The Domination

Chapter Fifteen

CHATEAU RETOUR PLANTATION

TOURAINE PROVINCE

AUGUST 3, 1947: 1100 HOURS

“Andrew! You made it!” Tanya’s eyes widened as the long car with the Security-skull blazon crunched to a stop by the steps. He was in crisp garrison blacks, with nothing nonregulation but a tasteful ruby eardrop. The warmth of her smile and embrace was still on her face as she turned to formally clasp forearms with the Security officer who followed. “And Strategos Vashon,” she continued. “You welcome to my House, sir. Make youself free of it.” A rueful shrug. “Bit crowded, I’m afraid.”

To her brother: “Edward’s up by the winery, lookin’ over our new Cub with Johanna and her Tom.” She turned to the waiting housegirl and took two greeting cups, handing them to the guests while harried-looking servants swarmed down to take their luggage and direct the Orpo trooper-driver to the vehicle-park west of the Great House.

They poured ceremonial drops and sipped at the wine, eyes widening slightly in appreciation at the taste.

“Spicy.” Vashon said. “Hmmm, hint of . . . flint, maybe? Local?”

“From a friend’s place, east of here: Pouilly-Fume. Fo’give me if I don’t join you, gentlemen, but I’ve got to get through the day standin’.”

Andrew held out a hand to stop one of the serfs going by with the luggage. “Not those two, boy, they’re the gifts.”

The serf, a middle-aged fieldhand hurriedly kitted out in house livery for the day, bobbed his head and looked at Tanya questioningly. “The table with the gifts, Marcel,” she translated into French.

“Oui, Maîtresse,” he said, and trotted up through the main doors.

“You lookin’ good,” Andrew said to his sister as she turned back to them. “And considerable less pregnant than last time.” Fresh and summery in a crisp white linen suit, with no hint of color but the ebony butt of the little Togren 9mm tucked into its holster inside her belt.

“Never again.” She shuddered, linking an arm through his and courteously motioning the Security officer before her. They turned to the high arched gateway that passed like a tunnel through the bulk of the chateau’s oldest section. Light showed at the other end, and the soft lilt of a string quartet. “Through here; the main court is out back . . . ”

It was a bright noon, almost cloudless; hot and dry, with a fitful breeze from the north. The courtyard along the north side of Chateau Retour was a blaze of color; from banks of flowers, from the silks and jewels, from the dragon’s hoard that sprawled along the long cloth-draped trestles where the naming gifts were exhibited, from the tile and stone of the courtyard pavement itself.

A wooden bandstand draped in tapestries from Lyon held musicians in pre-War formal dress, contributed from neighboring estates for the occasion. In the cool shadow of the arcade along the court’s eastern flank more trestle tables held food: piles of scarlet lobsters, roasts, salads, fruit, with white-hatted carvers and servers standing ready. Housegirls in brief gauzy costumes circulated with platters of delicacies, dabs of cheese on wafers, brandied truffles, savory morsels of fish or spiced sausage, wine coolers, juices, cigarillos and hashish.

Kustaa leaned against a pillar beside the buffet table and watched the crowd, taking occasional nibbles from a plate held in one hand. He had never seen so many Citizens in one place on a social occasion. Forty adults, he estimated, and nearly as many children, from infants being carried by their nurses to the teams playing water polo down at the lake. Their shouts and splashing echoed back, and he could see their sleek bodies slipping naked through the clear water and flung spray. The guests seemed to fill the great yard without effort, though they were far too few to crowd it, and less noisy than this number of Americans would be.

I wonder what it is, he thought. They were in every combination of attire, formal and informal, from one severely elegant woman in her sixties dressed in a Grecian-style gown of pure white, through uniforms of every rank in the Domination, to a few who had just come up from the lake in nothing but the glistening water on their skins. Sitting on the benches, strolling, talking, one even in a wheelchair . . . There was a sickness to them, he could feel it, a rot somewhere within, but it had not seemed to weaken them. Instead they fed on it and it made them strong . . . You could see it in their eyes and movements, a consciousness of power. Power of life and death over other human beings, power held since birth by hereditary right.

They believe, he decided. That was what gave them that air of absolute confidence and cold will. They believe their own myth of what they are and, believing, confirm it to themselves every day of their lives. Then: Don’t get spooked; they put their pants on one leg at a time like everybody else.

When they wore pants, that was. He tried to imagine a similar gathering in the U.S., Social Register types and haciendasdos, with one in every ten of them down to the buff. A grin forced its way to his mouth: they probably wouldn’t strip half as well. Which reminded him to be careful himself; he was circumcised, and he was getting graphic evidence that Draka men were not. Beside him Ernst waited, in a creditable imitation of a personal servant’s combination of attentive waiting and don’t-notice-me deference. Hell with it, Kustaa thought. Can’t be helped, so why should I feel guilty about it?

Then the man stiffened, looking over Kustaa’s shoulder. His fingers moved: Send me away. Quickly!

Why? He was officially nearly dumb without him, and it was a nuisance. Particularly since there were some here who might have valuable information, and they seemed reluctant to offend or directly deny him. He wished everyone in the States were as pleasant to disabled veterans, and that tall fiftyish man was a member of the Domination’s Senate, just retired from the Supreme General Staff. A quantum opportunity . . .

Because there’s a Security general coming through the gate who’s seen me before and probably read my file a hundred times. Even without the beard and in livery he may recognize me.

Kustaa’s fingers flew, and he made an imperious wave for audience effect, if somebody should be looking. Get your ass out of here. The shelter, if you can. Back after dark and be careful.

“Yes, Master.” A low bow and the Austrian hurried away, weaving through the partygoers. Carefully, with left-and-right bobs of the head: Citizens expected to be avoided.

Kustaa turned, feeling his heart surge and slow with the brief rush of adrenaline, then subside into alert wariness. He was too conspicuous to run. A Citizen was noticed when he moved, not part of the continuous background flicker of life like a serf. He would have to take his chances; his tongue probed at the capped tooth at the rear of his molars, imagining the swift crunch, a brief bitterness and oblivion. That was a choice he had made his mind up to long ago. Not simply that he accepted that there was too much knowledge in his skull, but they had sent Rutherford back. Alive, in a dirigible shipping container to London, with glossy prints of his progress from capture to the thing that had made one of the bomb squad team that had opened the lid faint. With “Thanks for the lovely chat” carved in his forehead, above the lidless eyes.

The container had been correctly addressed to OSS clandestine headquarters in Britain.

For a moment, he thought of Sister Marya. Who would never use the tooth, never even consider it, even knowing what would follow . . . And there are advantages to being a lapsed Lutheran, he told himself. Somehow he was smiling as he completed the turn and saw Tanya von Shrakenberg walking through the archway. She waved and guided the two men with her toward him.

One in black, tall, with what Kustaa was coming to think of as the von Shrakenberg face, bony eagle-handsome features and pale eyes. Another, short, black-haired and green-eyed, in a Security Directorate uniform that matched the shade almost exactly. Jesus, a Strategos.

“Mr. Kenston, pleased to see you lookin’ so well,” she was saying; seeming to mean it, too. An odd pang of guilt, quickly suppressed: This isn’t the middle ages, Marine. You don’t owe them anything because you’ve eaten beneath their roof. It isn’t theirs, anyway.

“I’d like you to meet my brother Andrew,” she continued. “An’ Felix Vashon, here. Mr. Kenston,” she continued to the two, “is the Wayfarer guest. Art-supply buyer, and a Class III veteran. Throat an’ head injuries, unfortunately, but he’s got a boy to talk fo’ him . . . Where is he, Mr. Kenston?”

“Hel-o.” Kustaa grated, exchanging forearm grips with the two men. Christ, I’m glad I don’t have to arm-wrestle for a living here, he thought. “Se-nt . . . ” he waved vaguely. “Er-rand.”

“Andrew von Shrakenberg, Merarch. XIX—formerly Nineteenth Janissary. Now on detached duty.” Hard arm, direct stare, polite expression, expressionless eyes. . . No. Flat, slightly dead; thousand-yard stare, familiar as the cracked scraps of shaving mirrors on troopship bulkheads during the War. Combat man, and not from a bunker, either.

“Felix Vashon, Strategos, West-Central European district,” the secret policeman said. Pleasant smile, well-modulated voice. The sort who made you understand why the standard nickname for Draka was “snake”—or that might just be knowledge of what he did for a living. Maybe this is the one that cut off Rutherford’s eyelids and left him staring into a strobe light for a week, the American thought.

Tanya was about to continue, halted, beckoned imperiously. Marya came up to the small group of Draka, bowed politely and stood with a clipboard in her hands, eyes meekly downcast.

“Report,” her owner said.

“Mistress, all the scheduled guests have arrived. These masters are also to be staying?” She brought up the paper and produced a pen. “Masters, there is camp-style accommodation in the pavilions in the cherry orchard west of the maze, or rooms at the plantations surrounding. Here? Very good, Masters; the last pavilion on the right; your luggage will be laid out.” To Tanya: “The final check on provisions indicates more than ample supplies, Mistress. Cook says the suckling pigs are turning out very well. The extra servants and the personal retinues of the guests have all been settled in and familiarized with the floor plan and the events. The transport for the boar hunt tomorrow is on schedule. Refueling arrangements for the aircraft at the landing field are complete, and the tanker-steamer is standing by. Repairs on the dock at Port Boulet are complete and the yacht is at anchor. Yasmin and Solange are completing their rehearsals and Solange says she is satisfied with the musicians”—she inclined her head toward the dais by the old chapel building—“for a provincial group. No serious problems, Mistress.”

Tanya patted her on the cheek and spoke to her brother. “Remember pickin’ her up fo’ me, back this spring? You were kind enough to offer me the run of you pens back there in Lyon, Strategos.”

“It’s a festive occasion. Felix, please. The wench is satisfactory? I had my doubts, frankly.”

“Mo’ than satisfactory. Occasionally troublesome, but worth it; real mind fo’ organization. New plantation, routines not set. Edward an’ I have to concentrate on plannin’ and getting the labor force goin’, she’s invaluable.”

“Hmmm, thought she might be,” Andrew said. “You get a feelin’. Type you have to watch, though.”

“Yes . . . although she turns out to have unexpected talents as well. Mr. Kenston here”—she gave him a smile and a friendly squeeze on the forearm; her fingers were like slender metal rods, precisely controlled force—“took a sudden hunger fo’ her yesterday. To tell the absolute truth,” she continued frankly, “if there’d been a way of refusin’ him compatible with manners, I would have.” A favorite horse or a regular concubine was something only a friend could ask the loan of, as a favor; ordinary household goods like Marya were a guest’s to use, of course. “I’ve gotten to know the wench somewhat, an’ I’d’ve sworn on the soul of the Race and the first von Shrakenberg’s grave all her erotic juices were channeled into her superstitions, need a prybar and help to get her knees open. Pro’bly girl-only if she were beddable, at that. Instead—”

She put a finger under Marya’s chin and lifted her face to the light. “Look at that. You wouldn’t notice, but the skin around her eyes is mo’ relaxed. Set of the shoulders, too.” A rueful shake of the head. “Happy! An’ I was afraid she’d be sulkin’ and poutin’ off her work fo’ weeks, at least. Turned out all she needed was a night rider and she’s purrin’. Shows, never be too certain about anybody.”

To her guest: “Satisfactory fo’ you?”

Kustaa smiled, looking at the three; their sleek strong bodies so expensively trained, the beautifully tailored clothes and uniforms, the cold predator eyes that never lost that speck of icy watchfulness. At the woman waiting patiently, dowdy in her long sleeves and the heavy wool that brought a glow of sweat to her face. Waiting with serene patience. Filth, he thought at the Draka, behind the mask of his smile. You’re all filth, none of you worth a thousandth the Sister.

“Go-od,” he said, nodding and smiling, knowing his face was flushing—but that was all right, they weren’t going to guess it was with the intensity of his need to kill them all. Out, he thought. If the world were ruled by sanity and justice as she believes, I could get her out. Introduce her to Maila. God, I’d send my kid to any school she taught in.

The Draka’s finger freed the nun’s chin; her eyes met his for a moment before dropping into the proper downcast position. Level and very calm. Do nothing foolish, Frederick. No, he wasn’t going to do anything foolish, no, there was an entire lifetime of work ahead of him. Until the last Draka was dead. Do not let them damage your soul with hatred. You owe your wife and child more than that, and yourself.

That brought him up cold. “Th-an-k y-o,” he said. The Draka woman nodded, taking the gratitude that was not meant for her, as he had intended. And the Sister would say this place was her cross, which she would take up to follow Him.

“Hold youself at this mastah’s disposal, when you not workin’,” Tanya said. “If you’ll forgive me, Mr. Kenston?” He nodded, and the group moved on.

“Uncle Karl,” he heard the voice say. “Cousin Eric, you two aren’t fightin’ again? Sofie, you’d better learn how to keep this pair of bull rhinos—”

“It’s the Boche,” Jean said, when Henri finally called from the other room. He inserted his head through the hood of the vision block beside the door, pressing his face to the padded visor. There was enough light in the short section of tunnel beyond the armorplate for him to see a distorted image of Ernst’s face. Peering behind him, so there was only a stretch of neck swollen by the mirrors and thick glass that bent the image through ninety degrees to bring it to him. Turning around, mouth working, he must be talking.

Whunk-whunk-whunk, a stone on the thick steel. So far away. Like Father’s face, when the switch was under my hand and the pain—Nothought, nothoughtnothoughtnothought. White sound inside his head, soothing. Forget the shaking, the sweat, they could not trouble him while he whitesound-nothought could not remember the room and the chair and the whitesound-nothought—

“Well, let him in, you young cretin!” Henri’s voice. Henri’s hands shoving him aside, spinning the wheel. He turned, helped, the heavy door swung open. The Boche stepped through, shaking his head, speaking in heavy guttural French even as they strained together to swing it shut again, quietly, quietly. Shhhh-chung, and the bolts were sliding home again.

“What took you so long? I might have been seen. Ach, there’s no possible excuse for my being here.”

“Quite correct,” Henri replied. “We are supposed to be hiding here.” Suddenly he turned and gripped Jean by the collar. “Merde, what were you waiting for! You know we can’t hear anything in the inner—” He turned suddenly, looked at the periscope. Jean felt a sudden stab of fear; it was up again.

Did I do that? Yes, he had; an impulse, in the hope that the masters would see.

Henri’s hand came around and hit him, across the face and back again. “Are you drunk, you little shit?” he said. Something seemed to snap behind Jean’s forehead, and now he was seeing very clearly.

