The Domination

Chapter Seven

NEW YORK CITY

FEDERAL CAPITAL DISTRICT

DONOVAN HOUSE

NOVEMBER 20, 1972

“Not going to the Inauguration, General?”

Nathaniel Stoddard snorted without turning from the window and brushed at his mustache. It was nearly solid gray now, only streaked with sandy brown, like the rather untidy mop of hair he kept in an academic’s shag-cut. Getting older, he thought. Older and creakier and more weary . . . Is it time to retire? He probed at himself, with the same ruthless analysis he might have used on an agent under strain. No. Still flexible, not making too many mistakes. You couldn’t overvalue yourself either; if you were indispensable, you weren’t doing your job properly.

“Work to do,” he said, in a voice that earned the flat vowels and drawl of Boston. “The OSS never sleeps.”

Frederick and Marya Lefarge were waiting patiently in their seats, still in tropical kit, looking a little rumpled from the two-hour flight from India, a little worn from tension and sleeplessness. Looking harder than they had once, after the work he had put them through these past four years. Easy with each other, and that was important; this had been their first mission together. There were jobs a team like this had an advantage in.

“And its agents don’t get any sleep either,” Fred was saying. “Here we are, just off the Calcutta shuttle, and you don’t even give us time to stop off at O’Toole’s for a beer.”

Donovan House was at the northern edge of the Federal District, the series of interlinked squares and parks that occupied the center of Manhattan Island. More and more of the capital’s swelling bureaucracy was being moved out to Long Island or the Jersey shore, but the Office of Strategic Services preferred staying close to the centers of executive power. This office was twelve stories up, overlooking Jefferson Avenue; from here you could see north and south to the Hudson and East rivers. The parade was still moving down the six-lane avenue, between sidewalks and buildings black with the crowds. Paper confetti spun through the air, and the noise was loud even through the sealed double-glazed panes. Another flight of fighters went by ten thousand feet up—contrails and a brief silvery flash—and their sonic booms rattled the furniture.

My, aren’t we noisy today, Stoddard thought.

The marching youth groups were past, the cheerleaders and bands, the cowboys and vaqueros and Hibernians . . . Troops now. Squat tanks with their long cannon swiveling in hydraulic pods above the decks, APCs, huge eighteen-wheeler tractors drawing suborb missiles on mobile launchers.

It’s a good thing the infantry aren’t marching, he thought dryly. Messy, after all those horses.

He took a sip from the coffee cup in his hands, thankful for the warmth. Thankful that he was inside, and not out there in the raw weather; it was damp and cold, the sky stark blue with streamers of cloud. An aircar went slowly by outside the window, down the length of the procession: a light open-topped model with ABS markings, and six ducted-fan propellers in swivel mounts spaced around the flattish oval body. The drone of its engines hummed through the air between them, and he could see the blue tinge to the faces of the televid crew in the little four-seater.

“Better you than me, friends,” he said.

“Sir?” Marya’s voice, cool and neutral. In a more just world, maybe she would be my successor, Stoddard thought. She’s . . . not harder than Fred. Cooler, less of a closet romantic. This line of work will do that for a woman. But then, in a more just world she wouldn’t have had the extra toughening.

Stoddard grinned at his protégés. “Just feeling each and every one of my sixty-eight years, Fred, Marya,” he said. “And glad I’m not out there courting arthritis.” The use of the first name had become a signal between them to drop formality.

They were all in the wolf-gray uniforms of the Alliance military today: high green collars and epaulets and the American eagle on their cuffs. Frederick Lefarge had a captain’s bars, his sister Marya a lieutenant’s; the older man, a general’s oak-leaf clusters, although his position here made his authority nearly equal to that of a member of the Alliance Combined Staff.

“Not missing the distinguished company?” Frederick had a little more accent than his sister’s, Academy mid-American, with a slight trace of East Coast in the vowels; Stoddard noted absently that a linguist would immediately place him somewhere between New York and Baltimore. “The Pope’s there.”

“And all sixty-two State governors,” Stoddard said, turning back to his desk.

It was severely plain, like the rest of the office. Plain dark wood, in-out baskets marked Hate and Love, a telephone, a scriber, the screen and keyboard of a retriever terminal. There was a table and settees for guests, bookshelves that held a mixture of mementos, leather-bound volumes and color-coded ring binders. Two paintings on the walls, New Hampshire landscapes by Parrish, the chilly perfection of his late period. And two photographs on the desk: one of a plain middle-aged woman and three children standing beside a weathered saltbox home, the other of a young man in a flight suit. That was bordered in black.

Stoddard gave it a glance as he sank into the swivel chair and filled his pipe. “And the College of Cardinals,” he continued between puffs. “The Chief Rabbi, Her Honor the Mayor, half the Alliance Grand Council, the Combined Chiefs, His Majesty Georgie the Fifth, the Prime Minister of Australasia . . . bit of a dog’s breakfast. Not to mention the speeches.”

“Bilingual, yet,” the other man said, sitting by the table and reaching for a manila folder. “It would make more sense to have them in French or Yiddish, in this town. Or deep Yorkshire.”

Stoddard nodded, blowing a cloud of aromatic blue smoke. A fifth of the United States was Spanish-speaking, but that was mostly in the states carved out of Old Mexico. New York had always been a polyglot city; the great magnet during the immigrant waves of the 1890s and 1920s, then the primary center for the millions of European refugees just after the War, the lucky ones who made it out before the Draka had the coasts of Western Europe under firm control. The English were the latest wave all along the Atlantic coast; the British Isles were the Alliance’s easternmost outpost, and not a very comfortable place to live, these days. It was a little embarrassing, for an old-stock Yankee. He could remember when a British surname was an elite rarity here; now every second waiter, hairdresser, and ditchdigger was a new-landed Anglo-Saxon. Not to mention prostitutes, pimps, street thugs, and the gangs who were pushing the Mexicans and Sicilians out of organized crime . . .

