The Domination

Chapter Eighteen

NEW YORK CITY

HOSPITAL OF THE SACRED HEART

FEDERAL CAPITAL DISTRICT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

APRIL 7, 1998

Nathaniel Stoddard grinned like a death’s-head at the shock in Lefarge’s eyes.

“Happens to us all, boy,” he said slowly. “Ayuh. And never at a convenient time.”

Lefarge swallowed and looked away from the wasted figure, the liver-spotted hands that never stopped trembling on the coverlet. I’ve always hated the way hospitals smelled, he thought. Medicinal, antiseptic, with an underlying tang of misery. The private room was crowded with the medical-monitoring machines, smooth cabinets hooked to the ancient figure on the bed through a dozen tubes and wires; their screens blinked, and he knew that they were pumping data to the central intensive-care computer. Doling out microdoses of chemicals, hormones, enzymes . . .

“I’d have told them to stop trying two years ago, if I hadn’t been needed,” Stoddard said. The faded blue eyes looked at Lefarge with an infinite weariness, pouched in their loose folds of skin. “But if I’m indispensable, the nation’s doomed anyway, son.”

Lefarge looked up sharply; that was the first time the old man had ever used the word to him. He reached out and clasped the brittle-boned hand with careful gentleness.

“My only regret is that you couldn’t take over my post,” Stoddard said. “But what you’re doing is more important. Janice and the boy all right?”

Lefarge smiled, an expression that felt as if it would crack his cheeks. “Janice is fine. Nate Junior is a strapping rockjack of thirty now, Uncle Nate. Courting, too, and this time it looks serious. We’ll have the Belt full of Stoddards yet.”

The general sighed, and closed his eyes for a moment. “The Project? What do your tame scientists say about the trans-Luna incident?”

Well, at least the information’s still getting through, Lefarge thought. I might have known Uncle Nate would arrange to keep a tap into channels.

“They . . . ” He ran a hand through his hair, and caught a glimpse of himself in the polished surface of a cabinet. Goddam. I show more of Maman every year. His cropped hair was as much gray as black, now; no receding hairline, though. “Well, the consensus is that it . . . mutated. They had to make it so that it could modify itself, anyway. The trigger is multiply redundant, but it’s just data, and if something knocks out a crucial piece . . . ”He shrugged and raised his hands. “No estimate on spread, either. Slow. Maybe ten percent penetration by now, if we’re lucky. Two years to critical mass. Absolutely no way of telling if there’ll be more, ah, mutations. Or if they’ll figure it out.” He shrugged again. “The Team says de Ribeiro was right; we took a . . . less than optimum path in computer development, way back when. Too much crash research, too much security. Though they practically end up beating each other over the head about what we should have done! Anyway, even the Project can’t redevelop an entire technology. They’ve pushed the present pretty well to its limits, and what we’re using is the product.”

Stoddard’s eyes opened again. “Fred . . . ” He fought for breath, forced calm on himself and began again. “Fred, don’t let them throw it away. We can’t . . . The Militants will win the next Archonal election in the Domination. Coalition . . . we’re pretty sure. War . . . soon after. Inevitable . . . fanatics. Think of the damage if they attack . . . first. Remember . . . Nelson’s eyepatch.”

Fred felt the hair crawl on the back of his neck. Admiral Nelson had been signaled to halt an attack; he put the telescope to his blind eye, announced that he had seen no signal, and continued.

A red light began to beep on one of the monitors. Seconds later a nurse burst into the room.

“Brigadier Lefarge!” she said severely, moving quickly to the bedside. “You were allowed to see the patient on condition he not be stressed in any way!”

He leaned over Stoddard, caught the faded blue eyes, nodded. “Don’t worry, Uncle Nate,” he said softly. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Brigadier—” the nurse began. Then her tone changed to one he recognized immediately: a good professional faced with an emergency. “Dr. Suharto to room A17! Dr. Suharto to room A17!” Her hands were flying over the controls, and the old man’s body jerked. More green-and-white-coated figures were rushing into the room; Lefarge stepped back to the angle of the door, saluted quietly, wheeled out.

The office in Donovan House was much the same, missing only the few keepsakes Nathaniel Stoddard had allowed himself, even the Parrish landscapes were still on the wall. Something indefinable was different, perhaps the smell of pipe tobacco, perhaps . . . I’m imagining things, Frederick Lefarge thought, as he saluted the new incumbent.