“Are you drunk? Have you been sucking that piss-smoke kif the snakes give us to rot our brains again? Or are you simply fucking insane? That thing’s naked to the sky except for some wire mesh, anyone could have seen it move up there!”

Seeing very clearly, the strong jowly face of Henri Maloreaux, who had been like his uncle. His father’s (screamingtwistedswitchchairwhitenoisenothoughtnothought) best friend, old friend from faded pictures on the mantel before the War, old army friend. God, how I hate you, he thought, very clearly, as he smiled with the right degree of shakiness.

“Thank you, Henri,” he said. “I’ve . . . well, I keep remembering little Marie-Claire, and—thank you.” The man’s eyes softened, not the hard clench of his muscles. Jean knew what he was remembering, he was seeing Marie-Claire in her white First Communion dress. The photo, only it was his sister across the padded block and the dog was—whitenoisenothoughtnothought. The Draka had let him talk to her just last week, her and Maman: hello Jean I love you no we are well the work is hard but nobody hurts us we love you when can you come to us—

“I understand,” Henri was saying.

Hate you.

“It must be absolute hell, not knowing where they are.” The Maloreaux family was in the same compound, three concrete bunks across the room. “I understand.”

The Boche was looking sympathetic too. “Ach,” he said. “It is always the families that make it worst.” Hate you. Ybarra was in the room now too, looking at him. Cold eyes, considering. Filthy Red whore, she was the one they had picked to kill the foreman, the one who listened at the doors and asked questions. Got him into her bunk—they could all hear the wet slapping sounds behind the curtain, then the thin whining cry as she put the steel needle in under the hair at the back of his neck; everyone thought it was a heart attack. Hate you, bitch.

I will go to America, he thought with the same gleeful clarity. I and Marie-Claire will go to America. I don’t know how I will get word to the masters, but I will. Not the chair, not with her or Maman, not their faces bulging around the gag and my hand pressing the switch and pressing and pressing and stopping the pain the pain pressing whitenoisenothoughtnothought. The masters will come for me, and we will go to America and Marie-Claire will wear a white dress, and we will sail under the big bridge like the newsreel and never again the compound, she will laugh and clap her hands and not bend over the block with the dog whitenoisenothoughtnothought.

“It’s that pigdog Vashon; he didn’t see me,” the German was saying. Jean felt another clear metallic thing go snap behind his eyes, because it was all working just right, just as the master called Vashon had said it would, the voice that spoke to him from the darkness beyond the blinding light, it always did and the photo landed at his feet and he looked down, no he didn’t.

“Probably just chance he’s here, but we’ve got to be even more careful. Almighty Lord God but he’s a cunning devil.”

Not chance. The voice from darkness was strong, it was wise, it would lead him into the newsreel and the ship and the tall fountains of water and the thrown streamers and confetti, where Marie-Claire laughed and did not huddle beside him on the concrete bunk listening to the noises in the dark. The voice knew he was its faithful servant and had come to reward him.

“But there’s one stroke of luck, as good as Vashon is bad: Jules Lebrun is here. He and I were friends in the old days, and he’s in on it with the other, the nun. They’ve arranged to have him on radio watch during the celebrations tonight, and with him I can ‘play chess.’ The American will slip away as soon as he can. When the message is received, we will flash the lights three times from the upper window. That gives us an hour before the airplane arrives; you must have the diversion ready, to draw all attention from this place. And the landing lights.”

Henri smiled, nodded. How ugly his teeth, why did I not see that before. “Don’t worry,” he said, clapping the older man on the shoulder. Disgusting, a Boche, maybe Henri just boasted of fighting them, he ran away and was a collaborator. “We’ll be employing our little plastique surprises, they’ll be too busy attending to the transformer and their autos to notice a silenced plane. No killings, even, so it shouldn’t mean more than a few sore backs among the locals; we’ll all be far away in our different directions, no?” He’s a coward too, a coward.

Vashon was here. It would be difficult to slip away, they were all watching him. Perhaps when they went to plant the explosives. The voice from darkness would take away all his sins as he knelt and begged forgiveness. It would wash him clean and it would all be clear in his head, like this.

“Sounds too good to be true, comrades.” Ybarra’s voice came from behind his shoulder.

His own mouth made sounds, and they were clear and good because Henri laughed and nudged him. Die, bitch. Die.

“Don’t call me comrade,” Henri was saying, an arm around Jean’s shoulders.

Die.

“I think,” the Austrian replied, resting a hand for a moment on Henri’s arm, the woman’s shoulder, “we can reclaim that word for all of us. It is a good word, Kamerad.”

Jean smiled and said the word. Die. Leave me alone in my head stop talking to me inside, die.

Tonight.

All of you. Die.

The picture was one of the middle series. Alexandra caught with the discus in her hand, leaning back against the wall with one leg propped up against it. Old stone wall, Mediterranean-white. Strong bare slender foot trailing toes in the white dust, just highlights of the rest, the scratched bronze of the disc, school tunic, metallic-black of hair, face shadowed by the colored dark of the bougainvillea . . .

“I was always too fond of putting flowers in,” Tanya said.

“No,” Alexandra replied. They were sitting on the solitary couch in an empty echoing room in the new east wing, the picture propped up before them on a wooden chair. Their arms were over each other’s shoulders, the free hands holding cooling late-afternoon glasses of beer. Light scattered through the windows, shafts into darkness, slanting hazy pillars of yellow crossed by the slow white flecks of dust motes.

Gods, I’m glad to get away for a while, Tanya thought, and let her head loll against the high scrollwork back of the seat. The tour of the Quarters had been deadly dull . . .

“Still thinkin’ ’bout all those old fogies complainin’ the serfs would be spoiled with four-room cottages an’ runnin’ water?” Alexandra said, with a slight teasing note in her voice.

Tanya turned her head. She’s aged well, was her first thought. Better than me. Experience lines beside the eyes that were a blue deeper than indigo, almost black. They kissed, drew back and laughed, turning to the painting.

“No, thinkin’ of . . . back then.”

“Gods bless, it’s like rememberin’ another universe . . . What were we goin’ to do?”

“What weren’t we? Conquer the world—”

“About half, it turned out.”

“Paint the most beautiful pictures ever done, design planes to fly to the moon . . . love like nobody ever had or would.”

“Ah, what happened to us?” Alexandra mused.

“What didn’t? The war. Life. Love, death, victory, defeat, joy, anguish, children . . . time.”

“There it is, captured fo’ever,” the dark-haired woman said. “Not many can say that, Tanya. All the fire an’ the sweetness and the old familiar pain . . . ”A sigh. “While we, we’re not those two any longer, are we?”

“No; we’re older, sadder, and friends.”

A door slammed and a small figure bounced through, cartwheeling, a flash of orange fire as the hair passed like a bar of flame through a patch of light.

“Ma, Ma!” Gudrun said, then stopped politely when she saw her mother had company. “Sorry, Ma, ma’am. I’ll come back later.”

Alexandra laughed. “Time takes, time gives. I’d best go see to my own, they’ve probably burned down half the province an’ set sail on you yacht to play pirates all the way to Ceylon.”

They touched fingers. “See you later, ’Zandra,” Tanya said.

“Sho’ly, Tannie.”

Tanya held up her arm. “Not too old to snuggle with you momma?” she said.

The child settled into the curve of her shoulder, a wiry-hard bundle whose calm trust finished the task of relaxing the tension out of her back. Not too old, she thought. Not yet. Gudrun sighed and yawned, curling up, the bouncing energy suddenly flipping over into sleepy thoughtfulness. How did I feel at her age? How did I think? The effort to recall was maddening, slipping away from the fingers of the mind. A rage, a rage to do, to live, to be . . . Fragments of memory: holding a dragonfly’s wing to the sun and seeing it suddenly as a vast plane of gold ridged with rivers of amber. Lying in her bed alone in the dark and feeling consciousness staggering as she comprehended death for the first time, realized that one day she, herself, the inner “I” would cease to be. Enormous unappeasable frustration with all-powerful adults who would not, could not understand . . . things that seemed so clear, but that she could never have put into words.

Her daughter was looking at the painting. “Did you love her, Ma?” she asked.

Tanya smiled and put down the glass, used the other arm to hold her daughter close. Well, she’s getting to the age when your parents’ love lives are troubling mysteries instead of boring grown-up stuff, she thought tenderly.

“Yes, very much,” she said.

“As . . . as much as you love Pa?” the girl asked.

“Different, child, different . . . ” How to explain? “Remember what happened when we said you were old enough to drink you wine unwatered?” Tanya felt the beginnings of an embarrassed squirm.

“No, don’t feel bad, baby, everyone takes a great big gulp just to see what it’s like. Love’s like that, Carrottop, you have to practice, an’ the first real try makes you head spin. Makes everythin’ wild an’ strange-like, because it is the first an’ the skill isn’t there. Flares up like a bonfire, where you freeze and roast. Then you learn how to make the good warm coals that’ll last all you life long, the way Pa and I’ve done. But, ah! Those first tall flames are a lovely sight.”

A long pause. She looked down and saw the red brows knitted in thought, then a slow nod.

“Will I ever have a special friend like your Miss ’Zandra?” she asked shyly. “The girls in the senior forms at school, they’re always goin’ on about who’s fallin’ fo’ who, and it all seems so . . . silly, like a game.”

“Sometimes it is, Carrottop, and it’ll all seem less silly once you body changes—I know it’s hard when we say, ‘Wait until you older,’ but sometimes it’s all we can.” She kissed the top of the child’s head, feeling the sun-warmth still stored in the coppery hair. “Jus’ have to wait, child; doan’ ever rush into things ’cause others are doin’ it and you want to fit in. When you time comes listen to you heart; maybe in school, maybe later in the Army when you old enough fo’ boys, maybe not till University. Maybe everythin’ will work perfect right off, or you might have to try an’ try again—most folks do.”

“If . . . if you love someone like that, and it doesn’t . . . work, does it hurt?”

A rueful laugh. “Sweet goddesses, yes, baby, worse than anythin’ else in the world.”

“Then why does anybody do it, Ma?”

“Can’t help themselves, child, no ways.”

Another silence. “Pa never had a special friend like Miss ’Zandra, did he, Ma?”

Tanya squeezed a hug. “Freya, Carrottop, you wants to find out everythin’ in a hurry.” A pause for thought. “No, though some do . . . Men are different from us, baby.” A nod: Draka children learned the physical facts of life early, from observation and in their schooling. “Not just the way they’re made, but inside.”

She tapped her daughter’s head. “They . . . come to the need fo’ lovin’ late, but need the pleasurin’ part of it more, ’specially when they’re young, and they can keep the two apart more. We’re the other way ’round, the lovin’ comes first, in general, and then the needin’ grows on us. Not everybody’s that way, you understand, but most. That’s why the boys mostly start with wenches, because at first with them it’s just this . . . blind drive to plant their seed.”

Gudrun frowned again, and when she spoke it was in a quiet voice. “Ma, doesn’t that mean . . . well . . . ”

Tanya rocked her, smiling over her head. That was a question all Draka children asked, sooner or later; important to give the right answer. “An’ you wonderin’ if that means he loves you less, with all those wenches’ babies he made, makes you less special,” she said. A quick nod. “No, never, darlin’ of my heart,” she went on, letting a note of indulgent amusement into her voice, showing that the fear was understood but not a thing to be taken seriously, feeling the momentary tension relax out of the girl’s body. “You see, Pa and I made you together; like he loves me special out of all the world, we love you and Timmie and the twins, because only you children of our blood are really ours. Y’understand, sweetlin’? You the children we raised an’ trained, and you our . . . well, when we’re gone, you’ll be all that’s left of us.

“Know how we always say, ‘Service to the State,’ and ‘Glory to the Race’?” A nod: civics classes would have taken care of that. “There’s another meanin’, and this is real important. You are the glory of the Race, darlin’. Because of you and you brothers and sisters, Pa and I are joined to the Race, through the children you’ll have some day, and their children and children’s children, forever. Just like we join y’all to the ones who went before, right back to the beginnin’.”

“Oh. That’s sort of scary.”

“Mm-hm. Big responsibility, Carrottop, but it’ll be a while before you has to worry about that. Never be in a rush to grow up, my baby; that’s what ’Zandra and I were talkin’ about, before you came. Lookin’ ahead you see all the things you can do that you can’t now; but lookin’ back, you see what’s lost. Take each year with what it brings, Gudrun.”

“Ma . . . ”

“What, mo’ questions?” A laugh. “Go ahead, daughter, go ahead. Just remember, fo’ you own when their favorite word is ‘why.’ ”

“Why do Pa and you . . . I mean, I know you love each other, so why, umm—”

“Aha, the wenches. Well, darlin’, that’s another thing you’ll understand better when you’re older, but . . . it’s like candy and real food. You could live without candy, fairly easy, but on nothin’ but candy you’d sicken. Nice to have both, though.”

“Why only, well, only wenches, Ma?”

“It isn’t,” she said frankly. “Fo’ men so inclined, there’s prettybucks. Remember what I said about the Race?” A nod. “Well, women can’t mother as many as a man can father, and it takes a Draka mother to make Draka, child. Especially since we’ve other things to do, like fightin’ and helpin’ run the estates and so forth. So we have to save our wombs fo’ the Race’s seed.” We’ll leave aside the vexed question of whether contraception’s made the Race Purity laws obsolete, and the even more vexed question of the primitive male confusion between penetration and domination; that’s for your generation to deal with. “Another thing that pro’bly won’t trouble you for a good many years yet.” More somberly: “When it does, remember, we’re like iron, they’re glass; be careful touchin’ them, you can shatter them without meanin’ to.”

Gudrun yawned again, snuggled her head down against her mother’s bosom, squirming into a more comfortable position. Tanya sat without words for a few minutes, watching the near-invisible lashes flutter lower, the near-transparent redhead’s eyelids drooping down.

“But what did you come runnin’ in to ask, my sleepy baby?”

Another huge yawn, and a near mumble. “Beth said I had to nap, but I’m too old to take naps in the afternoon, Ma.”

“ ‘Course you are, honeybunch. You just lie there a while, and momma’ll sing fo’ you.”

Rocking, she began very softly: “Hush little baby, doan’ you cry/ You know the spirit was meant/ To fly—”

“ . . . fiasco in Lyon,” someone’s voice was saying.

