The Stone Dogs

by S. M. Stirling

  "Pilot Breytenbach," she said to the number two. "Yo' can go aft; I'll sit in on this." Yolande grew conscious of her servant hovering behind. "Well, come in, wench." Marya flinched slightly, fingering the bare strip on her wrist; the controller cuff would have shocked her away from activated military comp systems like this. Yolande saw her take a deep breath and step forward. Good wench, she thought.

  "That crashcouch," she said, indicating the Sensor station. She swung herself into the copilot's seat and pulled the restraints down. "All yourn, Pilot," she said. He nodded briefly, running his eyes in a last check over the screens.

  "Highly cybered," Yolande said, indicating the control panels ."Less yo' has to fight her —in which case yo' bumfucked, because those lasers are a joke—"menu-commands to take yo' anywheres within range."

  She settled back happily. "I'll take ovah out of atmosphere," she said. They would be back to the world of the Commandant's office soon enough. Tech Sec designs a toy, I might as well use it, she reflected. The big vehicle lifted off the runway with the peculiar greasy feel of maglev and turned toward the long reach.

  Chapter Twenty

  All human beings are conscious of the process of choice, of choosing between alternative courses of action. Yet we are also and inevitably conscious of the limits of choice; if we see a three-tonne weight falling towards us, we have the "choice" of jumping or being crushed. Free will may appear absolute in the abstract but in the real concrete world in which we live it often seems a mere illusion, a mental construct. My own opinion is that both propositions are true, and that reality reflects this in a number of ways. First the constraining situation within which an individual finds himself is itself the result of countless previous decisions. It is their sum total forming an interacting field which we can never escape. So instead of an unconstrained fan reaching out in all directions, our choices are more in the nature of a set of tracks within canyon walls. For the most part the walls are narrow; we can veer a little to one side or the other, but the main direction is fixed. Moreover, even to use this small degree of latitude takes effort, to move the "wheels" of our path from one set of tracks to another.

  Sometimes the canyon walls open out for a time; then the fan of possibilities spreads, into a delta of radiating alternatives. Time presses. One or another alternative must be chosen. Once the choice is made, the course of a life—or a nation, or a world—is set on a new path. And the choice an individual makes becomes in turn immutable destiny for others, foreclosing their alternatives.

  Such changes of path may be the result of continuous effort or an ever-vigilant readiness to seize the moment Most terrifying of all, they may be the result of nothing more than raw accident…

  Meditations on a Life

  by Eric von Shrakenberg

  Central Press, Archona

  2003

  DRAKA FORCES BASE ARESOPOLIS

  MARE SERENITATIS, LUNA

  NOVEMBER l, 1998

  0930 HOURS

  "Sector Seven, Level Twelve," the transporter capsule said. The lid hissed open, and Marya stepped out.

  "Ident," the guard said. The room was a narrow box with only one exit, brightly lit and completely bare, smelling of cold rock. The guard was in Security Directorate green, battle-armored and carrying a gauntlet gun; his head turned toward her like a mirrored globe, her own distorted face reflecting off the helmet shield.

  She stepped up to the exit and laid her hand against the screen set in the wall beside it. "Marya E77AI422, property of Arch-Strategos Ingolfsson, Commandant, on personal errand."

  Her mouth was tissue-paper, and the pulsebeat in her ears roared louder than trumpets. This was action, covert action. It was impossible to disguise, impossible to cover, no matter her skill on the infonet. Recognition sets were embedded in the central brains, and flagging from a station with this priority was direct-routed down to read-only memory. It would stand out, stand out, the minute anyone did a search on her activities today. Even the most dimwitted Orpo would notice someone being in two places at once.

  Only for you, my brother, she thought, controlling the impulse to shudder. The message had been like none she ever received. Far longer. Not just instructions on a new drop, a new contact-code; orders to do. The thing she carried at her belt. Something is very wrong here. Freds never been in the loop before, neither of us would dare.

