Musing upon the fact that his wife's moods were as predictable as night
and day, Wantanabe gathered Tomo briefly in his arms, bestowed a kiss
on his soft, downy skull then handed him back carefully. For Yumiko,
the crisis was over, harmony was restored. Her husband's problems were
only just beginning.
Izo Wantanabe and his wife Yumiko came from a race of people known to
their neighbours as Iron Masters; a stratified collection of asiatic
bloodlines in which the Japanese formed the top layer, followed by
Chinese, Korean then the other ethnic groups in descending order.
Each group's position related directly to the distance - in the World
Before - of their ancestral lands from a sacred site known as Mount
Fuji.
Successive waves of the Iron Masters' ancestors had landed on the
north-eastern coast of North America between 2300 and 2400 A.D. Now,
six centuries later, the seventeen domains that made up their nation
state known as Ne-Issan - stretched from the Atlantic to Lake Erie, and
from the St Lawrence Seaway to Cape Fear, in North Carolina.
Wantanabe's family owed its allegiance to the noble house of
Yama-Shita, holder of the exclusive licence to trade with the
grass-monkeys who roamed the endless Western Plains. Izo's family
formed part of the Japanese ruling class but he himself was a
love-child produced by one of his father's Chinese concubines.
The resulting social stigma, while not catastrophic, meant he was
permanently barred from the high appointments open to his peer group
and that his future wife should he choose to marry - would have to be
Chinese.
This had led to his decision to enter commerce, for it was here that
many Chinese families had flourished, and his father's connections had
secured him a junior position in one of the rich trading houses with a
string of depots from Bu-faro on Lake In to the Eastern Sea.
His alert intelligence, plus a head for figures and a flair for
organisation, won him quick promotion and a fortunate introduction to
Yumiko, the fourth daughter of a Chinese merchant who, with a shrewd
eye to the main chance, provided her with a handsome dowry.
The father's gamble on Izo's family connections did not bring the
hoped-for rewards. After Yumiko had given birth to a son and a
daughter, and was carrying Tomo within her, the senior partner's latent
disapproval of Izo's mixed parentage was finally revealed when he was
twice passed over in the annual round of promotions, putting an end to
his hopes of reaching the top echelons.