Kustaa pricked up his ears, bending over the gift table. It was sunset, and the night’s entertainment had begun. He glanced at his watch; Ernst and Jules would be in the radio room at 2130, and for three hours after that. His scheduled transmission time started a half hour later. Plenty of time, and it would be suspicious in the extreme if he absented himself; he could plead sickness but then his hosts would exercise their damned consideration and call for medical help, which he could not afford.

He smiled to himself as he edged nearer to the cluster about Tanya’s brother and the Security general. The throat story was bad enough, making elaborate explanations impossible; sometimes he felt Donovan had outsmarted himself there. The speech training had worked to some extent, a more moderate injury would have been better. The head injuries were even worse, because if he played sick they might override his objections to a doctor’s examination.

Ah, well.

“Not quite a fiasco, sho’ly,” Vashon was saying.

“Since I was there, and jointly responsible, I think I can speak frankly without givin’ offense, Strategos. ‘Fiasco’ I said and meant,” Andrew replied.

Kustaa moved down again, past studbooks showing the pedigree livestock among the presents, past a da Vinci and a Cellini saltshaker. There was no formal organization to the viewing; you went and examined young Karl and Alexandra in their cradles, perfectly ordinary looking examples of two-month-old children, round squashed-looking faces and starfish hands. Then you drifted along, giving each item the grave attention or amusement or comment it merited; the American took his cues from others. A pair of pistols caught his eye, and he lifted one out of the satin lining in the rosewood case.

“We caught a good number of them,” Vashon objected.

“Spearchuckers. That bunch is so tightly celled, even they contact men don’t know who their opposite numbers are, they just a voice in the dark.”

“So they’re claimin’, to date.”

“Strategos, you know as well as I do that it isn’t impossible to lie while bein’ castrated, blinded and bastinadoed, but it is impossible to lie well and coherently and consistently. We didn’t get their leaders, or the American, or the scientist, or the . . . well, you know.”

Kustaa turned the weapon over in his hands, hiding savage elation as the old oiled metal sheened in the lamplight. It was a six-shot revolver, but—with a second barrel under the normal one—a massive weapon: the patterned Damascus steel inlaid with elongated leopards and buck, the butt with plaques of turquoise and ivory. He flipped it up to look at the white-metal plate on the end of the grip: Le Matt, Virconium, 1870. Back, to examine the barrel. There was a slight pattern of randomly-etched pits around the muzzles; these had been used, and fairly frequently. He reached into the case for two of the cartridges—brass centerfire models, no corrosion—so they must be made up to fit the antique. A standard revolver bullet, about .477, and what looked like a miniature shotgun shell. There was a faint smell of gun oil and brass about the weapon, the patina of another’s palm on the grip.

“Cobbler to the last, a fightin’ man to weapons,” a voice said by his ear. He turned, startled; the speaker was a tall gray-haired man in an Arch-Strategos’ uniform. That was a rarity; there weren’t more than a hundred or so in the Domination.

“Karl von Shrakenberg, Landholder, Arch-Strategos, Supreme General Staff, retired,” the man said. Kustaa took his hand and gave the strangled grunt expected of him. Another of the eagle faces, but this was an old bird, tired, face scored by years and pain; he moved stiffly, with a limp.

“Sannie von Shrakenberg, Landholder, Strategos, Supreme General Staff, Strategic Plannin’, active.” Kustaa blinked; the woman looked to be in her forties, a little old for the six-month belly, but it was still disorienting. Like seeing one of the Joint Chiefs knitting booties, he thought with a smile. The woman nodded to him again and moved off.

“I knew Charley Stenner, you commander,” the retired general said. Kustaa turned his start into an appropriate grimace. “Good man, pity that strafin’ got him.”

Maybe Donovan was right after all, Kustaa thought thankfully. Following two conversations at once was another skill he had been taught; the secret policeman was still arguing.

“ . . . not an irretrievable disaster, in any case. We were a little ahead of the Yankees on that project, now we’re a little behind. Bad losin’ Oerbach, but the basic research is done an’ recorded; the plutonium is really unfortunate, bottleneck fo’ us and the Alliance both.”

“It’s the Yankee that sticks in my gullet,” Andrew replied. “Much mo’ of that and we’ll have them runnin’ wild. And Corey Hartmann was a friend of mine.”

“Agreed. I want a film of him dyin’ on the stake. After we’ve gotten what he knows, of course . . . still, in the long run, we gain mo’ from espionage than they do.”

Kustaa put the pistol in the general’s outstretched hand. The older man snapped the action open with a practiced motion. “Le Matt,” he said. “He did his best work in Virconium after the Yankees ran him out of New Orleans; sugar country must have been homelike to him. This was his first swing-out cylinder model, and the last black-powder sidearm authorized for regular use. Best close-quarter weapon of its day.” He made another adjustment, and the thicker barrel beneath the main one slid forward. “Buckshot barrel, just the thing fo’ a cavalry melee.”

“One thing, I’m glad we’ve still got his grandchildren. Nice to have that tricky an’ ruthless a set of genes in the Race.” Andrew, in a tone of rueful admiration.

“I still say we should hold them ready to use as a lever, should, Loki fo’bid, he surface in Yankeeland.” Vashon’s voice was neutrally cold.

“No. Primus, he’s shown he’s ready to sacrifice them fo’ principle; secundus, by grantin’ Citizenship, we made them part of the Race. With all the protection that my sister’s children have, or any other young Draka.” Still friendly, but with an icy finality underneath. That would be reassuring to tell Ernst. As far as the OSS knew, the military were still more powerful in the Domination’s hierarchy. Of course, the Party was stronger than either of the armed branches . . .

“These were my father’s,” the old general continued. Kustaa smiled and nodded. “Weddin’ present; my mother’s parents were Confederates. He carried them in the Northern War.” The American racked his brain . . . yes, that was what they called the Anglo-Russian War of 1879-1882; the Draka had saved Britain from ignominious defeat, an important step in their progress to Great Power status.

“See the inset gold notches? Kills. Duels only of course, not countin’ war. The last one was the one he remembered best. An Englishman, durin’ the stalemate on the Danube. Damn fool thought a duel was a game fired in the air.” Karl smiled, the warm smile of a man remembering his childhood. “Pa always laughed when he told us how surprised the Brit looked when he gut-shot him . . . Honor makin’ you acquaintance, sir.” He replaced the pistol. “Best ever . . . still take them ovah anythin’ but a submachine gun . . . ”

A liveried servant took stance by the doors that led into the palaestra wing and the stairs to the terrace.

“My Masters!” she cried, sharply rapping the staff she carried on the flags. “The banquet awaits you.”

“Oh, Poppa, are you sure you can’t come?” Solange said, stepping back and turning her head a little to examine herself in the mirror.

How lovely, Jules Lebrun thought. How much like her mother. The image twisted with a pain worse than the growing lumps under his ribs, and he smiled to cover it and the tears that threatened his eyes. His daughter was dressed in a long form-fitting gown of platinum sequins, burnished until they glittered in a blinking, continuous shimmering ripple. Her hair hung loose down the length of her back, and thrown over it was a net of gossamer silver wire, the joinings of the mesh marked with tiny blue-white diamonds.

Solange turned to view herself from a different angle her hands moving down from below her breasts and over her hips. “I look like a princess,” she said happily, with a smile that highlighted the slight flush on her cheeks.

No, my child, you look like a very expensive toy, Lebrun thought with an aching sadness. The chamber that had been set aside as a dressing room was crowded: the quartet and their instruments, Solange and Yasmin, their friends. It smelled of cigarette smoke, clothes, brandy from the flask one of the musicians was handing around, faintly of the singer’s jasmine perfume.

“Ernst is an old friend, child,” he said. “Mr. Kenston will be leaving tomorrow”—actually rather sooner—“and we will never meet again, probably. I must spend some time with him, while his duties allow.”

Solange sighed. He could tell why—only a few privileged house serfs would be allowed to listen to the entertainment, from below in the courtyard, and she must have wheedled to get him included. Then he saw her cast off the shadow. Determined to be happy, and allowing nothing to stand in her way, he knew. She came over and embraced him lightly and he put his arms around her scented and bird-delicate shoulders.

“I love you, Poppa,” she said, brushing her cheek against his. “Wish me luck—this could be the most important performance of my career!”

Career? he thought. “I love you too, my child,” he whispered. And it is true. We love our children as we love our country, not because they deserve it but because they are ours, and we must. Angrily, he felt his weakened body betray him and the tears spill over his eyelids.

“Oh, Father, don’t be that sad, you will have hundreds of times to hear me sing!” She straightened, and gave her makeup a last check. “Yasmin, are you ready?”

The other serf girl looked up from her mirror. “Hold you horses, Solange sweet,” she said placidly. “Plenty of time.” She was dressed in a white-silk fantasia loosely based on an Arab burnoose, a color that set off her creme-caramel looks. Satisfied, she nodded, rose, hummed an experimental note and opened the neck of her garment a trifle more.

“Goin’ be some hungry eyes on us tonight,” she said complacently, linking arms companionably with Solange. “Only until we sing. Then they will be lost, and afterwards, it will drive them mad.”

They made for the door, the musicians trailing, but it opened before they reached it and Chantal stepped through, followed by Marya.

“Why, hello!” Yasmin said to Chantal, then looked more closely. “You lookin’ bettah, honeybunch!” The Frenchwoman flushed at the faces turned toward her, but it was true; she was still haggard, but neatly groomed and holding herself erect.

Chantal’s eyes passed over the serf with blank indifference, fastened feverishly on Jules Lebrun. Yasmin pursed her lips and turned to Solange with a shrug and roll of the eyes that said what-can-I-do more eloquently than words.

Solange’s smile and nod to the nun had a trace of good-natured mockery, looking her up and down. “You are also looking . . . well . . . Sister,” she said as the two singers passed through the door. “Good night.”

Lebrun remained silent after the door closed, glancing warily from the flushed excitement on the young woman’s face to the worried concern of his Resistance commander’s.

“Well?” he said at last.

“Chantal . . . Chantal, unfortunately, has stumbled across our . . . enterprise, Professor Lebrun. Specifically, she has deduced that Frederi—Mr. Kenston is not what he seems.”

“I saw him with you, last night,” Chantal said triumphantly. “But I wouldn’t have been fooled; I saw you all day when you thought you’d have to lie down for him. You hid it but you were looking into the grave. I’m not stupid enough to think you would change so quickly. He is an American, an ami agent, is he not? And that ‘servant’ of his, he is from the nuclear facility—”

“Quiet!” Lebrun said. Marya opened the door again and looked quickly up and down the corridor.

“And I know something that you perhaps do not. Master Edward mentioned it to that slut Yasmin, while he was violating me the other night. An Alliance submarine was spotted off Nantes just the day before yesterday, and the Draka cannot find it. That is how the American and the Boche are to escape. Well, I am going too! You thought you could keep me in ignorance, I who was arrested and tortured for Resistance work as well, leave me here to be a beaten drudge and whore, I am going too.”

“Oh, Chantal,” Marya said softly. There was mourning in her voice, and Lebrun met her eyes with a like sadness. They nodded slightly at each other, one thought in their minds. She knows too much.

“Chantal, child of God, believe me, only the American and the scientist are leaving,” Marya said. “I swear it by Father, Son and Holy Ghost, on my hope of salvation.”

Chantal’s fists clenched. “You may stay and be a martyr, I have done enough.”

The nun closed her eyes in pain. “As you wish it, Chantal,” she said. “We are to send a radio message, then you will come with us to the shelter in Bourgueil, where the . . . courier from the coast will take you to a boating dock, upriver.”

Lebrun stiffened in shock, then looked at the sickened, weary face of the Pole and understood; away from the Great House, to where the armed Resistance fighters were. Amid rubble where one more hidden body would be a little matter. Marya crossed herself and spoke softly in Latin. Which he understood and Chantal did not, although he knew he was not the Person she addressed:

“And Caiaphas said, is it not expedient that one man should die for the people?”

Lebrun replied sharply, in the same language: “And if your eye offends you, pluck it out.”

“Truly,” she sighed, crossed and took Chantal’s hands with a smile. “It would be better if you had not tried to force our hand so, Chantal. So much better. But I understand, truly, and with all my heart I forgive you.”

There was absolute sincerity in her voice, on the square homely face. Lebrun looked at it and shivered, knowing it was true, knowing it would be equally true in the moment Marya pulled the trigger. God protect me from the truly righteous, he thought, then almost laughed to himself at the unintentional irony. There were times when he congratulated himself on the sheer convenience of skepticism.

“Do you understand, Sister?” Chantal said, the anger still in her tone. She disengaged her hands. “What you were afraid of happened to me, over and over, for weeks, I had to . . . to do . . . and now I’m pregnant,” she spat. “Pregnant by that swine, but I’ll never bear it, never stay here to be a sow farrowing little slaves. Never.”

For a moment Lebrun felt only a detached sympathy. Then his eyes flashed to Marya’s face, appalled, and saw her go pasty-white beneath her tan. Inwardly he was cursing himself for the quotation he had chosen, remembering the first lines of it: “Whoso shall offend one of these little ones . . . it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea . . . ” Knowing that she would have thought of it herself, that no argument on earth short of a direct pronouncement by the Pope speaking ex cathedra would convince her that Chantal was not carrying a human soul beneath her heart. And that she was as incapable of harming what she considered a blameless child as she was of defiling the Host or committing necrophilia.

Well, the one-time professor of anthropology and ex-soldier thought. His eyes rested on Chantal’s triumphant form with detached appraisal. She’s stronger than I am in this state. It will have to be from behind, and quick, before the Sister can intervene. She’ll accept it once done.

Kustaa found himself surprised at how mild the banquet’s entertainment was, nothing like the propaganda; of course, this was an important occasion, and a conservative family. The food was good enough that his first concern, how to force enough into a tension-tight belly to avoid being conspicuous, turned out to be misplaced. Watch it, old son, he told himself. Not good to be stuffed before action. He looked around the hollow square of tables, snowy linen, the glitter of crystal and silverware and bone china. More formal than the afternoon; the men in dark evening suits with lace stocks or uniforms, the women out of uniform, all in draped classical-style gowns that left one shoulder bare.

Light from the globes, and from burning cressets hung between, as well; the Draka liked to see what they were eating, not grope by candlelight. Seafood, appetizers, soup, fish, a main course of roast suckling pig, salads, vegetables, while the chamber group played soft Mozart and he listened to the conversations; Andrew and Vashon rehashing their efforts to track him down, the female aeronautical engineer at his side explaining the long-term potential of hydrogen-fueled ramjets and lamenting the difficulty of modeling high-speed airflows; the Landholders and their close kin discussing weather and crops in words that might almost have been the ones he grew up among in the rural Midwest.