Anton Donati was holding down Stoddard’s desk now. Lefarge had worked with him often over the years; less so since the New America project got well underway and he was seldom on Earth. About his own age, thin and dark and precise, with a mustache that looked as if it had been drawn on. Competent record in the field, even better once he was back at headquarters. But a by-the-book man, a through-channels operator. The other man in the room was a stranger, a civilian in a blue-trimmed gray suit and natty silver-buckled shoes; the curl-brimmed hat on the stand by the door had a snakeskin band and one peacock feather. A whiff of expensive cologne; just the overall ensemble that a moderately prosperous man-about-town was wearing this season.

“Anton,” Lefarge nodded. He continued the gesture to the civilian, raised an eyebrow. His superior caught the unspoken question: Who’s the suit?

“Brigadier, this is Operative Edward Forsymmes, Alliance Central Intelligence.”

Fucking joy. He is a suit. Still, this was no time to let the rivalry with the newer central-government agency interfere with business. San Francisco was capital of the Alliance, and the Alliance was sovereign. The OSS had been founded as an agency of the old American government; it was only natural that the Grand Senate wanted an intelligence source of its own. And the suits still couldn’t find their own arses with both hands on a dark night.

Lefarge extended his hand; the ACI agent rose and shook with a polished smile. There was strength in the grip; the man had a smooth, even tan, and no spare weight that the American could see; thinning blond hair combed over the bald spot, gray eyes.

“Jolly good to meet you,” he said pleasantly. British? Lefarge asked himself. No. Australasian; South Island, at a guess. Probably Tasmanian. A quarter of the British Isles had moved to the Australasian Federation over the past century, and the accents had not diverged all that much, especially in the Outer Islands. “Shall we proceed?”

The ACI man sat and clicked open his attaché case, pulling out a folder. It had an indigo border, Most Secret. An OSS code group for title; the New America designation. Lefarge shot an unbelieving glance at his commanding officer.

Donati shrugged, with a very Italian gesture. “The Chairman’s Office thought the Agency should be involved,” he said in a neutral tone.

Christ, Lefarge thought with well-hidden disgust. Not enough that San Francisco was getting involved, but the Agency and the Chairman’s office. The Chairman was all armchair bomb-them-aller, and the Agency was a band of would-be Machiavellis, and the two never agreed on anything—except to distrust the OSS.

“Well,” he said. “What’s the latest on the hijacking incident?”

Donati waved a hand to the civilians.

“Really, quite unfortunate,” the ACI man said. “Your boffins did say that this would be a controllable weapon, did they not?”

Lefarge flicked a cigarette out of his uniform jacket and glanced a question at Donati. “Sir?”

“Go ahead, Brigadier.”

“It’s largely controllable,” Lefarge explained patiently, thumbing his lighter. “Christ, though, look at what it has to penetrate! We’re trying to paralyze the whole Snake defensive system, not just one installation, you know. That means we have to get into the compinstruction sets when they’re embedded in the cores of central-brain units; then it has to jump the binary-analogue barrier repeatedly to spread to the other manufacturing centers where they burn-in cores. Talking sets here, not just data. Plus the continual checks they run against just this sort of thing; they’re not stupid.” He drew on the tobacco, snorted smoke from his nostrils. “One replication went a little off, and responded to a specific-applications attack command instead of the general-emergency one. If we could get more original copies into fabrication plants . . . What’ve we got on reaction?”

The Australasian tapped his finger on the file. “The SD are running around chopping off heads,” he said thoughtfully. “But rather less than we expected. It seems they had the beginnings of a tussle over those prisoners of ours they took in the hijacking, the usual War-Security thing they amuse themselves with . . . and then their top politicals stepped in. Closed everything down; shut off all investigation; had the core from the stingfighter they lost, and the prisoners, and the bodies, all shipped to Virunga Biocontrol. We did catch an unfamiliar code group; all we could crack was the outer title. Stone dogs, whatever that means.” He smiled at the two OSS officers. “You chappies wouldn’t be holding out on us, would you?”

Lefarge and Donati exchanged a glance.

“We’ve never gotten a handle on it,” Donati admitted. “The name’s cropped up”—he paused to consult the terminal in the desk—“five times, first time in 1973. Again in ’75, ’78, ’82. Then now, which is the first time in nearly a decade. It’s about the most closely held thing they’ve got, and all we can say firmly is that it’s fed to Virunga . . . which might mean something biological. Or might not.”

