Stone dogs, p.32
Stone Dogs, page 32
Jolene rose, arranged the armoire table, bent to pick up the gown and fold it, swaying and glancing occasionally at the Draka out of the corner of her eyes. Yolande watched with amusement, lying on her stomach with her feet up and her chin in her hands.
"Oh, fo'get the play-actin' and come here, wench," she said. "I know what yo' want." Jolene sank down on the padded edge of the bed and Yolande knelt up behind her, reaching around to open the buttons of the silk shift and take the serfs breasts in her hands; she traced her fingers over the smooth warmth of them and up to Jolene's neck, down again to tease at the pointed nipples. Her own desire was increasing, a soothing-tingling whole-body warmth.
"Mmmm, feels nice… Mistis? Mmm—" as Yolande ran her tongue into the other's ear. "Mistis, yo' picked the brooder yet?"
"Freya, yo' feel good. Up fo' a second." She drew the garment over the serfs head and tossed it aside. "Yo' first. The brooder? No, I'll look at the short list when we get back to Claestum." There were always plenty of volunteers to carry a Draka child; it meant a year of no work and first-rate rations at the least, often the chance of promotion to the Great House, personal-servant work or education beyond birth-status. Being a child-nurse as well as brooder was a virtual guarantee of becoming a pampered Old Retainer later. "Lie down."
The serf lay back and Yolande straddled her, running her hands from the black woman's knees up over thighs and hips, circling on the breasts and starting over. Jolene arched into it, squirming and making small relaxed sounds of pleasure. Yolande savored the contrasting sensations, the firm muscle overlaid with a soft resilient layer of fat. Not flabby, but so different from a Draka, she thought.
"Yo' do this with the brooder, Mistis?" Jolene asked through a breathy chuckle.
"Maybe," Yolande said, running her fingernails up the other's ribs. That brought a protesting tickle-shiver. "If she's pretty an' willin'. I'm goin' pick her for hips, health, an' milk, not fuckabiliry."
She leaned herself forward slowly, until they were in contact, hips and stomach and breasts, then kissed her. Mint and wine, she thought languidly. There were times when this was exactly what you wanted: friendly, slow and easy. It might be the creche training, but with Jolene she always felt affection without the risk of the wench getting excessively attached, which was embarrassing and forced you to hurt them, eventually.
"Mhhh… I'd… I'd like to do it, Mistis," Jolene said. "Have yo' baby."
Startled, Yolande rose up on her hands and looked down into the other's face. "Why on earth?" she said. The movement had brought her mound of Venus into contact with the serfs, and she began a gentle rocking motion with her hips; the other slipped into rhythm.
"I… like babies, Mistis."
" Hmmm. Up a little harder. Yo' can have yo' own, any-times; take a lover or a husband, I don't mind."
"Thanks kindly, Mistis, not yet. I hopes to travel with yo' sometimes, see them faraway places. But yo' away lots next little while. An'… well, yo' knows I gets friendly with Marya? No, not like this, just she don' have many to talk to. Other Literates at Claestum sort of standoffish, 'specially with her." Yolande winced slightly, remembering her early treatment of the wench. It would mark Marya with dangerous misfortune, in the eyes of most.
"Then, she don't have much to talk about with, with the unclassed." The vast majority on a plantation, illiterate and forbidden even the most limited contact with information systems.
"Marya good with babies, but Gwen gettin' to be a holy terror; we kin,"—she ran her hands down her owner's flanks, gripped her hips to increase the friction of the slow grind— "kin help each othah. 'Sides," she said, raising her mouth to the Draka's breasts, "I like the idea."
"Mmmm. All right, I'll take yo' in to the Clinic and have yo' seeded. Now shut up an' keep doin' that."
Bing. The bedside phone. Yolande raised her mouth from Jolene's. "Shit." Bing. Bing. Bing. "It isn't goin' away." Not that it was all that late; she had only been back from the Amphitheater two hours.
Her left hand went to the touchplate, keying voice-only. Her right stayed busy; not fair to stop now. "Yes?" she said coldly.
"Uncle Eric here." An older man's voice, warm and assured. "If I'm not interrupt—"
Jolene shuddered and stiffened, crying out sharply once and then again.