He raised a glass of wine and pretended to sample the bouquet; an act, it all smelled and tasted like spoiled grape juice to him. He was strictly a beer-whiskey-and-aquavit man. He noticed nobody was getting more than mildly tipsy, or stoned on the kif that was also on tap. Well, they are health fanatics to a man, he mused. It might almost have been a very tony Long Island gathering at home, except for the costumed mime-dancers who enacted the legend of Leda and the Swan. They were dark women, with the bodies of ballerinas; professionals from the older territories, considering the length of time those skills must take to learn. The swan wings and mask of the one playing Zeus transformed were really lovely—feathers and jewels and delicate gold work—but then, this was not a society that went in for mass-production of anything but weapons and the cheapest consumer goods; it could afford artisanship.

The dance ended behind a covering of downswept ten-foot wings; the whole done with delicacy rather than gross explicitness, even erotic in a sort of eerie way. He noticed that Vashon had fallen silent to watch it with a burning intensity, and stacked away the datum for the OSS files. The mimes rose, bowed low, ran off in a flutter of feathers and long hair. That was after the tables had been cleared, set with coffee and liqueurs and nuts. Kustaa recognized the singers who came forward next, but was surprised by the sudden silence that fell as they stepped out before the musicians. He did not think it was for their looks, or not mostly; it was simply that they saw no point in having fine music unless they were going to listen.

Tasteful bastards, he thought, inhaling the aroma of the Kenya coffee, this time with genuine appreciation. May they rot in hell.

“My Masters,” Solange said with a graceful curtsy. “For your pleasure, we shall present a duet from the opera Lakme, by Delibes, with modified string and woodwind accompaniment of my own adaptation.”

Kustaa had never enjoyed classical opera much: too many fat ladies in odd clothes screeching, despite the valiant attempts of his mother, who had a dogged self-improving Scandinavian regard for capital-C culture, and Aino, who had dragged him to a fair number in New York after they moved to the capital. The Frenchwoman stepped forward and opened her mouth, and the OSS agent prepared for yet another run-through of the thousand ways the extraction could go wrong. Sound wove its way through the threads of his mind, unraveling. His eyes opened in shock, to see a face transformed into something beyond beauty, a purity of self-absorption as complete as the music that poured effortlessly from that quivering throat, wove around the deeper notes of the other voice, returned . . .

He blinked himself back to awareness as Solange and Yasmin walked the circuit of the table, hand in hand, bowing and flushing at the long sharp ripple of applause. Some of the guests even rose to clap as they went by, and a standing ovation was not something Draka did casually. At last the two came to the head table before their owners; there they sank gracefully to their knees and made the full bow, palms before eyes. The clapping continued, louder, directed to the Landholders now, congratulating them on possessions beyond price. What a waste, Kustaa thought angrily as the singers and musicians withdrew. What a total, fucking waste. It was obscene, far more than the unclothed dancers.

A deep breath, and another; he would have to listen to the first of the after-dinner speakers, at least. It was the retired Field-Marshal who rose, propping a cane against his chair. There was a murmur from the tables, then silence once more. He stood for a moment scanning them thoughtfully, a steady appraising stare.

“I am the eldest von Shrakenberg present,” he said abruptly. “As we’re here to celebrate the reinforcement of the Race by two of the youngest, it’s appropriate that I speak.” A smile. “Although I can’t promise to be as melodious as what we’ve just heard.” There was laughter, and a general settling-in rustle.

“I was born,” the elderly Draka continued, “in 1882. This would be a good occasion to reflect on the changes my lifetime has seen. When I received my commission, the Domination was still officially the Dominion of the Draka, part of the British Empire. We ruled all of Africa, but no more; the British still thought of us as a subject-ally. Europe,” he added with a shark’s smile, “was just beginnin’ to worry about us. Many of the institutions you’re all familiar with were in their infancy; I can remember when the thought of women bearin’ arms would have seemed fantastical. Why, I can remember old men usin’ ‘white’ and ‘black’ as synonyms fo’ Citizen and serf. A different world.”

The scored eagle face swept around the tables. “Now everythin’ since seems . . . inevitable. I can tell you, we didn’t think so at the time! We were afraid of the Europeans, fo’ example. No, don’t look shocked, it’s fact. They were all openly set on subvertin’ our institutions, and they were stronger than us. We were afraid.” A grin. “The Yankees were just a cloud on the horizon. There were those, Draka among them, who thought our overthrow was just a matter of time. And they had a good case, on purely logical grounds.

“We all know what happened in the Great War; I was blown up over Constantinople, makin’ it happen.” He slapped the stiffened leg. “We saw our enemies’ weakness, and we struck. Then words like ‘world conquest’ and ‘Final Society’ started to look more credible. The mo’ sober worried that we’d be drunk with success, with victory disease. Europe was still the stronger, if only it would unite against us, despite the vast conquests we made. Japan, Germany, Russia threatened our new northern and eastern borders.

“And”—he held up his hands—“here we stand, in the heart of Europe, here in France. Where are the children of the men who befo’ 1914 calmly sat to debate how ‘enlightenment’ and ‘reform’ would be forced on the primitive Draka, how they could bring us ‘democracy’? In graves from here to China, workin’ in our fields and kitchens, laborin’ in mines and factories to build our power, singin’ fo’ our pleasure after this excellent dinner, and”—he crooked a sardonic eyebrow at the owners of the plantation—“servin’ pleasure in other capacities. Soon enough, fightin’ and dyin’ fo’ us. Doesn’t this seem like the unfoldin’ of Destiny, the sacred destiny of the Race?

“Horseshit!” The speaker’s fist crashed down, and Kustaa saw startlement replace bored agreement on many faces. “We won because we were tough, and prepared . . . because we were lucky enough to have enemies who’d fight each other—rather than us. This land here is already a breedin’ ground fo’ Draka; I won’t make the usual tiresome references to the reproductive habits of digger wasps. If you young people plan to extend their Domination, you’ll have to be twice as tough, twice as disciplined as we were. We can still lose it all. Never forget that, never. Every day we live, we live on the edge of oblivion. It’s up to you, the young. Rule or die, kill or be killed, crush or be crushed. Always on guard fo’ opportunity, takin’ what we can, never relinquishin’ an inch.

“Destiny is what we make it. Service to the State!”

The guests came to their feet in a sustained roar.

“Glory to the Race!” It crashed out like thunder, broke into a spontaneous chant that lasted for minutes before dying out into self-conscious laughter and a rising buzz of conversation once more.

Short and to the point, Kustaa thought behind his grin, looking up at the lights in the upper room of the tower. Let’s see how you like being on the receiving end, you evil old bastard. He had a perfect excuse, too. One hour more, and he could call. He rose, bowed to the center of the head table. Tanya von Shrakenberg’s head came up, and returned the gesture with a wave.

“A good evenin’ to you, Mr. Kenston,” she said. “Just tellin’ Uncle Karl here that he should go into politics, but some things are even mo’ urgent, eh?” Slyly: “And don’t let her convert you.”

Good-natured laughter followed him. He smiled, nodded as he walked toward the glass wall on the inner side of the terrace. For a moment he halted beneath, stared up at the glowing backlit shape of the Drakon. Fuck you, snake, he thought, and pushed through. Behind him, the lambent yellow eyes stared sightlessly out over the darkened fields.

The sounds of the waters outside her hull were the loudest things that could be heard in the control center of the Benito Juarez. Whale song, mysterious clicks and pings and creaks. Occasionally the distant throbbing of engines, once or twice the hard ringing of a sound-detection scanner.

“2100,” the horse-faced OSS controller said.

The captain nodded to a tech-5 at a console. “Up buoy, stand by to monitor,” he said softly. Theoretically a normal speaking voice was no threat, but pigboaters had a superstitious reverence for “silent running,” and the attitude of mind was one valuable enough to encourage. The man nodded, depressed a switch.

Guzman strained his ears, but only imagination could supply the sound of the float inflating, rising out through the flooded hatchcover, with its spool of wire playing out carefully behind. Breaking surface with an inaudible splash, invisibly black against black water, no more metal than the cable itself and so near-invisible to electrodetectors, nothing for their microwaves to reflect from. Not much risk. The quick throbbing of destroyer screws had not been heard since they settled to the bottom.

The radio operator clamped on his headset, twisted dials. Time passed; Guzman brought out a stick of mint-flavored chicle, offered it to the agent, grinned to himself as the man refused with a repressed shudder. Not a gringo custom, but more comfortable for a submariner than tobacco; although he had to admire the way the yanqui waited without a twitch as the minutes dragged: most of the bridge watch were fidgeting and glaring at the unfortunate able seaman like buzzards around a dying donkey. The captain himself planned to turn in as usual when his watch ended; this would be the first vigil of many.

Time passed. Guzman looked at his watch: 2115. Ten more minutes until—

“Contact,” the radioman whispered. “Contact on the assigned frequency, sir.”

The OSS man crossed to the radioman’s seat in two strides, took the headphones and listened; his face was still impassive, but the blue lights glistened across the wet skin of his forehead. His right hand went out, and the operator shoved the pad and pencil beneath it. He jotted without looking down, waited.

“They’re repeating,” he said. “Prepare to send confirmation.”

The operator looked up at Guzman, unconsciously touching his tongue to his lip. The dark officer took the wad of chicle out between thumb and forefinger, considered it for an instant. Now the danger began. The jaguar is in the jungle, he thought.

“Do it, sailor,” he said calmly, and replaced it, chewing stolidly.

The OSS man took the microphone, spoke slowly and distinctly. “The caa is in the paaak,” he said, just once. A slow smile spread over his mouth as he looked up at Guzman.

“Two men and a treasure chest coming back, Captain,” he said in his nasal Bay State twang.

Guzman surprised himself; he saluted, and took the agent’s hand. “He is a man, that one,” he said quietly; then thought of this dry stick of a spy flying low and slow up the Loire, over the Domination’s defenses, landing with nothing more than a sidearm and risking capture by a people to whom mercy was scarcely even a word. “And so are you.”

To the exec: “Number two, maintain silent running drill; all hands to action stations, prepare to take her up.” Ten minutes on the surface, to unpack and launch the bird. Two hours waiting at periscope depth for the return, and then the hideous risk of a radio beacon.

We’re all going to be, he thought. Or dead.

“Nobody here!” Solange sang, as she and Yasmin came out onto the terrace. The lights had been extinguished and the tables stripped, shadows washed across the yellow marble of the floor, and the air had begun to take on the cool spicy smell of late night in the dog days of summer. The Frenchwoman sang again, a wordless trill, and danced out into the open space, whirling the other serf by the hands until she pulled them to a halt, laughing herself in dizzy protest.

“They loved us, me, wheee!” Solange sang again, giggling. “Did you hear them applaud, did you see their faces?. Mistress says I’ll be in demand for appearances all up and down the river; maybe she’ll even send me to the city for more training, maybe even to Archona, and they’ll make recordings.” She spun, arms high. “And I’ll perform before the Archon, and people will offer Mistress millions for me and she’ll laugh at them!”

“Solange, honeybunch, you drunk an’ on more than wine ‘n’ smoke. Calm down, maybeso it happen that way an’ maybeso no—mmph!”

Solange had stopped her mouth with a kiss, and when she released her, Yasmin was laughing again herself.

“That nice,” she said. “But I’ve got anothah engagement, Solange darlin’, an’ he impatient. See you t’morrow, and doan’ dance the whole night away.”

Yasmin left, and Solange laughed more quietly; she began dancing by herself, singing wordlessly under her breath, until she saw the glow of a cigarette tip by the far end of the terrace, froze for a moment, then walked forward, swaying toward the white outline of Tanya’s gown.

“Don’t let me stop the celebratin’,” the Draka said. “You deserved it, Solange.” She was leaning back against the angle where the head table met its neighbors, one hand under the other arm and the free fingers holding the cigarette. “I really may look into that trainin’, that voice deserves to live.”

“It was all for you, Mistress,” Solange crooned softly when they were at arm’s length. “I was doing it all for you, couldn’t you see it? I could feel your eyes on me warm like hands.” Her own eyes were wide, the pupils swollen until the violet color was a rim around pools of black, her voice slurred and husky. “Everything I am and do is yours, Mistress. Everything.”

Very true, Tanya thought happily. But still nice to have it so enthusiastically volunteered. The serf’s swaying made her platinum sheath quiver in the night like a candle flame of moonlight. You are a treasure Solange, an absolute treasure. She smiled, shivering slightly at the expression in the other’s eyes, abasement and exaltation. So much beauty, so much intelligence and talent and skill, and you are mine.

“Oh, Mistress, you give me so much, make me so happy,” the serf said. “How can I thank—oh!” She giggled again. “Don’t move, Mistress, stay right there, I know just the thing.” She skittered off, returned in an instant with a cushion from one of the chairs, dropped it at Tanya’s feet.

“A cushion?” Tanya said. Solange was playfully crazy even when sober, but wild on wine and kif . . .

“Mais non, the cushion is for me, Mistress, these flags are hard.” Her open mouth was moist as she leaned forward to press a quick kiss on her owner’s lips, and she smiled slyly as she dropped to her knees on the padded cloth. “I am for you, Tanya.”

The Draka looked around for a moment to make sure they were truly private; it was dark . . . Hell with it, she decided. Why not? The cigarette made a minor meteor as she flicked it away over the railing and leaned back, resting her weight on her palms. There goes my little half-hour chat with Tante Sannie about the trials of childbirth; oh well, tomorrow. She let her head loll upward; that brought the dim light of the tower’s highest room to view.

Damnation, she thought with a frown, as Solange lifted the fabric of her skirt and tucked the front hem neatly into her belt. We are visible from the radio room. Not that that would bother her normally; serfs did not count much when it came to privacy, but Jules Lebrun was up there tonight, and making him watch this would be the sort of pointless cruelty she despised.

Tanya looked down; Solange was rolling down her left stocking with elaborate slowness, planting light kisses on the leg as it was exposed. The soft moist sensation was unbearable, and the singer was humming as she worked. On the other hand, he can always look out the other window at the pavilions.

“God, I thought I’d never get away,” Kustaa muttered as he pushed in from the tubelike spiral stairwell; the efforts of the other partygoers to make the cripple feel wanted had been as entangling as glue-covered bungee cords. The radio-room door was a blank steel sheet like the armory one story below, but not locked in the normal course of things. He halted outside the panel; there was a murmur of voices from within. According to plan, then.

