The Domination

Chapter Six

BOMBS AWAY TAVERN

ALLIANCE SPACE FORCE ACADEMY

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

ALLIANCE FOR DEMOCRACY

AUGUST 25, 1969: 0100 HOURS

“Hey, Freddie! I say, Freddie old man!”

The voice bellowed inches from Frederick Lefarge’s ear, and was barely audible. The Bombs Away was the trainees’ watering hole of choice, and the graduation party was still going strong; the quieter spirits had mostly left with their families in the afternoon. Every table was full, and the bar was packed six deep; smoke drifted under the piñon-pine rafters, about half tobacco, and the air was solid with the Yipsatucky Sound music roaring from the speakers, the noise of several hundred strong young male voices. Speaking every language of the Alliance, though English and Spanish predominated . . .

“What?” Lefarge screamed back, halting in his forward-tackle drive toward the beer taps. The air was solid with smell, too, sweat and sawdust and liquor.

It was “Randy Andy” McLean, a transfer student from the British national military, and a few years older than the run of students; it was common for candidates to take lateral transfers into the direct Alliance service. Short, slight, unbelievably freckled, and newly assigned Junior Power Systems Engineer on the Emancipator. That was the first and to date only example of the second generation of pulsedrive spaceships, a plum posting for a new-minted Academy graduate; McLean had been celebrating his success ever since the assignments were announced, or drowning his sorrows at the prospect of joining an all-male branch of the Service. The pulsedrive ships were opening the area beyond Luna to Alliance exploration and development, and the cruises tended to be long.

“I say, who are those two stunners waving at you, you dog?” he continued. The Scot’s nickname was not undeserved, and represented a real achievement in Santa Fe, with its heavy surplus of young men.

Stunners? Lefarge thought. He had a few friends among the female tenth of the Academy’s student body, but he wouldn’t consider any of them worthy of that particular appraisal; besides, they were supervised like Carmelites, and none of them would be here tonight. Santa Fe was a government-research-military town, families and young single men mostly . . .

“Excuse me!” he bellowed at his two nearest neighbors, putting his hands on their shoulders and levering his feet to knee-height off the ground. There were two young women waving at the cantina’s courtyard door.

“Well?” McLean said. Lefarge began to laugh, and pulled his friend closer by the high collar of his uniform jacket. “It’s my sister,” he shouted into the other man’s ear.

“You lie!” A pause for thought. “Well, who’s her friend, then?”

“My godfather’s daughter, we grew up together!”

The redhead’s face fell, and the native burr showed under his carefully cultivated Queen’s English. “Yer a fookin’ traitor to the Class of ’69 and men in general, ye know,” he said with mock bitterness. They worked their way steadily toward the door, and the trace of cooler air that found its way in.

“Well, I can still introduce you,” he said in a more normal tone. “Just watch your step, Randy, or I’ll break the offending hand.”

“That bloody Unarmed Combat prize went to your head,” McLean said, pausing to adjust his jacket and pull the white gloves from his belt. “Lead on, old chum, and fear not: once a McLean, always a gentleman.”

“Meaning you never pay your tailor. Marya! Cindy!”

His sister gave him a quick strong embrace and a kiss on the cheek. They were twins, and looked it, the same high-cheeked oval face, straight nose, dark-gray eyes, black hair, long-limbed build. She was three inches shorter than his six feet, with a graceful tautness that suggested dance classes and gymnastics; her hair was in a plain ponytail, and she wore a sneakers-jeans-windbreaker outfit that made her look far younger than her twenty-one years.

He turned to Cindy Guzman and put his hands on her shoulders. “How’s Mexico City?” he said softly. She was nineteen and . . . McLean’s right, he thought breathlessly. Stunner. Anglo-Mayan looks, olive skin and greenish hazel eyes, hair the color of darkest mahogany. Figure curved like—down, boy! he told himself sternly. Remember Don Guzman and his machete. Cindy’s father had been a submariner in the Eurasian War and after had retired a commodore . . . and had never abandoned certain of the attitudes he learned as a farmboy in Yucatan.

