Under the Yoke

by S. M. Stirling

  Kustaa put the pistol in the general's outstretched hand. The older man snapped the action open with a practiced motion. "Le Matt," he said. "He did his best work in Virconium after the Yankees ran him out of New Orleans; sugar country must have been homelike to him. This was his first swing-out cylinder model, and the last black-powder sidearm authorized for regular use. Best close-quarter weapon of its day." He made another adjustment, and the thicker barrel beneath the main one slid forward. "Buckshot barrel, just the thing fo' a cavalry melee."

  "One thing, I'm glad we've still got his grandchildren. Nice to have that tricky an' ruthless a set of genes in the Race." Andrew, in a tone of rueful admiration.

  "I still say we should hold them ready to use as a lever, should, Loki fo'bid, he surface in Yankeeland." Vashon's voice was neutrally cold.

  "No. Primus, he's shown he's ready to sacrifice them fo' principle; secundus, by grantin' Citizenship, we made them part of the Race. With all the protection that my sister's children have, or any other young Draka." Still friendly, but with an icy finality underneath. That would be reassuring to tell Ernst; as for as the OSS knew, the military were still more powerful in the Domination's hierarchy. Of course, the Party was stronger than either of the armed branches…

  "These were my father's," the old general continued. Kustaa smiled and nodded. "Weddin" present; my mother's parents were Confederates. He carried them in the Northern War." The American racked his brain… yes, that was what they called the Anglo-Russian War of 1879-1882; the Draka had saved Britain from ignominious defeat, an important step in their progress to Great Power status.

  "See the inset gold notches? Kills. Duels only of course, not countin' war. The last one was the one he remembered best. An Englishman, durin' the stalemate on the Danube. Dam' fool thought a duel was a game, fired in the air." Karl smiled, the warm smile of a man remembering his childhood. "Pa always laughed when he told us how surprised the Brit looked when he gut-shot him… Honor makin' yo' acquaintance, sir." He replaced the pistol. "Best ever… still take them ovah anythin' but a submachine gun…"

  A liveried servant took stance by the doors that led into the palaestra wing and the stairs to the terrace.

  "My masters!" she cried, rapping the staff she carried sharply on the flags. "The banquet awaits you."

  "Oh, Poppa, are you sure you can't come?" Solange said, stepping back and turning her head a little to examine herself in the mirror.

  How lovely, Jules Lebrun thought. How much like her mother. The image twisted with a pain worse than the growing lumps under his ribs, and he smiled to cover it and the tears that threatened his eyes. His daughter was dressed in a long form-fitting gown of platinum sequins, burnished until they glittered in a blinking, continuous shimmering ripple. Her hair hung loose down the length of her back, and thrown over it was a net of gossamer silver wire, the joinings of the mesh marked with tiny blue-white diamonds.

  Solange turned to view herself from a different angle; her hands moved down from below her breasts and over her hips. "I look like a princess," she said happily, with a smile that highlighted the slight flush on her cheeks.

  No, my child, you look like a very expensive toy, Lebrun thought with an aching sadness. The chamber that had been set aside as a dressing room was crowded, the quartet and their instruments, Solange and Yasmin, their friends. It smelled of cigarette smoke, clothes, brandy from the flask one of the musicians was handing around, faintly of the singer's jasmine perfume.

  "Ernst is an old friend, child," he said. "Mr. Kenston will be leaving tomorrow"—actually rather sooner—"and we will never meet again, probably. I must spend some time with him, while his duties allow."

  Solange sighed. He could tell why—only a few privileged house-serfs would be allowed to listen to the entertainment, from below in the courtyard, and she must have wheedled to get him included. Then he saw her cast off the shadow. Determined to be happy, and allowing nothing to stand in her way, he knew. She came over and embraced him lightly and he put his arms around her scented and bird-delicate shoulders.

  "I love you, Poppa," she said, brushing her cheek against his. "Wish me luck—this could be the most important performance of my career!"

  Career? he thought. "I love you too, my child," he whispered. And it is true. We love our children as we love our country, not because they deserve it but because they are ours, and we must. Angrily, he felt his weakened body betray him and the tears spill over his eyelids.

