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colonists of Yamato. Under the circumstances, Minamoto Kantaro was saying politely, it was Minamoto no Kami, the daimyo of Ieyasu and the chosen Shogun of Yamato, who would deal with the outsider.
    Minamoto no Kami , Duncan amended mentally, or no one . “Still,” Duncan persisted. “Is the Ninja Order as strong on Planet Yamato as it once was in Japan?”
    “What does your ship’s database tell you?”
    “It suggests that it is, Kantaro-san.”
    “Your database is correct, Kr-san. Here the Master of the Order takes the name of Tsunetomo--the author of the Hagakure --the book by which samurai try to live. The Order is secret and not political.”
    Duncan’s heavy brows arched skeptically.
    “It is so, Kr-san. On Yamato we say that the Ninja Order is the sword arm, not the brain.”
    “Killers work for pay and not out of political conviction?”
    “We do not regard ninjas merely as killers, Kr-san. But yes, the agents of the Order are blades in the wars of ideas.”
    What a remarkable way of seeing the world , Duncan thought. And how bloody risky it made life for a stranger on Planet Yamato. But there was no point in carrying on this conversation now. “You said something earlier that interests me, Kantaro-san. About Yamatans disliking free fall. I find that unusual for a spacefaring race.”
    The Yamatan shrugged. “Perhaps it is because so many of our ancestors experienced cold-sleep for only part of the voyage from the home planet. Now most who leave the planet’s surface do so wearing grav units. They are expensive, but very good.” And their concentration of gravity control might account for their advanced state in the development of mass-depletion propulsion, Duncan thought. A fascinating, paradoxical people.
     
    The tilt-rotor’s flight was carrying them from the coastal hills upon which Yedo stood, across a wide, lowland valley, toward the foothills of the Fuji Mountains.
    From what appeared to be about fifteen hundred meters’ altitude, the valley below could be seen clearly--an intricate pattern of waterways and paddies. Dappled yellow sunlight glinted as the aircraft’s sun-angle changed. It was as though the field below were sending golden arrows after the interloper. Duncan’s empathic sense made the impression powerful. The land
    seemed to be warning off the machine flying above it.
    Duncan glanced at Anya to see if she was getting the same psychic message. But the New Earther was staring out the window at the wetlands below. Water in such quantity was unknown on New Earth.
    Kantaro said, “I took note of your interest in the valley, Kr-san. Do you know what crops are being raised down there?”
    “It appears to be rice, Kantaro-san.”
    “It is rice. Now, rice grows poorly on Yamato. The conditions are not favorable,” Kantaro-san said. “But rice is of mystical importance to Japanese, Kr-san. Did you know that it was once a medium of exchange on the Home Islands? One koku of rice was the amount needed to feed one warrior for one year. The daimyo who owned a crop of a million koku had at his command, in effect, an army of a million men.” He gestured to the land below. “That rice could be genetically reengineered into a crop more suited to the ecosystem of Yamato. This has been proven a number of times over the last millennium in the agricartel laboratories. The engineered rice is designed to the Yamatan taste and indistinguishable from the rice you see growing down there. It may even be more savory. But I would not know. I have never eaten any of the rice growing in those paddies. Nor have any of the secular inhabitants of the Four Domains. The rice grown with such difficulty in those paddies below is rice reserved for the temples and monasteries. I have no idea what the bonzes and monks do with it. For the most part, they eat what the rest of us eat--cereal grains and meat from the descendants of offworld food animals. Yet rice, specifically that rice you see in the paddies below,