The American halted, drew his automatic and took in a deep breath. A glance at his watch: 2330, right after the plantation’s scheduled call-in, no alarm until the next was missed in four hours. The stairwell was redolent of old stone, with a faint underlying tang of ozone from the electronic equipment within; cables in metal conduits ran up the walls beside him, new metal and brackets drilled and bolted to the ancient tufa ashlars. This was the turning point, the step that could not be taken back. He shook his head; that was cowardice speaking, as stupidly as it always did, the desire to buy safety for a few more hours or days at the expense of real escape after a brief risk. He firmed his lips and pushed open the door.

A square room, the size of his bedroom. Brightly lit, naked overhead fluorescent tubes. Small square windows facing east and north. Metal tables bolted to the walls, and banks of equipment: telephone switchboard, shortwave set, teletype. Five people: Ernst and Jules sitting stony-faced over a chessboard, Sister Marya, Chantal—what in God’s name is she doing here—a nameless ordinary-looking serf with his back to the door, sitting in a swivel chair and speaking to the nun.

“I know the visitor’s boy is authorized up here to play chess with Jules, Sister, but you and the other lady will have to—”

“Don’t look around,” Kustaa said in French, in the flat emotionless voice that intimidated so much better than screaming. His hand had locked in the serf’s hair, drawing his head to one side until the muscles creaked. The agent reached around to waggle the muzzle of the automatic in front of his eyes, just in case, then put it in his ear.

“One sound and you’re all dead,” he said for the watch-stander’s benefit. “Down on the floor, hands behind your heads, move. Not you,” he added, checking a scrambling movement to exit the chair with the hard cold metal grinding into an ear.

“Don’t kill me,” the man blubbered, but enough in control not to shout. “Please, Master, I’ll—”

“This is the Resistance,” Kustaa said.

The man started violently.”Oh, God, no. Please go away, you’ll get us all killed. They’ll impale us all, our families, please—”

“Shut up.” You never knew what twisted paths courage might take, even in a rabbit like this. “I’m going to let go of your hair. Keep your head pointed the same way or I’ll blow your brains all over the wall.”

Trembling silence, while Kustaa unclenched his left hand from the man’s scalp and used it to pull the hypodermic from his pocket. The serf started once when the American plunged it home, then slumped.

“Out for hours,” he said, as Marya rose and scrambled across to lay the man straight and peel back an eyelid for a check. The agent tossed her a roll of adhesive tape, and she began to bind the unconscious form, hands and ankles, strips across mouth and eyes. Kustaa dropped the hypo by his side. It was Domination-standard with his own fingerprints on it. All that should spare the bystander from anything too gruesome; serfs were expected to surrender meekly to force. If not . . .

Toughski shitski, as they say in the Polish Marines, Kustaa thought, gleeful under the hammering pulse of action. His movements were crisp and controlled as he sat before the shortwave set.

“What the hell is she doing here, Sister?” he asked as he turned the dials, calling up the settings before the eye of memory. His head jerked towards Chantal, as he set the pistol by his right hand and propped the battle shotgun by the chair.

“She is with us,” the nun said, rising and coming to lean beside him. Swiftly and very quietly, in German: “She is the communist from my cell, she saw us together and guessed what you are. Be careful, we must get her to the cave. The master has been forcing her and she is pregnant and it has driven her . . . wild. She thinks you can take her out and will not listen to reason.”

“English or French!” Chantal hissed. “Don’t think I’m stupid. If I suspect you, I will scream.”

The settings were as correct as he could make them and this was a big military-issue set, powerful enough to punch messages across continents. He took up the microphone, giving the young Frenchwoman a single hard glance. Par for the course. Always something to fuck up at the last minute, he thought. There was a certain detached pity in his glance. The girl looked close to the edge, but . . . Mission first, buddies second, your own ass third and bystanders a distant fourth, he quoted to himself, the unofficial rule-of-engagement the Marine assault battalions had operated by.

“Break, four-seven, four-seven,” he began, repeating it half a dozen times. You had to believe they were listening, that no electromagnetic freak was damping it out so that they got static and a ham operator in Patagonia was picking it up loud and clear.

“This is loganberry”—Donovan’s perverse sense of humor again—“loganberry, with a friend, repeat, with a friend and a Christmas package. A package as big as two loganberries.” The extraction aircraft wasn’t very fast but at least they’d factored in a wide margin on lift. “Coordinates follow.” He read them off. “A grassy path bordered by light, repeat, a grassy path bordered by light.” Let whoever they’d sent wonder how he’d gotten a marked runway for them. “Over.”

He lifted his thumb from the send button and waited, suddenly conscious of sweat soaking his cotton jacket beneath the arms, crawling greasily out from around the rim of his hair; a hand squeezing up under his lungs. One broadcast might not catch some monitor’s attention, but . . .

Hiss. Crackle. Wavering hints of words, spillover, this was close to a commercial frequency, an unused bit of bandwidth in a crowded neighborhood. Then: “The caa is in the paaak.”

Kustaa grunted in sheer relief, suppressed euphoria; this was no time for it. He pulled out the yellow-edged Pan-Domination map for the region, confirmed his earlier estimate. “ETA, not long, it’s a good little aircraft,” he said. “Hit that light.”

He looked up, saw that the northern window that overlooked the terrace was shuttered, the one the Resistance people could see through the periscope. “What the fuck—sorry, Sister.”

“I have heard soldiers before, Frederick,” she said, rising to open it and giving Jules Lebrun’s shoulder a silent squeeze on the way. “This is a battle.”

The lights flickered three times, three times again. “Now, let’s go—” he began, rising.

And there was a scream from the door, long and loud. Kustaa whipped around so quickly that the swivel chair nearly dumped him on the floor, time slowing like treacle as he clawed up the pistol and staggered into some imitation of a crouch. The singer, the one from the banquet, standing in the doorway in some sort of pajama outfit, eyes wide and drawing breath to scream again. Chantal directly in his line of fire. His own legs driving, throwing him to one side, left hand slapping out for a breakfall, too late too late—

“Get the fuck out of the way!” he yelled, trying to get off one shot, but the girl was collapsing backwards; Chantal was standing with her mouth an O of surprise.

The face vanished as the girl threw herself back; there had been only the single scream, but he could hear the sound of tumbling and running footsteps going down that narrow stone corkscrew. God, a single woman’s scream is nothing here, if she just goes to ground we can still make it—

“Quickly,” Marya said. “Quickly, she will go straight to the mistress, quickly.”

“Three lights!” Henri said, and slapped up the handles of the periscope. Ybarra and Jean sprang to their feet and snatched up their sacks. “You two, down to the cars; I’ll get the lights. Allons, mes enfants!”

There was a smile on Henri’s face as he led the charge out the opened door of the shelter, up the short length of tunnel, and hurdled the green steel box they had placed on the lip where excavation met pavement. It would be quicker to load that way, and besides, being in the same room with it made even Henri nervous.

* * *

Moaning, Solange tumbled out of the stairwell into a main corridor; it was dimly lit, and for a moment she nearly screamed again, in panic at not knowing where she was. Blood was trickling salt-musky from her nose, and one eye was almost swollen shut where her fall had driven her face against the stone. She moaned again, seeing the horror of the room, the man bound, the gun coming up toward her, its black pit turning toward her, and her father sitting there, looking at her, doing nothing while the gun came up to kill her, kill her . . .

She shook her head, whimpered at the pain but almost welcomed it as her thoughts cleared. Tanya, she must get to Tanya at once, get out of this nightmare, get to safety. Hugging her bruised arm to her side, she limped down the corridor, tears of pain running down through the sheeted blood on her face, not conscious of speaking aloud.

“My God, Poppa, how could you, how could you betray me again, Poppa, Tanya help me, everything was so nice, Poppa, why did you spoil it—”

Figures, looking at her, jumping aside. House servants, common ones, asking questions. She ignored them, they could not help her, nobody but Tanya could help her. The door, the dear familiar bedroom, her pallet and nook, nobody there. It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair, where is she, she must be here, she said she had to get to bed, the hunt tomorrow—For a full minute Solange could only stand and stare, willing the empty bed full, seeing Tanya rising with concern and comfort, making the whole nightmare go away.

The Master. She must be with the Master. Panting through her mouth, Solange turned and plunged back into the corridor. She must be.

“Keep up, damn you!” Ybarra hissed. That damned Jean, falls on his ass without a pavement under his feet, she thought. There was ample moonlight for running here, with nice clear tracks between the vine trellises. Easy compared with darkness in the hills above the Ebro, waiting to ambush the Fascist supply convoys. Her hand gripped the knife hilt more tightly. It had been amazing how soft, how cooperative, how eager to please the toughest Fascist prisoner had become, when she showed him what she could do with the knife.

Jean got to his feet, brushing at the machine pistol across his chest, clearing the sandy dirt from the action; he was still panting from the run down the long slope. Ybarra jerked him down into a crouch.

“The car park is just beyond those trees,” she said. It was actually a pasture, pressed into service for the celebration. “We’ll go down to the end of the vineyard, low and quick. Through together to the first vehicle, they’re parked in rows. You cover me, three cars behind, and I’ll plant the little bomblets.” A thumb-sized piece of plastique and a chemical detonator for each, not precision timers but reliable and good enough for this work. She sniffed the air; nothing but the rich damp earth smell of this place, so different from the hard dry odors of her native Asturias, the bleak arid hills and the mining towns. A moment’s fierce nostalgia seized her, fueled her rage again. Asturias was no more, all the blood spilled in the uprisings against the mine owners and the victorious war against the Fascist generals, wasted.

No sounds, except for night birds and those accursed rasping crickets. No lights, except from the manor and the tents on its immediate grounds.

“Forward, Jean,” she said.

“Why not you?” he replied. There was an unpleasant note in his voice, and her eyes narrowed. Perhaps his nerve had broken; that happened sometimes, men just ran out of whatever it was that kept them going. As well to remind him that there was no retirement from the Resistance.

“Because I have an uneasy feeling you might drop too far behind, maricon,” she said, letting the honed edge of the knife show for a second; it was not blackened, like the rest of the metal. She could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down. “And if this behind you makes you uneasy, Jean, comrade, remember I’ve never yet cut a man’s throat unless I intended to.”

Kill her now? Jean thought, fingering the trigger of the machine pistol. No, she’s too close. He shuddered, remembering again the sound the overseer had made. This one had eyes like a master, hard and flat and you were nothing, not even a cockroach . . . no, among the cars would be better.

Tanya sighed, and squeezed her husband’s hand. How nice just to lie here and talk over the day, she thought drowsily. Just the two of us, no distractions—

The door to Edward von Shrakenberg’s bedroom burst open, and Solange stumbled through. Tanya shot bolt upright—the serf’s face was a mask of blood and bruise all down the left side, one eye a slit in the blue-shining swelling, and she was clutching at an arm whose fingers were limp. A low moaning trickled from her lips, turning to a sob of relief as she wavered toward the bed.

“Shit,” Edward said with quiet anger and rolled out of bed and onto his feet, reaching for clothes and gunbelt. A flick turned the lights from dim to bright, and the serf looked even more ghastly then; Tanya was by her side immediately, an arm supporting, guiding her to a chair.

“Who did this?” she said, with low deadliness. Somebody’s going to die for this, ran through her with cold conviction. Her fingers probed gently but irresistibly. No broken bones, the arm was just badly bruised; painful, but it looked worse than it was. Solange’s arms shot up with an anaconda grip around the Draka’s shoulders, and she began to cry hysterically.

“Who did this?” Tanya asked more firmly, nostrils flaring at the scent of blood and fear-sweat, overpowering the familiar cologne and musk of Edward’s room. Solange gave a muffled cry, raised her head, jerked back a little in involuntary terror at the expression on the face of the Draka who held her.

“I’m not angry at you, sweetlin’. Now, tell me.” Firm but not loud . . . Wotan’s spear, if it’s that swine Vashon, I’ll call him out and gut-shoot the serf-born bastard. Solange was far too well trained to have offered any provocation that would remotely justify this; even if somebody had the gall to ignore courtesy and take her, she would have submitted and complained later. This was wanton brutality for its own sake. “I don’t let anybody treat my own like this, Solange. Was it Vashon?”

“No!” The serf shook her head, winced, continued. “It was that Kenston, the mute.”

Tanya felt her face go slack with surprise. Kenston, she thought incredulously. You could tell a serf abuser, they showed it by a thousand mannerisms, Kenston she would have pegged as the type to spoil with sentimentality.

“He . . . he tried to kill me, Mistress. I went up to say good night to Poppa, to tell him how beautiful it was when I sang, and . . . and Raoul, they had him tied up, Chantal and . . . and Master Kenston, I screamed and . . . and Master Kenston tried to take his gun and, and shoot me and, and—”

“Chantal?” Edward bellowed, halting in the middle of stamping his foot into a boot.

Solange flinched, closed her good eye and continued in a breathless gabble. “Oh, it was horrible; there were Chantal and Marya and Poppa and the German and Master Kenston and they had Raoul tied up and they were talking—” She stopped, took a deep shuddering breath, visibly forced control. The eye came open again, and when she spoke her voice was shaking but coherent.

“Master Kenston was talking. Really talking. Like . . . like an American.”

“Shit.” This time it was Tanya who spoke. Edward’s hand was flashing to the glass-covered alarm plate above the bed. There was a crunch, but not the expected shrilling of bells. Tanya lowered the bedside telephone in the same instant. “Out,” she said. “Not even a tone.” Which meant the lines were cut.

“Uprisin’?” Edward said bleakly.

“No. Smells wrong. Somethin’ we weren’t even meant to know about fo’ a while.” Aside: “Solange, you did well. Very well. Now, shut up.” To her husband. “All right, twenty adults here overnight. Fifteen arms bearers.” That was not counting the crippled, very aged or severely pregnant. “Personal arms only.” A hard mutual grin: the armory was just below the radio-room, presumably in enemy hands. “It’s night.” Edward nodded; that made her commander, a one-eyed man was at a serious disadvantage without light.

Tanya had been pulling on trousers and shirt from a wardrobe as she spoke; several of her outfits were always here. “Edward, you collect the guests. We’ve got to collect an’ guard the youngsters.” Too much of the future of the Race was at stake, their own blood not least. “Once that’s done, able-bodied an’ any licensed armed servants assemble inside the main gates.” Sheltered from possible snipers in upper windows. “Tom was in the armory, right? I’ll scout there first, try an’ make contact.” The ex-Janissary’s loyalty also went without saying. “Let’s do it, love, let’s go.”