“Those damned Luddites!” the ACI man exclaimed. Donati and Lefarge nodded in a moment of perfect agreement; the antibiotech movement had crippled Alliance research for a generation. It was understandable, considering the uses to which the Draka had put the capabilities, but a weakness nonetheless.

“Still,” he went on musingly. “Why is that involved . . . when we know that it was our little surprise that caused the incident with the stingfighter?”

“Let’s put it this way,” Lefarge said grimly. “The Stone Dogs, whatever they are, are as closely held as . . . the Project. What’s the Project? Our ace in the hole. Now, what’s wrong with this picture?”

The agent winced slightly. “I say, bad show. Well, not our affair, what? There’s no compromise of the Project; they’ll go over that stingfighter’s core, but their standard search models won’t find a thing.” He thumbed through the file. “We are getting some interesting data, from the deep-cover agent with the Commandant of Aresopolis.” He laughed. “A deep-cover agent between the covers, eh? From the pillow talk, she must be fantastic—”

Lefarge was dimly aware of Donati wrestling him to a standstill, of the ACI man scrambling backward, snarling, with a hand inside his jacket.

“That’s my sister you’re talking about, you son of a bitch!” he shouted. Coming back to himself, shuddering, smelling the sudden reek of his own sweat.

Inch by inch, they relaxed. “Look, Fred,” Donati said. “He didn’t know, all he saw was a code description; he’s got no need to know, he wouldn’t know if you hadn’t blown up!”

“Right,” Lefarge said, shaking off the arm and straightening his jacket. Breathe. In. Out. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and split the package, wiping his face down with the scented cloth and sinking back into his chair.

“I apologize, Brigadier,” the ACI agent said.

“Accepted. You had any experience inside, Operative Forsymmes?” The other man shook his head. “Then don’t make comments about those who have to operate in the Snake farm. For your information, my sister was missing-in-action in India in ’75. She contacted the OSS again, on her own initiative. Twenty-four years in there!”

“I apologize again, Brigadier,” the man said patiently. “The fact remains, the New America Project is not compromised, as far as we know. Time to saturation remains on schedule and then we will be in an unassailable bargaining position.”

Lefarge smiled with a carnivore’s expression. “Certainly we will. After we’ve pounded their strategic installations into glowing rubble and destroyed everything they have off Earth—” He paused at something sensed between the other two. “There’s been a change of plan?” he said, in an even tone.

Donati looked down at his linked fingers. The agent spoke in the same smooth tone.

“No, of course not. Your Project will finally give us the top hand, and we’ll use it, never fear. Not in an all-out surprise attack, of course. That was ’70s strategy. We’ll demonstrate it; with the balls cut off their space defense capacity, they’ll have no choice effectively but to surrender. With guarantees for the personal safety of their top people, of course.”

“Ah.” Lefarge glanced over at the other OSS officer. “General Donati, is it just this suit, or are they all fucking insane out there on the West Coast?” He glanced back at Forsymmes. “Are you? Completely fucking insane, that is?”

The agent’s tone grew slightly frosty. “Brigadier Lefarge, I’m going to charitably assume that your personal . . . background and losses have made you somewhat unbalanced on this subject. Are you aware, my dear sir, of what even one hypersonic surface skimmer could do to a major city? Even given the most optimistic possible projections, the Project could only disable eighty percent of their space-based systems, less on Earth. That’s primarily the defensive systems, at that. The Project’s little photonic bug can’t fit into anything smaller than a shipcomp core, and the enemy use more distributed systems than we do, which can be decoupled from their core computers. They would still have some capacity to operate their ships by manual linkage, and their installations. Furthermore, even if we wait three years, some of the older backup cores would be uninfected. They are not, as you pointed out, fools. We will show them they can’t win an exchange, and offer terms.”

Lefarge shook his head in sheer wonderment. “You . . . somebody thinks the Snakes are going to be deterred by casualties! You look old enough to remember the fall of India, even if you haven’t read any history. Perhaps you recall them shooting the top fifteen thousand officials of the Indian Republic’s government in batches, on the steps of the goddamn Archonal Palace, and broadcasting it worldwide? How many millions more were slaughtered or chemically brainscrubbed?”

“There’s no need to spout propaganda at me, Lefarge!” Forsymmes snapped.