  "Oh, father, don't be that sad, you will have hundreds of times to hear me sing!" She straightened, and gave her makeup a last check. "Yasmin, are you ready?"

  The other serf girl looked up from her mirror. "Hold yo' horses, Solange-sweet," she said placidly. "Plenty of time." She was dressed in a white-silk fantasia loosely based on an Arab burnoose, a color that set off her creme-caramel looks. Satisfied, she nodded, rose, hummed an experimental note and opened the neck of her garment a trifle more.

  "Goin' be some hungry eyes on us tonight," she said complacently, linking arms companionably with Solange.

  "Only until we sing. Then they will be lost, and afterwards, it will drive them mad."

  They made for the door, the musicians trailing, but it opened before they reached it and Chantal stepped through, followed by Marya.

  "Why, hello!" Yasmin said to Chantal, then looked more closely. "Yo' lookin' bettah, honeybunch!" The Frenchwoman flushed at the faces turned toward her, but it was true; still haggard, but neatly groomed and holding herself erect.

  Chantal's eyes passed over the serf with blank indifference, fastened feverishly on Jules Lebrun. Yasmin pursed her lips and turned to Solange with a shrug and roll of the eyes that said what-can-I-do more eloquently than words.

  Solange's smile and nod to the nun had a trace of good-natured mockery, looking her up and down. "You are also looking… well… Sister," she said as the two singers passed through the door. "Good night."

  Lebrun remained silent after the door closed, glancing warily from the flushed excitement on the young woman's face to the worried concern of his Resistance commander's.

  "Well?" he said at last.

  "Chantal… Chantal, unfortunately, has stumbled across our… enterprise, Professor Lebrun. Specifically, she has deduced that Frederi—Mr. Kenston is not what he seems."

  "I saw him with you, last night," Chantal said triumphantly. "But I wouldn't have been fooled; I saw you all day when you thought you'd have to lie down for him. You hid it but you were looking into the grave. I'm not stupid enough to think you would change so quickly. He is an American, an ami agent, is he not? And that 'servant' of his, he is from the nuclear facility—"

  "Quiet!" Lebrun said. Marya opened the door again and looked quickly up and down the corridor.

  "And I know something that you perhaps do not. Master Edward mentioned it to that slut Yasmin, while he was violating me the other night. An Alliance submarine was spotted off Nantes just the day before yesterday, and the Draka cannot find it. That is how the American and the Boche are to escape. Well, I am going too! You thought you could keep me in ignorance, I who was arrested and tortured for Resistance work as well, leave me here to be a beaten drudge and whore, I am going too."

  "Oh, Chantal," Marya said softly. There was mourning in her voice, and Lebrun met her eyes with a like sadness. They nodded slightly at each other, one thought in their minds. She knows too much.

  "Chantal, child of God, believe me, only the American and the scientist are leaving," Marya said. "I swear it by Father, Son and Holy Ghost, on my hope of salvation."

  Chantal's fists clenched. "You may stay and be a martyr, I have done enough."

  The nun closed her eyes in pain. "As you wish it, Chantal," she said. "We are to send a radio message; then you will come with us to the shelter in Bourgueil, where the… courier from the coast will take you to a boating dock, upriver."

  Lebrun stiffened in shock, then looked at the sickened, weary face of the Pole and understood; away from
the Great House, to where the armed Resistance fighters were. Amid rubble where one more hidden body would be a little matter. Marya crossed herself and spoke softly in Latin. Which he understood and Chantal did not, although he knew he was not the Person she addressed:

  "And Caiaphas said, is it not expedient that one man should die for the people?"

  Lebrun replied sharply, in the same language: "And if your eye offends you, pluck it out."

  "Truly," she sighed, crossed and took Chantal's hands with a smile. "It would be better if you had not tried to force our hand so, Chantal. So much better. But I understand, truly, and with all my heart I forgive you."

  There was absolute sincerity in her voice, on the square homely face. Lebrun looked at it and shivered, knowing it was true, knowing it would be equally true in the moment Marya pulled the trigger. God protect me from the truly righteous, he thought, then almost laughed to himself at the unintentional irony. There were times when he congratulated himself on the sheer convenience of skepticism.

