The Domination

Prologue

VIRUNGA BIOCONTROL INSTITUTE

WEAPONS RESEARCH DIVISION

WEST RIFT PROVINCE

MARCH 1, 1964

“This is the first series,” the project manager, a stocky brown-haired woman in her thirties, said. The wall lit up with a three-dimensional rendering of a virus molecule. It was color-coded, black and scarlet. “You see how we’ve replaced—”

“Doctor Melford,” the Senator said, with soft courtesy. The other members of the audience turned slightly to catch his words. “We’ve all absorbed as much technical information as possible from the prep files, and while I’m sure the computer projections would be very interesting, perhaps . . . ?”

He was a tall man, eagle-faced, with silver-streaked blond hair and mustache, conservatively dressed in indigo velvet and white lace. There was no impatience in his posture, leaning back at his ease in one of the two dozen swivel chairs that lined the little auditorium. Still, the woman in the white lab coat flushed slightly, coughed to cover it; her fingers moved on the controls.

“Well,” she said. Her vowels had a rather crisp tone, an East African accent; she had been born in these highlands. “Well, here are the recordings of the chimp results.”

The screen blanked for a moment and split. “The left is our control sample, an’ the right is the Series 24D group.” The Senator watched, stony-faced amid his silent aides, as the dance of madness and death ran to its close. The plainly clad woman at the heart of the other clump laughed aloud. A minute passed, and nothing living remained on the right-hand screen. To the left the chimps might have been a picture of the innocence before the birth of man.

“It seems,” he said, “that you’ve been makin’ progress, Doctor.”

She nodded eagerly. “ ‘Specially since you got us the new computer,” she said, one hand caressing the row of pens in her breast pocket with a nervous gesture.

The Senator smiled for the first time. “Thank the Yankees; it was the best we could steal,” he said dryly. “How confident are you that these-here results can be transferred to humans?”

“Very, yes,” the geneticist nodded. “Chimps are the best possible test subjects, they’re so close to us. Ninety-eight percent genetic congruence, only five million years since the last common ancestor, which . . . Yes. The endorphin response is modified into a feedback loop. That still needs work.”

The woman to the Senator’s left spoke, in a flat Angolan accent: “What’s y’re success rate?” She was younger than the Senator, perhaps forty-five, head of a committee in the House of Representatives that attracted little public attention.

Melford nodded at the right-hand screen. “Ovah ninety-nine percent, no point in finin’ it down further until we moves to human subjects.”

“In y’ professional opinion, is this project go or no-go?”

“Go.” A decisive nod. “Provided we get the necessary fundin’ an’ personnel. Mo’ work on the vector—we’re still relyin’ on blood to blood—and the secondary keyin’ sequence. Four years, eight maximum, an’ we’ll have it on spec.”

“Ah.” The Senator dropped his chin onto the steepled fingers of both hands, and the lids drooped over his narrow gray eyes. “Doctor, what about keepin’ it from the Yankees when we deploy it against the Alliance?”

“Well.” A frown. “Well, they’re not as, um, sophisticated at biotech as we are. Those Luddite fanatics of theirs who keep protestin’ every time they try to use somethin’, and then again they can’t test humans to destruction the way we can. Sloppy. Still, they’ve got some good people.”

The Senator looked across to his colleague; she nodded and spoke: “What’ll you need?”

“Um, more funding. More personnel, as Ah said. An’ experimental subjects, of course. Several hundred humans, assorted gender an’ age in the postpubescent range, pref’rably the same ethnic mix as the target population. Very delicate, to get it contagious but with a fail-safe turn-off. Don’t want it becomin’ a global pandemic, do we?”

“Wotan, no,” the Senator said. “Well, Doctor Melford, certain othahs will have to be consulted, but unofficially I think you can take it that the project will be approved fo’ further development.” He rose. “Service to the State.”

“Glory to the Race,” the scientist answered absentmindedly as the audience left; she was keying the machine again, reviewing the additional resources that would be needed.

“Well, how do y’like it?”

“Nice view,” the Senator said, nodding down from the terrace toward the lake and drawing on his cigarette.

The Virunga Biocontrol Institute was built in the hills overlooking Lake Kivu, at the southern edge of the Virunga range. A century old now, almost as old as Draka settlement in these volcanic highlands. Low whitewashed buildings of stone block, roofs of plum-colored tile, almost lost among the vegetation; the gardens were flamboyantly lovely even by the Domination’s standards, fertile lava soils and abundant rain and a climate of eternal spring. National park stretched north and west, to the Ituri lowlands: haunt of gorilla and chimp, elephant and hippo and leopard; of the Bambuti pygmies also, left to their Old Stone Age existence.

Plantations stretched widely elsewhere across the steep slopes, green coffee and tea and sheets of flowers grown for air-freighting elsewhere; the air was scented with them, cool and sweet. The city of Arjunanda lay two thousand feet below by the waters, turned to a model by distance: buildings white and blue and violet with marble and tile, avenues bordered with jacaranda and colonnades roofed in climbing rose and frangipani. Even the factories and labor compounds that ringed it were comely, bordered by hedge and garden. Sails speckled the waves, and they could see the pleasure boats beating back toward the docks, and dirigibles lying silvery in the waterfront haven.

“It’s a famous beauty spot,” the woman said with elaborate sarcasm, indicating the sun setting behind the mountains to their right, amid clouds turned to the colors of brass and blood. “No mo’ games, man.”

He flicked the butt of the cigarette over the railing. It’s just like her, to be cold even when she’s angry. You can see why our enemies nicknamed us “snakes,” looking at her. The burning speck fell like a tiny meteor, to lie winking for a second before one of the Institute outdoor serfs arrived to sweep it up.

“It might work,” he said quietly.

“It will work. This time you suspicions of biotech don’t wash. And this project was mah price fo’ supportin’ you pet schemes.”

“Granted.”

They gave each other a glance of cool mutual hatred and turned again to the view beneath. Shadow was falling across the city and the lake as the first stars appeared above. The streetlights of Arjunanda flicked on in a curving tracery, and the lamps of the plantation manors scattered down the hills. An airship had cast off from the haven, and the thousand-meter teardrop rose from darkness into light as it circled, bound northward with cut flowers and electrowafers, strawberries and heavengrape wine.

“Have you ever wondered,” the Senator said meditatively, “why we Draka love flowers so?”

The woman blinked, her fox-sharp face shadowed in the dim glow. “No, can’t say as I have,” she said neutrally. “Why?”

“They’re safer to love than human bein’s,” he said thoughtfully. “An’ unlike humans, they deserve it.” He turned. “I’ll be in contact after I speak to the Archon.”