“Oh. Then maybe you’ve tuned in to their public execution channel? Impalements in living color; I’m told the breaking-on-the-wheel is—”

The agent sighed with elaborate patience. “Brigadier, I’m fully aware of the enemy’s contempt for other people’s lives. We are talking about putting their own lives at risk.”

“And maybe you think it’s a myth their troops commit suicide rather than surrender? What about Fenris?”

“The so-called doomsday bomb? Nobody’s ever been able to prove that it’s active; evidently a bluff.”

Donati intervened. “In any case, we’re talking in a vacuum, here,” he said mildly. “None of us are exactly at policy-making level, are we?”

“No, that’s true,” Lefarge said calmly. The discussion became technical.

“Lefarge, do you really want to be taken off the Project?” Donati asked, turning to his subordinate as the door closed behind Forsymmes.

“No, sir, I do not,” Lefarge answered.

The black eyes probed him. “If you don’t, I’d better not see another performance like that,” the general warned. “Stoddard’s protégé could get away with things because Stoddard had been here longer than God and knew where all the skeletons were buried. They were terrified of him, from the chairman and the president on down . . . at least the chairman was; I don’t know if Hiero’s scared of anything. Herself, probably, like all the rest of us. But—and this is the important but—her attitude to the constitutional relations between the Presidency and the Alliance is correct to a fault. Hell, Fred, the president knows Allsworthy’s a horse’s ass as well as you or I do. But he’s the boss man.”

“We’re neither of us a General Stoddard,” Lefarge agreed. “Does that mean we have to swallow this horseshit?”

Donati shrugged and lit a thin black cheroot in an ivory holder. “As far as it goes. You know the ACI, they like to use scalpels where a sledgehammer’s needed.”

“Christ, Anton, that so-called strategy of theirs could lose us a dozen cities—if we’re lucky. Fenris is as real as this table.” He rapped his knuckles on the wood.

“You know that. I know that. The people in San Fran, they don’t believe it because it’s . . . ‘fucking insane,’ to their way of thinking.”

“Not to a Snake . . . Yeah, Anton, I know—” He shook his head. “Of course, we could be in a use-it-or-lose-it situation before that. If the cover goes, or they spring their surprise on us, whatever it is. What do you think our Great Leaders will do then?”

“If the Project’s cover’s blown? Back off, if it’s before saturation point. Dither a little and then use it, after that. If the Snakes attack first, everything gets used.”

“I wish Stoddard were here. You going to the funeral?”

“Yes.” Donati drew on the cheroot, his hollowed cheeks giving a skull cast to the thin face. “I never thought he’d die, you know?” There was compassion in his voice as he continued. Everyone had known Lefarge and the old man were close. “I’m glad you made it back before the end; it was so sudden . . . What did you talk about?”

“Nothing. Personal things.” And Nelson’s eyepatch, Lefarge thought with chill satisfaction, as the other man nodded agreement. A soldier’s duty was obedience, but there were other duties. I’m glad Uncle Nate reminded me of that, he thought. It would have been a lonely burden to bear alone.

“And, Fred, remember you’ve gotten out of touch with the institutional balance while you had your head up there in the clouds all these years. Stoddard kept the wolves off your back while you pushed the Project through.” He rose and crossed to the sideboard. “Scotch?” Lefarge accepted the glass. “Here’s to him.” They clinked glasses. “You’re going to have to walk a little smaller, for safety’s sake. The view’s great, but there are disadvantages to having your head in the clouds, you know.”

It’s still better than having it rammed up your ass, Lefarge reflected, as he raised the glass in bland acknowledgment.

“We’ll all do our jobs,” he said. Whether the suits want me to or not.

DRAKA FORCES BASE ARESOPOLIS

MARE SERENITATIS, LUNA

MARCH 26, 1998: 1100 HOURS

There were dozens of launch sites around Aresopolis, and swift linear-induction subtunnels to all of them. Yolande chose to exercise a Commandant’s privilege and use the central dome exit when possible, and to travel aboveground. They left from another of those privileges, a small private villa on the lip of one of the natural terraces that rimmed the crater. It was daywatch, and the sky was set to a bright blue-green that dimmed everything but a ghost outline of the three-quarter Earth, and the unwinking fire of the sun. The house gleamed white and blue and its roofs russet-red; the walled hectare of garden smelled of damp earth and plants from the nightwatch rain.

The staff were lined up before the round doorway; they bowed with hands before eyes as she drew on her gloves, this being a formal occasion.

