The domination, p.98
The Domination, page 98
“Gwen,” she whispered to herself. For a moment the responsibility daunted her; this was a twenty-year duty she was undertaking, not a whim. A person, a Draka, someone she would have to play parent to as long as they lived. Give love, teach honor. Then: “Yes. I understand, Doctor; that’s entirely satisfactory.” She paused. “Just out of curiosity, what’s planned fo’ the serfs along these lines?”
He relaxed. “Oh, much less. That was debated at the highest levels of authority, an’ they decided to do very little beyond selectin’ within the normal human range. Same sort of cleanup on things like hereditary diseases. Average the height about 50 millimeters lower than ours. No IQs below 90, which’ll bring the average up to 110. No improvements or increase in lifespan, beyond that, so they’ll be closer to the original norm than the Race. Some selection within the personality spectrum; toward gentle, emotional, nonaggressive types. About what you’d expect.” He laughed. “An’ a chromosome change, so that they’re not interfertile with us any mo’; the boys can run rampant among the wenches as always without messin’ up our plans.”
“Yes,” she said again, interest drifting elsewhere. “When can we do it?”
“Tomorrow would be fine, Tetrarch. The process of modifyin’ the ova is mostly automatic. Viral an’ enzymic, actually . . . Tomorrow at 1000 hours?”
Yolande looked up as the serf walked into the room. Marya was dressed in a disposable paper shirt; the medical technician pulled it off and pushed her toward the couch. It was at the center of the room, surrounded like a dentist’s chair with incomprehensible machinery, near a curved console with multiple display screens. The room was deep within the Clinic, far from the morning sun; the American captive’s eyes blinked at the harsh overhead lights, reflected from gleaming white tile and synthetic. Her eyes darted from the doctor, busy at the console, to the other serf meditech in white who waited by the table.
She started uncontrollably as she saw Yolande rise from the corner.
“Nhhh!” she gasped, then clenched her teeth, staring at the palm-sized controller clipped to the Draka’s belt. Her left hand hugged the left wrist to her stomach, as if she could bury the controller cuff on it into her flesh, away from the radio commands.
Yolande forced herself to watch the flinch, the eyes gone wide and white around the iris. I should be enjoying this, she thought, hating her weakness, remembering the American’s stubbornness. Instead it made her faintly nauseated, like a wounded dog. The faint medicinal-ozone smell of the Clinic was a sourness at the back of her mouth.
“Marya!” she said sharply. “You won’t be punished, as long as you obey. Do as these people tell you.”
“M-mistis,” the serf stammered. Docile but quivering-tense, she waited while the other technician laid a paper sheet on the table, then climbed onto it and lay back.
“Feet in the stirrups,” the serf technician said. “That’s aright, little momma, this no hurt ata-all.” She buckled the restraints at neck, arms, waist, knees, and thighs. “Now, we get a you ready for the visitor.” She began to rig a visual barrier below the serf’s neck.
“No,” Yolande said, walking closer. The serf looked up with a respectful dip of the head. “No, I want her to see it all.”
The meditech looked toward the doctor, mimicked his slight shrug. “Si, Mistis.” She touched controls instead, and the equipment moved. The couch bent into a shallow curve, raising Marya’s shoulders and buttocks. The stirrups moved apart and back with a slight hydraulic whine, presenting the serf’s genitals.
“Thisa no hurt,” the meditech repeated. She pulled down a dangling line, attached it to Marya’s throat.
The doctor looked up from his screens. “She’s hyperventilatin’ and on the edge of adrenaline blackout,” he said dryly, giving Yolande a resentful look. “One cc dociline.” She could read his thought: Damned amateurs messing up a medical procedure.
Fuck you, she thought back.
Marya’s straining relaxed a fraction, and sanity returned to her eyes. Good, Yolande thought. It would be terrible if she went mad.
“W-what—?” the serf shook her head angrily, as if trying to fling the stammer out of her mouth. “What are you doing to me?”
Yolande rested a hand on her stomach. “Seeding you womb,” she said quietly, looking into the other’s eyes. “Myfwany left me her ova. They don’t have the egg-mergin’ technique mastered yet, or I’d do that. So we’re clonin’ her; you’re to bear the egg.”