“Well, India’s patched up for the moment,” Frederick Lefarge said, riffling the folder. “That little scandal about Rashidi and the hamburger killed the Hindi Raj Party deader than Gandhi.” He laughed sourly. “Why didn’t he smuggle something safe, like heroin? For a Hindi nationalist, running a clandestine beef trade . . . ”

Marya frowned. “Well, I was mostly working with the Indra Samla people,” she said. “They were ready enough to believe the bad about Rashidi. Too many Moslems in his background, besides him being their main rival. Still and all, a lot of them had trouble believing he could make a blunder that big.”

“Double-blind,” Stoddard said. “He didn’t. We framed him.”

The captain sat bolt upright. “Jesus! If that ever gets out—”

Stoddard took another draw on his pipe. “You were the test, Fred. You took a first-rate team there for the investigation; if you couldn’t find our sticky finger marks, who could?”

The younger man shook his head and pursed his lips slightly. “I don’t . . . It’s not what we’re supposed to do.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“He would have won the election. And left the Alliance.” A long pause. “How could he be so . . . stupid’s an inadequate word. Are the Snakes bribing him?”

The general gestured with the stem of his pipe. “Fred, Marya, when you’ve been in harness as long as I have, you’ll learn two things: first, human beings don’t have to be stupid to act stupidly, they just need to feel strongly about something. Second, conscious evil is actually quite rare, even rarer than deliberate hypocrisy.”

He cradled the bowl of his pipe between the heels of his hands. “Rashidi is no fool, he’s just convinced that American influences are sapping and undermining Hindu culture.” A shrug. “He’s right, too.”

“Did he think the Snakes would be better?”

Stoddard smiled sourly. “Actually, there are some similarities between their system and the old Indian caste setup, and the doctrine of karma is the most diabolically effective mechanism for keeping the lower classes in order ever invented . . . No, the Hindi Raj people certainly didn’t want a Draka conquest—they weren’t insane. They thought a neutral India could stand off the Domination by itself—with unacknowledged help from us—and successfully industrialize behind tariff barriers without having to accept the, hmmm, ‘culture of individualist rationalism,’ isn’t that the way Rashidi used to put it?”

“That’s insane.”

“No, just wishful thinking. Actually, there are only two possible alternatives for human beings on this planet now. Us and the Domination. One is going to utterly destroy the other and incorporate everything else. It’s one of the truths everybody knows and nobody says. The nationalists in India simply refuse to believe it, because believing that would mean that they cannot have what they most want.”

“Stupidity.”

Marya had leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes; now she opened one and chuckled. “Brother, while you were out playing astronaut”—he winced slightly—“I’ve been doing more straight political work. Your training’s made you overestimate the role of rationality.” A wry grin. “Also, you’ve never had an observer’s chance to see how stupid most men are with their pants down.”

Stoddard nodded. “Not stupidity, humanity. Which means this is a battle won, not a war. The discontents continue, and they will find another vehicle.”

Lefarge shook his head. “Hindi Raj is a dozen quarreling fragments, the Progressives will win the next three elections without trouble.” A wolf’s grin. “And some of those fragments were being paid off by the Snakes. We can use that if they start building momentum again. So much for deliberate evil.”

“A rather petty evil. I’ve got the reports, and none of them were selling anything vital.” He leaned back and blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. “Grafters like that are the political equivalent of tax frauds. They cheat, relying on the fact that most people don’t, so they keep their money and get the benefit of the services, too . . . The Draka lose there by their own racial prejudices. They may not care about the color of the people they enslave, but they do when it comes to granting Citizen status. Best bribe they have. That’s the way they got Ekstein.”

“The filthy little traitor,” Frederick Lefarge said, flushing with anger.

“Even so . . . I’ve never understood how he could do it. Why would anyone want to become a Snake?”

“Captain, now you’re allowing prejudice to blind you.” A gentle laugh. “If you don’t mind me asking, when did you lose your virginity, Fred?”

He blinked in surprise, then smiled reminiscently. “Junior high. I was fifteen.”

“Ekstein never did.”

“I’m not surprised.”

Stoddard nodded. “He was an obnoxious, ugly, sweaty little toad with all the inherent appeal of a skunk and an overcompensated inferiority complex as big as all outdoors. Smelled like a skunk at times, too. No friends, and no female in her right mind would have touched him without being paid, which he was too terrified to do. Also one of the most unhappy and lonely young men I’ve ever met. It’s the reason he went into electronics design; that was something he could do without face-to-face contact and get a certain degree of respect for. It was our fault the Draka were able to contact him, they gave him a palace in France and a harem. Not your idea of paradise or mine, but Ekstein’s happy.”

Marya made a tsk sound. “We should have fixed him up. I would have, if I’d been his case officer . . . even have volunteered myself, which shows you my devotion to duty.” She raised an eyebrow at her sibling’s discomfort. “Tool of the trade, Captain Brother Sir . . . Who did we have working on him?”

“A Sector Chief, ex-Sector Chief now, domestic surveillance. Very sincere fellow. Baptist.” They all winced. “It was slick, I must admit. Off to England for a design conference, and the next thing we know his bed hasn’t been slept in.”

“I suppose it’s too much to hope he stopped producing over there in the Snake farm,” Fred muttered.

