would long remain in his hands. It was no jest when he told Aimaina that he would come to live with him. Once Tsutsumi decided to punish, the miscreant would have no choice but to throw himself on the mercy of his friends -- if he had any friends who were not themselves terrified by the Tsutsumi wrath.
All these dire scenarios played themselves out in Yasujiro's mind as he waited, waited, hour after hour. Surely they had not simply ignored his message. They must be reading and discussing it even now.
He finally dozed off. The ansible operator awakened him -- a woman who had not been on duty when he fell asleep. "Are you by any chance the honorable Yasujiro Tsutsumi?"
The conference was already under way; despite his best intention, he was indeed the last to arrive. The cost of such an ansible conference in realtime was phenomenal, not to mention the annoyance. Under the new computer system every participant in a conference had to be present at the ansible, since no conference would be possible if they had to wait for the built-in time delay between each comment and its reply.
When Yasujiro saw the identification bands under the faces shown in the terminal display he was both thrilled and horrified. This matter had not been delegated to secondary or tertiary officials in the home office on Honshu. Yoshiaki-Seiji Tsutsumi himself was there, the ancient man who had led Tsutsumi all of Yasujiro's life. This must be a good sign. Yoshiaki-Seiji -- or "Yes Sir," as he was called, though not to his face, of course -- would never waste his time coming to an ansible merely to slap down an upstart underling.
Yes Sir himself did not speak, of course. Rather it was old Eiichi who did the talking. Eiichi was known as the conscience of Tsutsumi -- which some said, rather cynically, meant he must be a deaf mute.
"Our young brother has been bold, but he was wise to pass on to us the thoughts and feelings of our honored teacher, Aimaina Hikari. While none of us here on Honshu has been privileged personally to know the Guardian of Yamato, we have all been aware of his words. We were not prepared to think of the Japanese as being responsible, as a people, for the Lusitania Fleet. Nor were we prepared to think of Tsutsumi as having any special responsibility toward a political situation with no obvious connection to finances or the economy in general.
"Our young brother's words were heartfelt and outrageous, and if they had not come from one who has been properly modest and respectful for all his years of work with us, careful and yet bold enough to take risks when the time was right, we might not have heeded his message. But we did heed it; we studied it and found from our government sources that the Japanese influence on Starways Congress was and continues to be pivotal on this issue in particular. And in our judgment there is no time for us to try to build a coalition of other companies or to change public opinion. The fleet might arrive at any moment. Our fleet, if Aimaina Hikari is correct; and even if he is not, it is a human fleet, and we are humans, and it might just be within our power to stop it. A quarantine will easily do all that is necessary to protect the human species from annihilation by the descolada virus. Therefore we wish to inform you, Yasujiro Tsutsumi, that you have proven yourself worthy of the name that was given you at birth. We will commit all the resources of the Tsutsumi family to the task of convincing a sufficient number of Congressmen to oppose the fleet -- and to oppose it so vigorously that they force an immediate vote to recall the fleet and forbid it to strike against Lusitania. We may succeed in this task or we may fail, but either way, our younger brother Yasujiro Tsutsumi has served us well, not only through his many achievements in company management, but also because he knew when to listen to an outsider, when to put moral questions into a position of primacy over financial considerations, and when to risk all in order to help Tsutsumi be and do what is right. Therefore we summon Yasujiro Tsutsumi to Honshu, where he will serve Tsutsumi as my assistant." At this Eiichi bowed. "I am honored that such a distinguished