  The screen flicked light at her eyes. A laser read the pattern of her retina; the information sped away as modulated light. Another scanned her palmprint, the abstract of her voice. Information flowed into a central computer's ready-storage peripheral; embedded instruction sets were tripped. Data from deep storage was copied, run through a translator into analog form, compared. Another code-phrase tripped a set in the response machine.

  "Confirmed. Marya E77AI422, property of Arch-Strategos Ingolfsson, Commandant. Literate Class V-a. Delay, query." The idiot-savant routines would be calling her owner's private quarters. Marya breathed in, calmly. That was where the interception loop she had established would work; or not. The machine spoke again: "Query, confirmed. E77AI422, proceed."

  The guard nodded. "Confirmed. Present, wench," he said. Marya turned and bent back her head to bare the serf-tattoo beneath her right ear. There was a box clipped to the serf policeman's waist; he pulled free a light-pencil on a coil cord and ran the tip down her tattoo. The box chirped, encoding her ident on a dataplaque within; another footprint.

  With a slight hiss, the door opened. Marya noted the thickness of it, featureless sandwich-armour alloy. The corridor beyond was plain, but there would be instruments and weapons in the walls. Another door, and she was out into a vestibule of the factory; more guards, crewing control-desks. They waved her through. She walked on, past color-coded doors and more corridors. Through a transparent tube, over a long room where workers bent to their micromanipulators and screens. They were assembling circular electrowafers in tubes, building the preceded stacks that contained the instruction sets for major computers and their closed-access internal memories. Others fitted the pillars of wafers into the rectangular platforms of the logic decks; she could imagine the submicroscopic tools soldering their gold-wire and optical-thread connections.

  All familiar enough; the basic technology had not changed in a generation, despite vast improvements in detail. And I've heard Draka complain the Alliance isn't introducing as many refinements for them to steal lately, she recalled. Exterior data storage, translator/interfacer unit, memory, instruction sets, logic deck. And beyond this complex, the most crucial area of all, where the design teams' compinstruction data was turned into physical patterns for embedding in the cores…

  "Hello," she said to the receptionist in the office area. Polite but not servile; she was a command-level officer's personal servant. Not as formally high-status as this expensively trained technical secretary, but they were both Class V-a's, and her owner outranked the Faraday Combine exec who ran this facility. "Is Master MacGregor in? The plant manager?"

  The receptionist looked up from his keyboard, looked Marya up and down. "Your message?" he said. "Master MacGregor can't be interrupted, he's in conference."

  He's checking my clothes, Marya thought. Silk shirt, pleated trousers, jeweled clasps on the sandals and belt. Obviously a houseserf, equally obvious from someone not to be offended.

  "It's an invitation," she said. "From the Commandant." Marya held out a folded parchment sealed in gold with the Drakon signet, then pulled it back when the man reached for it. "Personal service." That was one of her duties, keeping track of the obligatory social functions Yolande hated, and seeing that the invitations were in harmony with the relative status of each participant. A personal hand-delivery to a Commandatura reception was just slightly more than MacGregor rated; just enough that no underling of sense would endanger it.

  "Oh, excuse me." The serfs heavy Arab features knotted. "Ahhh…" There was a waiting area behind the desk, but that was for Citizens. "Here, I'll take you to his office. You can w
ait there, and give the invitation."

  "Will he be long?" Marya said, with a frown of concern. "Mistress the Arch-Strategos Ingolfsson expects me back." Sometime this evening, probably, but the rank ought to make you sweat. Marya's owner took her lunches at her office, and it was vanishingly unlikely that her absence would be noted. Even less likely that anything would be made of it, Marya was authorized to leave the household and entitled to do so at discretion, so long as her work was done. But every minute is another chance to be missed.

  "It's right this way," he continued. She followed; there was carpet here, muffling even the light sound feet made under Lunar gravity. He touched the wall, and a section slid upwards; that's right, lay on the courtesy. He could have made her wait in the hall, but it was never wise to antagonize one who had the ear of your superior's superior. She stepped through. A typical office chamber, big enough for pacing, with a holowall landscape, desk, workstation. That was activated, notes and papers left carelessly around the terminal. The release of tension was like nausea or orgasm. She turned that into a one-two-kneel motion, sinking down on her heels and closing her eyes, hands and invitation folded in her lap. The Perfect Servant, concentrated on the task in hand. Go away, she thought with deadly concentration at the receptionist. Don't try to make polite conversation, don't offer me refreshment, go away.