“Good-bye,” she said. “You’ve served well, and while I’m gone, y’all can stay here in the villa servants’ quarters an’ grounds.” They brightened; it was a rare treat, they were usually only here when the Mistress was in residence.

“Maintenance work only, an’ Jolene’s authorized to draw supplies fo’ an entertainment, youselves and a guest each.” Cheers at that. She nodded at Jolene. “Keep ’em in order, hey?”

“You command, Mistis,” Jolene said, bending to kiss the Draka’s hand.

Yolande put the palm under her chin and raised her to meet her lips. “Be seeing you.”

Marya sank back on the cushioned seat beside Tina and watched the Draka board the airsled. Yolande ignored the steps, vaulting over the side in a complete feet-uppermost turn that looked slow motion in the .16 G, landing neatly in the bucket seat; she turned and smiled broadly at Marya, with a wink.

The serf smiled back. It’s like method acting, she told herself in some cold inner pocket of her mind. You had to construct a part of you that actually was what you portrayed; only here, you had to write the role as you went along. Impossible to do consciously—there was no way to concentrate long or hard enough; eventually you would slip up fatally. More a matter of creating and living in a persona. She suspected most born-serfs did the same from infancy, less consciously; it was impossible to tell how many retained anything beneath the role, how many became it.

Careful, she doesn’t expect you to fawn, Marya reminded herself. Yolande turned to the controls and stretched, cracking her fingers together over her head before dropping them to the sidestick. Just keep her happy and relaxed, and she’ll keep talking. Why not? You’re only a serf.

Knowing people was useful in ordinary life, the margin of survival for a spy, life itself to a serf. Yourself most of all. She isn’t cruel by their standards, Marya told herself. Nor stupid. As for last night . . . The shame was less than she had expected; decades spent in the Domination could not help but rub off on your attitudes. It wasn’t rape. You asked her. And while it was not something she would have otherwise chosen to do . . . Face it, it was physically pleasant. Yolande had been gentle, and took pleasure in giving pleasure as much as in receiving it—from what she knew, not something a serf could count on. The irritating part had been remembering always to let the other take the lead. Oh well, call it waltzing.

No, not unpleasant, she thought, letting her tired body relax into the cushions. Apart from the lack of sleep, she felt fine; the body had its own logic. Expecting it, she could handle the irrational rush of friendliness. That was a common pattern as well; hopefully, her owner would see no reason to suppress it. Yolande liked to be liked, even by her chattel, when possible.

She’s not evil, Marya thought with analytical dispassion. Neither was an apple full of cyanide.

It was simply too dangerous to be allowed to exist.

Yolande took the airsled straight up from the courtyard. It was basically a shallow dish of aluminum alloy built around a superconductor storage ring, with seats and windshields and small noiseless fans. Lift and drive were from pivoting vents on the rim, a dozen of them making the little craft superbly responsive. She glanced up into the rearview mirror.

Not the only thing that’s superbly responsive, she thought happily. Freya, but I needed my clock cleaned. That was different, not as bland as most serfs. More push-back.

A sensor went ping at three hundred meters: echo sounder, of course. Air pressure here was uniform right up until you ran into the sky. The aircraft slid forward at sixty kph, beneath a light scattering of fleecy pancake-shaped clouds.

There were times when you had to step back from a problem, turn your mind to something else, before you could see it plainly. She had climbed the command chain faster than anyone before her—native ability, connections, luck, and sustained drive—that because she had seen that the deadlock on Earth would squeeze resources into space, where they could at least accomplish something. For more than a decade, ever since Telmark IV, the knowledge that there could be nothing better here than a stalemate at a higher level of violence had eaten at her. Her mind prompted a list.

Item: Uncle Eric and the others aren’t stupid. They must realize that as well as I.

Item: Only something on the order of technological surprise could break the stalemate. And if it went on long enough, it would be the Alliance that came up with the winning card. She grinned at the thought, not an expression of pleasure, but the outward sign of a hunter’s excitement. So the Final War had to come before then—but it would be a disaster, as things stood. Seemed to stand.

Item: The Supreme Command knew that, too.

Item: Commandant of Aresopolis was high enough up the command structure to be on the verge of the circles that made policy, political decisions. High enough that she would get hints of purpose, not just code-verified orders.