"Ah, even if I am, niece, I've got a gentleman here I think yo'd like to meet, an' some matters to discuss. Half an hour in the study? Strictly informal."
"Certainly, Uncle Eric," Yolande said, breaking the connection. "Senator, possibly Archon-to-Be, war hero, Party bigwig, darlin of the Aerospace Command, he-who-must-be-obeyed by new-minted Cohortarchs,shit," she muttered, looking down. Jolene was smiling as she lay with her eyes closed, panting slightly. "Got to go fo' a while, sweet wench," the Draka said.
Jolene's eyes opened. "Half an hour, the bossman said," she husked, swallowing. "Five minute shower, five minutes fo' a loungin' robe and sandals. Ten-minute walk; that leaves ten minutes. No time to waste, Mistis-sweet, yo' just lie back there an' put yo' legs over my shoulders."
Yolande threw herself back and began to laugh. I wonder, she thought in the brief moment while thought was possible, I wonder what he has to say?
The study was book-lined, with the leather odor of an old well-kept library; there was a long table with buffel-hide chairs, and another set of loungers around the unlit hearth. A few pictures on the wall: old landscapes; one priceless Joden Foggard oil of Archona in 1830 with a smoke-belching steamcar in front of this townhouse; a nude by Tanya von Shrakenberg. A few modern spacescapes. The doors to the patio had been closed, and the room was dim; a housegirl was just setting a tray with coffee and liqueurs on the table amid the chairs. There were three men waiting for her. Uncle Eric; nearly sixty now, and looking… not younger, just like a very fit sixty; the hatchet-faced von Shrakenberg looks aged well. His eldest, Karl, thirty-six and a Merarch already, like a junior version of his father with a touch of his mother's rounder face and stocky build; also with more humor around his eyes.
They rose, and she saw the third man was still in evening dress rather than the hooded djellaba robes she and her hosts were wearing. A rather unfashionable outfit, brown velvet with silver embroidery on the seams and cuffs, and a very conservative lace cravat. An unfashionable man, only fifty millimeters taller than she, broad-built and bear-strong; you could see that he might turn pear-shaped in middle age among any people but Draka. A hooked nose, balding brow, and a brush of dark-brown beard.
"Greetin's," she said politely, gripping his wrist. "Service to the State."
"Glory to the Race," he replied; the return grip was like a precisely controlled machine. His accent was Alexandrian, like the Board chairman this morning, but with a human pitch and timbre. And a hint of something else, unplaceable.
"Doctor Harry Snappdove, my niece, Cohortarch Yolande Ingolfsson," Eric said, with a smile at her well-concealed surprise. "I am on the Strategic Planning Board, Yolande," he said.
They all sank into the chairs; the housegirl arranged the refreshments and left on soundless feet.
"I felt," her uncle continued, "that it was time yo' and I started… talkin' occasionally on matters of importance, beyond the purely social."
His voice was genial as they sipped at the chocolate-almond liqueur, and the other two turned politely toward her, but for a moment Yolande felt as tense as she had before the Appointments Board. Then the mellow contentment of her body forced relaxation on her mind, and she sent a thought of silent gratitude to Jolene.
"Hmmm. Ah, Uncle… am I to presume I'm bein' invited into the infamous von Shrakenberg Mafia?" The factional struggles within the Party had been getting fiercer these last few years, and it was well-known who led the controlling circle of the Conservative wing.
Eric laughed soundlessly. "Wotan, are they still callin' it that?" Seriously: "Yo're reaching the point where political commitments become necessary." Yolande nodded slightly; that was almost true. The Domination had never been able to afford real nepotism; you had to have plenty of raw talent to get promoted. Still, it had never hurt to have family and Party connections.
"The Party is goin' to split soon," he continued. Yolande felt a cold-water shock at the casual tone, the equally casual nods of the other two. The Draka League had always been there in the background of her life, like the atmosphere.
"How?" she asked.
