The Stone Dogs (53 page)

"Gwen, there's always space, an' that's enemy enough fo' all."

A smile. "An' the telescopes say most stars like ours have planets, with air we can breathe. That means life, maybe with hands and minds. Yo' goin' to live a long, long time, honeyhunch, hundreds of years. Yo' and Eric can go out to the stars an' conquer the aliens."
Who will hopefully have nothing better than spears,
she thought. "We've never gotten a message, not for all our looking, and the Yankees.".

Eric was gazing at her with a frown of serious thought. "The Yankees," he began, "they killed Aunt Myfwany." So she had always been called in this household, as courtesy to Yolande.

"They're really, really bad. I want to kill them all." Gwen nodded vehemently.

Mandy and John turned to quell their son, but Yolande raised a hand. "Ah," she said, closing her eyes for a moment. "Eric, Gwen, thank yo' both." They were getting to the age of reason, and should be exposed to as much serious thought as they could handle. "But—remember this. When y'all are grown, yo' may have to kill to live. Remember, killin'—killin' people, even if they're not of the Race—it's not a good thing. We do it because we must, not because we hate, or because we like it. Eric, yo'

don't hate yo' Tantie-ma Delores, do yo'?"

The boy shook his head.

"But she's Italian, and her people fought yo' grandma and grandpa. Gwen, Jolene's people fought us, long ago. Yo'

Tantie-Ma is… was a Yankee. Don't want to kill
her
, eh?"

"Oh, no, ma. I love Marya."

"So yo' should, punkin. See, we're the Race, the Draka, it's our place to rule, an' fo' others to serve us and work fo' us. All this fightin' and killin', it's just because the wild ones don't know it yet. Once they've been brought under us and we've taught them that, we should protect them and treat them as gentle as we can, so they can be happy in their service." Yolande smiled indulgently as she saw the children's brows knitted in thought.

"And with that, maybe yo' should both go eat dessert at the children's table," Mandy said. Eric and Gwen slid from their chairs and came to give their parents the kiss of courtesy. Eating with the grownups was an honor but a strain as well, and less fun than joining their cousins and siblings.

"Gwen," Yolande whispered into her daughter's ear. "Did yo'

like Archona? Quietly, now."

"Yes, ma, lots," the girl whispered back, her eyes glistening with excitement. "There was all sorts of things to do. Can we go again?"

"Well, punkin, don't tell anyone yet, but we're going to live there, yo' and yo' new brother and I, and I'll be home a lot more."
While I'm chained to a desk learning how at be a
Staffer.
"And don't worry, yo' can still go to school in Baiae, and visit here lots." It was only a two-hour trip these days, anyway.

"Now scoot!"

"Wisdom," her father said, when the children had gone.

"Though there was damn-all fightin' here in Italy, at least." A laugh. "Bit of partisan trouble afterwards, though. Yo'd be too young to remember. Mo' like huntin' than combat, just a little mo' dangerous game."

Yolande shivered slightly inside herself; she had often wondered whether her generation had the iron of the ones who had fought the Eurasian War. India had been a sideshow, compared to that.

"That why yo' pushed to let those Alliance types yo' took go?"

John asked. The servants gathered the plates and spread sweetmeats and pastries; her brother selected a walnut and crushed it between thumb and forefinger.

"Well, we traded them, fo' that lot of serf technicians." An embarrassing incident, when a robot personnel capsule had gone derelict on the way to the Phobos station; nobody but the Alliance had been in position to rescue them. "Left them with egg on they faces, too, when most of the serfs wanted back in."

Her mother snorted derisively. "Well, did they think we sent convicts fed on scraps into space?" she said. "Or that we'd select people without strong ties here to send to a risky frontier zone?"

"Quite possible they did think that," Yolande said, remembering. "I talked to some of the prisoners… they adapted pretty well; we only had to execute two or three…"
And none
among the born-serf workforce;
Harry was tickled pink about
that.
"And they know less about us than we do about them." She frowned. "Of course, the type we got, near as yo' can translate they'd be Class IV or V serfs, here. Wotan knows, a serf learns as little about the Alliance as we can manage. I suppose their overlords do likewise."

