The Stone Dogs

by S. M. Stirling

  They were silent for long minutes, each staring upward past the fire-glow and the dancing sparks.

  "Well," Mandy said, her hands moving again in the basket. "Who's fo' lemonade, and who's fo' wine?"

  "Mmmm, I'll take the wine," Yolande said.

  "Lemonade first, I'm too thirsty fo' drinkin'," Myfwany said. "That enough, 'Landa?"

  "Feels nice," she replied.

  Veronica and Mandy were making skewers from a pile of willow-switches, sharpening the ends and threading on pieces of scallop and shrimp wrapped in bacon; they handed the limber sticks around, with wicker platters of soft flat Arab bread, and glasses. The five girls drew closer to the fire. Yolande sat up, watching the flames. The breeze had picked up slightly, and gusts of it blew the tongues ofcolored flame toward her. She sipped at the wine as the bacon sizzled and dropped fat to pop and flare on the white coals; it was cool from the earthenware jug, rather light, slightly acidic. A southern vintage, she thought, probably from Latium.

  "Strange," Muriel said, hugging her knees and leaning back, letting her head fall against Veronicas ' shoulder.

  "What?" Mandy asked.

  "I was thinkin'… Here we are. In twenty-odd years our own daughters will be here, or someplace like here. Maybeso raaht here; maybeso doin' and thinkin' just what we are. Strange."

  "What brought that on?" Myfwany said. She brought the skewer close, examined the seafood critically, and used a piece of the flatbread to pull it off. "Mmm, these are good."

  "I was… I was thinkin' about history class. An' about the things Ma and Pa used to tell me, yo' know, those religion things." Muriel stuck the butt-end of her skewer into the sand and rolled the wine-cup between her hands. "I mean… if yo' believes all that, the God stuff, then,"—she frowned —"then it would all look different. It would be comin from somewheres, and goin to somewheres. Like-so a story, hey? An' if yo' don't believe it, then it's… all sort of, well, it just happens."

  "Iff'n yo' believes it, we're all goin' straight to hell," Veronica laughed, giving a light tug on Muriel's brown curls.

  "Pass the wine, will yo', hey?" Yolande said. There was a clink of stoneware. "Thanks, Mandy. Well, the way Harris says it, it's the story of the Race; where we came from an' where we're goin'."

  Muriel rested her chin on the edge of the cup. "That sort of depends, don't it? I mean, the Race didn't have to happen; Harris says so herself. History's a story leadin' up to us, but only on account we happened. If the Yankees killed us all off, then it'd be a story about them, an' we'd just be part of history,"."

  "But we did happen, an' the Yankees aren't goin' to win; we are," Myfwany said definitely.

  Yolande chuckled. "So the story has an endin' and a meanin', because we're tellin' it." A pause. "Us here, too. It's… true because we make it true, eh? So we tell history like ouah own story, like we was writin' it. Like God."

  The others looked at her. "Say, that's really pretty clever," Myfwany said.

  Yolande flushed and looked down into her wine cup, continuing hastily. "Speakin' of which, what are we goin' to do once we've conquered the Yankees?"

  Myfwany laughed. "My brothah, Billy? He likes the Yankee movies; says the girls look nice. Says he's goin' buy a dozen when we put the Yoke on them."

  "Euuu, yuk, boys," Mandy said. "Ooops, this is overdone…"

  "Ah thought yo' liked boys," Veronica said. She bent her head to whisper something in Muriel's ear, and the other girl giggled and worked her eyebrows.

  Yolande looked at Veronica and flushed again; the Alexandrian girl was no older, but she had definite breasts, and the dark-brown hair between her legs was thick and abundant. It made her conscious of her own undeveloped form again. And… strange about sex and things, she mused. When yo' young, yo' know about it an it isn't all that interesting and all of a sudden it's scary and important. She shook her head; at least there was a while before she had to worry about that sort of thing. Freya's Curse, I hate being shy!

  "I do like boys," Mandy said. "At least, I sort of like the idea of 'em. But they still sort of yucky, too. Yo' know, my brothah Manfred, he only a year older than me, an' he's got ouah cook pregnant? Ma found him ridin' her in the pantry, an' cook's thirty, with a bottom a meter across an' a mustache. I mean, we're not planters, we've only got a dozen houseserfs, but Pa bought him a regular concubine when he turned thirteen, and still he goes an' does things like that." She brooded for a moment. "Yucky."

