The Stone Dogs (19 page)

Now I can grow it long enough to comb,
she thought gleefully, as she did a smart about-face and marched into the outer office, past the desks and the gray-uniformed serf Auxiliaries. Out into the corridor, past the two motionless Janissaries, like giant insects in segmented impact-armor and visored sensor helmets. She looked down; her hands were shaking. I didn't even notice, she thought. She concentrated a moment; the floating feeling at the back of her skull diminished.

Down the arched colonnade, thin rain falling on tiles and potted trees on her left, bas-reliefs of the Eurasian War on her right through more offices, into a waiting room.

Her pace picked up as she saw Mandy and Myfwany, turned to a jog as they saw her grin and wave. Then she was running, dodging tables and people in uniform, and flinging herself into the air, heedless of the jar to her bruises.

"Wuff!"
Myfwany caught her in midleap, Yolande wound her legs tight around her friend's waist and propped her elbows on the hard muscle of her shoulders. "Why, Cadet Ingohsson, someone might think yo'd had good news."

Yolande clasped hands behind the redhead, as close-shaven as her own, and kissed her. It turned long and passionate, until she felt herself as breathless as in a high-G turn, lost in touch and scent and taste. Taste of salt, as two tears slid down her cheeks to the meeting of their lips. She turned her head aside and buried it in the collar of the other's uniform.

"Yo' hurtin', love?" Myfwany whispered into her ear.

"No. Happy. Well be together." Her hug turned fierce.

"Oh,
moo,
" Mandy said. "Y'all are always at it. Good news, yo'

make out. Bad news, yo' make out. Nothin' else to do, yo' make out. C'mon fellas, we've all gotten through Selection, let's go
celebrate."

Yolande unlocked her legs and slid down to stand. "Well," she said huskily, smiling up into Myfwany's turquoise-green eyes.

"Myfwany an' I could celebrate by goin' back to our room an'

fuckin' our brains out—
oof."
She broke off as the blond jabbed her under the ribs with her fingertips.

Myfwany laughed. "Do we complain at the boys y' always draggin' in?" she said.

"No, y' all steal 'em," Mandy said.

"That's not fair, we just
borrowed
a few; they are reusable, yo'

knows," Myfwany replied. "Anyways, yo' know what they say:

"Men fo' amusement, women fo' pleasure, cucumbers fo'

ecstasy.'"

Yolande sighed, closed her eyes, and leaned into her friend's side; they were just the right height for that, about a handspan's difference. As far as she was concerned, Mandy could keep the men—it was as often uncomfortable as enjoyable—but she supposed Myfwany was right, you had to broaden your experience.
I guess I'm just a prude,
she thought regretfully. For that matter, she didn't much like sleeping with serfs, either; it was always difficult to tell whether they really wanted to, and if they didn't why bother?

"There's always the Flamingo Feather," Mandy said.

The Crimea had been taken by amphibious assault in the fall of '42, early in the War, and had become a major base area for the drive west, since the harbors had fallen relatively intact.

Between the Germans and the Draka and the general chaos, there had been little of the native population left; when the European section of the Eurasian War wound down in '45, it had seemed sensible to make it a military reservation, and the remaining locals were moved out to provide labor on the wheat plantations of the Ukraine. There were mountains, plains, seashore, forest, and steppe, a reasonable facsimile of a Mediterranean climate along the southern shore for barracks, and every other type of weather and terrain within easy reach.

Recruit-training became the major occupation as the settlement of the lands west of the Volga proceeded, and the Citizen population built up.

So the Crimea was not really part of the Province of Sarmatia; not really of any specific location. It was Army, an island in the archipelago, a way-station in the Domination's largest institution, and a cog in the slaughterous efficiency that had conquered two-thirds of the human race. That meant more than barracks and armories.

"Hoppin' tonight," Mandy said, as they pushed through the bead curtain. The Flamingo Feather was an aviator's hangout, a dozen linked public rooms with the usual facilities, palaestra and baths and bedrooms.

"Everybody glad to be off restriction," Myfwany replied. Few Draka used enough of anything to endanger their health; it was stupid, and illegal besides. Pilot-trainees were on an altogether stricter regimen, enforced by the medical monitors they wore at all times; there were even restrictions on sex, leading to a good deal of resentful graffiti about the Orgasm Police.

