What was causing her misgivings now was the fact that the twelve-inch model was very expensive.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford it. For all she’d teased Yukio about his being a rich kid, she was not poor herself, and she had enough money in her savings to handle a few special purchases. No, the difficulty was that giving an expensive gift created an obligation to reciprocate equally. She felt that the gift was well matched by the honor of being invited to the Ishiwara home. The question was, would the Ishiwaras feel that way? She might never know.
The four of them walked down the hall to a room with a tatami-covered floor, so everyone removed their slippers before stepping onto the reed mats. Three times she was offered the seat of honor near the beauty alcove, the toko-no-ma, and three times she declined. The fourth time she knelt on the tatami. After a similar process of offers, polite refusals, and renewed offers, she shifted to a floor cushion, a za-buton.
As they’d walked down the hall, Kaitlin had noticed a room with a carpet and Western-style furniture, indicating that the Ishiwaras were used to entertaining foreign visitors. The fact that they were treating her as a Japanese guest instead—taking her to the Japanese living room rather than the Western-style one, continuing to speak Nihongo rather than switching to English—was an honor…and a test. So far she’d been doing all right. The evening was young, though. She rarely got examination jitters, but she’d never had an exam on which so much depended.
Glancing at Yukio, she wondered what he thought of her performance. He had certainly come to life since arriving at his home. He was smiling, laughing, teasing Shigeru. This, she realized, was his world; this was where he belonged. As he glanced around, his eyes met hers and his smile faded. So. He too was wondering if she could ever belong here. Being an honored guest was one thing.
Being accepted as a member of the family was something completely different.
Slowly the evening wore on. After about an hour, they all moved to another room, which seemed identical to the first, with the addition of a low table in the middle of the tatami-covered floor. Here several hours of dinner were served by servants who were constantly refilling her bowls. The food was magnificently prepared, a feast for the eye as well as for the palate. Gradually she relaxed, telling herself to simply enjoy the experience.
“O-kyaku-sama,” Shigeru said during a pause in the eating. “Toshi has told us that your honored father was going to Mars.”
Kaitlin looked at the youngster and smiled at the eagerness in his voice. Yukio—Toshi, as his family seemed to call him—had told her that Shigeru was sixteen and just as space-happy as his brother.
“Hai, Shigeru-san,” she said. “The cycler arrived in Mars orbit last week, and the shuttle lander ferried them down to Cydonia. I’m afraid my father is not as thrilled at being on the surface of the red planet as you or I would be. He prefers his sand with an ocean nearby. One that’s not half a million years old.”
“Both my sons feel strongly,” Ishiwara said, “that our future is in space.”
“And you feel differently, Daijin-sama?” she asked.
Ishiwara put his chopsticks down carefully on the hashi-oki and took a sip of o-cha before replying. “I would be more interested, Honored Guest, in your opinion. Both because you are an American and because of your connection with Mars.”
“I do not know that my opinion would be worth anything, Respected Minister, but I must agree with your sons. And for two reasons. However long it takes to uncover what is buried under the sands of Cydonia, it could change…everything. Whether it is new technology that we are able to make use of, or simply the knowledge that we are not alone in the universe, it will transform life on this planet.”
“You are…most persuasive. And what is the second reason?”
“A corollary of the first. The fact that the Ancients were there means that we are not alone. It means that there are others out there. If we stay put, nice and safe here within our solar system, well, then they might find us. The encounter might be…quite a shock. But if we are the explorers, if we go out and seek them, then…Well, I can’t say we’ll necessarily be ready for whatever we’ll find, but surely it is better to be the seeker than the sought. In history it is the exploring nations that have grown, have developed, whether that exploration has been physical or intellectual. There are no more physical frontiers on this planet. For that…we have to reach out into space.”
“Japan has tried isolation before, Father,” Yukio said. “After the battle of Sekigahara we tried to wall ourselves off from the rest of the world, believing that if we continued to ignore them, they would politely continue to ignore us.”