“Ayuh. Tapered off a mite at first, then better than ever. The Maxwell and Faraday Combines are rushing his latest microwafer designs into production on a maximum-priority basis, or so our sources tell us.”

“Damn!” The younger man shook his head again. “It was our job to prevent it . . . and I always hate to see them get their hands on our technical secrets. Technology’s our big advantage over them, after all.”

“Particularly the sapphire-silicon and gallium-arsenide stuff they’re doing up on the orbital platforms,” Marya put in. “And Ekstein was in that up to the zits on his earlobes.”

Stoddard shrugged. “We’re ahead in some respects. Those tanks out there”—he pointed with the stem of his pipe toward the window—“we copied from Draka designs. Same with our small arms. They’re ahead in mining, ferrous metals, some machining, basic transport equipment. About equal in aeronautic power systems. Way ahead in biotechnology. We’ve got a commanding lead in agricultural machinery, synthetics, electronics, particularly circuit wafers.” He smiled sourly. “And in household appliances.”

Fred flushed, opened his mouth to speak and paused, after a glance at his sister’s relaxed form. “Wait a minute, General. I know your methods; you’re trying to get me to think through something by pretending to defend the Snakes.”

“Draka. That’s one part of the lesson, son: calling them ‘Snakes’ is a way of denying that they’re human beings. Which leads to underestimating them, which is fatal.”

“They don’t act like human beings.”

“They don’t act like us.” Stoddard dug at the bowl of his pipe with a wire. Meditatively, he continued: “Ayuh. It’s a handicap for you in the younger generations, growing up in so . . . uniform a world.” He shook his head. “Just the fact that you can go anywhere on the globe and get by in English makes it a different planet from the one I grew up on. It’s made us, hm, not less tolerant, but less used to the concept of difference. One of the reasons I sent you to India was to meet people who were genuinely alien in the way they thought and believed, seeing as the rest of Free Asia’s gotten so Westernized . . . ”

Fred ran a hand over his crewcut. “It did that, general. Do you know, some of those Muslim types wanted to secede from the Alliance so they could declare a jihad against the Sna . . . against the Domination? Crazy.”

“Just different; when you really believe that dying in battle gains you instant admission to Paradise, it gives you a different perspective. Also, they’re quite right that nobody in the Western countries gave a . . . rat’s ass—isn’t that the younger generation’s expression?—about them until the Draka attacked Europe. As long as it was niggers and wogs and chinks and ragheads going under the Yoke . . . ”

The other man winced. “Ancient history, though try convincing those stupid bastards of that.”

“Fred, Fred . . . historical amnesia is an American weakness. Most people have a longer collective memory. The Draka certainly do.”

“Quite true,” Marya put in, without opening her eyes. “I spent more time with Maman and the refugees, Fred, while you were out proving how assimilated you were. You wouldn’t believe some of the things they raked up and threw at each other; stuff nobody but history professors knows here.”

“Don’t Draka have any weaknesses?”

Angry, but controlling it well, even tired as he is, Stoddard decided. Good.

“Certainly,” he said. “They don’t understand us, not even as well as we—some of us—understand them.” He laid the pipe down and leaned forward, laying his hands on the blotter. “They could have lulled us to sleep so easily, so easily . . . Fred, the great American public doesn’t like being confronted with evil, or with a protracted struggle. We’re not a people who believe in tragedy; history’s been too good to us. Evil is something we conquer in a crusade, and then everybody goes home a hero.”

Lefarge snorted, and his mentor nodded. “Yes, I know, but we’re professionals, Fred. And you have personal reasons to keep the truth fresh. All the Draka would have to do is ease up, tell some convincing lies, and we’d have our work cut out for us keeping even a minimal guard up.”

A sour twist of the mouth. “You wouldn’t remember it, but there were substantial numbers who refused to believe the truth about Stalin, until Hitler and the Draka between them released the pictures and records of his death camps. The Draka could have railroaded our credulous types just as easily. Instead they’ve virtually flaunted what they are, and pushed at us every chance they got. Trying to scare us, but Americans don’t scare easily. It’s the flip side of our weakness; we’re the Good Guys, and therefore have to win in the end. All the stories and the movies and the patriotic pablum the schools dish out instead of history prove it. God help us if we ever lose a big one; we’d probably start doubting we were the Good Guys after all.”

“I thought you said the Draka were smart?”

“Ayuh. Very smart, and very, very tough. But they don’t understand us; some of them do, intellectually, but not down here.” He touched his stomach. “Our reactions don’t make sense to them, emotionally, any more than theirs do to us, and they’re . . . a little less flexible. They know it, they repeat it to themselves, but it’s . . . hard . . . for them to really believe anyone could fudge a power contest, could want to fudge one. For them, life is lived by the knife. That’s reality for them. They believe in enemies; they don’t have our compulsive need to be liked. For a Draka, if you’ve got an enemy you destroy or subjugate them; it’s their lifework. Subconsciously, they assume that everybody else is the same, only weaker and less cunning.”

Fred grinned wolfishly. “The way we assume that deep-down everyone is just plain folks, and you can always make a deal and square the differences, and the guy in the black hat either repents or gets shot five minutes before the hero’s wedding? That’s the point of these Socratic dialogues you’ve been putting us through?”

“More like Socratic monologues, I’m afraid,” Stoddard said. “Also the temptation is, when we realize somebody isn’t like that, to hate them. Which interferes with the task at hand.”

“Elucidate, as you Ivy League types would say.”

“The task of wiping every last Draka off the face of the Earth,” Stoddard said calmly, and touched a control on the surface of his desk. A printer began to hum, and pages spat out into a tray with a rapid shft-shft sound.