"Never thought I'd see yo' talkin' down hatred and vengeance, sist —" John started, as his wife kicked him under the table.

Yolande's voice turned remote as her gaze. "I—I'll handle the vengeance, John," she said. "Hopefully, I'll handle the Yankees as well. Vengeance an' hate… that's my burden, and little joy of it I've had. None of it will give me back what I lost.
That's
what I want to spare our children."

There was a moment of awkward silence. "I hear yo' took one of the prisoners in fo', hmmm,
personal
cultural anthropology.

Good? Wench or buck?" Mandy said, changing the subject with a joke.

The elder Ingolfsson's chuckle was strained.
Ah, the Race
Purity Laws,
Yolande remembered. Fifty years ago, in
their
youth, it had been a hanging matter for a Citizen woman to lie with a serf male—an ancestral habit from which much else sprang. Contraception and equality of rights within the Citizen caste had made the law obsolete, and the new style of reproduction had rendered it outright silly, well before repeal in 1971. It had still been a matter for sniggering jokes when Yolande was a teenager; she found the younger generation appallingly casual about the whole matter. Mandy had always thought it vilely unfair, of course; but then she was just entranced with the male of the species.

"Wench," Yolande said, with a mock-severe frown of reproof at her schoolfriend and sister-in-law. "I'm an old-fashioned girl, myself. No, actually, I didn't touch her. Nice little thing, might not have minded keepin' her, but I sort of promised." She frowned, selected a confection of puff pastry and cream with fruit. "Coffee, Bianca. Did talk a fair bit; it got right borin' at times out there." She shook her head. "I'd read about them, of course. Seen viewers an' such. Still hadn't realized how downright
strange
they are. It'll be a relief when they're broken to the Yoke; the thought of it makes my brain hurt, frankly." She paused. "Might look little Alishia up, Iff'n she survives the conquest."

"Oh," she continued. "I'm goin' to be needin' some staff, fo' the townhouse in Archona. Probably be based out of there for quite some time. Need a round score, good cook, assistants, set of housegirls, the usual. Driver, mechanic… hmmm. Junior nurses, to help Jolene; she'll be doin' clerical stuff again as soon as she's up. Glad to buy Claestum stock, if yo' can spare it." The plantation was actually overstrength; pa had been a little lax about enforcing birth control in the early years, and the chickens were coming home to roost. She saw the others exchange a glance and a smile.

"Well," said her father. "No problem, but it'd be unwise to stock a city home all from a plantation. Should buy some locals as well; maybe from a creche-trainer. Don't usually hold with the creche product, but yo' Jolene certainly worked out."

"Eric would help out," Johanna said. She sighed. "It is nice to see one's children doin' well," she added.

Yolande caught herself glancing out at the light, steady rain once more. It would be chill, out there. Misty and muddy, and the trees would be bare, and the smell would be of wet earth and rock and vegetation.

"I think," she said, "I'll get a slicker cape and a horse and go fo' a ride. Gods, if yo' knew how I'd missed fresh air, and the hills, and water I didn't turn on out of a tap. And I need the exercise, we used a 1.5-G spun minihab but it wasn't the same.

Don't wait supper, I'll have somethin' sent up from the kitchens.

See yo' in the mornin', I'll take the baby around then to show the ghouloons." The gene-engineered guardians trusted scent better than sight, and far more than words.

"Have a good time, darlin'," her mother said.

"And when yo' get back," her father said, to the others'

laughter.

"Damn, I feel good," Yolande said quietly. The ride had been just what she needed, cold and physically demanding, a chance to feel at one once more with the earth that had born her, hour after hour until moonrise. And it had washed out the last of the tension from the ride down from orbit, cursing the interminable delays, the flight across the Mediterranean knowing that half the Citizens in the western provinces were following by viewer and smiling. The ride, and a long soak in the baths, and steam and massage from friendly expert attendants who had known her all her life. Now she felt alert and sharp-set, ready for her meal.

Shouldn't take long
, she thought, opening the door of her suite by the tower. The kitchens always had someone on standby, and it wasn't as if the staff were overworked.
You know,
she told herself meditatively,
I'm even glad that Yankee bitch made it
alive to Ceres
. That news had come through while the
Subotai
was making rendezvous with the relief flotilla.