Yolande looked down on the sunken room. There was a haze of blue smoke under the rooftop lights, a little tobacco, considerably more Kenia Crown
ganja
. Tables scattered around the edges, a dais for the musicians and singer; dancers going through their paces in the center. Big murals on the walls, holograph-copies. She recognized one: it had been done by her mother's uncle's daughter Tanya, who had been a cohortarch in the Archonal Guard until '45. Gray shattered buildings under gray sky, with a column of tanks going through, mud squelching up from under their treads. Hond III, mid-Eurasian War models.

The hatches were open, and the Draka crews showed head-and-shoulders out of the turrets. Wrapped and muffled against the cold, looking with a weary and disgusted boredom at the skeletal corpses lying rat-gnawed along the avenue.

"Euugh," she said, as they handed their rain-cloaks to the serf and walked down the stairs. She had seen her share of bodies—Draka children were taken to public executions fairly early to cure them of squeamishness—but this was just purely ugly. "I like that one bettah." The other side was a picture-holo A tropical beach, palm-fringed, backed by jade-green sugarcane and dark-green mountains beyond; the sun was setting over a stretch of purple sea speckled with white foam-crests, in a riotous banner of clouds in cream, gold, and rose.
"Nosy-Be, isn't
it?"

They found an unoccupied table in a nook, settled back in against the cushioned settees. The attendants had seen their new-minted Pilot's bars; this was Graduation Week, after all. A bucket of ice with a bottle of champagne appeared, and finger-food, grilled spiced prawns and crawfish.

"I think so," Myfwany said. "Which raises the interestin'

point, where do we go after the Great Escape?" The next two months would be the longest leave they would have before they mustered-out on their twenty-second birthdays.

Yolande halted with the glass halfway to her lips and set it down again on the smooth stone of the table. "It's real," she said dazedly. "It just hit me,
we're adults."
Her eyes were wide, and she felt a slight tug of alarm. The speeches and parades would come later that week, but it was official enough NOW. "We can…

oh, we can vote. Get elected Archon."

She took a gulp of the wine, then slowed down as the chill piquant sweetness hit her mouth.

"Watch the sacrilege there, that's Old Klik," Myfwany said, and took up the game as she sipped at her own. "Or we can get called out in a duel. At least while we're not Active Service."

"Apply fo' a land-grant. Or get married," Mandy said, propping her chin on a hand with a distant look.

The other two exchanged glances; their friend had been getting an awful lot of letters from Yolande's brother John. It was a bit May-September, but the difference in ages mattered less as they grew older.

"Well, not much point in that," Yolande said. "Yo've got to live in barracks fo' the next twenty-six months at least. Not really practical to have children, either."

"Oh, I don't know," Myfwany said. "Use a brooder fo' the children. These days, no need to incubate yo' own eggs. But it's true there's no point in marryin' until yo' can set up house together; I wouldn't consider it fo' another three, five years, myself."

Yolande felt a chill that ran down her spine and settled under her ribcage. With too-familiar effort of will she shoved it aside and sprang up. "C'mon, love, let's dance," she said.

"Shadowdance."

Myfwany grinned back at her, the strong-boned young face the most beautiful thing in the world. "Sure, sweet," she said.

They rose and threaded their way hand-in-hand to the dance floor, their soft boots rutching on the tessellated mosaic of the surface. The band were just setting up for a new number: Hungarian Gypsies by their look, and in native costume, playing violin and flute and czembalom, something like a hammer-dulcimer. Except as horse-handlers, Gypsies made poor workers, but they were fine entertainers and the leisure industries had bought up a good many of them. The lights dimmed. The music began low and sweet, with a swinging hit; then it grew wilder, sorrowful, and with a hint of dark empty places and wind through faded grass. The singer stepped up to the edge of the dais and began a soft throaty lament; the hoop earrings bobbed against the toffee-colored skin of her neck, and the multicolored silk flounces of her dress glittered.

The two Draka stood face to face and extended their arms until their hands touched, very lightly, at the fingertips.

Shadowdancing was a development of the martial arts, originally a method of training in anticipating another's movements.

Yolande half-closed her eyes and let the music take her, the gentle pressure on her fingertips, the whole-body sense of the other. They turned, circling, swooping, bending, the lead passing from Myfwany to Yolande and back with each dozen heartbeats.

She felt the boundaries of her self blur; motion was uncaused, unthought, total control merging into total abandonment of will.

