Under the Yoke

by S. M. Stirling

  The Draka laughed again, reaching out and playfully rapping the Janissary across the knuckles with the electroprod. "Na, no rough work with Security's property," he said. "Besides, I know you lads; once you had your pants down you wouldn't notice even if one of the others pulled the pin on a grenade and shoved it where the sun don't shine. Then think of the paperwork I'd have to do."

  The dark soldier released the woman and saluted. His officer returned the gesture, then grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. "But no reason you shouldn't hit the Rest Center until we're due; consider yourselves off-duty until…" He looked at his watch "… 20:00 hours. Report to the depot then. Off you go; I think I can handle the wild French wenches alone."

  "Yaz, suh!" the serf soldiers chorused. Their clenched right fists snapped smartly to their chests before they wheeled and left.

  It had been half a year since Marya last saw the main door of Block D; not since the night of her arrest, when she had been kicked through still bruised and dazed from the standard working-over with rubber hoses that all new inmates received. And she was nearly the oldest inhabitant; the others came and went, swept in off the streets for some offense too petty to merit an immediate bullet, processed through and vanishing to places unknown. A few found the courage to call farewell as they climbed the pierced-steel treads… Behind them came Therese's voice, thin and reedy:

  "Chantal, don't leave me, come back, please—"

  Then the welded panels clanged shut, and they were outside. A serf clerk at a desk-kiosk, a saffron-skinned slant-eyed woman in neat coveralls who bowed as she took the papers the Draka handed her.

  More corridors, more cells; the electroprod tapped her on the shoulder, left, right, pointing to crossings. A harder jab to Chantal's lower back, just over the kidneys. She gasped, stumbled, would have turned her head to glare if the aching strain of the restraints had not prevented.

  "Walk more humble, wench," the Draka said softly. "Through there, I think."

  A men's section, hairy faces crowding close to the bars and glittering eyes, silent and intent, others who looked at her with pity, or away. The nun felt herself flushing under that hopeless hunger, forced herself not to shrink back towards the sound of the Draka's bootheels. Courtyards, and she began to shiver as a thin drizzle of cold rain fell slick on her skin. Cobblestones, a brief glimpse to a road outside as a convoy of steam-trucks chuffed in with a new load of detainees, ragged figures clutching bundles and children as the guards chivied them into ranks for processing. Overhead, huge and silent, a dirigible was passing, its lights disappearing northward…

  Then they were in an office complex. Soft diffused lighting instead of the harsh naked bulbs, warmth, rain beating against sound windows of frosted glass. Incredulous, her feet felt carpet beneath, soft and deep; somewhere a teleprinter was chuttering, and the homey familiarity of the office-sound brought sudden inexplicable tears prickling under her lids. She was conscious of her nakedness again; not in shame or modesty, but as vulnerability. Most of those she saw were serfs as well, but they were neatly clad in pressed overalls and good shoes, clipboards and files in their hands as they strode purposefully down the aisles or sat at desks working, typing, filling the air with a clatter of abacuses and adding-machines. Their eyes flicked over her and away, and she could see herself in them: nude and wet and muddy-footed, rat-tails of wet hair clinging to her shoulders, arms locked behind her. Livestock, beneath contempt to these born-serf bureaucrats, the selected elite who occupied the management positions just below the Draka aristocracy.

  "Hope these'un're house-broken," a voice said, and others chuckled. Her ears burned, and Chantal beside her stiffened and glared. The man behind them evoked more interest: deferential bows, and curiosity. Marya saw a few other Citizens, through the open doors of offices or walking in their bubbles of social space, crowds parting for them; but those men and women were in the olive-green of the Security Directorate, not War Directorate black. The freefolk grew more numerous as they climbed stairs and at the last an elevator to the upper level. There was no bustle here; empty corridor with wide-spaced doors, wood paneling replacing the institutional-bile paint of the lower levels. Names and mysterious number-letter codes on brass plates: "Morrison: infl.77A Relig.delation."

  "Carruthers: alloc.lOF Labor." A larger door still, unmarked, at the end of a hallway.