So. Perhaps the incident with the Yankee prisoners was something significant, perhaps not. There were a thousand clandestine programs going on, everything from espionage to cultural disinformation. But perhaps this was different, and they had promoted her to the level where they had either to bring her into the picture or shoot her. Nor could her appointment be an accident.

I’m competent, she told herself judiciously. More than competent; but even so, there are dozens of others with qualifications as good.

Uncle Eric and his Conservatives knew where she stood; foursquare with them on domestic policy. She was a planter and an Ingolfsson and a von Shrakenberg connection, after all, and besides that, she agreed with them. On the other hand, in foreign policy nobody could doubt she followed the Militant line; nobody at all.

Yolande began to hum softly under her breath. This promised to be interesting, very interesting indeed, when she got some data to work with. Her mind felt as good as her body, loose and light and flexible, ready to the hand of her will like a well-made and practiced tool. Quite true what the alienists said: celibacy was extremely bad for you, as bad as going without proper diet or exercise or meditation, and as likely to upset your mental equilibrium.

I must do something nice for Marya, she thought as the crater slid by below.

This view always heartened her. Most of the Domination off-Earth was like being inside a building all the time at best, or more commonly imprisonment on a submarine. Efficient, necessary, even comely in the way that well-designed machinery could be, but not beautiful; difficult to love. Space and the planets were lovely, but they were unhuman, beyond and apart from humankind and its needs, too big and too remote. Here were reminders of what she was fighting for.

There was a river beneath them, meandering in from the rim, weaving between broad shallow lakes that had been subcraters once. Reeds fringed the banks, brown-green, except for a few horseshoe shapes of beach. The water was intensely clear, speckled with lotus and water lily, and she could see a fish jump in a long, slow arc that soared like an athlete’s leap. Trees grew along the shores, quick-growing gene-engineered cottonwood, eucalyptus, and Monterrey pine, with a dense undergrowth of passionflower and wild rose.

Beyond was a rolling plain of bright-green neokikuyu grass, the plant of choice for first establishment, rolling in long thigh-high waves beneath the warm dry air. Beneath that, earthworms, bacteria, fungi helping grind dead soil into life with millennial patience.

Yolande grinned and sideslipped down to ten meters over the grasslands. A herd of springbok fled, scattering like drops of mercury on dry ice, their leaps taking them nearly as high as the belly of the car. Two grass-green cats a meter long raised implausible ear tufts and yowled at her with their forepaws resting on a rabbit the size of a dog. She banked around them, skimmed over a boulder-piled hillock planted in flat-topped thorn trees that exploded with birds.

“Mistis.” She looked back as her hands straightened the aircraft and put it on an upward path. Tina was looking green and swallowing hard.

“Sorry, Tina,” she said. Morning sickness had struck the brooder hard, and she was still easily upset.

They flew more sedately across tree-studded plain, then a section of still mostly bare whitish-brown soil—regolith, she reminded herself. Vehicles and laborers moved over it in clouds of dust, spraying and seeding. Then over another waterway, a stretch of forested hills beyond that curved out of sight on either hand. The area within was more closely settled, networked with maglev roads and scattered with buildings: lodges, inns, experimental plots, landscaped gardens. Ahead lay the central mountain.

Long ago an asteroid had struck here, carving the crater in a multigigatonne fireball; a central spike half as high as the walls had been left, when the rock cooled again. For three billion years it had lain so, with only the micrometeorite hail to smooth the sides; then the Draka engineers had come. The dome they built required an anchor point and cross-bracing; the mountain was bored hollow, and a tube of fiber-reinforced metal sunk home in it. That rose from the huge machinery spaces below through the ten-meter thickness of the dome itself, and the long monofilament cables that ran in from the circumference melded into a huge ring kilometers overhead. Yolande looked up, tracing their pathway. Thread-thin in the distance, like streamers of fine hair floating in a breeze; swelling, until they bulked like the chariot spokes of a god.

The slopes below had been carved as well, into stairs and curving roadways, platforms and bases for the buildings, or left rugged for the plantings and waterfalls that splashed it with swathes of crimson and green and slow-moving silver-blue. The buildings were traceries of stone and vitryl and metal, like an attenuated dream of Olympus, slender fluted columns and bright domes. Yolande brought the airsled in toward the main landing field, a construct that jutted out in a hectare of flange from a cliffside. She sighed at the sight of the reception waiting; some ceremony was inevitable. I am Commandant, after all, she thought reluctantly, and let the sled sink until it touched the gold-leaf tiles.