The younger man snorted. “Glad to hear you say it, Uncle Nate; the sweet reason was beginning to wear a little.”

The general paused with his finger on the control. “Ayuh, not so sweet, Fred.” A pause. “I grew up in a world where the Draka were a blot, not a menace. I’ve had to watch the Domination grow like a cancer, metastasizing. Watch my children”—he paused again, face like something carved out of maple—“nieces and nephews and their children grow up in the shadow of it.”

His eyes met the younger man’s. Frederick Lefarge had seen danger. Leading an incursion team ashore in Korea, to snatch a fallen reconnaissance drone from the coastal hills. Once on the surface of an asteroid, when a friend turned around and saw his hands reaching for the air controls of the skinsuit. Never quite so strongly as now, in the gentle horsey face of the New Englander. There had been Stoddards who signed the Mayflower Compact, stood at Bunker Hill, helped break the charge of the Confederate armor at Shiloh. Certain things you shouldn’t forget about Uncle Nate, he reminded himself. The memories were real, visiting the New Hampshire farmhouse, snowball fights and tree forts and sitting in the kitchen with Uncle Nat and Aunt Debra . . . and this was real, too. Every man had his god; Stoddard’s was Duty, and he would sacrifice both the Lefarges to it with an unhesitating sorrow, as he had his own son, as he would himself.

Stoddard blinked, and the moment passed. “It doesn’t pay to get emotional about it, is all. You’ll be happy to know the Ekstein problem is what I want you working on. He has to go.”

“I thought you were sorry for him, General.”

“I am. What’s that got to do with the barn chores? I’ve selected a partner for you, too; Captain Lefarge will be your backup on this one.”

“Captain Lefarge?” Marya sat bolt upright at that.

“You deserved it,” Stoddard said. He pulled a small box out of a drawer. “This job has a few compensations, anyway.

“And here’s the Ekstein file,” he continued. “All but the eyes-only portion. Marya, you covered this before you left for India.”

“Yes, sir, partially.” Marya said. “Need to know,” she added to her brother. “He’s really quite formidably good. And I attended a few lectures of his at the Institute.”

Frederick looked a question at the general.

“MIT, their Reserve Training Program.” Fred nodded; he had known that much. “We wanted her to qualify as an electronics specialist, microwafer design and comp instruction both.” Fred blinked surprise; it was not at all common to be an expert in designing computers and in the instructional sets that ran them as well.

“We put the captain through MIT under an assumed name, and fudged the physical records on her military service; enough to keep the Security Directorate from tagging her with a routine border scan.”

“You have been a close-mouthed little sister,” Fred said.

“Need—”

“I know, I know. Why do you think I never asked where you were, when you dropped out of sight for three months at a time?” The general’s last words sank home. “We’re going in?” he asked sharply.

“Certainly.” Stoddard rose and walked to the window again. “You’ll both be in for intensive briefing, starting Monday. Take the next few days off, rest. This may get messy, but we certainly can’t afford to let them keep Ekstein much longer.” The general looked aside at the black-bordered portrait of his son whose P-91 had taken a seeker missile over the Pacific. Just a skirmish, border tension . . . and a valuable indication that the Alliance electronic countermeasures were not as good as they had hoped. “Not much longer at all.”

* * *

VON SHRAKENBERG TOWNHOUSE

ARCHONA, ASSEGAI BOULEVARD

ARCHONA PROVINCE

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

NOVEMBER 21, 1972

“Gayner’s next,” the assistant said.

Senator Eric von Shrakenberg tipped his chair back from the desk. “Spare me,” he muttered, rising and pacing with a smooth graceful stride.

It was a warm summer’s afternoon, and the windows of the office were open on the sloping gardens that overlooked the city below. The von Shrakenberg townhouse was old; the core of it had been built around 1807, in the time of his great-great-grandfather, when Archona had been new. He tried to imagine it as it had been then, a vast rocky bowl on the northern edge of the great plateau; olive-green scrub, dense thickets of silverleaf trees around the springs and the Honeyhive River. A chaos of muddy streets and buildings going up by fits and starts, mansions and hovels and forced labor compounds, bars and brothels and fitting-out shops for the miners and planters, the hunters and slavers and prospectors pushing north into the great bulk of Africa.

“Why exactly do you detest Gayner, suh?” the assistant asked. She was just back from the yearly Reserve maneuvers of her legion in the Kalahari, bronzed and fit with rusty sun streaks through her black hair. “Apart from her bein’ a political enemy.”

“Why?” Eric stroked a finger over his mustache in an unconscious gesture of thought. “Because she’s totally ruthless, insanely ambitious—personally, as much as for the Race—and has no more scruples than a crocodile.”

“Yes, but what does she want? And . . . we’re idealists?”

“No, Shirley. We’re utterly unscrupulous for the greater good,” Eric said, smiling without turning. At fifty, he was a generation older than his assistant, dressed in a gentleman’s day suit: jacket and trousers of loose cream silk brocade trimmed in gold, ruffled shirt and indigo sash, boots and a conservative ruby stud in the right ear. The clothing brought out the lean shape of his body: broad shoulders tapering to slim hips. The long narrow skull bore faded blond hair worn in an officer’s crop, short at the sides and back, slightly longer on top. His eyes were gray, set over high cheekbones in a face that was handsome in a bony beak-nosed fashion.

“What does Gayner want? I suspect she doesn’t know herself; at a minimum, all this.”