The serf froze for a moment, then began to throw herself against the restraints, hard enough to make them rattle; it took Yolande a moment to place the sound she was making. A growl. The two meditechs frowned without looking up from their instruments, and the doctor swore aloud.
“Frey’s prick, Tetrarch!” His hand touched the controls. “Two cc dociline, an’ if you don’t stop interferin’, I won’t be responsible fo’ the procedure!”
Yolande nodded, but spoke once more to the serf. “Marya.” She raised the controller box; the anger drained out of the serf and she whimpered. “If the pregnancy an’ nursin’ go well, I won’t use this on you again. If they don’t, I’ll lock it on until you die! Understand me, wench?”
A frantic nod. Then Marya’s eyes darted down as the meditech touched her.
“Dona you worry, little momma,” the meditech was saying from between the serf’s legs. “This just take a momento.” She had an aerosol can in her hand; with careful, swift movements she applied a thick pink foam to the genital area and lower stomach. “Now just wait a minute.”
“N-no!” Marya bit at the corner of her lip. Yolande looked up; the other meditech had rolled her sleeves back to the elbow and thrust both hands into a claver. There was a flash and hum, and when the technician withdrew them they were covered in a thin film that glistened like solidified water where the highlights caught it.
“All right, Antonia,” she said.
“Hnnn!” from the serf on the table. Yolande followed her eyes; the meditech was wiping off the foam with cloths that had a sharp medicinal smell, moving down from belly to anus; the hair came with it. The Draka could see the muscles of Marya’s belly and thighs jerk as the tech followed with a clear sharp-smelling spray. The pinkly naked flesh gleamed.
The serf with the molecular-film gloves replaced her coworker. “Whata you think we win the bridge tournament?” she said casually, spreading the subject’s vulva with her left hand. With her right she ran an experimental finger into Marya’s vagina. “If that crazy Giuseppe no—Jesus-Mary-Joseph, she tight like stone!”
Yolande pushed down with the flat of her hand. “Marya, relax,” she said in a clean clipped tone. After a long moment she felt the serf loosen into obedience.
“Thank you, Mistis, thata better,” the meditech said. Her companion handed her an instrument like a speculum, giving it a quick spray of lubricating oil from another aerosol.
“Agg. Nhhhhnng.” Marya’s voice, as the meditech inserted it with a series of deft, steady pushes. She gave the threaded dilator at the base two turns and hooked fold-out supports over Marya’s thighs to hold it in place.
“Please! God, please!”
The doctor whistled through his teeth. “Catheter now, Angelica,” he said.
“Giuseppe, he crazy like fox,” the other tech said, unreeling the end of a spool of what looked like black thread from a machine on casters. It rolled near. “Here. He say you play too cautious, you lose alla time.”
The gloved meditech threaded the tip of the catheter through the instrument and into Marya. “Master Doctore?”
“Good, anothah ten millimeters. Careful now. Very slowly.” Yolande stroked Marya’s stomach and watched the wild, set eyes that stared down between her legs. “Good, that’s it. Hmmm. Acidity balance good, uterine wall looks good . . . getting a reading . . . let’s boost . . . All right, here we go.”
Yolande looked down at the shuddering body on the couch, imagining a tiny form with red birth fuzz lying in her arms; she smiled, and for a moment the weight of hatred lifted.
“Blastocyst’s in the uterus. That’s the egg in the womb to you lay people,” the doctor chuckled. “All right, Tetrarch, one seeded brooder. Virtually certain to take, anyway. Leave her here until tomorrow; she ought to be immobile. Intend to bring her back fo’ the bearin’?”
“No,” Yolande said, with a slight smile. “We’ve got a perfectly good midwife on our plantation. Look at me, Marya.” The serf looked up, licked her lips. Wisps of hair were plastered to her brow, and Yolande pushed them back with one finger, and touched her navel with the other hand. “You’re going to bear Gwen fo’ me, Marya, an’ suckle her. That’s how you serves me and the Race, now. Understand?”
The serf jerked slightly. The meditech had withdrawn the speculum and catheter; the two technicians laid a cloth over Marya’s crotch and adjusted the stirrups so that her legs were together with knees up. One waited patiently with a blanket, while the other stripped the thin film gloves from her hands. The doctor rose.
“You can pick her up tomorrow. Unless you’d care to sit with her.”