  "Do you understand, Sister?" Chantal said, the anger still in her tone. She disengaged her hands. "What you were afraid of happened to me, over and over, for weeks, I had to… to do… and now I'm pregnant," she spat. "Pregnant by that swine, but I'll never bear it, never stay here to be a sow farrowing little slaves. Never."

  For a moment Lebrun felt only a detached sympathy. Then his eyes flashed to Marya's face, appalled, and saw her go pasty-white beneath her tan. Inwardly he was cursing himself for the quotation he had chosen, remembering the first lines of it: Whoso shall offend one of these little ones… it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea…' Knowing that she would have thought of it herself, that no argument on earth short of a direct pronouncement of the Pope speaking ex cathedra would convince her that Chantal was not carrying a human soul beneath her heart. And that she was as incapable of harming what she considered a blameless child as she was of defiling the Host or committing necrophilia.

  Well, the one-time professor of anthropology and ex-soldier thought. His eyes rested on Chantals triumphant form with detached appraisal. She's stronger than I am in this state. It will have to be from behind, and quick, before the Sister can intervene. She'll accept it once done.

  Kustaa found himself surprised at how mild the banquet's entertainment was, nothing like the propaganda; of course, this was an important occasion, and a conservative family. The food was good enough that his first concern, how to force enough into a tension-tight belly to avoid being conspicuous, turned out to be misplaced. Watch it, old son, he told himself. Not good to be stuffed before action. He looked around the hollow square of tables, snowy linen, the glitter of crystal and silverware and bone china. More formal than the afternoon; the men in dark evening suits with lace stocks or uniforms, the women out of uniform all in draped classical-style gowns that left one shoulder bare.

  Light from the globes and from burning crescents hung between, as well; the Draka liked to see what they were eating, not grope by candlelight. Seafood appetizers, soup, fish, a main course of roast suckling pig, salads, vegetables, while the chamber group played soft Mozart and he listened to the conversations; Andrew and Vashon rehashing their efforts to track him down, the female aeronautical engineer at his side explaining the long-term potential of hydrogen-fueled ramjets and lamenting the difficulty of modeling high-speed airflows; the Landholders and their close kin discussing weather and crops in words that might almost have been the ones he grew up among in the rural Midwest.

  He raised a glass of wine and pretended to sample the bouquet; in fact, it all smelled and tasted like spoiled grape juice to him, he was strictly a beer-whiskey-and-aquavit man. He noticed nobody was getting more than mildly tipsy, or stoned on the kif that was also on tap. Well, they are health fanatics to a man, he mused. It might almost have been a very tony Long Island gathering at home, except for the costumed mime-dancers who enacted the legend of Leda and the Swan. They were dark women, with the bodies of ballerinas; professionals from the older territories, considering the length of time those skills must take to learn. The swan-wings and mask of the one playing Zeus transformed were really lovely, feathers and jewels and delicate goldwork; but then, this was not a society that went in for mass-production of anything but weapons and the cheapest consumer goods; it could afford artisanship.

  The dance ended behind a covering of downswept ten-foot wings; the whole done with delicacy rather than gross explicitness, even erotic in a sort of eerie way. He noticed that Vashon had fallen silent to watch it with a burning intensity, and stacked away the datum for the OSS files. The mimes rose, bowed low, ran off in a flutter of feathers and long hair. That was after the tables had been cleared, set with coffee and liqueurs and nuts. Kustaa recognized the singers who came forward next, but was surprised by the sudden silence that fell as they stepped out before the musicians. He did not think it was for their looks, or not mostly; it was simply that they saw no point in having fine music unless they were going to listen.

  Tasteful bastards, he thought, inhaling the aroma of the Kenia coffee, this time with genuine appreciation. May they rot in hell.

  "My masters," Solange said with a graceful curtsy. "For your pleasure, we shall present a duet from the opera Lakme, by Delibes, with modified string and woodwind accompaniment of my own adaptation."