  He did; she waited until the door closed, and sixty heartbeats beyond. When she rose, it was with a smooth economy of motion that wasted no second of time, time that she was buying with her life. There was no turning back; it could be months before she might have to use the pills carefully hoarded in her room, even years, but the clock was running from this moment.

  Exec MacGregor had been careless, leaving his terminal up. A violation of procedure, even here in the heart of a guarded facility. Even behind a door only those with authorization could access. She took the dataplaques from the pouch at her waist and touched the keyboard.

  -Work in progress-, she typed.

  [Core memories. Actuation sequences.] A long string of codes; she picked out the ones she knew, the ones on the plaque she should have wiped but could not bear to, the one with her brother's image.

  Cr-ex 5-5 Btstation orbital: launch sequence. IFF.J There.

  Her fingers moved. -Halt. Memcheck, active-. Then the only time embedded sets were held in access memory. While they were being transferred to the cores. Feverishly, she checked the work-in-progress table on the status of the sets; they were finished, ready to be templated for the master-pattern in the assembly hall.

  -Modification,- she typed.

  [Delay.] Seconds of white terror. [Accepted. Load sequence.]

  Marya stared at her hand until the slight tremor disappeared. She pushed the first of the palm-sized synthetic rectangles into the receptor.

  -Create parallel file temp:l-

  [File standing.]

  -Load receptor D: seq-

  An almost inaudible whine, as the reader/translator loaded the contents of the plaque into the virtual space she had created. Another. Another. There were five of the plaques. Three minutes in all; now for the difficult part. She gave silent thanks that the Domination used a standard working compinstruction language. There were three in the Alliance, not to mention illegals.

  -Run temp:l comparison workfile: Cr-ex 5-5 keyphrase com; master-

  The screen flickered, as the computer matched the sets.

  [Congruence sector core: code exe.] The master recognition commands, friend-foe.

  -Mergeset: modify workfile: Cr-ex 5-5 keyphrase com: master-

  [Merging.] Long seconds, while the machine knitted the new symbols with the old, matching smoothly where the coded ends fitted the set. [Complete. Workfile 2temp:1]

  Shit, she thought. It was making duplicate drafts, not substituting.

  -Compare workfile / workfile 2temp:1-

  [Congruence 99.73 abs.]

  -Wipe workfile-

  [Query?]

  -Wipe workfile-

  [Query?]

  "Oh, shit, shit, shit!" she said. Think. Think, damn you, wench. What are you, Draka cattle or a human being? The station and the table around it were littered with paper notes; this MacGregor was a worrier. Hated to do anything irrevocable. Calmly. There are only a few ways you can alter the procedures. Designer compinstruction sets were embedded as well, after all. A single note at the bottom of a stack, old and faded, in pencil.

  Mary a gave a shark-grin and returned her hands to the keyboard.

  -Wipe workfile-

  [Query?]

  -coverass-

  [Execute -wipe workfile-]

  -Load workfile seq all mainmem-

  [Unfind: query? namefile.]

  "I got it, I got it!" Quickly now, but carefully.

  -dename workfile 2temp:1 / rename workfile-

  [Execute -dename workfile 2temp:1 / rename workfile-all. Wipe wordfile 2temp:1?]

  -command aff-

  [Execute -wipe workfile 2temp:1-]

  Now to check; only an anal-retentive of the first order would log under a code like this, but… -time/work log coverass perscode/master-[Query? coverass unrec Logtime/work MG-A1?] Marya looked at the time display in the lower right corner of the screen; 09:41, exactly eleven minutes since she entered the fabrication complex.

  -time/work log thisdate MG-A1-[Inlog 08:00 01/07/98 lastsrk 09:29 dto MG-A1] "Exactly why only designers get these free-access memories," she muttered to herself. "Too easy to cheat a little." Her handkerchief dusted across the keyboard, no use making it easy for the greencoats if things blew soon. A quick pass across her face left it damp; nothing she could do about the trickles from her armpits down her flanks.