Not that my intentions aren’t of the most honorable, he thought dismally. Lieutenants just can’t marry. Not if they had any concern for their careers, and while he would be willing to risk it, Cindy would not. Captains could marry, of course. That had been a considerable element in his academic success. A good report never hurt.

She hugged him and exchanged a long but frustratingly chaste kiss.

“Mexico City’s still as crowded and nasty as ever,” she said. It was the fourth-largest city in the United States, after all, and the postwar growth had been badly handled. “Luckily, I don’t have to leave campus very often. Who’s your friend?”

“The Honorable Andrew McLean of McLean, fifth of that ilk,” Lefarge said. McLean bowed with his best suave smile, somehow suggesting a kilt, with gillies and pipers in the background. Cindy and Marya extended their hands, found them bowed over and kissed rather than shaken.

“Och aye, an’ my friend Frederick, he wasna joking when he said that here would be two flowers fairer than any the Highlands bear,” he said.

Lefarge smiled, remembering his friend’s description of the family’s seldom-visited ancestral hall, late one night after a few beers:

Built by cattle thieves for protection against other cattle thieves. Och, it’s this ghastly great drafty stone barn, uglier than Balmoral if that’s possible, and if y’ ken Balmoral . . . the land? Bluidy pure. Heather, beautiful and useless. Great-great-great-gran’ther drove out all the crofters and tacksmen in the Clearances and then found it wouldn’t even feed sheep to any purpose. We’ve lived off renting the deer shooting and the odd bit of loot ever since.

“Shall we find a table?” Lefarge said. The Bombs Away had several outdoor patios.

“Ah, Fred, Cindy wanted to go back to the hotel. She’s staying with Maman, and doesn’t want to be out late.” Marya made a slight shooing sign with her fingers as she spoke. There was something puzzling in her face as she looked at McLean, as well, it was too smoothly friendly. His sister was not a naturally outgoing girl . . . Well, it had been nearly a year, and people changed.

“Andy,” he said, slapping the smaller man on the shoulder. “Be a brick, would you, and see Cindy back to her room. She’s staying with my mother”—who you know is a dragon—“and I’m sure she’d appreciate it.” And I know where you live, you cream-stealing pirate.

“A pleasure and an honor,” the other graduate said, extending his arm and sweeping a bow to Marya. “Until we meet again.”

Brother and sister watched them go, then moved out onto the patio. This was an old building, Spanish-Mexican in its core; the original had been built in adobe brick around a courtyard, then extended to an H-shape later.

“Uncle Nate’s here,” Marya said quietly. “With his working hat.”

“Oh.” Lefarge felt a chill shock run into his belly, like the moment before you went out the door on a parachute drop. Nathaniel Stoddard had taken turns with Commodore Guzman in being the father they had never known; he was also General Nathaniel Stoddard, Office of Strategic Services . . . and now their commanding officer as well. “Let’s go.”

The older man was sitting at a table in the outer courtyard, hard up against the wrought-iron fence; it was dark there, with only candles in glass bubbles on the tables. Stoddard rose with old-world courtesy as they approached, a lanky figure in a conservative houndstooth-tweed suit and dark blue cravat; as Eastern as his Bay State accent. The face was pure New England as well, long and bony, with faded blue eyes and gray-streaked sandy hair; the face of an extremely mournful horse. There was an attaché case with a combination lock on the table before him, half-open; Lefarge caught sight of equipment he recognized, a detector set that would beep an alarm if any of the active long-range snooper systems were trained on them. The younger man glanced up quickly at the parking lot visible through the grillwork: It was full of Academy student steamcars, battered Stanley Jackrabbits and cheap Monterey Motors Burros; also a few very quiet, systematically inconspicuous men.

“Marya, Fred,” Stoddard said, shaking hands with them both. They sat. A waitress in synthetic-fabric pseudo-Southwestern cowgirl costume brought coffee for the younger pair.

“Anytheek for you, sir?”

“Nh-huh,” Stoddard said, touching his glass of water. “Fine, thank you.”

“Mike’s not here?” Lefarge asked. Stoddard’s only son was Air Force, stationed in Asia, but he had been planning to take leave. Marya’s face froze, and Lefarge looked up in sharp alarm.