She touched down. Waiting Auxiliaries pushed up two sets of stairs, one for her and another for the servants. She stepped onto the red carpet of the first, and a band struck up “Follow Me,” the anthem of the Directorate of War. A cohort in dress blacks snapped to attention: human troops, Citizen Force. Her own Guard merarchy. Bayoneted rifles flashed, drums rolled, feet crashed to the tiles in unison. Not easy to do without kicking yourself into the air, here, she thought ironically as she saluted in turn, right fist snapped to left breast.

“Service to the State!” she called.

“Glory to the Race!”

The Section heads were waiting, with their aides and assistants. Aresopolis was still organized like a War Directorate hostile-territory base, although that was growing a little obsolete. Commandant, herself. Vice Commandant and Operations Chief, Alman Witter. Weapons, Power, Lifesystems, Construction, Civil Administration. The Security commander, in headhunter green—a surprisingly reasonable sort, she had found, with a weakness for terrible puns. The Aerospace Command chief. The civil administrators. In four years she had come to know them all quite well; twelve-hour office days were something they all had in common. Except during emergencies, when it was rather more.

There’s irony for you, she thought. Yolande Ingolfsson was niece to the Archon, an Arch-Strategos, and scion of two of the oldest Landholder families in the Domination. Wealthy in her own right even by Landholder standards, owner of several dozen human beings directly, and of thousands if you counted interests in Combine shares and other enterprises. And she actually had less leisure than a State-chattel serf clerk toiling away in one of the anonymous offices below her feet, and not much more in the way of personal freedom. Well, a little more. I have all sorts of choices. Who I go to bed with, and what clothes I wear. She looked down at her uniform. Sometimes.

“For this we conquered the world,” she muttered under her breath, then looked up. The Earth was in its invariant place on the horizon, and she could make out the shield shape of North America. Not all the world; it will be better once we have. Her teeth bared for a moment, and then she forced relaxation. Ah, well, it would get boring with nothing more to do than swim, hunt, and make love.

“Strategos Witter,” she said formally to her second in command. “Citizens,” to the others, “I expect to be back in about a week.”

There was the usual exchange of civilities, but only Witter stayed with her as the metal rectangle rose a handspan and floated off into the three-story arch in the cliff; there was a mesh of superconductor laid below the tiles.

“Thomas was notably uncommunicative about the patrol incident,” he said.

The skid was moving through a long corridor cleared for her use into a great circular hall, overlooked by ramps and walkways. The hall stretched out of sight in either direction, encircling the launch stations; crowds thronged it, away from the Orpo-cordoned path to her gate. Arches were traced on the walls, covered in brilliant mosaics; the sights of the solar system, mostly. Jupiter banded in orange and white, or the rings of Saturn against the impossible skystalk rising out of the hazy atmosphere of Titan. A few landscapes from Earth. And endlessly repeated above, the Drakon with its wings spread over all. She heard murmurs, foot slithers: a troop of new-landed ghouloons following their officer, peering about and hooting softly in amazement. One forgot himself and bounced two meters in the air, slapping at his chest and shoulders for emphasis as he spoke.

“Ooh,” he burbled. “Big big. Big.”

“Merarch Irwine had his orders,” she said.

“Meaning, shut up?” the other Draka replied.

“Not quite. But all is not as it appears, Alman. I’m goin’ down to find out. I may find out something; I may not. In any case—”

“There are Things We Were Not Meant To Know,” he replied. The skid stopped before a final door. “Exactly,” she said, stepping off the platform as it sank to the floor. “See you next Thursday.”

“Service to the State.”

“Glory to the Race.” She turned to the door guards. “Scan.”

One of them touched a control; something blinked at her eyes, like a light flashing too quickly to be noticed.

“Arch-Strategos?” the tetrarch said. “Ah, ma’am. You serf, the tall one.” Yolande turned; he was indicating Marya. “She’s cuffed, but you don’t have the controller activator on you.”

“Thank, you, Tetrarch, but I think I’m safe from my housegirls,” she said dryly, tapping her fingers on her belt. He flushed and stepped back with a salute.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Straight through, Arch-Strategos.”

* * *

“Tell you the truth, I’d forgotten the bloody thing,” Yolande said, as they seated themselves.

“I . . . never have, Mistis,” Marya said, touching the cuff with the fingers of the other hand.