He nodded out the windows. The reception office was on the second story, and beyond lay Archona. It had long outgrown the original site; there were twelve million dwellers now, Earth’s greatest city. Hereabouts were mansions and gardens, like the townhouses of country gentry, used when business or politics brought them in from their plantations for a few weeks; for the whirl of social life in season as well. Tile roofs set amid green on the low slopes below him, red- and plum-colored, the flash of sunlight on water or marble. Quiet residential streets, lined with jacaranda trees as municipal law required. A mist of purple-blue in this blossom-time, spreading down over the hills and into the valley below and up the far slope, kilometer after kilometer. There were few tall buildings, and those were for public use.

The blue haze of the flowers sank into the languorous sienna-umber tint of the high-summer air, giving a translucent undersea look, as if the Domination’s capital were Plato’s lost Atlantis still living beneath the waves. At the center, the House of Assembly loomed, a two-hundred-meter dome of stained glass on thin steel struts, glowing like an impossible jewel amid its grounds. From there, the Way of the Armies ran east to Castle Tarleton, west to the Archon’s Palace, each set on the bordering rim overlooking the old city. He could recognize other landmarks: the cool white colonnades of the University, the libraries and theaters, pedestrian arcades lined with shops and restaurants . . . gardens everywhere, small parks, streets lined with marble-and-tile low-rise office structures. More parks beneath the tall pillars of the monorail. A train slashed by with the smooth speed of magnetic induction.

There was little noise, a vague murmur under the nearer sound of children playing. Draka hated blaring sound still more than crowding, and even in the central streets voices and feet would be louder than traffic. The air smelled freshly of garden, hot stone, water; there was only the faintest underlying tint of the vast factory complexes that sprawled north of the freemen’s city, the world of the Combines and their labor compounds. Decently hidden away, so that nobody need visit it except when business took them there. His mind filled in the other hidden things: the vast engineering works that brought in water from the Maluti mountains and the headwaters of the Zambezi a thousand kilometers away, the nuclear power units buried thousands of feet below in living granite . . . He had known this city all his life, and still the sight was enough to catch at the breath.

“What wonders we’ve built and dreamed,” he said softly. The aide leaned closer to listen. “Wonders and horrors . . . ” Above the horizon tall summer clouds were piling, cream-white and hot gold in the fierce sunlight. Aircraft made contrails high overhead, and the long teardrop shapes of dirigibles drifted below. “Gayner . . . it’s a melodramatic word, but she lusts for control over the Race. And she’ll never have it, because to rule them she would have to . . . love this world we’ve built. And to do that she’d have to understand it, understand how beautified and how utterly evil it is . . . ”

“Suh?”

“Forget it,” Eric said. “Just keepin’ up my reputation as a heretic.” He turned, and his face went as cold as the flat gray eyes. “At seventh and last, I hate Gayner because she’s a distillation of our bad qualities without our savin’ graces; like a mirror held up to the secret madness of our hearts.” A pause. “And if she and hers had their way, there’d be nothing human on this earth in a hundred years. Things that walked on two legs and talked, but nothin’ we’d recognize.”

Louise Gayner snapped the box file shut and sank down in the rear seat of the runabout. It was a hired vehicle rented by the month. She preferred them: less bother than maintaining your own. Her house was temporary, too, a modest four-bedroom rental in the eastern suburbs. Archona was not her home; she was city-bred, but from the west coast, Luanda. And not interested in luxury for its own sake.

Unlike some I could name, she thought sardonically as the car turned under the tall wrought-iron gates of the mansion. The wheels rumbled on the tessellated brick of the drive, a louder sound than the quiet hiss on asphalt.

Five hectares: the von Shrakenbergs had arrived early, and kept wealth and power enough to preserve what they took. A slope, on the southern side of the basin that had sheltered the original city. Generations of labor had turned the stony ground into a fantasia of terraces and tiled pools, fountains, patios. Native silverleaf and yellowwood, imported oaks and paper birch towered to give shade, and the high wall that surrounded the estate was a shape beneath mounds of rose and wisteria. The car soughed to a halt before the main entrance.

“Why are we bothering?” her assistant said, as they emerged into the dazzle of sunlight, then gratefully forward into the shade of a huge oak.

Gayner flicked her wrists forward to settle the lace, adjusted her gunbelt. “It’s like dancin’, Charlie,” she said flatly. “You have t’ git through the steps. Speakin’ a’ which—”

The half-moon of the drive was fronted by a last stretch of rock garden, with topiaries in pots. The stairway ran up the middle of it, polished native granite casting sun flecks back at them; dark foreshortened strips of shade lay slanting across it, from the Lombardy poplars along the edges. Servants came forward as they disembarked, one to show the driver the way to the garages; two more knelt smoothly to offer glasses on trays.

Gayner looked down at them, holding her gloves in her right hand and tapping them into her left. Wenches, a matched set; about nineteen, their movements as gracefully polished as the silver and crystal in their hands. One an ash-blond Baltic type, the other the gunmetal black of a Ceylonese Tamil, both in tunics of colorful dashiki, hand-embroidered cotton from the Zanzibar coasts.

The two Draka took the wine and poured out ceremonial drops before sipping. The aide’s eyebrows rose. “Constantia,” he said.

Sweet, with a lingering aroma as of flowers. Priceless; there was only one estate which produced it, down in the Western Cape province, and that was preserved as a historical landmark by the Land Settlement Directorate. Gayner smiled grimly as she replaced the glass; it was all faultless Old Domination manners, emphasizing that they were guests of the house. The finest of welcoming cups, presented with art . . . but no Citizen to greet them, subtly reminding her of status. Von Shrakenberg was a senator, she merely a committee head of the House of Assembly. He a retired Strategos, a paratrooper four times decorated, while her military service had been with the Security Directorate. Her family moderately obscure Combine execs and bureaucrats, descended from rank-and-file Confederate refugees, his among the oldest in the Domination. The von Shrakenbergs had been mercenaries in British service during the American Revolution, and they had arrived in the then-Crown Colony of Drakia with the first wave of Loyalist refugees. And every generation since had produced a leader, in war or politics or the arts.