“No,” Yolande said. The meditechs draped the blanket over the serf, tucking it around her neatly and freeing one hand next to a plastic cup of water. “No, I’ve got a date.” This was better than inflicting pain, but she did not want to stay and watch. “And Marya here needs to be alone with her thoughts, hey?”
Chapter Twelve
SOUTH WING WAITING ROOM
CASTLE TARLETON
ARCHONA
ARCHONA PROVINCE
DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA
The family was waiting for her in the ring-road plaza by the south side of the Castle Tarleton grounds. Her brother John and Mandy, sitting at a table under an umbrella and talking. Looking exactly what they were, Landholders in from the provinces, down to the broad-brimmed hats and conservative Tolgren 5mms . . . David, their latest infant, cooing and gurgling in the arms of stout Delores, his brooder-nurse; Jolene, Adele . . . and Marya, with Gwen. Gwen.
“Momma! Momma!” The small red-headed form bounced erect and ran toward her, toddler’s tunic flying. “Momma!” She leaped up.
“Ooof.” She was heavy for a five-year-old; that was the denser bones. Incredibly strong. Yolande grabbed her under the armpits and swung her in a wide circle, laughing up into the face that smiled back at her.
“Zero-G!” the child cried. “Zero-G, Momma!”
Yolande darted a look of apology at her brother, and tossed her daughter up with a swoop-catch. “There you go, spacer! And—one and two and three and dockin’ maneuver.” She gave the child a smacking kiss and hugged her.
Gwen’s arms tightened around her neck, and she pressed her head against her mother’s. “Love you, Momma,” she said.
“Love you, too, my baby Gwennie,” she said.
“I am not a baby! I’m Gwen,” she replied firmly.
“Indeed you are, light of my life.” Yolande signed to Marya. “Here, now stay with you Tantie-ma fo’ a minute, an’ hush.”
John and Mandy were smiling indulgently at her, hands linked.
“I gathah the news is good,” her brother chuckled. Mandy was using her belt phone to call for the car; the family had rented the latest for their stay in Archona, a superconductor-electric with maglev capacity on the few stretches of road relaid for that luxury.
“You are lookin’,” Yolande said, buffing her nails, “at the newest Cohortarch in the Directorate of War.”
“Well, well, well, we Ingolfssons are movin’ up in the world,” he said, with a swift hard embrace. John had never been more than a tetrarch, or wanted to be. He and Mandy did their Territorial Reserve duty, and that was enough distraction from Claestum and its folk. “Even as I dragged you appalling offspring through the zoo and amusement park. Wotan’s stomach, the things they do with rides these days! While Mandy shopped the estate into bankruptcy; we’ll need a Logistics Lifter to get the loot—”
He winced theatrically as the tall blond woman dug him in the ribs. “Gwen didn’t enjoy those rides half as much as you did,” she said. “Do I quarrel with you gettin’ every toy Biocontrol dreams up fo’ the credulous planter? Like those steakberries?” John winced more sincerely; the high-protein meat-mimicking fruit had proven a beacon for every vermin, pest, scavenger, and grub in Italy. Their son began to cry softly. “I could scarcely take Davie along with you and Gwen, now could I?”
They glanced over to the nurses. Delores was just lifting a full breast out of her blouse and brushing the engorged brown nipple across the infant’s mouth; she rocked the child and crooned, smiling, as he suckled.
“That reminds me, you-know-who dropped a broad hint it’d be appreciated if I had anothah befo’ shippin’ out. Hm, Gwen? You likes a little brothah or sistah to play with you?”
The girl had been seated on Marya’s lap, watching the adults and ignoring her cousin with five-year-old disdain. “Can’t play with a baby,” she said practically. “They just makes messes an’ sleeps.”
Yolande laughed, and glanced an inquiry at her brother and sister-in-law. Mandy nodded. “One more’s no problem, ’Landa. Freya knows, what with ours and the two new ones ma an’ pa are having, we gettin’ to be more of a tribe than a family.”
Yolande’s mother had borne four children naturally, but seemed to prefer the new method wholeheartedly.
“I’ll have to pick a brooder,” she said.
“No problem . . . ‘Ship out’?” her schoolfriend said.
Yolande shrugged, spread her hands and looked from side to side in the universal Draka gesture for secrecy. Not that the Security Directorate needed to have spies hiding behind bushes these days.