Though more for the children's sake than hers. I really don't
like hurting little ones, even when it's necessary.
Uncle Eric's
right, though; we hurt ourselves more than them if we… get out
of proportion.
Her eyes narrowed, lost in thought, as she walked through the lounging room and up the stairs, dropping her robe.

Even then, she felt a minor surprise when something went away when you dropped it, instead of floating irritatingly at hand. f It's
her man I want, anyway. I certainly don't regret the grief
I've caused him. And he'll know they were under my hand,
for all. Build
the rest o days. Him, I'll kill. The rest of my revenge,
it'll be enough to put the Alliance under the Yoke once and
a
better world for mine and Myfwany's children.

There was a fire crackling in the bedroom hearth, and a meal laid out on a trolley table next to it. Her favorite, stuffed lobster with drawn butter, salad, and—

"Who the hell are
yo
'?" she asked the wench kneeling beside the table.

She rose, wearing a dazzling smile and a ribbon like a bandolier from shoulder to hip, with a large bow and a card attached to it. About twenty, raven hair falling to her waist, pale creamy skin; the straight delicate features and full-curved lips of a Michelangelo painting. The card was extended in one slender-fingered hand.
Nice fingers,
Yolande thought dazedly, as she unfolded it.

Enjoy
, it read; signed by her kin.

"I am Mirella… Antonio the gardener's daughter, Mistis? And I am a gift, to serve you."

"Is that so?" Yolande said, falling back into the Tuscan of her earliest years and feeling laughter bubbling up beneath her breastbone. Those
impossible, presumptuous
— She shook her head helplessly. "Is that so, wench? And what do you think of the idea?"

"Oh, I wish very much to serve you,"—a coy glance

—"perfectly, in all ways, Mistis."

"Why?"

"Well… Everyone knows, you are land, Mistis. And very beautiful. And…" the smile turned slightly urchin as the rest came in a rush. "And that you are going to the great city, Archona, and if I please you I will fly there away from here where nothing ever happens and see the lovely palaces and everything, and become a
head
housemaid before I am old and withered and not have to clean floors any more, and have a room of my own and pretty things and maybe even learn to read as they say all the servants do in the great city. Mistis."

Yolande sank into the chair, laughing until the tears flowed, then looked up at the wench's uncertain glance. "Well, Mirella, I like a serf who's honest. We ought to get to know each other better, before we settle your life." She patted the cushion beside her; there was plenty of room. It had been her favorite curl-up-in-front-of-the-fire-and-read-chair, when she was a child. "First, sit here and let's see if you like lobster."

The paradox of our times is that information has increased more rapidly than the capacity of the sciences to integrate it and nowhere more so than in physics and cosmology. In the 1950s, we were still uncertain what lay under the clouds of Venus—swamps seemed a sound hypothesis— and the "canals" of Mars had only recently been debunked. Less than a decade later, spaceships and probes were studying every planet inside the orbit of Neptune. We exist in a world bear-lead by engineers, themselves driven by frantic necessity. Our theories are lame, limping things cobbled together to give some rough framework and mathematical basis to the huge constructs we make, and the monstrous puzzles we encounter. And often we ignore vital areas of research simply because there is so much else to be done that is immediately promising. For example, only now are we developing a theory of stellar formation which has any predictive force, and this decades after the space telescopes proved the ubiquity of planets. We now know that planets with life—or at least oxygen-rich atmospheres and liquid water—are fairly common around stars of the general type of Sol; four have been confirmed so far within 50 light-years of Earth. Yet there has been no sustained investigation of Bigetti's Paradox; if life is common,
where are the intelligent aliens?

A still more glaring example has recently arisen. Ever since the initial breakthroughs of the decade 1900-1910, we have been treating the quantum-mechanical paradoxes as useful mathematical fictions; some amuse themselves with thought-experiments such as Kubbelman's Rat and its half-life/half-death state in the sealed box.Now these questions are rising, as it were, out of the subatomic world and clamoring for attention—by biting us on the ankle, if nothing else. Our rule-of-thumb engineers stumbled across high-temperature superconductivity, and applied it widely, long before an adequate theory had been produced; we knew that the whole superconductor was in a single quantum state and left it at that.