Tanya hit the door running, ignoring the man behind her: she would not have married one she did not trust. A break-roll, looking both ways, painfully conscious of the light weight of the little 9mm Togren in her hand; it was the sort of token gun a city dweller in the Police Zone kept . . . down the corridor, vision hopping in a methodical skitter, another bubble of rage at having to go combat-mode in her own home, suppress it, count doors, this was Issac’s. She wrenched it open and slapped the light plaque without ceremony. The narrow cubicle lit, and Issac rolled off his wife, reaching automatically with his good arm for the pistol he had been issued after the ambush this spring crippled a shoulder.

“Bushman trouble,” she said.

“Scheisse!” he said, reaching for his clothes, throwing a rapid stream of Yiddish over his shoulder to the girl who sat with growing alarm on her face, pulling the sheet up around her as if that was a defense.

“ ’Zactly. Main entranceway, fast.”

Back into the hall, swift cautious zigzag from cover to cover. Tom was in the armory; a good man, but he’d’ve been drinking tonight, it was traditional . . . Freya, I hope he’s all right, she thought, then ground the words out of her brain. No time for words, hope, fear, anything but the automatic reflexes of war—she had a household to defend.

Behind her, unseen, Solange hesitated in the doorway, staggered, put her hand to her head. It hurt; somewhere she was conscious that she must have a concussion, things were showing double. She wavered again; she could shut the door, back there in the room. Shut it and wait for it to swing open again, the gun, like before, smashing glass and laughter and pain . . . no. The mistress, I must follow her. There is safety.

“Fuck it!” Kustaa hissed in frustration. The radio-room had turned from a fortress into a killing box in a few seconds. His hands were on the levers of the junction box, slamming them down into the “off” positions, insurance, a few extra seconds. “Come on, let’s go.”

“No,” Jules Lebrun said. “I will stay, and disable the equipment.” A smile. “There is no time to argue, and I am a dying man anyway. Cancer will give me pain even the Security Directorate cannot rival, and I will not be taken alive. Go!”

“ . . . an’ then we pulled back to th’ mosque,” Tom rumbled, pleasantly aware of the glow of admiration on the face of Yasmin as she sat at his feet, arms wrapped around her knees. His wife Annette was a good wench, but she didn’t appreciate a good story the way his daughter did. “Jus’ five o’ us lef, no officers, ragheads a’ yellin’ an’ screamin’, hundreds of ’em. They din’ know we wuz five devil dogs, ‘n’ pissed as hell.”

The armory about him was dim, the racked weapons and boxes of ammunition shadowy backdrops to his memory; the honest smell of his own sweat staining the thin cotton undershirt across his chest, beer and gun oil and steel. Memories of warm nights in barracks and the casern, all his old friends, strong young men, laughter and dice, drink and the laughing friendly whores. He took another pull at the beer and belched, feeling a familiar humming in his ears. How many? Twenty, or only ten? Fuck it. ’Nuff storytellin’, time to get back home and give Annette another young un’. He wasn’t that old.

He dropped his hand to Yasmin’s curls, opened his mouth to speak. A scream interrupted him, loud even through the steel door, and close.

“Wha’?” he said, his chin rising from his chest. “Wha’ that?”

Yasmin was on her feet. “Poppa!” she said urgently. “That Solange, it came from that-there radio-room.” Puzzlement fought with alarm on her slender features.

Tom lurched to his feet, waving her vaguely back. “Y’ pretty fren’?” he said with bewilderment. “Wha’ she doin’ here?”

He walked to the door and pushed it open, glancing around. A slight hint of light and voices from upstairs, but nothing out of the ordinary. Tom shook his head, rubbed his hard-callused palms across his face. There was something wet on the step, at chest level, too dark to see color, only a blackness that glistened. He touched, raised his fingers to nose, lips. Utterly familiar, in a way that began to wash the fumes of alcohol out of his brain.

“Blood,” he said wonderingly. “Gots ta’ see whut happenin’,” he muttered, and began to climb.

This place is turning into a shitty railroad station, Kustaa thought disgustedly as the door swung open again. A conscious effort kept his trigger finger loose. The last thing they needed was the sound of a firefight breaking out. Worth the time to gag and tie whoever it was.

A black. Big man, bigger than Kustaa, fifties, balding. Heavy muscle well padded with fat, beer belly and a bottle of beer clutched like a miniature in one ham-sized fist. Stained white T-shirt and baggy olive-green pants, splayed bare feet . . . eyes bloodshot and puzzled and mild in the heavy-featured African face.

“Silence,” Kustaa barked. “Come in, lie down, put your hands behind your head.”

The other great hand slowly squeezed shut into a fist and the eyes were still bloodshot yet anything but mild, thick lips drawn back from strong yellow teeth. “Yaz no Mastah!” he said in wonderment, glance darting to the bound form of Raoul.

“Janissary, kill him!” Chantal shouted, but Kustaa had seen too many fighting men to need the warning; his finger was tightening even before the man finished speaking. The 10mm bucked in his hand, three shots merging into one, echoes in the small stone room, three soft-nosed slugs blasting into the black’s solar plexus no more than a hand’s width apart. The last so close the thin fabric of his shirt was crisped and singed, and that was the one that stopped him, stopped the bull bellow and huge hands reaching to kill.

Yasmin followed, and stood looking with utter disbelief at the heavy body lying jerking at her feet, blood pouring from overlapping exit wounds in the small of his back, a raw cavity bigger than her paired fists full of shattered bone splinters and things that glistened and moved. The dark girl’s hands came up, one on either side of her face, pressing palm-in as if to drive the knowledge out of her skull.

“Poppa?” she said in a tiny voice, sinking down by his side. “Poppa?” A small shriek, and she was tearing at her clothing, shoving the scraps into the impossible gaping wound.

“Poppa, doan’ die, doan’ die, Poppa, please, I love you, Poppa, doan’ die, please—” She abandoned the hopeless effort and threw herself on his chest, clutching at his shoulders. “No, Poppa, no!”

Kustaa turned his head; one of the others would know how to quiet her. That shift saved his life, Yasmin’s clumsy thrust with her father’s belt knife scoring along the American’s ribs down to the bone rather than sinking into his belly. Then she was a blur of white cloth and brown arms and heavy razor-edged steel, hacking with a berserker frenzy that lacked only knowledge to make it instantly deadly. Kustaa shouted again as the edge jammed into his shoulder, clubbing frantically with the pistol as he tried to bring it round close enough to bear point-blank.

“You killed my poppa! You killed my poppa!” Intolerably shrill, almost a squeal.

Christ, she’s going to kill me! ran through him as he blocked and struck with elbows, knees; bone-shattering strikes but she would not stop, It’s my own bloody fault shitshitshit—

The muzzle of his battle shotgun reached around him and shoved itself into Yasmin’s stomach. Chantal pulled the trigger, and the explosion was muffled by flesh and cloth. The result was not; the slender body of the serf girl catapulted back over the swivel chair and struck the ground already limp. The Frenchwoman stepped over to the dead serf, looked down into the blood-spattered face frozen in eternal surprise.

“Bitch,” she said in a voice that cracked, and retched dryly. The floor was running-wet, like a bathroom where the sink has overflowed—or the toilet, for it stank of salt, shit, the raw chemical smell of burnt propellant.

The scent of glory, Kustaa thought as he forced himself straight, vision returning after the grayness of shock; he felt the same brief irrational disbelief that always came after being wounded, compounded of so fast! and I was all right just a second ago! Neither ever helped . . . a long cut on the ribs, stab in the shoulder, superficial slashes, bleeding but no arteries cut, he could keep going for a little longer, he had to keep going.

“Come on,” he said, and plunged down the stairwell. The others followed, all but Lebrun stone-faced before the radio and the bound and unconscious Raoul. Into the armory, across to the window that latched from the inside, only three feet down onto the low-pitched slate roof. He and Ernst helped the women through, and he gave the Austrian a tight smile.

“Not doing badly,” he said.

“I fought on the Italian front in the Great War,” Ernst said. “It is nothing I have not seen before.” He helped Kustaa through in turn.

Whore, filthy whore, Jean thought, frantically. There had been no opportunity, not down all the dozen cars and vans, not until now. The fuel tanks of the last two autosteamers were underslung, and Ybarra had to drop to her back and crawl beneath. Now! His finger began to close on the trigger, he could feel the cool metal against his skin and the tiny slack and the muscle would not close. It was very surprising, the way his head and body did not work the way they should, why couldn’t he pull the trigger, he hated her, she was going to put him back in the chair with his father screaming around the gag, pleading and—

whitenoisenothoughtnothought

Kill her, kill her, the Master will reward you. But the finger would not close, and if he did not then it would be Marie-Claire, bending over the block while the giant—

whitenoisenothoughtnothought and he could feel his arms and legs start to shake, and tears were running down his face. The clicking started again behind his eyes, but this time there was no sharp clarity of thought, nothing but the noise inside his head growing louder and louder, hissing like the sea. It reached a peak and he thought he would have to scream, to cry out to God for pity, for relief, but he knew that was nonsense. There was no pity and no mercy and pain was the only thing that was forever.

Jean turned, the machine pistol dangling in his hand, turned and walked south. Not running until he was too far away for even Ybarra to catch, then at a shambling pounding trot; white noise was almost continuous now, but that was good, it kept the visions from his eyes, memories and fears, all too terrible to be borne. Vision came in glimpses, and thought; the Schmeisser dropping from his nerveless fingers in a field—they would shoot him down on sight, a strange serf with a forbidden weapon. The gardens at last, he was too far east of the house; everything was quiet, and he almost ran into the man standing fifty meters from the great tents.

“Halt,” the man said, in bad French. “No serfs past here. I’m the bossboy; give me your name.”

Jean leaned against him, hands pawing weakly for support as the knowledge of his own exhaustion came through the white noise. He made gobbling noises as his mouth tried to speak while his lungs could spare no wind for it, none, they were dry and tight and aching, and the gasping breaths did him no good.

“Drunk?” the bossboy asked. Short and dark and thin, with a long willow switch in his hand. He prodded Jean with it, as the Frenchman bent over and leaned his hands on his knees, rasping for air. “You drunk? You got drink with you? Our party’s not until Wednesday. Nobody here but masters and the wenches to pleasure them. That bastard Arab fieldboss posted me here where I can listen and do nothing.”

“Vashon,” Jean wheezed.

“What? What you say, boy? You belong who? Who your master?”

“Vashon, Master Vashon, Strategos Vashon, I have news, now, hurry.”

“The greencoat?” Even in darkness Jean could see the fear on the serf foreman’s face, the little start of recoil; he stood up, heartened. Even the Master’s name was a thing of power. “Third door, he have wenches in there.” The switch trembled as it pointed. “You lie, he kill you. Not Erast’s business.”

Jean walked forward, stumbling, pushed through the heavy flap, into the dimly lit shadows. He could see the Master’s face. At first he thought it was floating, all amid a froth of feathers and giant wings and the limp head of a great golden swan that lay and stared at him with eyes of tourmaline. Then his brain made sense of the pattern of line and movement before him, Vashon was on a woman, kneeling with her legs over his shoulders, embracing another who leaned back from her position astride the first’s head. The Frenchman’s mouth dropped open; the women were darkly beautiful, lithe as cats, the Master a study in power, his skin rippling, bunching, the whole human pyramid shaking with the power of his thrusts. There was another clicking behind his eyes and Jean fell to his knees, a vague wash of awe and terror and worship submerging consciousness.

“Who the Eblis—” Vashon’s roar cut off, and Jean’s eyes jerked open. Only seconds could have passed, for the Master was just rising. His green eyes were like jewels in the gloom, narrowed as he recognized the double agent, came to stand before him like a squat minotaur statue gleaming with sweat and fluids.

“Jean,” he said. The voice was soothing, deep, all that Jean remembered from—

whitenoisenothoughtnothought

“Master,” he said, a choking in his voice. “Master.”

“I am very pleased with you, Jean,” the voice said, and the serf felt an uprushing of joy. “Now, tell me. Tell me everything.”

A moment to marshal his thoughts. They seemed so clear, once again, as if the noise in his head and the shaking were all gone. He is strong, he bears the burdens of my sins, Jean thought, and began, rapid and precise: “At the cave to the north, Master. Three of us. Here, the American who calls himself Kenston, the nun, the Boche; there is a box of the poison dust, and . . . ”

Afterward nothing could bother him, not the shouting or the noises or the shots, the darkness or the cramping of his muscles as he knelt, nor the whimpers of uncomprehending terror from the dancers, who clung together and stared at him with white rims around their eyes. His strong lord was pleased with him, and all was well.

Tanya heard the distance-muffled shots a dozen meters before the stairwell entrance. She took the stairs in a rush and flipped the gun into her left hand, leading with it as she went up the steep spiral treads in a silent crouching bound. The open door of the armory drew her in like a magnet, coming up in a knee-roll and quartering the empty room. Nothing, racked weapons and drained beer bottles beside a cooler and an open window . . . she darted over, noticing the fresh blood trail without focusing on it. All her attention was out on the slate roof, on the figures at the far end of it, over a hundred meters, impossible distance with the snub-nosed toy she carried. A careful brace of the elbows against the windowsill, and all but one of them were gone, squeeze—crack-crack-crack, and did he stagger or was that a wish and the distance and the starlight? No time, she thought, spinning back to the stairwell. No time for pursuit, she couldn’t go haring off on her own. No telling how many there were, either. The stairs above the armory were wet, slow congealing trickles that were an old story to her, of the astonishing amount of blood a human body carries and the swiftness with which it can escape through massive wound trauma as the heart itself shoots the pulse of life out to scatter and cool.

Jules Lebrun sat before the ruined equipment, watching it spark and refusing to turn. Even when he heard the pistol snap below, the light tick . . . tick . . . sound of bootsoles pulling free from what coated the floor stones outside. Instead his lips moved; surprising himself with the first genuine prayers since he had been an earnest middle-class chorister in Paris, all those years ago. Prayers for another.

“Ah, Tom,” he heard Tanya’s voice say behind him. The feet moved to the dead girl’s side. “Yasmin, sweetlin’, I should . . . ”

They stopped behind him, and he waited for the bullet, wondering whether he would hear the click of the action first, and at how the pains in his chest seemed further away, almost unimportant.

Even then the small hairs along his spine seemed to crawl and struggle to stand erect when he heard her voice. “Well, well, what have we heah?”

“A man who would rather die than be a slave,” he said quietly, proud of the fact that his voice did not quaver.