“There was a brush over the South China Sea,” Stoddard said. He was staring at his water, voice flat. “Trawler out of Hainan lost its engine, drifted into Draka-claimed waters; one of their hovercraft gunboats came out after it. We sent in fighters, so did they. Mike’s wingman reported him hit.” A pause. “Missing, presumed dead. Hopefully dead.” The enemy recognized no laws regarding treatment of prisoners; their own military were expected to fight to the death.

“Oh, Jesus, Uncle Nate,” Lefarge said, crossing himself.

His sister followed suit. “Jesus.”

Stoddard raised the glass to his lips, the hand was steady. The homely face was emotionless as he sipped, but there was an infinite weariness in it.

“How’s Janice?” His daughter-in-law.

“In Hawaii with the baby, waiting for news,” Stoddard said, and sighed slightly. “So, Fred, you’ll see I couldn’t make the graduation ceremony.”

Lefarge nodded slightly, groping within for a reaction; grief, anger, hatred. Nothing, he thought. I must be dazed. There were continual border skirmishes along the line that divided the Domination from the Alliance; even in space recently. But that was like traffic accidents or cancer; you never thought of it as something with a relation to you, you and the people you knew.

He was a good joe, Lefarge thought. Bit too solemn, but he always put up with me. He remembered the older boy patiently explaining to the visiting New Yorker how to use a fly rod, and letting him hold a safely unloaded bird gun. Later Mike and Uncle Nate and he had gone on long hunting trips up to the Maine woods, and—

“Jesus,” he said again, shaking his head.

The sky above was clear and full of stars; this city was at seven thousand feet, and far too small for the lights to dim the sky the way they did at home, in New York. When he had lain in the hammock on the veranda at the Maine cottage, Mike and his father had taught him constellations. There was a far-off growl like thunder, only it did not end; another star was rising, from the mountains to the northeast. Rising on a pillar of light, laser light, into the sky: a cargo pod from the launcher at Los Alamos. He followed it with his eyes, up toward the moving stars. Space platforms, and these days weapons platforms armored in lunar regolith. Suddenly the stars were very cold; reptile eyes, staring down with ageless hunger. “Ayuh,” Stoddard said. “To work.”

Only someone who had known him all their lives could have seen through the mask of calm; Lefarge did, and now anger flushed warmth into his skin. Stoddard would grieve in the manner of his kind, with a silent reserve that encysted the pain, preserving it like a fly in amber.

His hands were sliding a file out of the attaché case. “First, one thing, Fred. Do you still want the Service?”

Lefarge nodded, slightly surprised; that commitment had been made long ago. Not that the OSS recruited openly; to his classmates and most of his instructors, he was just one more astronaut-in-training, with a specialty in cryptography and information systems. One who went somewhere else for the holidays, most of the time. Plus a more-than-fair halfback . . . Concentrate, he reminded himself. An astronaut could not afford to let anything break his mind’s grip on a problem, and neither could an Intelligence agent.

“Then look at this,” Stoddard continued.

He pushed an eight-by-eleven glossy across to Lefarge. The younger man took it up and inclined it toward the candle, then accepted a pencil flashlight. His lips shaped a soundless whistle. Ultra-chic, somewhere between twenty and thirty. In a strapless black evening gown, a diamond necklace emphasizing the long slender neck without distracting from the high breasts beneath. Smooth, classic-straight features, dark blue eyes, glossy brown hair piled high; one elegant leg exposed to the knee by the slit gown, with a daring jeweled anklet. Holding a champagne glass in one gloved hand, gesturing with the other, laughing. At some sort of function: black suits, very expensive dresses. An old-looking building, with a Georgian interior.

“European?” he said. She had that look. Millions had made it out of Western Europe during the last phases of the Eurasian War; his own mother had, in 1947, although that had been a special case. The Draka serf identity-tattoo on the neck could be surgically removed. “In London, recently?”

Stoddard nodded with bleak satisfaction.

Marya spoke: “Marie-Claire Arondin: that’s actually her name. Elder brother is Jean-Claude Arondin, refugee from Lyon. Got out in ’48, officially stowaways in a cargo container aboard a dirigible. Established a machine-parts business in London, and made a fair go of it, despite occasional alcohol problems. The sister went to English schools, latterly a fairly expensive boarding establishment. Did her National Service as an assistant nurse in a West End hospital; the alcohol-rehabilitation ward, where she made some . . . interesting contacts.” His sister’s voice had a dry tone he recognized; someone reciting from a file.