  "Through," the Draka said, tapping them again on the backs of their necks with the prod. Hesitantly, Marya stepped closer. The dark oak panel slid aside with a soft shusssh, and she stepped through, blinking with astonishment. She had been six months in prison; before that six years in war-crippled cities, on the roads of Europe, in refugee centers and tenements… For a moment she lost herslf in wonder.

  The room was large, a lounge-office fifteen meters by twenty. Two walls were floor-to-ceiling tinted glass, a view over the tumbled rooftops of Lyon down to the choppy surface of the Rhone, iron-gray under a sky the color of a wet knifeblade. The other walls were murals in the Draka style, hot tawny savannah and herds of zebra beneath a copper sun. A huge desk of some unfamiliar glossy-russet wood occupied one corner, with a sparse scattering of files, intercom, telephone, closed-circuit television monitor. The floor was covered in Isfahan carpets, the furniture soft chairs around a cluster of low brass tables on filigree stands, Arab work.

  The remains of a light meal were scattered on one, meats and cheeses, fruit and bread, coffee warming over a spirit-lamp with little pots of sugar and cream.

  Marya felt her nostrils flaring and mouth filling. The prison fodder was abundant and adequate; porridge laced with fish and soya meal, hardtack, raw vegetables. Bland, bland; after months of it, years on scrimping wartime rations, the smell of the good food was intolerable. She was used to austerity, would not have chosen a religious vocation if comfort were essential to her, but she could feel her skin drinking in the softness and warmth, eyes flooding with the color and brightness. To feel something besides harsh cloth and stone, to see something that pleased the eye and was not ugly and hurtful…

  The Draka officer's hand rested on her shoulder, forcing her to her knees beside Chantal. Inwardly, she shook herself as she bowed her head and glanced upward through the lashes; a prisoner could not afford the luxury of distraction. Focus on the people, she thought. Study them. Know those with power. Knowledge was the only defense of the weak.

  There were five others in the room. A man behind the desk; Security uniform, high rank. In his forties but athletic, short, with dark curly hair, blue eyes, tanned pug face and a cigarette in an ivory holder. In the lounger… Marya blinked. The woman lolling there was the first Draka she had ever seen not in some type of uniform; she was wearing low tooled boots, loose burgundy trousers, a long blouse-shirt over a stomach that showed the seventh month of pregnancy. Somehow that seemed unnatural, shocking… Of course Draka had to be born like other folk, but… Tall, hawk-faced, hair a mixture of brown and gold that gave the effect of burnished bronze, one hand holding a cup. A massive thumb-ring, long fingers… And beside her a girl of perhaps ten years in a thick silk tunic, playing with a long needle-pointed knife.

  The nun frowned, glanced covertly from one face to another. There were two servants, in dark elegant liveries; one knelt in a corner and played softly on a stringed instrument, the other was a middle-aged black woman standing by the child, probably a nurse. Forget them for a moment; there was something about the Draka… All the Citizens she had seen had a certain look, of course: hard sculpted faces, gymnast's physique, the studied grace that came of long training. Even the girl had none of the coltish awkwardness usual on the verge of adolescence; her hands moved the blade with relaxed precision, spinning it up and snapping it closed again around the hilt without looking down. But there was something more…

  Ah, a family likeness. Pale eyes and long limbs and sharp-featured eagle-nosed high-cheeked faces; the pregnant woman might be the sister of the officer who had fetched Marya from the cell. She licked her lips, waiting.
/>   "Gudrun, yo' said you were old enough to carry a weapon; don't fiddle with it." The woman's voice. Soft, rather husky. The child pouted, flushed and pulled up the hem of her tunic to slide the blade into a sheath on her leg. The blush was very evident under pale freckled skin, copper hair; there were dark circles under her eyes.

  The pregnant woman worked her fingers and spoke to the man behind the desk. "An' yes, Strategos Vashon, I've been known to do outlines for mural work; the Klimt workshops have a few in their standard offer book. Not takin' commissions right now, though, what with everythin'." She transfered her attention to the two prisoners.

  "So, Andrew, these two are the best yo' could do?"

  The voice stirred a memory, elusive; darkness and pain, dust and the hot-metal stink of engines… It slipped away as she tried to grasp at it.