The tempo picked up, and they were whirling, leaping, then suddenly slowing to half-time and a languorous drifting. It was a pleasure halfway between flying and making love, and like both it translated you outside yourself. They slowed almost to a halt, palm against palm on either side of their faces, feet skimming the tile with cat-soft precision.

The music stopped, and Yolande returned to herself with an inner jerk, like walking down a step that wasn't there. Sensation returned, and she knew she was breathing deeply, felt the prickle of sweat on her skin. The other dancers had emptied a circle around them, and a few were applauding. Myfwany was close enough for her to watch the pupils contract from their concentration-flare, close enough to smell the clean warm scent of her body, like summer grass and fresh sheets.

"I watched you, not the teacher, all that long summer's noon Though he taught Leonardo, with loving respect, I was blinded by knowledge of where we'd be soon And my eyes wandered dazed on the curve of your neck.

Oh, statues and portraits, now to me you're a part of my golden Myfwany; kisses and art."

AIRCAR

100 KM SOUTH OF NANTES

LOIRE DISTRICT, TOURAINE PROVINCE

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

APRIL 5,1973

Nantes in ten minutes
, Yolande thought, banking the aircar north toward the Loire estuary and beginning the descent.

Chateau Retour in another fifteen after that.

The little aircraft dipped smoothly; the whole top was set transparent down to waist-height, crystal-sandwich luxury.

Poitou wheeled beneath them, broad squares of plowland and vineyard and straight dusty roads, patterned with the shadows of a few fleecy white clouds on this bright spring morning. She had a temptation to swoop down and barnstorm—the aircar was as responsive as a fighter at low altitude—but resisted it with a caressing motion on the sidestick that waggled the wings.

She is a honey,
the Draka thought happily. A six-seater Bambara, Archona-made by Dos Santos Aerospatial. The very latest, twin ceramic axial flow turbines, vectored-thrust VTOL, variable-geometry wings that could fold right into the oval fuselage. Supersonic, just barely, though she ate fuel like a stone bitch if you tried to cruise above .9 Mach; obscenely comfortable by comparison to any sort of military issue. The four rear seats were recliners, swivel-mounted around a table-console and bar.

Myfwany's parents and hers had clubbed together to buy it for them, as a graduation present.

Myrwany and she had spent the first month of their furlough traveling in the Bambara. Money was no problem; they had the basic Citizen stipend now, their pilot's pay, and their families had put them on an adult's allowance from the joint enterprises, about as much again. Yolande looked over her shoulder at her lover, curled asleep on one of the rear seats with her hand under one cheek. It had been like school holidays again, only better, with nobody to tell them what to do. They had rented a little island for a week. Sleeping during the hot days, watching impossibly lurid sunsets, spearfishing, grilling their catch on the long empty white beach while the surf hissed phosphorescent under the huge soft stars, making love by moonlight and lying entangled under the palms until dawn. Visiting distant relatives had been fun, too: the parties and sports, the cities and museums and galleries and plays. Giving each other presents—Myfwany had found her a signed first edition of
Ravens in a Morning Sky
in Damascus, and Yolande had dug up a Muramachi blade someone had left in a dusty shop in Shanghai.

The serf sitting behind her craned to see the semicircle of the control panel, smiling a little uncertainly as the Draka caught her eye.
Jolene, dammit, remember the name,
Yolande told herself. Jolene had been their latest impulse-buy. They had picked
her
up at an auction in Apollonaris, on the coast of western Africa, two days ago. Yolande frowned a little; it had been Myfwany's idea, and in her opinion it was a bit reckless just to buy a serf like that. Ingolfssons did not sell their human chattel except for gross and deliberate fault, which meant you had to be careful.

Mind you, traveling from base to base, they would need at least one literate bodyservant, someone in Category IV or V, trained to handle communications equipment and secretarial business. Jolene was well educated and beautifully trained, creche reared and certified by Domarre & Ledermann, who specialized in high-skilled and fancy items. Very pretty besides, in a broad-nosed, high-cheeked Mandingo fashion—and pilots had a certain status to maintain in their personal gear. Skin the shade of ripe eggplant, almost purple-black, with natural yellow-blond hair and eyes like hot brass, the result of some sport of wandering genes. Yolande rather liked her; she was eager to please without being fawning, glad to be in good hands, and charmingly agog at seeing the world beyond the strait confines of the creche.