“Set up a small dressmaking concern after studying design at the University of London; soon, not so small, due to discreet gifts from several prominent men with whom she became quietly involved.” Her right hand was resting in her lap; the fingers of the left tapped the table. “A very classy and high-priced courtesan, if you examine the record.”

“Agent?”

Stoddard nodded. “Ayuh. Her brother was a sleeper—he died in ’66 and she was trained in London. Financed very carefully from the Security Directorate’s cover-assets in the Alliance.” The British capital was the world center of espionage and fashion, if of little else these days. “The usual thing, pillow talk leading to compromise, then blackmail to keep it coming.”

“How did—?” he stopped; if there was a need-to-know, he would be told the method of discovery.

“Her mother was still in the Domination; that was their lever. She died. We started suspecting one of Marie-Claire’s . . . clients, when one of our sources on the other side turned up data only he could have leaked.”

Stoddard slid another package across the table. Lefarge broke the seals and pulled out the first envelope. It was a set of assignment orders, in his name.

“Assistant Compsystems Officer on the Emancipator!” His eyes narrowed. “This had to come from the Service, right?”

The general nodded wearily. “Because she told us the latest of her conquests, Fred,” he said, with a tired disgust in his voice. “Open the next package.”

Lefarge obeyed with fingers suddenly gone clumsy. There had to be a reason he, of all people . . .

Lieutenant Andrew McLean, RN, Alliance Space Force. “Oh, shit, God, Andy would never sell out!”

“He didn’t,” Marya said, an impersonal pity in her tone. “She met him at some social affair when he was on leave from Portsmouth, before he transferred here, and hit him like a ton of cement. Far too expensive for him, and she guided him to some of the best clip joints and casinos in Britain. Then found ‘friends’ to tide him over with loans, then . . . By the time she let the hook show, he was in over his head.” She hesitated. “She told the debriefers she’s convinced he’s in love with her, as well. Gave him a long story about the threats the Security Directorate were holding over her family, that sort of thing.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Stoddard said quietly. “For money, for a promise of Draka Citizenship, for love . . . it’s treason, Fred.”

“Why hasn’t he been arrested?” Lefarge said, but felt the knowledge growing in his gut, a cancer of nausea.

Stoddard nodded. “We turned Arondin, and the Security Directorate doesn’t know it. Won’t for several years, during which we’ll feed them a careful mixture of accurate data and disinformation . . . but the stuff she’s been getting from McLean has a short half-life, Fred.

Nothing too important yet, but the Emancipator is the best we have. He can’t return from that cruise, and it has to look like an accident. You’re the best-placed operative.”

Lefarge opened the rest of the sealed packages. An Execution Order. “I . . . don’t like it,” he said hoarsely.

“I don’t like it either,” Stoddard said. “The personal approval of the Alliance Chairman and a quorum of the High Court . . . It’s still a secret trial, and that wasn’t what this country was founded for.” More gently: “And I know he was your friend, Fred.”

“He was.” Lefarge slammed his fist into the wall beside him, then looked in shock down at his own bleeding knuckles. “The bastard, the stupid, stupid brains-in-balls bastard.”

Marya looked away. Stoddard continued. “Can you do it?” Lefarge pressed his fingertips into his forehead. Could he kill a friend, a man who trusted him? Another thought twisted the knot below his stomach tighter. He would have to live at close quarters with him. Laugh at his jokes, pass the salt, never let show that anything was different . . .

“I can,” he said. And that was a bitter thing to know about himself, as well.

Marya relaxed, and brought her right hand up from under the table. Lefarge’s eyes widened; there was a gun in his sister’s hand, an ugly stubby little silenced custom job. For the first time in his life, he felt his jaw drop with surprise; she flushed and looked down. Stoddard reached out and slipped the weapon into his own hand, pointed it out into the night and pulled the trigger.

Nothing. The young woman’s head whipped around, and she gave the general an accusing stare. “You claimed there was evidence he might be involved!” she said.