  Kustaa had never enjoyed classical opera much; too many fat ladies in odd clothes screeching. Despite the valiant attempts of his mother, who had a dogged self-improving Scandinavian regard for capital-C culture, and Aino, who had dragged him to a fair number in New York after they moved to the capital. The Frenchwoman stepped forward and opened her mouth, and the OSS agent prepared for yet another run-through of the thousand ways the extraction could go wrong. Sound wove its way through the threads of his mind, unraveling. His eyes opened in shock, to see a face transformed into something beyond beauty, a purity of self-absorption as complete as the music that poured effortlessly from that quivering throat, wove around the deeper notes of the other voice, returned…

  He blinked himself back to awareness as Solange and Yasmin walked the circuit of the table, hand in hand, bowing and flushing at the long sharp ripple of applause. Some of the guests even rose to clap as they went by, and a standing ovation was not something Draka did casually. At last the two came to the head table before their owners; there they sank gracefully to their knees and made the full bow, palms before eyes. The clapping continued, louder, directed to the Landholders now, congratulating them on possessions beyond price. What a waste, Kustaa thought angrily as the singers and musicians withdrew. What a total, fucking waste. It was obscene, far more than the unclothed dancers.

  A deep breath, and another; he would have to listen to the first of the after-dinner speakers, at least. It was the retired Field-Marshal who rose, propping a cane against his chair. There was a murmur from the tables, then silence once more; he stood for a moment scanning them thoughtfully, a steady appraising.stare.

  "I am the eldest von Shrakenberg present," he said abruptly. "As we're here to celebrate the reinforcement of the Race by two of the youngest, it's appropriate that I speak." A smile. "Although I can't promise to be as melodious as what we've just heard." There was laughter, and a general settling-in rustle.

  "I was born," the elderly Draka continued, "in 1882. This would be a good occasion to reflect on the changes my lifetime has seen… When I received my commission, the Domination was still officially the Dominion of the Draka; part of the British Empire. We ruled all of Africa, but no more; the British still thought of us as a subject-ally. Europe," he added with a shark's smile, "was just beginnin' to worry about us. Many of the institutions yo're all familiar with were in their infancy; I can remember when the thought of women bearin' arms would have seemed fantastical. Why, I can remember old men usin' 'white' and 'black' as synonyms fo' Citizen and serf. A different world."

  The scored eagle face swept around t
he tables. "Now everythin' since seems… inevitable. I can tell yo', we didn't think so at the time! We were afraid of the Europeans, fo' example. No, don't look shocked, it's fact. They were all openly set on subvertin' our institutions, and they were stronger than us. We were afraid." A grin. "The Yankees were just a cloud on the horizon. There were those, Draka among them, who thought our overthrow was just a matter of time. And they had a good case, on purely logical grounds.

  "We all know what happened in the Great War; I was blown up over Constantinople, makin' it happen." He slapped the stiffened leg. "We saw our enemies' weakness, and we struck. Then words like 'world conquest' and 'Final Society' started to look more credible. The mo' sober worried that we'd be drunk with success, with victory disease. Europe was still the stronger, if only it would unite against us, despite the vast conquests we made. Japan, Germany, Russia threatened our new northern and eastern borders.

  "And…"he held up his hands. "Here we stand, in the heart of Europe, here in France. Where are the children of the men who befo' 1914 calmly sat to debate how 'enlightenment' and 'reform' would be forced on the primitive Draka, how they could bring us 'democracy'? In graves from here to China, workin' in our fields and kitchens, laborin' in mines and factories to build our power, singin' fo' our pleasure after this excellent dinner, and"—he crooked a sardonic eyebrow at the owners of the plantation—"servin" pleasure in… other capacities. Soon enough, fightin' and dyin' fo' us. Doesn't this seem like the unfoldin' of Destiny, the sacred destiny of the Race?

  "Horseshit!!" The speaker's fist crashed down, and Kustaa saw startlement replace bored agreement on many faces. "We won because we were tough, and prepared… because we were lucky enough to have enemies who'd fight each other rather than us. This land here is already a breedin'-ground fo' Draka; I won't make the usual tiresome references to the reproductive habits of digger wasps. If yo' young people plan to extend their Domination, yo'll have to be twice as tough, twice as disciplined as we were. We can still lose it all. Never forget that, never. Every day we live, we live on the edge of oblivion. It's up to yo', the young. Rule or die, kill or be killed, crush or be crushed. Always on guard fo' opportunity, takin' what we can, never relinquishin' an inch.