  The Draka who had brought the women from their cell snapped his fingers for coffee, sinking into one of the chairs with a grateful sigh and hooking the electroprod onto his belt. "More difficult than the manual workers, sister dear, yo' wanted them spirited and intelligent… troublemakers, in other words. That, these are; healthy sound stock, as well."

  The woman shifted, sighed, rested one hand on her belly and held out the other.

  "The tag," she said, and her brother tossed a strip of metal; her hand picked it out of the air with a hard fast slap. "Yasmin." The girl in the corner laid down her mandolin and rose to take the key. "Take the restraints offn them."

  Marya kept her head bent as the serf approached, knelt behind the two inmates. A crisp sound of linen and silk, a smell of scented soap, a soft hand on her arm.

  "These-heah on way too tight." The girl's voice was harder to understand than the Draka's had been, the same soft drawl but a more extreme dialect. "It gowin hurt." Metal clicked. Thumbs first, then wrists, then the painful stretch of elbows drawn together behind the shoulderblades. The fetters had been a burning ache; agony lanced through muscles and tendons, throbbing as circulation returned. Then relief through the fading pain, almost as hard to bear; involuntary tears starred her lashes, breaking the light into rainbows that flickered like kaleidoscopes as she blinked, as her hands fell trembling to the rough surface of the carpet. She heard Chantal's hoarse grunt, and the metal of the restraints clanking as the serf-girl folded them. When the dark woman spoke it was in a whisper, barely audible and spoken downward into the rug so as not to carry.

  "Be brave, mah sistahs. Tings bettah soon." Yasmin rose, laid the restraints on a table with a bow and returned to her instrument, strumming a faint wandering tune.

  Endless moments passed, and Marya became aware of the Draka speaking among themselves.

  "… nice pair of Danes, but I thought you still had that Jewish wench, what was her name…" the woman was saying.

  "Leja." The officer in black worked his shoulders into the cushions and sipped his coffee. "I do, but I'm out of Helsinki in the field, most of the time. No company while I'm gone, too much work for one when I'm back. Besides, she's pregnant again."

  "Why not have her fixed, for God's sake?"

  Andrew sighed. "And spoil years of work? She just might not like that, you know; even gratitude has its limits. Why do you think I pulled her out of that Treblinka place when we overran it back in… yes, '42. Don't roll your eyes, I'm not going to start another boring war story."

  "You don't have to, I remember the pictures you sent. Fuckin' sick picking her out, too, she couldn't have weighed more than thirty kilos." A grimace. "What happened to the rest of them, anyway?"

  "Ask our good friend Strategos Vashon here."

  The squat secret police officer looked up from his desk and leaned back in the swivel-chair, picking up a ball of hard indiarubber. "Nursed them back to health, every one we could," he said; the ball flexed under the rhythmic squeezing of his hand. "Most enthusiastic collaborators we've got, particularly in Germany."

  Alfred nodded. "And Leja was well worth the trouble, to me; six months an' the bounciest wench yo' could want. Saw she had good bones from the start, an' spirit too." He grinned without opening his eyes, as if savoring a memory, a gaunt expression. "Gave her a knife and she went down a row of SS guards we had tied up, slittin' throats. The two I picked up in Copenhagen, Margrethe and Dagmar, they're just nice little bourgeois muffins, pathetically happy to be out of the ruck and terrified of goin' back."

  "Why not Finns?"

  Andrew snorted. "Almighty Thor, no! When I want to commit suicide, I'll do it decent, with a pistol." He opened his eyes and extended a finger at Chantal. "Those Finns're most-all like Leja, or her; hearts of fire.

  Sieu, they call it. Place won't be safe for a decade. You can tell it by the eyes."

  He waved his cup toward Chantal. "Speakin' of which, look at that one, sister dear. I didn't save her from a gas chamber. Sure yo' want her 'round-about the place?"

  The pregnant woman rested her elbows on the arms of the lounger, placed her palms together, tapped fingers, addressed the inmates.

  "Look at me, wenches." Gray eyes, impassive. Appraising. "My name is Tanya von Shrakenberg," she said. "Yo' will address me as 'Mistress Tanya"; we pronounce it 'Mistis.' This is my daughter Gudrun; you will call her 'Young Mistis Gudrun.' I have bought you out of Central Detention." A smile. "It may interest you to know that your price was roughly the same as a record player's; the tort-bond I had to put up was considerable larger, because yo' two're classified as potential trouble-makers."