“Be gone fo’ quite some time. Months, leastways.”
Gwen made a protesting sound, frowning and pouting, blinking back tears. Yolande moved over toward her on the stone bench, smoothing the copper hair back from her brow.
“Now, where’s my big brave girl?” she said gently. “Momma has her work, an’ I’ll bring you back another piece of a star, sweetie.” Gwen had been just old enough after the last voyage to understand that the light pointed out in the sky was where her mother had been, and the lump of rock from Ganymede was her most precious possession.
“I don’ want a star. I want Momma!” She tugged on Marya’s hair. “Tantie-ma, tell Momma she cain’ go!”
“Hush, Missy Gwen. You know I can’t tell your mother what to do.” The serf wrapped her arms around the child and made soothing noises.
“Now, don’t be a baby, Gwen,” Yolande said. “Momma doesn’t have to leave fo’ a week yet”—which was forever to a child this age—“and when I go, you can come up to the station with me, how’s that? Right up above the sky.” No more risky than an ordinary scramjet flight, these days, and she could probably swing it.
“And you’ll have Uncle John and Auntie Mandy and Tantie-ma, too, and all the friends you makes at school next year. Oh,” she continued, looking up at Marya. “I meant to tell you. I’ve posted bond, you’re moved up to Class III Literate.” That meant nontechnical and nonpolitical literature, and limited computer access to menu-driven databanks; the classics, as well, most of them.
Marya looked down, flushing. “Thank you, Mistis,” she whispered. For an instant Yolande thought she caught something strange and fierce in the wench’s expression, then dismissed it. Must have been boring, nothing much to read, she thought. Should have done this before. Gwen subsided, looking up with nervous delight at the thought of flying to orbit.
“Well, what have we planned?” Yolande asked.
“Lunch,” John said. “Then the Athenaeum, then dinner at Saparison’s. Then there’s a Gerraldson revival at the Amphitheater, the Fireborn Resurrection, and Uncle Eric used some pull to get us a box. We’ll drop the children off first, of course.”
“Nnoo, I think Gwen might enjoy it,” Yolande said, considering. “The dancin’ at least. Marya can keep her quiet, or take her out in the gardens if not.” And it would be a treat for Marya as well; she had been behaving well of late. Gwen was certainly devoted to her, which was a good sign.
The electrocar had hissed up on the smooth black roadway a dozen meters away. The main processional streets of Archona had been the first public places in the solar system to be fitted with superconductor grids, just last year. Their car floated by the curb, motionless and a quarter meter above the roadway as the gull-wing doors folded up; it still looked a little unnatural to Yolande for something to hover so on Earth, without jets or fans. She reached out for Gwen’s hand and the child took it in one of hers and offered the other to Marya. Their eyes met for a moment over the child’s head, before they turned to walk behind the others.
Strange, Yolande thought. Life is strange, really.
“I did it! Cohortarch, independent command, I did it!” Jolene looked up smiling as Yolande collapsed backward onto the bed in her undertunic, the formal gown strewn in yards of fabric toward the door. The room was part of a guest suite in the von Shrakenberg townhouse, beautiful in an extremely old-fashioned way; inlaid Coromandel sandalwood screens in pearl and lapis, round water-cushioned bed on a marble dais with a canopy, a wall of balcony doors in frosted glass etched over with delicate traceries of fern and water fowl. They were opened slightly, letting in a soft diffuse glow of city light cut into fragments by the wind-stirred leaves of ancient trees; it smelled of water, stone, and frangipani blossoms, and the air was just warm enough to make nakedness comfortable.
“Congratulations, Mistis . . . again,” the serf said.
Yolande shook her head wordlessly; it had been a perfect evening, after a stone bitch of a week shuttling from one debriefer to the next and wondering what the Board would say. Her mind still glowed from the impossible beauty of Gerraldson’s music . . . Why had he killed himself, at the height of his talent? Why had Mozart, for that matter? And this mission, it was the perfect opportunity, for so many things. She rolled onto one elbow and watched Jolene. The serf was sitting on a stool before the armoire, brushing out her long loose-curled blond mane, dressed in a cream silk peignoir that set off the fine-grained ebony of her skin. And also showed off the spectacular lushness of her figure; the black serf had filled out a little without sagging at all. The Draka grinned.