“No.” The word was calm and even, but suddenly a hand spun him around and wrenched him upright with a force that jerked his limbs loose as a puppet’s. The pistol was under his chin as Tanya held him off the ground, his eyes level with her own. She spoke, and now the killing was naked in the guttural snarl: “No. That choice you made three years ago, Lebrun, it’s too late. So what we have heah is a fuckin’ rabid mad dog, that turned on its owners, an’ now will be put down like one.”

There was a faint sound from the Janissary, a mixture of grunt and sigh. Lebrun felt himself thrown backward over the desk and against the dials and hanging severed wires of the radio, felt them gouge into his back. The pistol remained unwavering on his face as she knelt beside the man who was incredibly not quite dead.

“Yas . . . min?” Tom said in a breathy whisper. His head had fallen turned away from her; Tanya looked up at the corpse, rested her free hand on his forehead, leaned close and spoke with clear conviction as the man’s eyes wandered unseeing.

“She goin’ be fine, Tom. Hurt, but not bad.”

Another sigh, and a catch in the faint breathing. The next words were fainter still, almost a suggestion: “Reportin’ ’s ordered . . . suh.”

Tanya closed the lids with thumb and forefinger, rose, and gripped Lebrun by the back of the neck, until he could hear the tooth-grating sound of protesting vertebrae through the bones of his skull.

“No,” she said. “Not quite like a dog, even at the risk of a few seconds, wouldn’t be fitting. We were discussin’ what we have?” Suddenly she pulled him over to Yasmin’s body in a slithering rush that sent him banging and twisting against unseen hard objects as they passed. The man found his face pushed down to within inches of the dead girl’s.

“What we had here,” she said, “was Yasmin. A pretty, happy little wench, who loved music an’ babies an’ wanted most of all never to hurt anyone, anyone at all. What we have now is fuckin’ dog meat.”

Another rush, over to the Janissary’s body. Again the thrust nose to nose with the dead flesh. “What we have here, is a brave man an’ a good soldier who died loyal to his salt. Who should have died thirty years from now, in his sleep, surrounded by grandchildren.”

She spun him around, tapping the pistol barrel against the bridge of his nose. “An’ what we have here—here—here is the last thing you’ll ever see, yo piece of vomit.”

“Please,” Solange said.

Tanya’s head jerked around so quickly that her hair lashed across Lebrun’s eyes before he could blink them closed, starring them with tears. His daughter was standing in the doorway, staring at the bodies with the backs of her hands pressed to her mouth.

“Oh, Poppa, what have you done?” she mumbled. Then her hands dropped, and she walked to the Draka. “Please,” she said again, knelt. Pressed her cheek to her owner’s foot. “It is your right, it is your right, we are yours . . . but he is my father, I beg, please.”

“No,” Lebrun said, and looked up into the Draka’s eyes. She must know, know I am dying, he thought. She smiled.

“I give you life, on her plea,” she said. Her hand held his head while the pistol came down with precisely calculated force. “Solange . . . Solange! He’ll be out fo’ a couple of hours, tie him up and then go back to my room and wait.”

Ah, the peace and quiet of the country, Andrew von Shrakenberg thought. The leaves of the vineyard rustled as he strolled down the rows, enjoying the cool contrast of the air and soil still carrying fragments of the day’s heat. Am I being ironic, or not? It was certainly more peaceful than the pavilion, now mostly occupied by the noises of vigorous fornication. Fresher, too, dew-damp leaves and turned earth.

Which is not displeasing in itself, but not conducive to thought either. Perhaps it was time to take his sister’s advice and settle down. He looked up at the stars, smiling and remembering the night when he had first seen them with depth, not as lights in a dome but as tiny fires suspended in infinite space, feeling an echo of that elating, terrifying rush of vertigo. Wondering if somewhere out among the frosted scattering of light something was looking skyward at him.

And to them, all our loves and hates, wars and passions are so insignificant that they can’t be seen, not even as a shadow on the sun.

“Jean? Is that you?” a voice said. French, accented . . . a woman’s voice.

Peace held his mind in its embrace a moment longer. “No,” he said, chuckling. “But if it’s a man you lookin’ fo’, wench, I’m willin’ to volunteer.”

Starlight glittered on the blade of the knife as it drove toward his belly.

Smack. The edge of his left palm hit her wrist, and he felt the familiar jolt as the small bones of the joint crushed under an impact that would have broken pine boards. It was the measure of his bewilderment that his follow-through was completely automatic, a strike upward with the heel of his right hand that sent the woman flipping back with her nasal bone driven into her brain and neck snapped. The knife flew off, tinkling, but his fingers touched the piano wire garrote coiled within her belt before the body stopped twitching.

He stood, and the first of the vehicles blew with a huge muffled thump that struck his face like a soft warm hand. Light blossomed beyond the line of trees that screened the vehicle park, and explosions followed like a string of giant fuzz-edged firecrackers.

“I think,” he said quietly to himself, “that a serious mistake has been made.” Turning, he drove for the laneway at a steady loping run.

There was a bristle of guns under the arched entranceway to the central court of Chateau Retour. They lowered as the figure approaching halted and grunted out her name.

“Tanya,” she said, shifting the body to a more comfortable fireman’s carry over her shoulders, then dropping it in the midst of the crowd. “This one’s neck number was dye, not tattooin’.”

The face sprawled upward as the body rolled, a small black hole between its brows. Tanya stretched, looked around, estimating numbers and weapons. Sixteen Draka, pistols, three submachine guns, two battle shotguns, two assault rifles. More in the armory, of course . . . Five armed serfs who would do to stand guard. The scouts had all reported back, and there was no sign of bushman activity beyond the one small band. Which is enough, enough, she thought sourly.

“Oerbach,” Vashon was saying, “by Loki and the soul of the White Christ, Oerbach.” He looked up at her. “Congratulations.” Back down at the body, and a murmur. “Because you may have just saved me from the Aral Sea.”

“Dumb luck,” she replied. “Hundred meters with a Tolgren, pure fluke.” To her husband. “Situation?”

“Transport gone,” he said calmly. “Power out. Communication out. Runners to the neighbors.” Draka runners, nearly as fast as horses, but still a half hour there, more time to organize, transit time back . . . three quarters of an hour to an hour. “Children, sick an’ bearin’ mothers down on the yacht, Uncle Karl presidin’.” A weight lifted from the back of her neck, a thing she had not been conscious of until that moment.

“Information from the Strategos here,” Edward went on. “Three bushmen from Lyon, one a double who reported in to warn us. Two mo—”

Andrew interrupted: “One, if the second was a woman with a knife,” he said bluntly. “She’s fertilizin’ you vineyard, sister.”

“One mo’ up at the winery, with the Yankee callin’ hisself Kenston, an’ the wenches Chantal an’ Marya. Yankee plane comin’ in, soon.”

“And many, many kilograms of plutonium oxide,” Andrew said.

“Bad?” Tanya asked as a fist clenched under her gut. She had seen the fallout-victim wards, the ones caught in the plume from the Ruhr strikes toward the end of the war. An image welled up in her mind—Gudrun, Tim, the newborns, their ulcerated skins sloughing away—

“The radiation isn’t that severe,” Vashon began.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Andrew cut in decisively. “Garbage is so toxic chemically you don’t have time to die of the radiation sickness an’ cancer that would kill you in days to weeks. It’s worse than nerve gas, submicroscopic particles deadly almost immediately; the amount they’ve got could kill everythin’ within light-artillery range of here, or worse. Dependin’ on how it’s scattered.” He jerked his head toward the kilometer-distant glow of the vehicle park. “We know they’ve got explosives, and imagine how an updraft like that would scatter a finely divided powder.”

“Shitfire.” Hushed awe in the word.

A thick silence fell. “We’ve got to attack,” someone said.

“Sho’ly do! And quick. Befo’ they can loose that stuff.”

Tanya held up her hand, and silence fell. This was her land, and Draka were soldiers; they understood the need for teamwork down in their bones. She looked around, at steel and fugitive gleams from eyes and teeth.

“We can’t just roll over them,” she said slowly. “We may have to talk them out.”

“No!” That was Vashon. “The Race doesn’t back down from a threat! We take that plutonium back, and—”

Tanya nodded, and there was a multiple click and rattle. Vashon froze as the cold muzzles of weapons touched lightly on his skin. She walked close, held her face inches from his.

“Strategos . . . let us say, I’m not very impressed with the quality of you security work. Seein’ as the position we’re in.”

Someone behind him spoke. “The hell we don’t back down from threats, how do you think we got this far, by bein’ bull-stupid like so you?”

Another: “It’s our land and children, Vashon. I think the von Shrakenbergs are senior here . . . Hell, we are the Race.”

Tanya continued, never taking her eyes from the man’s. “Nobody here will do anythin’ prejudicial to the interests of the Race or the State,” she said. “Andrew, run it down fo’ me.”

“Bad if”—he kicked Oerbach’s body—“had gotten away to the Yankees; he is, was, a genuine thinker, an experimenter an’ theoretician in one. Unfortunate if they were to get his research to date, but no disaster, we’ve got it too. Mildly unfortunate to let them have the plutonium, it’s rare an’ expensive, but still just matériel.”

Tanya nodded. “Against which we have to balance risk to the lives of two-score members of the Race. We’re not a numerous people, Strategos, never start imaginin’ you can spend our lives the way you might do serfs’. That’s not the way we’ve operated, ever.” A pause. “I think it might be bettah if somebody else took care of this mastah’s gun; the gleam in his eyes is a touch too fanatical fo’ my taste.” Hands reached out. Green eyes met gray, nodded. There would be feud, but not now.

Tanya looked around. “You, Sofie. Down to the dock and tell Karl to cast off with the kids, downstream as fast as he can an’ not run aground. The rest of you . . . follow me.”

They turned and ran toward the north, to the caves, toward the waiting poison.

“No, no, no,” Kustaa said, pounding his fist into the turf.

“He is with God,” Marya said quietly. They were resting in the shadow of one of the disabled Draka aircraft, with the winking rectangle of the landing strip stretching away.

“That isn’t going to do any good to the fucking Taos Weapons Research Lab!” Kustaa shouted, then mumbled apology as pain lanced through his wounds.

Marya examined them again, frowning; there had been bandages, iodine, sulfa powder in the aircraft first-aid kit, she had cleaned and bound as best she could, but he needed stitching and plasma, and complete bed-rest. Instead he had insisted on a stimulant, and he was right, but it made it so difficult for him to lie still. “Quiet, Frederick. We have done what human hands can do, the rest is with God.”

Her eyes went doubtfully to the steel box. It had been transformed into a lumpy gray mass by the ten kilos of plastique they had wrapped around it. The batteries and improvised switch rested atop it, wires spindling down to the detonator. Such a simple thing, she thought with a shiver. Their insurance. A deadman switch, so just a name. Grip, so. Press down sharply and now you must keep pressing or the contact will be made, contact, current through the detonator, detonator explodes, rapid-propagating shock wave provokes sympathetic reaction in the plastique.

And all this dies, she thought, looking around at the night countryside with another shudder. Like the wrath of God upon the cities of the plain, only this wrath is man’s. It all dies, the beasts and the humans, innocent and guilty, fathers and mothers and babes in arms for leagues around.

She signed herself, knelt by the box and began to pray; first seeking the intercession of the Saints, that they might stand between her and the terrible necessities that God seemed to demand of her. Then asking mercy of Mary, the Mother that was the pattern of all mothers, human flesh united in nine months’ inconceivable communion with the Word. Then at last to the heart of Mystery. The words ordained, and then her own.

Lord God, she begged, let there be mercy in this hour. As you would have spared Sodom for ten upright men, spare those poor souls dwelling here, whose lives are humble and full of suffering yet still precious to them, as You intended. For indeed Your world is good, where we have not marred it. And if only through blood may there be remission of sin, let the sword fall upon me alone. Wordless for long minutes. Then: Lord, I am unworthy, full of pride and sin and conceit of my own righteousness, yet ever willing to be Your instrument. Give unto me not that which I ask, but what is best for me, though it be the thing I fear most. Not my will, but Thine be done.

“Amen,” she murmured and took the switch in her hand, pressing down sharply.

The others looked up at the hard clicking sound. “It will not become easier to do if we wait,” she said. “If we are successful, I can disconnect one of the wires.”

Chantal glanced aside, then laid her head back on her knees, muttering under her breath. From this position, the nun could hear clearly what she had only suspected.

“I had to do it. She deserved it. I had to. She deserved it.”

“Chantal!” Marya snapped. “I am losing patience with you!” The other’s head came up, with anger in her eyes. “That is half a lie, worse than a whole one. It was necessary, to save Frederick’s life. And she did not deserve it; the poor girl had been mistaught, grievously, since she was a little child. But of herself she was a gentle soul who only acted from natural grief. You are trying to blame her because it eases your conscience, aren’t you? So that you won’t see her face and what you did to her? Remember it! Don’t lie to yourself, and don’t lie to me, either.”

Chantal turned her back, but silently. Marya looked down at the bundle of steel and explosive again. And it makes my temper still worse than it usually is, she thought.

“By God, the plane,” Kustaa said quietly. “The plane!” he shouted, half rose, sank down again with a grunt. Marya strained her eyes and ears: nothing. Then a hint of something, a shadow against the stars, a muffled purring drone. Circling, returning toward them, falling feather light in a steep slope out of the sky, and the nun felt her eyes prickle with tears for the first time that night. It landed, bounced, trundled toward them, a flat complex wing with two engines buried in the structure and thickly wrapped in shrouding cowl, a teardrop fuselage.

“That’s it, that’s the Spector,” Kustaa was saying in what was almost a babble. “Isn’t she a beauty, takes off on a postage stamp, lands on a balcony, noisy as a scooter, seats four with cargo—” He stopped, looked at her. “And Ernst is dead,” he finished in something closer to his normal tone.

“But Henri is alive,” she replied sharply, turning to find the darker shadow that was the sole survivor of the Resistance team. He was walking up the slope in a crouch that rose toward a full stride, his impassive stubbled face finally breaking into a grin of unbelieving triumph as the cockpit window of the aircraft folded back and an arm emerged, waving.

Marya smiled at the Frenchman in return, watching as he grew solid in the darkness, as his grin went fixed, his stride stiff-legged, as he toppled forward with the glint of the throwing knife’s hilt winking from his back. Thump went the body. Limp as sleep, limp as death, kicked twice, lay still.

“Down!” Kustaa yelled.