  "My Ma," Yolande began, "says it's on account of they don't have enough blood." She grinned at their blank looks and held out a hand, palm-up, then slowly curled up her index finger. "Yo' know, all the blood rushes to they crotch, their brains shut down fo' lack of oxygen, an' they stop thinkin'?"

  There was a moment of silence, and Yolande felt a flash of fear that her joke had fallen flat. Then the laughter began and ran for a full half-minute, before trailing off into teary giggles.

  "Aü, that's a good one," Muriel said. She glanced up at the stars again. "When we've beaten the Yankees, we'll put up mo' of those power-satellites my Pa's workin' on."

  "Build cities on the moon !"

  "Turn Venus into anothah Earth!"

  "Give Mars an atmosphere!"

  "Hollow out asteroids an' fly 'em to Alpha Centauri!" The comments flew faster and faster, more and more outrageous, until everyone collapsed into giggles again. Myfwany rose, and pulled out a velvet case from their bundles.

  "This is your'n, isn't it,Landa?"

  "Yes—careful!" Yolanda took the long shape in her hands; they moved toward it with unconscious gentleness. "It's a mandolin."

  Muriel whistled between her teeth. "An' Archona's a city. Old one, hey?"

  "My great grandma's," Yolande said. She put the pick between her teeth while she arranged the case across her lap, then settled the instrument and slipped it onto her hand. "On my Ma's side; she Confederate-born. Had it fancied up some…" She tuned it quickly; the strings sounded, plangent under the fire-crackle and shhhhh of the waves. The wood was smooth as satin under her fingers, the running leopards inlaid in ivory around the soundbox as familiar as her own hands.

  "Well, give's a song, then," Myfwany said.

  "I don't sing all that well—"

  "C'mon," Mandy said. "Well all join in."

  "Oh, all right." Yolande bent her head, then tossed it as the long pale ripple of her hair fell across the strings. She swept through the opening bars, a rapid flourish, and began to sing: an alto, pure but not especially strong.

  Twas in the merry month of May

  When green buds all were swellin',

  Sweet William on his deathbed lay

  Fo' love of Bar'bra Allen—

  The ancient words echoed out along the lonely beach; everyone knew that one, at least. They all had well-trained voices as well, of course; that was part of schooling. Myfwany's sounded as if it would be a soprano, rich and rather husky. Muriel's was a bit reedy, and Veronica's had an alarming tendency to quaver; Mandy's was like her own, but with more volume. They finished, gaining confidence, and swung into "Lord Randal" and "The Wester Witch."

  "What next?" Veronica said. "How about something modern?"

  "Alison Ghoze?" Muriel said.

  Mandy made a face.

  "Oh, moo. Call that modern? It's a hundred years old; modern iff'n yo' count anythin' after the land-takin'."

  "I—" Yolande strummed, forced the stammer out of her voice. "I've got somethin' new, care to hear it?"

  The others nodded, leaning back. Calm. Breathe deep. Out slow. She began the opening bars, and felt the silence deepen; a few seconds later and she was conscious of nothing at all but the music and the strings.

  It ended, and there was a long sigh.

  "Now, that was good," Myfwany said. She half-sang the last verse to herself again:

  "An we are scatteriris of Dragon seed

  On a journey to the stars!

  Far below we leave—-fo'ever

  All dreams of what we were."
/>   "Who wrote that, anyways?"

  "I—" Yolande coughed. "I did."

  They clapped, and she grinned back at them. Mandy laughed and jumped to her feet.

  "C'mon, let's dance—Muriel, get yo' flute out!"

  The silver-bound bamboo sounded, a wild trilling, cold and plangent and sweet. Yolande cased her mandolin and joined the others in a clap-and-hum accompaniment. The tall girl danced around the outer circle of the firelight, whirling, the colored driftwood flames painting streaks of green and blue across the even matte tan of her skin and the long wheatblond hair. She spun, cartwheeled, backflipped, leaped high in an impossible pirouette, feet seeming to barely touch the sand.

  "C C'mon, yo' slugs, dance!" she cried.

  … as we dance beneath the moon

  As we dance beneath the moon!"

  Myfwany came to her feet and seized Yolande's hand in her right, Muriel's in her left. "Ring dance!" she said. "Let's dance the moon to sleep!"

  "Oh, wake up, Pietro," Veronica said, kicking the serf lightly in the side. He started up from the grass beside the little electric runabout and loaded the parcels as they pulled on their tunics and found seats.