“Up,” she said to the serfs. They rose with boneless grace and led the way, up the steps and into the colonnaded veranda, into the cool shade past the ebony doors. A house steward bowed them in; he was elderly, a dark-brown man with a staff of office that he had probably borne for thirty years. Estate-bred, she decided; he had the look common in the southern Police Zone.

“Mistis, Mastah,” he said, with a deferential smile. “My Mastah bids youz free of his house. Does you wish to be shown to the reception room at once, oah is there anythin’ you desire first? Rest, refreshments?”

“No,” she said dryly. “It’s excellent wine, but we didn’t come here to drink.” Tempting to keep the senator waiting, but childish. Nor did she wish more conversation with this relentlessly polite serf, who spoke far too much like a Citizen for her taste.

He bowed again. “A case has been sent to you cah, Mistis . . . This way, if it please.”

Through rooms and courtyards, up a spiral staircase. Portrait busts in niches, von Shrakenberg ancestors from the time of the Land-Taking on.

Dead men, she thought flatly. All long dead; as useful as a plantation hand’s fetish.

Or perhaps not. Dead as human beings able to help or harm; powerfully alive as myths. The question being, is von Shrakenberg using the myths or being used?

The upper corridor ran the length of the building, glassed at both ends, with a strip of skylight above. The steward swung the door wide, stepped in to announce them.

“My Mastah, the Honorable Louise Gayner, Representative for Boma-North,” he said. “Centurion Charles McReady of the Directorate of Security.”

“Gayner,” Eric said.

They had met often enough at official functions that no more was necessary. She was a slight woman, a decade younger than he. Reddish-brown hair, hazel eyes, a sharp-featured foxy face, freckled and with a pallor that spoke of a life spent indoors. Nothing soft in her stance, though; she had the sort of wiry build that always seemed to quiver on the brink of motion. Dressed with almost ostentatious plainness in pale-green linen, no more than a single stickpin in her cravat. A statement, in a way: so was the gun. Not an ornamental dress weapon. A Virkin custom job, worn higher-slung than usual and canted forward in a cutaway holster, the molded grip polished with use. A duelist’s weapon, and the four tiny gold stars set into the crackle-finished black metal of the slide were a reminder of the ultimate argument in Draka politics.

Well, I’m not the only one who can deliver a hint, he thought with self-mockery, rising to grip forearms.

“Von Shrakenberg,” she replied. “Kind of you t’ make time fo’ me, Senator.”

Did I always dislike that Angolan accent? It was ugly, a nasal rasp under the usual soft-mouth drawl of the Domination’s dialect of English . . . but that might be subconscious transference from the decade they had spent in political sparring.

“No trouble at all,” he said, which was true enough; VTOL aircars cut the commuting time to his family’s plantation to less than an hour. Not like the old days . . . ox wagons then, a once-a-year trip. Moving the capital here from Capetown had been the first of the notorious Draka faits accomplis; the British governor-general had protested all the long wagon journey through the mountains of the Cape and across the high-veldt plateau. Unavailing protests, since the local Legislative Assembly held the power of the purse, a purse England needed desperately while locked in its death struggle with Napoleon.

The two leaders’ aides were laying out papers, treating each other with rather less courtesy than their elders. Eric watched in amusement as they bristled; his assistant was visibly looking down her well-bred nose, and the Security officer responded . . . exactly as you’d expect, the senator thought. He looked to be the sort of thug-intellectual the headhunters usually recruited, anyway.

“About the legislative docket—” Eric began, and halted as the doors swung open again.

“Oh, sorry, Pa.” A group of Draka adolescents in tennis whites or the loose bright-colored fashions the younger generation favored. Eric’s smile turned warm as he greeted his eldest.

“A last-minute appointment, Karl,” he said. Turning to Gayner: “My son, Karl. His aunt Natalia”—the politician blinked at the teeneged girl until she remembered that Eric’s father had remarried late in life—“my sister’s daughter Yolande and her friend Myfwany, down from Italy.” Eric’s eyes swung back to Gayner, narrowed slightly.

“Karl,” he continued, “Miz Gayner and I were just about to discuss somethin’ private. Why don’t you and you friends show Centurion McReady an’ Shirley around fo’ about an hour or two? We should be through by then, and we can be down to Oakenwald by dinnertime.”

Gayner stared back at him for an instant, then gave an imperceptible nod to her subordinate, waiting until the door shut before speaking.

“What’s y’ game, von Shrakenberg?”

“An end to games,” Eric replied. He walked to the desk, pressed a switch beside the retriever screen. “Private; my word on it.”

Gayner inclined her head: “I believe you,” she said neutrally. Fool was left unspoken.

“Gayner, between us we command the largest single voting blocs in the Party . . . That’s our power, and that’s our danger.”

“Party unity’s an overworked phrase,” she said.

“Because the Front has been in power too long; the other parties are shadows. Which means that everyone who wants office or powah crowds in, which undermines unity. But contemplate the consequences of an open split, and an electoral contest.”

She nodded warily. At the very least several years of uncertainty, while the factions settled who had most backing among the Citizen population. And it might not be her own group who came out ahead . . .

“What do y’ propose?” Gayner said.