“Circumstantial evidence,” the general replied. He snapped the clip out of the weapon and thumbed the square rounds of caseless ammunition out. “He was a close friend of someone we knew had gone over. Actually, I never doubted him.”

He smiled bitterly. “Fred, you just passed a test. Your test is willingness to eliminate McLean. This little charade was hers. Marya was lucky; the information we gave her about you wasn’t real. We just needed to see how she would react if it was real.” The expression lost any resemblance to good humor. “This is what I told you, long ago. This business of ours, it takes . . . a different sort of courage from a soldier’s. A soldier”—his voice stumbled for a moment—“may have to sacrifice his life. More is asked of us; we get the danger without the glory, such as that is. For us, there’s the dirty business that has to be done; we may have to sacrifice a friend, a brother . . . our own sense of honor.” He slid the material back into the attaché case, stood. “I’ll be in touch.”

Stoddard left by the back gate, walking toward an inconspicuous steamer. Two of the silent men followed, one taking the wheel. There was an almost imperceptible whump of water hitting a flashboiler, and the vehicle slid away.

“Shit, what a night,” Lefarge said, a shakiness in his voice. “Shit.”

A hand fell on his, and he looked up to meet his sister’s eyes. “Would you have shot me?”

“If I thought you were a traitor?” she said, gaze level. “Yes.” The eyes glimmered suddenly, in starlight and moonlight. “I’d have cried for you after . . . but yes.”

The moment stretched. “Thank you,” he replied. Their fingers met and intertwined. “Merci, ma soeur,” he said again, in their mother’s native tongue.

Presently he sighed. “Look . . . can you drop me back at Maman’s hotel? I’d . . . like to see Cindy again.”

“I understand. It’s not far from mine.”

“But not the same hotel as Maman?” he said, with a faint smile.

His sister’s was more wry. “Maman’s never going to accept that I don’t have a vocation, Fred,” she said.

“Christ, when the Sisters sent that bloody delegation around to explain you were a perfectly good Catholic, just not suited—!” It was an old anger, a relief to slip into it.

Marya shrugged. “Hell, I might as well be a nun, the chances I’m going to get in this line of work . . . Fred, Uncle Nate told me a little bit more about how he got Maman out of France, back in ’47.”

“Oh?” Thank you for changing the subject, he thought. I need something to calm me down first. “Her Resistance work and so forth?”

“Fred . . . Maman was in the Resistance, all right. But she wasn’t Uncle Nate’s contact. She wasn’t supposed to come out at all.”

“What? Look, I know there was an agent in place, I’m named after the man, but—”

“Shh. That nun that Maman told us about, Sister Marya? She was the Resistance contact. Maman just got dumped in the same place, bought out of a Security Directorate pen in Lyon by a planter. She . . . found out about the operation they were on—you can guess it was weapons research—and . . . well, threatened to blow the cover unless she was pulled out of there. The whole extraction phase went sour, your namesake was killed, so was the nun . . . Had to kill themselves, rather. Maman’s considered it her fault, ever since.”

“Mary mother. No wonder she was so set on getting you into the Order!”

“Expiation, and more than that, Fred. There wasn’t any husband killed by the Snakes.”

“You mean she wasn’t pregnant then?” He blinked bewilderment. Maman? Maman had an affair after she got to New York? He had never seen his mother miss Mass or confession in all his life; and he still remembered the thrashing she had given him when she caught him with that women’s underwear catalog under the bed.

“Yes, she was . . . We’re half-Draka, brother.”

For a moment Frederick Lefarge saw gray at the corner of his vision, and then his skin crawled as if his body were trying to shed it. Oh, it made no legal difference; by Domination law, only those born of Citizens on both sides were of the ruling caste. But—he made a wordless sound.

“I know,” Marya replied. “I threw up when I heard; I’ve had a week or so to get used to the idea now. But you can see why, why she’s never looked at another man, why she was so dead set against me going into intelligence work. Any sort of field where there was a chance I might be captured.” She pressed the button for the waitress. “I think you need a stiff one; then I’ll drive you over.”

“Cindy, Cindy!”

“Honey, what is it?” Shock and concern, and fear of what could have harrowed him so.

“Hold me, will you? Just hold me.”