out of the valley,' Gen said from a corner. 'I've been getting to know him. Might as well enlist him, since he's here. I've already vetted him. He hasn't got anything better to do. In fact he'll be good.'

While the old man spluttered some objection, Gen got up and grabbed Kiyoaki by the shirt front.

'Get someone to lock the front door,' he told one of the younger men there, who left quickly. Gen turned to Kiyoaki: 'Listen, youth. We're trying to help the Japanese here, as I told you down at the Gate.'

'That's good.'

'We're working to free the Japanese, actually. Not only here, but in Japan itself.'

Kiyoaki gulped, and Gen shook him. 'That's right, Japan itself! A war of independence for the old country, and here too. You can work for us, and join one of the greatest things possible for a Japanese. Are you in or are you out?'

'In!' Kiyoaki said. 'I'm in, of course! just tell me what I can do!'

'You can sit down and shut up,' Gen said. 'First of all. Listen and then you'll be told more.'

The elderly foreigner seated in the chair of the honoured guest asked a question in his language.

Another of the men waved Kiyoaki aside, answered in the same language. In Japanese he said to Kiyoaki, 'This is Dr Ismail, visiting us from Travancore, the capital of the Indian League. He's here to help us organize our resistance to the Chinese. If you are to stay in this meeting, you must swear never to tell anyone what you see and hear. It means you are committed to the cause without a chance of backing out. If we find out you've ever told anyone about this, you'll be killed, do you understand?'

' I understand,' Kiyoaki said. 'I'm in, I said. You can proceed with no fear from me. I've worked like a slave for the Chinese in the valley, all my life.'

The men in the room stared at him; only Gen grinned at the spectacle of such a youth using the phrase 'all my life'. Kiyoaki saw that and blushed hotly. But it was true no matter how old he was. He set his jaw and sat on the floor in the corner by the door.

The men resumed their conversation. They were asking questions of the foreigner, who watched them with a birdlike blank expression, fingering a white moustache, until the man translating spoke to him, in a fluid language that did not seem to have enough sounds to create all the words; but the old foreigner understood him, and replied to the questions carefully and at length, taking pauses every few sentences to let the young translator speak in Japanese. He was obviously very used to working with a translator.

'He says, his country was under the yoke of the Mughals for many centuries, and finally they freed themselves in a military campaign run by their Kerala. The methods used have been systematized, and can be taught. The Kerala himself was assassinated, about twenty years ago. Dr Ismail says this was a, a disaster beyond telling, you can see it still upsets him to talk about it. But the only cure is to go on and do what the Kerala would have wanted them to do. And he wanted everyone everywhere free of all empires. So Travancore itself is now part of an Indian League, which has its disagreements, even violent disagreements, but mostly they work out their differences as equals. He says this kind of league was first developed here in Yingzhou, out in the east, among the Hodenosaunee natives. The Firanjis have taken most of the cast coast of Yingzhou, as we have the west, and many of the old ones out there have died of disease, as here, but the Hodenosaunee still hold the area around the great lakes, and the Travancoris have helped them to fight the Muslims. He says that is the key to success; those fighting the great empires have to help each other. He says they have helped some Africans as well, down in the south, a King Moshesh of the Basutho tribe. The doctor here travelled there himself, and arranged for aid to the Basuthos that allowed them to defend themselves from Muslim slave traders and the Zulu tribe as well. Without their help the Basuthos probably wouldn't have survived.'

'Ask him what he means when he says help.'