Eric seated himself across from her and leaned forward, tapping one finger on the papers. “On the budget and the next six-year plan, we can compromise easily enough. It’s all technical, after all. I still think you radicals are too ready to approve megaprojects. The Gibraltar dam worked out, but we’re still patchin’ and fittin’ on the Ob-Yenisey diversion to the Aral Sea . . . Still, we’ll let it pass. We agree on shiftin’ mo’ of the military appropriations to the Aerospace Command; we can compromise on the amount. Let’s get on to the real matters, an’ start the horse tradin’.”

She tapped paired thumbs and looked aside for a moment. “Y’ right, dammit.” A long pause. “Of the truly difficult . . . the new Section fo’ serf education an’ selection.”

“You don’t think it’ll work?”

“Too well. We’re concerned with the long-term implications.”

Eric sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. “Look, Gayner, the pilot program has been yieldin’ excellent results; that’s why we got the votes to put it through. We need mo’ Specialists, we can’t raise them all from childhood in crèches, an’ psychological testing is a crude tool at best. Competition an’ selection are necessary if we’re to get results; we can only substitute quantity fo’ quality so far and no further.” A hard smile. “Or do you really think we can point to this one or that an’ say: ‘Drop the hoe, lay down that jackhammer, now go an’ write comp instructions fo’ our missile computers’?” He shrugged. “We’ve always picked out the mo’ promisin’ serfs for further training. This just systematizes it a little mo’ than the Classed Literate system.”

“What about those who get some trainin’ and then aren’t selected? What about ‘rousin’ expectations we can’t satisfy?”

“That’s what the Security Directorate is fo’; let the headhunters cut off a few mo’ heads, then. Thor’s balls, woman, we need those serfs trained! If fo’ nothin’ else, to increase automation. We’ve always tried to keep the urban workin’ class small as possible, here’s our chance.”

“Reducin’ total numbers at the cost of buildin’ up the most dangerous section. The fields we’re talkin’ shouldn’t be serf work at all, nohow. We Citizens’re producing too many architects, too many so-called artists who sit an’ draw their stipends and ‘create.’ ”

Eric raised his hands, palms up. “This is an aristocratic republic, not a despotism,” he said dryly. “Citizens are free to pick they own careers, providin’ they do their military service. We get enough career soldiers, enough administrators. Even enough scientists, usin’ the term strictly. It’s routine skullwork that’s unpopular, and which we’re short of. A matter of choice . . . unless you were plannin’ on makin’ some changes?”

“That’d be electoral suicide.” Fo’ now, she continued to herself with a tight smile of hatred.

Eric nodded. “Which is why that program has solid backin’ among the independents,” he said. “Not much of a concession t’ you faction to drop their opposition. Brings us to the court reforms.”

“An’ that’s a matter of principle,” she said. “That proposal isn’t popular. Citizens have rights, serfs do not—at most, privileges revocable at will. If administrative changes are necessary, let the owners an’ Combines make them.”

“Well,” Eric said softly. “Nobody’s proposin’ to let the serfs have access to our courts, or to limit the power of owners. Or to limit the rights of Citizens in general.” The Code of 1797 had given the free Draka as a body power of life and death over every individual of the subject races; the privilege was jealously guarded. “All that we’re askin’ fo’ is a set of tribunals to regulate ordinary administrative punishments by serf supervisors. Not fo’ convicts or labor-camp inmates; just fo’ the labor force in general.”

“Why?”

“Because as it stands every little strawboss can do as they fuckin’ please!” He gathered control of himself. “An’ if you thinks that don’t impact on productivity and worker morale, talk to somebody in any of the industrial branches.” Eric’s finger brushed at his mustache in a quick left-right gesture. “Harsh regulations can be lived with, harsh enforcement, but there has to be some regularity to it.”

“It still sounds like rights to me,” Gayner said with soft stubbornness, watching him closely. “An’ it sets up mo’ classes within the serf caste; we’ve got too many as it is. I can see why Janissaries an’ Orpos need special treatment, but extendin’ it beyond that is bad policy, whatevah the payoff.” She waited, still as a coiled mamba, before proceeding silken-voiced. “That’s what I believe . . . an’ on this issue, I’ve got the independents behind me, I’m thinkin’.”

Her paired thumbs tapped together. “It’s quid pro quo time, von Shrakenberg. What’re you givin’ me, to take back to my people when they ask why we’re not fightin’ you in caucus?” Silence stretched. “I want the Stone Dogs, an’ I want the trial run on the psychoconditionin’.”

“No.” His voice was quiet, a calm that matched his face and the relaxed stillness of his body. “I’m willin’ to have you new toy used as an alternative to the traditional drugs-an’-lobotomy fo’ incorrigibles, but no mass application an’ no accelerated research.”

Her palm cracked down on the teakwood. “Gods damn, von Shrakenberg, you the one always goin’ on about catchin’ up technologically; biochemicals an’ genetics are ouah strengths, an’ you fight every time we try to apply them!”

“Incorrect. I pushed as hard as you fo’ eugenic improvement of the Race, and fo’ the reproductive techniques. I’d’ve thought that would count fo’ something especially fo’ those not inclined to the traditional methods.”

Eric watched with satisfaction as Gayner flushed. She had never married, or borne children herself—which was odd, since according to his reports she was heterosexual to the point of eccentricity for a Draka woman . . . As little as a decade ago voluntary childlessness would have ruled out a serious political career, but now one’s duty to the Race could be done by proxy, via a deposit of frozen ova with the Eugenics Board.

“An’ as far as the long-term genetics projects fo’ the serfs are concerned, I’m all fo’ them as long as they’re selectin’ from within the normal range. Wotan knows we’ve been scatterin’ Draka genes among the wenches fo’ generations; breedin’ the serfs for bidability might make . . . harsher measures . . . less necessary. But I say no to lowerin’ general intelligence, an’ no to direct intervention to remove the will.”