"Oh, along the present factional lines. About thirty percent to my Conservatives, maybe twenty to twenty-five to Gayner and her Militants, the rest to the Center group; the Center will pick up what's left of the other parties, the Rationalists and so forth. Melinda,"—she thought for a moment before realizing he must mean Melinda Shaversham, the present Archon—"hates the idea; she'll probably end up with the rump, the Center, and try to hold things together. The Center have the largest numbers, but they're short on organization an' leadership. Well prob'ly have an unofficial Center-Conservative coalition, fo' a while at least. The long-term struggle will be fo' the Center's constituency."
"Well, if yo' lookin' fo' my vote, Uncle Eric—" she began dubiously. He shook his head.
"Somethin' far mo' fundamental, Yolande." He paused, looking down into his glass for a moment. "One thing the Militants don't lack, it's leadership: McLaren, Terreblanche, and Gayner. A thug, a loon, and a loony thug, but smart."
"Call themselves Naldorists, don't they?" she said.
Karl's snort matched his father's. "Naldorssen's been dead since 1952," he said decisively. "The Militants just wave her name, since we've all had her Will-To-Power philosophizing shoved down our throats in school."
"Well, son, she did put it mo' coherently than Nietzsche, even the formulations he made after he migrated to the Domination and calmed down," Eric said charitably. "And the Militants do have a point. All that trans-human stage of evolution thing was mystical drivel when Naldorssen made it up, back when. With modern biocontrol, it could happen." His mouth twisted slightly. "Under the adjustment to circumstances mealymouthin', what the Militants have in mind is reorganizin' the human race on a hive-insect specialization model."
"Gahh," Yolande said. Maybe I should have been following public affairs more carefully.
"Bad biology, too," the professor said. "The hive insects haven't changed an iota in seventy million years."
Karl laughed sourly. "Precisely Gayner's definition of success. Not surprisin'; the icebitch's never had an original idea of her own, anyways."
"But we live in a more challenging environment than insects do," Snappdove mused. "And… intelligence doesn't necessarily imply a self-conscious individual mind, y'know. Let the Militants get in control for three, four generations, and it'd be a positive disadvantage, even for the Race. We'd end up as empty of selfhood as ants."
"Lola on ice," Yolande said, alarmed. "I have been out of touch. Well, off Earth an' busy. Don't tell me the electorate is buyin' this?"
"Not directly, but then the Militant inner circle aren't spellin' it out in those terms," Eric said. "And it appeals to our national love of unchanging stasis, and the basic Draka emotion." Yolande looked a question. "Fear."
"Oh, come now, Uncle—"
"Why else would we have backed ourselves into this social cul-de-sac?" He rolled the liqueur glass between his hands. "Ever since the Landtaking, we've been in the position of a man runnin' downhill on a slope too steep to stop; got to keep going, or we fall on our face an' break our necks. Individual relationships aside, don't delude yo'self that the serfs as a group like us as a group. They don't. Why should they? We enslave them, drive them like cattle; because if we did any different, they'd overrun and butcher us."
Yolande looked from side to side, not a conventional gesture but genuine alarm.
"Don't worry," her uncle said dryly. "This place is swept daily by technicians personally loyal to me. It works, or I'd be dead."
"Well…" Yolande gathered her thoughts. "It's true, some aspects of the way serfs are treated is… unfortunate." She remembered deeds of her own. "I gathah yo'd like to increase the scope of those reforms yo've introduced, the serf tribunals an' such?"
Eric nodded. "Yes; but those are strictly limited. Administrative measures, really. They regularize the way serfs treat serfs… perhaps not so minor a mattah, since we use serfs fo' most of our supervisory work. It's certainly improved morale and efficiency, among the Literates… and they still provide the Headhunters with the most of they work. An ex-slave in America once said that a badly-treated slave longed fo' a good master, and a slave with a good master longed to be free… Not entirely true thank Baldur the Good, or even mostly, but often enough to be worrisome. No, the long-term solution is to eliminate or reduce the fear. Do that, make the Citizen caste absolutely sure they're not in danger from the serfs, an' genuine reform becomes possible."