  "Do y' know," Mandy said, tying off her belt, "that the Yankees wear clothes to go swimmin'?"

  Veronica made a rude noise. "And fo' takin' baths, too. "

  "No, it's true, darlin'," Muriel said. "My Pa visited there, an' they do." She outlined the shape of a bikini. "Like underwear."

  "Strange," Myfwany said. They settled in for the kilometer ride back to the main buildings; nothing else moved on the narrow asphalt ribbon of the road, save once an antelope caught in the headlights for an instant with mirror-shining eyes. It was much darker now after moonset, and they rode with an air of satisfied quiet.

  "Go into Naples tomorrow?" Veronica said. Tomorrow was a Sunday, their only completely free day.

  "Fine with me," Mandy said; Muriel nodded agreement, and Myfwany nudged Yolande with an elbow.

  "How bout' it?" she said casually.

  "Why—" Yolande smiled shyly; this was acceptance, no longer tentative. "Why, sho'ly."

  The runabout ghosted to a silent halt by the eastside entrance. They made their farewells and scattered; Yolande blinked as she walked into the brighter lights of the halls and colonnades. It was after twelve and there were not many about; twice she had to skirt areas where the houseserfs were at their nightly scrubbing and polishing. Her own door, looking more familiar now somehow.

  "Missy?" That was Bianca, yawning and blinking up from a mat by the entrance, tousled in her nightgown. Machiavelli yowled and circled until she picked him up; the cat settled in to purr as she rubbed behind his ears, sniffing with interest at the shrimp scent on her fingers.

  "Jus' turn down the bed, put this stuff away, then go to sleep," Yolande said, padding through to her bedroom. How do I feel? she asked herself, with relaxed curiosity. Tingly from the swim, tired from that and the dancing. Relaxed.… Happy, she decided. Maybe that's part of growin'. When you were a child happiness was part of the day, like sadness over a skinned knee or sunlight on your face. Then one day you knew you were happy, and that it would pass.

  "Tomorrow's also a day," she muttered to herself, setting the cat down on the coverlet. She yawned hugely, enjoying the ready-to-sleep sensation; that was odd, how it felt good when you knew you could rest, and hurt if you had to stay up. The bed was soft and warm; she nuzzled into the pillow, and felt the cat arranging itself against the back of her knees. "Tomorrow.".

  Chapter Three

  The War? We didn't think about the War while it was on. We thought about the next mission, then staying alive for the next five minutes. Get back and we thought about sleep or food or a cigarette, or getting laid. Maybe about "after the War," but that was a daydream… but when It was really afterward, yes.

  Then we thought about It. Something as big as the Eurasian War can't be understood from the inside, not while you're in the belly of the beast. What did we think? We were… shocked, I suppose. We were a more matter-of-fact generation than yours, you know. You youngsters have grown up with things getting really strange —yes, you're tired of hearing that. The War was something new under the sun though; there'd never been a world war in an Industrialized world before. A tenth of humanity died in those seven years, that's just numbers, but we up at the sharp end, we saw it. Worse than that because it was concentrated, no fighting on our soil, thank Wotan, not much on the Yankee's, either. Elsewhere, though, by '46 it was a enamel house. I'm not using a metaphor, you could travel hundreds of miles and not get out of sight of human bones. You'd see a city, and someone would say it was Shanghai or Minsk or Bruges or Heidelberg, but It was all rubble. Just mounds of dirty brick and stone with bits of reinforcing-rod standing out. Sometimes melted by firestorms, and the stink. Freya bless… tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of bodies down under the buildings, smothered by the fire or nerve-gassed.

  We were tired, by the end, very very tired. Tired and sick of it. Gods know, we're not a squeamish people, but… It changes you, that much killing, first you stop even thinking about alternatives. Life in the abstract loses its meaning, then your own life does. Life and death, good and bad, it all starts to blur.

  It takes a lot of rest to recover from. If you ever do.

  From: Notes to My Children

  Journal of Thomas Ingolfsson:

  April, 1950

  CLAESTUM PLANTATION

  DISTRICT OF TUSCANY

  PROVINCE OF ITALYAPRIL, 1969

  The aircar was a Trevithick Meerkat, a little crowded with six. Shiny new and smelling of fresh paint and synthetics; civilian production had just gotten under way, and they were still expensive enough that only the more affluent Citizens could afford them. Yolande, Myfwany, and Mandy were squeezed into the backseat, with Muriel in the front and Veronica on her lap, careful not to jostle the driver. He was a serious-looking young serf, thin and very black, flying cautiously. Trained at the Trevithick Combine's works in Diskarapur in the far south; a pilot and two mechanics had come with the aircraft.