“Why?” she asked; he thought he heard genuine curiosity in her voice, beside the hard suspicion.

“Well.” He inclined his head toward the obligatory bust of Elvira Naldorssen, the Domination’s philosophical synthesist, and the copy of her Meditations that rested beside it. “What did she say? That it was the mark of humanity to domesticate subsapient animals, and of the Race to domesticate humanity? We rule our human cattle—though they outnumber us forty to one, though even most of our soldiers an’ police are serf Janissaries—by dominatin’ their wills with ours. Where’s the pride of the Race, if they’re not human beings, with potential wills of their own?”

Gayner rose and walked to the opposite wall, looking at the pictures hanging there. Portraits of Eric’s parents, of his wife and children. One of a serf wench, a Circassian in a long white dress.

“You know,” she said slowly, without turning, “that argument goes ovah well with the dinosaurs in you group; even with some of my people . . . Tickles their vanity. You and I both know it’s bullshit. Which leaves me with the question, why do you use it? I think you soft, von Shrakenberg. Weak-stomached. The serfs are organic machinery, no mo’, and runnin’ them all through a conditionin’ process would eliminate major problems an’ costs. I know, I know”—she waved an unstated objection aside—“there’s still unacceptable side effects on ability. But those are just technical problems. Genetic manipulation to remove the personality is even mo’ promising. Y’ real objection is squeamishness. Soft, I say.”

Eric rose, too. “You not the first to think that, Gayner,” he said flatly. “Those that did, mostly found I could be as hard as was necessary.”

“P’haps so,” Gayner said. Her gaze had gone to a battle scene beyond the portraits. It showed the ruined mountain-pass village Eric’s Century of paratroops had held against two days of German counterattacks, back in the opening stages of the Eurasian War. “This-heah certainly covered up you earlier peccadilloes.” She jerked a thumb at the picture of the Circassian. Eric winced inwardly; she had been his boyhood concubine, and he had sent the child she died bearing out of the Domination. To America, to freedom . . . to the hereditary foe of the Race.

It hasn’t helped that little Anna grew up to be a prominent novelist, he thought between irritation and pride. He had had works of his own win prizes; it seemed to run in the blood.

“I hope you not threatenin’ to bringin’ that up again,” he said dryly. The Archon of the time had publicly said his action in the pass had saved the Domination ten thousand Citizen lives; and the Draka were a practical people.

“Oh, no, I’m makin’ no threats,” she said. She turned, and her eyes slid over him from head to toe. “There’s an old rumor, that the Security Directorate tried to have you arrested by administrative procedure right after that there battle. Befo’ yo’ became the untouchable hero with the corna aurea, of course. Even sent an officer to do it.”

“His mission was classified,” Eric said with the ease of long practice. There were very few left who knew the truth of what had happened . . . By the White Christ, was it really twenty-six years ago? “In any case, moot; he shouldn’t have wandered about an unsecured combat zone.”

“Two Walther 9mm slugs,” Gayner agreed. Another pause. “I used to wonder about how my brother died,” she continued, approaching with steps that were soundless, leaning on the table until her face was inches from his. “But yo’ know, fo’ the last fifteen years I haven’t wondered who fired that pistol, at all.”

Eric kept his face motionless. Inwardly he felt a chill wariness that reminded him of going into close bush country after leopard.

“I presume,” she continued, moistening her lips, “that this means you’ll agree to the Stone Dogs project, von Shrakenberg?”

With an effort of will Eric forced himself to clear his throat and speak.

“Quite right, Gayner. It’s still insanely risky, but it does oppose our strength to Alliance weakness, an’ if war does come, it’d be invaluable. I was hesitatin’ because I thought it might provoke the conflict itself, if they discovered it.”

She nodded, still without taking her eyes from his face; the intentness of it was akin to love, a total focusing of attention on another human being. Her pupils expanded, filling the light hazel of her eyes with pools of black, and the small hairs along his spine struggled to stand.

“That’s agreement in outline, then. I’ll get my people to drop their opposition to the trainin’ and tribunal motions; you agree to puttin’ the Stone Dogs through the Strategic Plannin’ committee; we shelve the chemoconditionin’ trials. Agreed?” He nodded. “Let’s have our subordinates draw up the draft proposals, then. I’ll be goin’.”

“Wait.” She turned; he was standing at unconscious parade rest, with his hands clasped behind his back. “You think I’m soft. What’s more, you think the Domination’s gone soft, don’t you, Gayner? Not like the hard, pure days back in the ’50s?”

“In danger of it,” she said, with her hand on the handle of the door.

“You should read some history, Gayner; about what things were like just befo’ the Great War, when we’d had two generations of peace. But think on this, Gayner: Let’s do a best possible case heah; let’s say the Stone Dogs work, an’ we destroy the Yankees. Cast you mind forward of that, say we’ve pacified them; say the Domination is coterminous with the human race, as we’ve always dreamed. Whose policies do you think the Race will find most agreeable then?”

She blinked at him in surprise for a moment, then relaxed. “Well, then, we’d have only our personal matters to attend to, wouldn’t we? In any case, by then other . . . hands may be at the tiller. A very fond, an’ very anticipatory farewell, von Shrakenberg.”

She swept out the door, and Eric went to his desk, sat, thumbed the record switch and dictated a digest of the legislation to be drafted. He flicked it off, thought for a moment, then thumbed it again:

“Note to Shirley. We’ve won, two out of three,” he said, “Why is it that I don’t feel too happy about this?”