“Deadman switch, deadman switch,” Marya shouted out into the night, at the full stretch of her lungs. “The plutonium is sitting on ten kilos of high explosive, and we have a deadman switch. Think about that and hold your fire!”

There was another shout of pain, mingled with rage this time, from the encircling shadows. Then a brief burst of fire, a Holbars on full automatic, a dozen rounds that chewed into the left engine of the American aircraft, followed by whapping thuds and sparks and a sudden metallic screeching as the internal parts seized hard. The prop slowed from its silent blur, froze into four paddle-shaped metal blades. Then the stream of tracer waggled crazily up into the sky, went out, more thuds and grappling sounds.

“Wait, wait!” Tanya’s voice. “That was a rogue . . . no, don’t kill him, you fools!” The latter seemed directed at her own people. The hailing voice again: “There are twenty of us out here; we have enough firepower to cut that paper airplane into confetti—think about that!”

Silence, until Kustaa crawled to the airplane’s landing struts; the effort left him gasping.

“No closer,” Tanya called. “No packages!”

They were close enough for words, murmured too low for the nun to hear. He crawled again, to her side, and lay for a moment with fresh blood seeping through her careful bandages, his fingers digging into the soil as if it were his mother’s body to which he clung.

“We’re fu—We’re in trouble, Sister. One engine completely out.” The voice had the hard flatness she had come to know meant his deepest effort at control.

“It can fly. It can even carry a passenger . . . one passenger, preferably a very light one.”

Marya prayed again, this time an utterly wordless appeal. She gasped sharply.

“What is it?” Kustaa asked.

“I think . . . I think I see what I must do,” she said grayly. “Oh, Frederick, I had hoped . . . hoped so much you might return to your wife and daughter.”

To the Draka: “We have no time, and nothing left to lose. Will you talk, or do we all die?”

“I’ll talk. Shall I come closer?” Tanya again.

“Agreed.”

The Draka strolled into the dim glimmer of the landing lights, elaborately insouciant, her hands on her hips. Dark clothing, bright hair, the eyes throwing back the light like ice; she stood waiting for the nun to speak.

She is playing for time, Marya thought. Then: Of course. They have sent their children to safety; the longer we wait the better. And the authorities will arrive at any moment.

“No games,” the Pole said. “The plane can take one of us out, only.”

“Not the plutonium, of course . . . and not the Yankee. He stays; that’s a matter of honor.”

The OSS agent sighed, then looked up at Marya with a smile more relaxed than any she had seen him wear before. There is a relief in acknowledging the race is lost, she thought. But there are more important things than life.

“I won’t let myself be taken alive,” Kustaa said.

“Well, obviously,” Tanya said with cool contempt. “You a treacherous bastard abuses hospitality, but not a fool. You have that gun, don’t you?” She grinned with bared teeth. “The one that you kill drunk old men an’ harmless serf girls with?”

“Enough,” Marya said. “If you let the plane go with one of us, we will promise not to detonate this weapon.”

“I made the mistake of underestimatin’ you, but please don’t reciprocate with an insult to my intelligence,” Tanya replied evenly. “Once it’s out of sight, you’d simply set it off anyway.”

“To spare myself pain?” Marya asked. “Have you sent your children away?” Tanya nodded warily. “And those of your serfs?”

“Ahh, I see,” the Draka said. “Then you will surrender anyhows?”

“No,” Marya replied, meeting her owner’s eyes in a steady glare as hard as the Draka’s own. “Frederick knows too much. We will take it below, into the shelter. That can be sealed, and I will promise not to release the switch until it is. Quickly, decide, there is no time.”

Tanya nodded, turned. “The terms are these,” she said in a clear carrying voice. “We let the Yankee plane take off, with my wench Chantal on board. My wench Marya an’ the Yankee go into the shelter an’ we seal them in with they little hellbomb, after one hour’s grace.” There was a protesting murmur, and she held up one hand. “Listen! We lose nothin’ by allowin’ the plane back. Chantal’s also nothin’, unless the Yankees are perishin’ fo’ want of a so-so bookkeeper and bed wench.” A mutter of unwilling laughter. “We keep the plutonium, it can be recovered, an’ they lose their agent an’ all his knowledge. I’d call that victory! An’ I take full responsiblity fo’ any repercussions from the State. Objections?”

“It’s agreed,” she said, turning to the American and the nun and raising her hand. “Word of a von Shrakenberg, by our honor.”

Chantal had turned back to them, and watched Marya’s face with an expression of thoughtful wonder. “No,” she said, on the heels of Tanya’s oath.

Marya looked over at her and laughed with a catch in her voice. “What a collection of martyrs we are . . . of course you must, Chantal.”

“I . . . can’t take your life!” the Frenchwoman said. “I want to, God, I want to, but how could I live with myself, remembering this? How could I owe you this, and never be able to repay?”

Marya sighed. “Chantal, nobody can give you their life. Only your own.” More softly: “If you feel you owe me a debt, choose another and pay it to them, and I will be repaid in full and to overflowing.” Chantal’s face cleared, she touched her stomach involuntarily, then gave the nun an ashen nod.

“Will you give me the kiss of peace, Chantal?” Marya said, brushing her free hand across her face. The younger woman stood with sudden decisiveness, bent to offer her cheek, met the Pole’s lips instead. Her eyes widened, and she swallowed convulsively.

Kustaa reached inside his jacket. “And would you take this to—” he began.

“No!” A voice from the darkness. “No papers, no chance to pass along microfilm, Yankee.”

Suddenly Kustaa was on his feet, a big man bristling with rage, the lumberjack strength of his shoulders showing despite wounds and weariness. “It’s a letter to my wife, you bastard!” he roared.

“Mah heart bleeds fo’ you. Verbal only!” A dozen lights speared out to trap Chantal. “An’ the wench has to shuck and bend, so’s we can see she’s not carryin’ ”

Kustaa turned to the Frenchwoman, who stood blinking and shading her eyes with a palm. “Tell Aino I love her,” he said. “And Maila. Say”—he glanced back at the nun—“say she can be proud of the way her father died, and the company he kept. Tell her . . . tell her everything.”

“I will. Rest assured, I will.” When the cockpit door of the airplane closed on her, the nakedness was a lack of clothes only.

The single engine whined, stressed beyond its limit.

Kustaa sank to the ground beside Marya, the shotgun clenched white-knuckled in his lap as the Spector took off.

“I know,” she said. “I want to run after it shouting, ‘Come back, come back’ myself.”

“Good,” he sighed. “I was beginning to think saints were too perfect to live around.”

“Mr. . . . Frederick,” she said, and he glanced around in shock at the cold anger in her voice. “You will never call me that again. Never!”

“Sorry, Sister,” he said.

“I too . . . my temper was always bad . . . ” To Tanya: “Mistress, it would be a courtesy if someone would fetch the radio for us, from the shelter.”

The Draka nodded, and signaled with one hand; the parcel came, and Kustaa busied himself with dials and antennae, tuned to the Draka Forces emergency network. Time passed, and the night grew colder and more silent; in the distance, the fires of the burning vehicles guttered low. The headlights of a high-speed convoy flickered up to the main gates of Chateau Retour, and a runner went at Tanya’s order to halt them. Another returned with a radiation detector, pointed it at the box with its leprous covering, and paled as the needle swung; there was a rustle from the darkness as the besieger’s circle drew back.

Kustaa looked up, squeezed his eyes shut. “They missed it,” he said softly. “It’s full time, and they’re going crazy looking for it. We won.” A sour laugh. “In a sense, I suppose.”

Tanya shifted her stance, the first movement in half an hour. “The Security people will be here soon,” she said. “I’ve got influence, but not enough to stand off their rankin’ people. My oath; I’m not answerable for them.”

“It is time,” Marya said. “Just one more thing.” She raised her voice. “We need someone to carry this box; Frederick is wounded and cannot possibly do so.”

Tanya snorted. “We’ll send for a strong serf.”

“No! Someone here, immediately. No time for tricks.” And I will not condemn an innocent. Any adult Draka is a murderer, fornicator, blasphemer.

Another slight rustle in the darkness. “I can’t order anyone to—”

Then a voice “I volunteer.”

“No,” Tanya snapped, as her brother Andrew strolled up, paused to lay his weapon on the grass, walked toward the American’s shotgun, which tracked him with a smooth turret motion.

“But yes, mah sister,” Andrew continued gently. “Be logical, as you usually are. Here I am, thirty-two, unmarried, no children of the Race, a middlin’ good Merarch among thousands . . . The Race can spare me.”

“It can’t, and neither can I!” Tanya said, and Marya heard open pain in her voice for the first time that night.

“Yes, you can,” he said, stopping to confront her. “Mo’ than I could you. Furthermo’ it’s a risk of death, not certainty. Furthermo’ to that, it’s my choice. Service to the State, sister mine.” Matter-of-factly: “If’n I’m unlucky, would you see to my girls and my valet?” She nodded wordlessly. “Glory to the Race, then.”

“Yes, indeed,” she said thickly. “I love you brother.”

“And I you, Tannie.” Two more strides brought him to Marya’s side, and he crouched smoothly.

“Watch it, you son of a bitch,” Kustaa said, holding his weapon close. “Slow and careful.”

“Yankee, don’t be mo’ of an imbecile than nature intended,” Andrew said dryly, running his hands around the box. “I’m squattin’ next a live bomb, with enough poison inside to destroy Archona, an’ you puts a shotgun in mah ear an’ tells me to be careful?”

Kustaa flushed slightly, but kept the weapon pressed against the Draka’s back. “I know how you snakes train by snatching flies out of the air without hurting them,” he said. “You still can’t grab her hand faster than I can pull this trigger. Like I said, slow and careful.”

Andrew’s face went blank as he drew a deep breath. “Now,” he said, and exhaled with a long sustained grunt as he stood. A seam parted along the rear of his jacket, and they could feel the ground shake slightly as he took the first step toward the shelter door. Tanya stood to one side, eyes hooded. As they passed, her hand came up in salute, held there. “I’ll see there’s a priest to bless the ground,” she murmured.

“Thank you,” Marya replied. Their eyes met, but there were no more words.

The shelter lights seemed painfully bright; Kustaa blinked against them and the ringing in his ears that was growing worse. Andrew was whistling under his breath as he bolted home the steel covers over the ventilators, checking carefully to make sure the sealing rings seated square. Almost, the American missed the quiet sobbing sound.

“Sister, what is it?” he said anxiously, dropping down beside her with the shotgun trained across the room. Tears were dropping into her lap, onto the clenched knuckles of her right hand on the switch, onto the steel and dough-gray explosive.

“Fear, Frederick,” she said, between catches of breath. A laugh through the sobbing, as she saw his face. “Frederick, I fear death, so much . . . pain even more. You know what they can do, would do if they took me. They can make a hell on earth, less than Satan’s only because it is not eternal. They would never believe I knew nothing of consequence . . . oh, Frederick, I have had nightmares of that, ever since . . . ”A shake of her head. “But if there was a way, I would walk out that door and right now and let them take me to the place of torment.”

“What?” he said.

“Thank you for listening, my friend, when you too must need to speak . . . Frederick, I am in such fear that I cannot bear it, that this thing I am doing is self-murder. I tell myself it is not, it is as a soldier does when he charges the machine gun or throws himself on a grenade to save his comrades, but . . . self-murder, murder of the soul, damnation.” The tears became softer, and her voice thickened. “Damnation . . . not the pains of hell, but never to see God in the face . . . never . . . never to see the other Sisters of St. Cyril again, and Frederick, I am the last. They are all with Him in Glory, they were saints and martyrs, but sisters in truth, dearer than any earthly thing to me. Never to see them, never to share their joy, oh, I cannot bear it!”

I have gone crazy, Kustaa thought, as he heard himself speak. But it’s a pleasanter madness than the one before. “I’ll do it then,” he said. “Here, give me the switch.”

“No! Frederick, no! You may not believe suicide is mortal sin, but it is for you as well. How could I buy Paradise at the cost of your damnation? This is my fault, Frederick, my weakness; if I were more worthy God would have called to my heart, shown me a better way . . . ” The control and serenity were cracking out of the nun’s voice, leaving only raw pain and will.

Kustaa turned and drove a fist against the wall. “Dammit,” he swore. “If only we could have gotten the microfilm out. If only that, at least!”

“Oh, we did, Frederick,” Marya said, half listlessly. “Did you not notice—” She halted in mid-sentence, and both their heads swung to the Draka. He completed the last bolt and dropped lightly to the floor, dusting his hands on the black uniform trousers.

“Feh,” he said, an exhalation of disgust. “I don’t suppose you’d believe a promise not to tell . . . No, I don’t suppose so.” There was no need to mention that the Draka would mobilize every keel and wing to hunt the Alliance submarine if they knew. He walked lightly to the outer door, stood with one hand on the wheel. “I could refuse to close it,” he said.

“Your friends and relatives, snake,” Kustaa said with a grin of jovial hatred. “Much more limited spread, from here.”

“Yes, there is that,” Andrew said, pulled the door home with a clang, spun the wheel until the bolts went shhnnnk-click into their slots, and pushed the locking bar. “Shit,” he said meditatively. “Suddenly a long, dull life becomes so much less wearisome in prospect.” Suddenly he was laughing as he strode back to stand before them, a low wicked snicker.

“What the fuck are you laughing at?” Kustaa glared, glancing from the weeping nun to the scarred aquiline face and the earring that jiggled in time with his mirth.

“Everything an’ nothing, Yankee. You bourgeois have such a tiresome gravity about serious mattahs, takes a gentleman to bring the proper levity to the grave. If it’s one thing I’ve learned in thirty-two years, it’s that the only thing mo’ amusin’ than this farce we call life is the even more absurd farce known as death. If there was an afterlife, the sheer comedy of it would be too much to bear!”

“Have some respect,” Kustaa said, raising the shotgun despite his own sense of its futility.

“Oh, I do, an’ that’s the most comical thing of all, Yankee.” His voice dropped. “Sister.” She raised her head, startled to hear the title on a Draka’s voice. “Sister, pardon me fo’ listenin’ to you, ah, confession. But it occurs to me that while you belief is as absurd as anythin’ else, you belief in it, is not.” He spread his hands. “So, since if one is goin’ anyway, one might as well go with a grand gesture—”

Kustaa screamed and fired, but he was too late—the fluid Draka speed had outmatched him, the boot heel struck the nun with needle precision and pickax force directly above the nose. Sound merged, the snap of bone, the shot, the beginnings of a roaring blast as dead fingers unfolded like the petals of a rose.