  "Oh, hurry up, boy," Yolande said irritably, as he banked the car into a circle at a thousand meters and began a slow descent, the ducted-fan engines turning down for lift. They had been slow getting away; the eight-month academic year was ending, and the Baiae landing fields had been crowded. Of course, an aircar like this could be driven by road and take off from any convenient open space, but serfs operated machinery by the book. Her hands itched to take the controls; this was all fly-by-wire, you couldn't redline it, the computers wouldn't let you…

  "Just yo' parents to home?" Veronica asked, turning her head and resting it on Muriel's shoulder.

  "Mmm-hm," Yolande replied. "Edwina and Dionysia both turned eighteen last year; they in Third Airborne, stationed near Shanghai. John would've been out, but they picked him fo' officer's trainin'." That meant an extra year's active service beyond the usual three, or possibly more. "He might be back on leave soon, though… Ma said her cousin Alicia's up from the south; she's in textiles, Shahnapur. Just got divorced, up here restin'-like. May move up."

  The sound of the fans altered as they came to a halt a hundred meters up and lowered with a smooth elevator sensation.

  "Oooo, woof, nice," Mandy said from her right, as their descent gave a slow panorama of Claestum manor. "I like it when they use the old things."

  There were admiring murmurs as the aircar extended its wheels with a cling-chung, and Yolande felt a warm glow of pride like sun on bare skin. They had landed at the southern entrance of the main building, where the road widened into a small plaza after its winding journey up from the Quarters and through the gardens. Ahead was the house complex, and the tall oaks and chestnuts that crowned the hill and tumbled down the northern slope.

  It is pretty, she thought, trying to look at it as a stranger might. Her parents had laid out the Great House in the shape of a U along the south-facing slope, with its apex open to the woods at the
crest. Both flanks were old Tuscan work from the pre-War town, each ending in a tower; weathered red tiles and sienna-colored stone overgrown with flowering vines. The newer buildings knitted them together, and the southern end of the U was closed by a curved block in classic Draka style; two stories of ferroconcrete sheathed in jade-green African marble. Fluted pillars of white Carrara ran from the veranda past the second-story gallery to end in golden acanthus leaves at the roof, and the windows behind were etched glass and silver.

  "Oh, it's all right," Yolande said casually, as the gullwing doors of the aircar soughed open. She put a hand on the rim of the passenger compartment and vaulted out.

  Home, she thought, swallowing. It smells like home. Green, after the filtered pressurized atmosphere of the aircraft; the mildly warm fresh-green scent of a Tuscan spring. Odors of stone, dust, flowers, water from the two fountains that flanked the wrought-iron gates into the central courtyard. The piazza of checkered brick beneath her feet was where she had learned to ride a bicycle, the trees flanking it were ones she had watched grow. Her parents had been waiting beneath the gate, out of reach of the miniature duststorm an aircar made in landing. They came forward as their daughter's friends clambered out of the Meercat. Yolande swallowed again and drew herself up calmly, cleared her throat.

  "Hello, mother, father," she said. One of the housegirls behind the Landholders was coming forward with a curtsy, bearing a courtesy tray with a carafe and glasses. Yolande smiled with a flush of pleasure. There would be a formal greeting; her parents were treating her friends as adults, not casually as children.

  "Service to the State," her father said. He was a stocky man and rather short for a Draka, no more than 175 centimeters, dressed in planter's working clothes: boots and loose chamois trousers, cotton shirt and gunbelt, and a broad-brimmed hat in one hand. Hazel eyes, and gray streaks through seal-brown hair and mustache. "Thomas Ingolfsson, Landholder, pilot, retired," he continued.

  "Johanna Ingolfsson," her mother took up, handing out the glasses and raising her own. "Landholder, pilot, retired. Glory to the Race." She was a finger's breadth taller than her husband: a wiry-slender blond woman in her forties with a handsome hatchet face and scarring around her left eye, dressed in a long black robe with bands of silver mesh at neck and throat. They all poured out the ceremonial drops and sipped, murmuring the formula. The wine was a light, slightly sweet white; not the clasico vintage that was Claestum's pride, but that was a red dinner wine and unsuitable as an aperitif. "Well, do the honors, daughter."