The capsule was the standard passenger form, a steel-alloy tube five decks high. There was an axial passageway with a lift platform, a control bubble at the bow and a thrust nozzle and reaction-mass tank at the other. There were the usual facilities, and a small galley. Nothing elaborate—cargo versions didn’t even have a live pilot—but quick and comfortable. The usual load was several hundred passengers, although this flight would be hers alone; a seven-hour flight, under 1 G.

She sighed and looked around the lounge, empty save for herself and Marya; Tina had gone to lie down in water-cushioned comfort. This was a wedge-shaped section of the topmost passenger deck, set with chairs and loungers and tables. A long section of the wall was crystal-sandwich screen. Yolande touched a control, and the wall disappeared. Smooth metal showed a half-meter away. Clanking sounds, and it began to move; magnetic fields were gripping the capsule. They slid sideways with ponderous delicacy, then into a vertical shaft. A slight feeling of acceleration, like an elevator. That lasted five minutes, past more blank metal; they were rising through one of the many passages that honeycombed the central lift shaft.

“Ah.” They were out, on the hectare-broad pentagonal metal cap; flat and empty now, no other launches just now. The dome stretched around them, and dimly through it she could see the landscape below. From above and close-by the structure of the dome was more apparent, the layers of gold foil and conductor sheathing.

“Stand by for boost, please.”

She swung the lounger to near-horizontal. Not that the acceleration would be anything to note. Below her lasers would be building to excitation phase, mirrors aligning. A rumble, as the pumps began pushing liquid oxygen into the nozzle. Whump. Thrust, pushing her back into the cushions, building to Earth-normal. She sighed again, glanced over at Marya.

“Marya,” she said. The other woman looked up. “What am I to do with you?”

“What you will, Mistis.”

Yolande laughed with soft bitterness. “What I will? Now there’s a joke.” She brooded, watching the lunar landscape grow and shrink behind the windowscreen, the ancient pale rock and dust, the roads and installations her people had built. “Duty . . . I was raised to do what is right; duty to the State, to the Race, to my family and my friends and to my servants. For the State and the Race, I’ve helped preside over a useless nonwar that shows no signs of endin’ except in an even mo’ useless real war that will destroy civilization, if not humanity. My best friend I failed . . . not least, by failure to let go of grief. My family?”

She sighed and stretched. “Well, my children have turned out well. And I’ve been a good owner to my serfs, with one exception. You, of course. It was wrong to torture you, hurt you beyond what was necessary to compel obedience. Actin’ like a weasel, to assuage my own hurt.”

“Are . . . ” Marya hesitated. “Are you apologizing to me, Mistis?” There was an overtone of shock in her voice.

Yolande opened one eye and grinned. “It’s rare but not unknown,” she said. More seriously: “Marya, I know you’ve never accepted the Yoke, not in you heart. But you behavior’s been impeccable for more than twenty years, which means my obligation is to treat you as a good serf. I . . . seriously violated that, back when.” Her smile turned rueful. “I’d consider letting you go, were it practical. Or just giving you a cottage on the Island and letting you live out y’ years.” She owned one of the Seychelles islands outright, but seldom visited it.

“Mistis? May I speak frankly?” Yolande nodded, and the serf continued. “You don’t feel in the least, ah, disturbed about enslaving me, but using this”—she raised the controller cuff—“makes you feel, mmm, guilty?”

Yolande linked her hands behind her neck. “Slightly ashamed, not guilty; such a bourgeois emotion, guilt.” She frowned. “Not about—yes, enslavin’ is the correct term, I suppose—no. You not of the Race; I am. My destiny to rule, yours to obey and serve. Obedience and submission: protection and guidance. Perfectly proper.”

The Draka studied the serf’s face, which had taken on the careful blankness of suppressed expression. “One reason besides Gwen I’ve kept yo around, not off somewheres clerkin’ or something. You so different. It’s refreshin’, keeps me on my toes mentally, like doin’ unarmed practice against different opponents. Here.” She snapped open a case on the table beside her, brought out two pair of reader goggles. “I’m promotin’ you to Literate V-a.” That gave unlimited access to the datastores. Except for information under War or Security lock, of course, and Citizen personal files; it was the classification for top-level civilian-sector serfs. Very rare for someone not born in the Domination. Yolande tossed the other pair to Marya and put on her own; they had laser and micromirror sets in the earpieces so that you saw the presentation on an adjustable “screen” before your eyes.

She sighed again. One more time at the data, and maybe I can make sense of it.