  Her head went to one side. " This is a bad place…" Freya's truth, and you've probably heard rumors "bout what might happen when you leave; most of them are true… breaking rock and shoveling rubble in a chain-gang until you died, most likely. Or worse. You've been very lucky indeed; now you're going to be part of the familia rustica on the plantation my family is establishing west of here. Household serfs; interpreters, bookkeepers. Possibly in positions of responsibility, eventually. Well fed and clothed, not punished unless you break my rules. Which are simple and plainly stated, by the way." She pointed at Chantal, turned the hand palm-up, crooked a finger. "Come and kneel here by me, Chantal."

  The Frenchwoman shuffled forward on hands and knees, wise enough in the Domination's etiquette not to rise without permission. Tanya cupped a hand beneath her chin, forcing the head up. 'I've read your dossier, wench. You were picked up for curfew-breaking by an Order Police lochos; yo then tried to brain the monitor with a piece of pavin'-stone. Why?" A tighter squeeze. 'The truth, Chantal, not what you think I want to hear."

  "He—" A pause. "He tried to rape my sister, she's a child, she's only fourteen, Mistis!" The last word was a hiss.

  Tanya used her grip on the other's chin to wag her head back and forth. "With the result that you were both raped, repeatedly, then beaten bloody and ended up here, rather than in the factory compound where your family was sent." Another pause. "Have you enjoyed it here? Has your sister? From the report, she's simple-minded now: 'post-traumatic shock syndrome.' How do you think she's goin' to do without you to look after her, here in Central Detention?"

  Marya could see the hands clenched by Chantal's sides, quivering. The Draka's voice continued: "Have you learned anything from this, Chantal? Besides the fact that the Draka are not humanitarians, that is.

  "Hearken to the voice of experience, wench. Where are we?"

  "In—in prison, Mistress."

  "Beyond that."

  "France, Mistress."

  The hand shook her head again. "Wrong. We are in the Province of Burgundia, under the Domination; I am at home, you are an immigrant, ignorant of the laws and customs of the land." A smile. "And a serf, who is new to being a serf. I am a serf-owner, born of seven generations of serf-owners; consider who will have the advantage of knowing all the tricks, here.

  "Now, here's what I'll do. I will buy your sister Therese, as well as you. She will have a room, light work; nobody will hurt her, and I'll even tell the overseers that she's hands-off." Chantal jerked and made a muffled sound. "Or, if you wish, I
will have you sent back to her cell and pick someone else. Your choice. Shall I send you back, or not? Now, wench."

  A whisper. "No, Mistress."

  "Louder. I can't hear you."

  "No, Mistress, please."

  Tanya chuckled and leaned closer. "Now, that's what you should have learned from the incident that brought you here: the difference between courage and recklessness. Not at all the same thing. Tell me, Chantal, do you know what in loco parentis means? Yes? Good; you will be in loco parentis for your sister. Only, for you a special rule will be made; when the parent sins, the child is punished. Understand?"

  She removed the restraining hand, but Chantal did not move.

  "Yes, Mistress," she said, in a quiet, conversational tone.

  "Oh, ho, what a look," Tanya said, keeping her eyes locked with Chantal's. "Andrew was right; a heart of fire, this one. Maybe we'll continue this conversation at greater length, someday." She brought up finger and thumb and flicked the other's nose. "Back."

  Marya let her breath out in a long shudder, only then conscious of holding it, averting her eyes as the other woman crawled back and sank on her heels by the nun's side, panting as if from a sprint. The sight was disquieting; the nun felt a flush of shame rising from breasts to cheeks and bent her head, letting the pale curtain of her hair hide her face and silently cursing the milk-pale skin her Slavic ancestors had left her. The war, the Soviet and Nazi occupations, the long flight westward before the Draka had been chaos, random death, hunger, sickness, running through the cold wet squalor of the refugee centers. Soldiers and police, prison and camps she understood; even the Draka occupation had been merely a harsher version.