  I have just condemned myself to death, she thought, as she fettled back on the floor—can't pollute the Race's holy chair with my serf ass—and folded her hands. "And I haven't felt this alive in decades."

  "No, I don't want anything." Yolande snapped, then forced herself to calm. The housegirl isn't to blame, she thought. It would be alarming enough that she was back here at the Commandant's quarters at 1200, only four hours after she left. The serf was looking at her wide-eyed. Be gentle. They're frightened when the routine is upset. "Run along, Belinda. I'll call later if I want lunch."

  The memory of the message from Archona was a sour taste at the back of her mouth as she stalked past the fountain into the lounging room. No party planned. Invitation superfluous.

  "He isn't going to do a fuckin' thing," she told herself, lost to rage and wonder. Months past saturation point on the Stone Dogs, and no action whatsoever. Be honest with yourself, she thought, flinging herself down on a couch and staring at the ceiling. Throwing yourself down was curiously unsatisfying on the Moon; like punching pillows, there was no thump.

  It's two months into Gwen's voyage. She's out of the inner system, out of any possible combat. And Gwen was the only one of her children old enough for military service. Short of a catastrophe that wrecked the planet, the others would be safe. The Draka prided themselves on being a foresighted people; since before her birth they had been building deep shelters, every plantation and school, city and town in the Domination was ready. And the facilities had been improved constantly. They would work, provided there was a living world to return to.

  "All right," she asked herself, coldly realistic. "What can yo' do, Yolande?"

  Very little. It was bitter knowledge. She knew of the Stone Dogs, now; perhaps two dozen others did. Could I get in touch… No. The only others she knew of for certain were Gayner and the two Militant leaders; they would not trust a niece of the Conservative boss man. And it would be like shooting Uncle Eric in the back. Morally unthinkable, and… you did not betray Eric von Shrakenberg and enjoy the consequences. Perhaps it would be worthwhile, if there was no alternative. Not until there was no alternative. She had a year until the Lionheart returned from the edge of the System. For that matter, Gwen would not thank her for being sheltered from danger. So she's as stupid as anyone else that age. No mo
re essential to the State than a hundred thousand other junior officers. A fine balance, duty to the Race and to family, but clear in this case.

  "I'll have to fuckin' wait," she hissed to herself, and then clamped down on her own mind. The Will is Master, she repeated. Breathe… Presently she won to a degree of calm.

  "Belinda," she said to the air; the housecomp would relay it. "Lay out a fresh uniform in my changin' room."

  "Marya!" she said, pushing open the door. It had no lock, of course. "Yo'—"

  The room was empty, and there was no sound from the others. Yolande stopped, blinking slightly in surprise. Could have sworn the comp said all servants present, she thought in puzzlement, looking around. It was a fairly standard upper-servant's suite, bedroom, sitter opening off the corridor through a nook, and a bathroom at the rear. The lights had come on as she entered, but the air had the slightly dead feel of space not used for several hours. I wonder where she is? It was annoying; grabbing a quick nooner was not something she did all that often, and there was nobody else in the household right now she would feel that relaxed with; Jolene was down dirtside, visiting her daughter and Nikki back at Claesrum.

  Oh, well. It was no great matter; she turned to go, and then hesitated. I've never actually been in here, she thought.

  No reason to visit the servants' quarters, really, except a sudden impulse to surprise… Nothing in the bedroom but a bed with a quilt coverlet; there was a signed holo of Gwen by the bed, and a book left open beside it. The sitter was a box-room about four meters by three, lit by a glowceiling, walls of foam rock and tile floor covered by throw rugs. A couch along one wall, a couple of spindly low-C chairs, cushions. The viewer screen, and a bookshelf with a dozen titles, mostly classics; a row of dataplaques beside it, with the garish covers of serf entertainment. The new perscomp on a table, with a chair still pushed back as if in haste; the screen was dark, but the indicator was on, something running.