"Yo' see," he continued, leaning forward with hands on knees. The dim glowlight outlined the craggy bones of his face. "Yo' see, an outright slave society like ours is a high-tension solution to a social problem. Extreme social forms are inherently unstable; ours is as unviable as actual democracy, because it's as unnatural. It's too far up the entropy gradient. We have to push, continually, to keep it there. Remove the motive of fear and necessity, an' the inherent human tendency to take the path of least resistance will modify it. Eventually—perhaps in a thousand years—we'd have… oh, a caste society, certainly. An authoritarian one, perhaps. But somethin' mo' livable fo' everybody than this wolf-sheep relationship we have now. A better way out than Gayner's beehive, fo' certain. That's almost as bad as annihilation."
"Leavin' us Citizens as sheepdogs instead?" Karl asked rhetorically.
Eric grinned at his son. "Don't quote me back at mahself, boy. But yes, the human race will always need warriors and explorers, leaders even."
Yolande paused, picked up a brandied chocolate truffle and nibbled on it. "Uncle, with all due respect, Ah don't see how yo' could remove the necessity fo' strict control. It's been… well, the root of everythin'. Except by turnin' the serfs into machinery o' ghouloons."
Eric's grin became almost boyish. "We use go-with, on the Militants," he said. Yolande frowned in puzzlement; that was an unarmed-combat term, a deception-ploy which used an opponent's weight and strength against themselves.
"Yo've been in contact with the Eugenics people, fo' your daughter?" She nodded.
"The Militants thought they'd fought through a favorable compromise, a first step. We suckered them. Look—what are the biocontrollers removin' from the serf population? It'll take centuries more than the changes they're making in the Race, but what? Not intelligence; they're increasin that, by eliminatin' the subnormal. Not creativity; Lola's tits, we don't know what causes that an' I suspects we never will, same as we'll never have a computer that does mo' than mimic consciousness. We're just removin'… that extra edge of aggressiveness that makes a warrior, from the subject races. We all know serfs that be no menace however free we let them run, right?"
"And Draka who aren't much mo' dangerous," Karl laughed.
Eric acknowledged it with a nod. "So, eventually… no fear. Not that the serfs would be without bargainin' power; they'll still outnumber us by eighty to one, and we'll still be dependent on them… but we could let the balance shift without bein terrified it'd shift all the way. And think of what we could do if we didn't have to keep such tight clamps on their education an' such!"
Snappdove made a vigorous gesture of assent. "Better evolutionary strategy than Gayner's," he said. "More flexible. Couldn't count the number of species that've hit extinction by being overspecialized. Not that specialization's altogether bad; have to strike a balance."
She sipped at the drink again. Silence stretched into minutes. "Uncle Eric… Senator… yo've always been good to me, and honest with me. I'll be honest with yo'; it sounds good, and mo' or less what I've been thinkin', though I haven't articulated it. I've Gwen's future to think of, and my other children. But on foreign policy, as I understand it, the Militants stand fo' absolute, well, militancy. And that's my position, too, I… have reasons." She stopped, feeling her own fragility.
"Oh, so do we," Karl said.
"Absolutely. Political equations don't figure as long as the Alliance is in it," Snappdove rumbled, combing his beard with his fingers. "Adds too much tension and anxiety."
"Yes, I'm afraid so," Eric sighed. "I wish… well, we live as we must, and do what is necessary. Our prim'ry obligation is to our descendants, aftah all. As to the Yankees… well probably have to kill most of them." He set his glass down. "Gods, how sick I am of killin'!"
"I'm not," Yolande said grimly. To herself: Is there anything I value more than that revenge? Gwen, perhaps… A ghost opened green eyes at the back of her mind and whispered. Don't borrow trouble, 'Landa-sweet. Or torment yourself with decisions you don't need to make.
"Which brings us to the secondary mattah of Task Force Telmark IV," Eric said. "Incidently, Arch-Strategos Welber is one of us."
Us, Yolande thought. So we make irrevocable decisions, without a spot you could stop and say—"Here. Here I did it." She shivered slightly; the trip to Archona had been difficult enough when only an Appointment Board was at stake. Now she had joined a political cabal, and Draka politics was a game played by only one rule: rule or die.
"We—the inner circle of the Conservatives, that is—want to win the Protracted Struggle very, very badly. In the interim, we've got to be seen to wage it effectively; one hint of softness an' the Militants will be over us like flies on horse-shit. This is an impo'tant mission. I think you can handle it. Wouldn't have recommended yo' fo' it, otherwise."
