The Stone Dogs (63 page)

Item
: Uncle Eric and the others aren't stupid. They must realize that as well as I.

Item:
Only something on the order of technological surprise could break the stalemate. And if it went on long enough, it would be the Alliance that came up with the winning card. She grinned at the thought, not an expression of pleasure, but the outward sign of a hunter's excitement So the Final War had to come before then—but it would be a disaster, as things stood.

Seemed to stand.

Item
: The Supreme Command knew that, too.

Item:
Commandant of Aresopolis was high enough up the command structure to be on the verge of the circles that made policy, political decisions. High enough that she would get hints of purpose, not just code-verified orders.

So. Perhaps the incident with the Yankee prisoners was something significant. Perhaps not; there were a thousand clandestine programs going on, everything from espionage to cultural disinformation. But perhaps this was different, and they had promoted her to the level where they had either to bring her into the picture or shoot her. Nor could her appointment be an accident.

I'm competent
, she told herself judiciously.
More than
competent; but even so, there are dozens of others with
qualifications as good.

Uncle Eric and his Conservatives knew where she stood; foursquare with them on domestic policy. She was a planter and an Ingolfsson and a von Shrakenberg connection, after all, and besides that she agreed with them. On the other hand, in foreign policy nobody could doubt she followed the Militant line; nobody at all.

Yolande began to hum softly under her breath. This promised to be interesting, very interesting indeed, when she got some data to work with. Her mind felt as good as her body, loose and light and flexible, ready to the hand of her will like a well-made and practiced tool. Quite true what the alienists said: celibacy was extremely bad for you, as bad as going without proper diet or exercise or meditation, and as likely to upset your mental equilibrium.

I must do something nice for Marya
, she thought as the crater slid by below.

This view always heartened her. Most of the Domination off-Earth was like being inside a building all the time at best, or more commonly imprisonment on a submarine. Efficient, necessary, even comely in the way that well-designed machinery could be, but not beautiful; difficult to love. Space and the planets were lovely, but they were unhuman, beyond and apart from humankind and its needs, too big and too remote. Here were reminders of what she was fighting for.

There was a river beneath them, meandering in from the rim, weaving between broad shallow lakes that had been subcraters once. Reeds fringed the banks, brown green, except for a few horseshoe shapes of beach. The water was intensely clear, speckled with lotus and waterlily, and she could see a fish jump in a long, slow arc that soared like an athlete's leap. Trees grew along the shores, quick-growing gene-engineered cottonwood, eucalyptus, and Monterrey pine, with a dense undergrowth of passionflower and wild rose.

Beyond was a rolling plain of bright-green neoltikuyu grass, the plant of choice for first establishment, rolling in long thigh-high waves beneath the warm dry air. Beneath that, earthworms, bacteria, fungi, helping grind dead soil into life with millennial patience.

Yolande grinned and sideslipped down to ten meters over the grasslands. A herd of springbok fled, scattering like drops of mercury on dry ice, their leaps taking them nearly as high as the belly of the car. Two grass-green cats a meter long raised implausible ear-tufts and yowled at her with their forepaws resting on a rabbit the size of a dog. She banked around them, slammed over a boulder-piled hillock planted in flattopped thorn trees that exploded with birds.

"Mistis." She looked back as her hands straightened the aircraft and put it on an upward path. Tina was looking green and swallowing hard.

"Sorry, Tina," she said. Morning sickness had struck the brooder hard, and she was still easily upset.

They flew more sedately across tree-studded plain, then a section still mostly bare whiteish-brown soil—
regolith,
she reminded herself. Vehicles and laborers moved over it in clouds of dust, spraying and seeding. Then over another waterway, a stretch of forested hills beyond that curved out of sight on either hand. The area within was more closely set-tied, networked with maglev roads and scattered with buildings: lodges, inns, experimental plots, landscaped gardens. Ahead lay the central mountain.

Long ago an asteroid had struck here, carving the crater in a multi-gigatonne fireball; a central spike half as high as the walls had been left, when the rock cooled again. For three billion years it had lain so, with only the micrometeorite hail to smooth the sides; then the Draka engineers had come. The dome they built required an anchor-point and cross-bracing; the mountain was bored hollow, and a tube of fiber-reinforced metal sunk home in it. That rose from the huge machinery spaces below through the ten-meter thickness of the dome itself, and the long monofilament cables that ran in from the circumference melded into a huge ring kilometers overhead. Yolande looked up, tracing their pathway. Thread-thin in the distance, like streamers of fine hair floating in a breeze; swelling, until they bulked like the chariot-spokes of a god.

The slopes below had been carved as well, into stairs and curving roadways, platforms and bases for the buildings, or left rugged for the plantings and waterfalls that splashed it with swathes of crimson and green and slow-moving silverblue. The buildings were traceries of stone and vitryl and metal, like an attenuated dream of Olympus, slender fluted columns and bright domes. Yolande brought the airsled in towards the main landing field, a construct that jutted out in a hectare of flange from a cliffside. She sighed at the sight of the reception waiting; some ceremony was inevitable.
I am Commandant, after all,
she thought reluctantly, and let the sled sink until it touched the gold-leaf tiles.

She touched down. Waiting Auxiliaries pushed up two sets of stairs, one for her and another for the servants. She stepped onto the red carpet of the first, and a band struck up "Follow Me," the anthem of the Directorate of War. A cohort in dress blacks snapped to attention: human troops, Citizen Force. Her own Guard Hierarchy. Bayoneted rifles flashed, drums rolled, feet crashed to the tiles in unison.
Not easy to do
without kicking
yourself into the air, here,
she thought ironically as she saluted in turn, right fist snapped to left breast.

"Service to the State!" she called.

"Glory to the Race"

The Section heads were waiting, with their aides and assistants. Aresopolis was still organized like a War Directorate hostile-territory base, although that was growing a little obsolete. Commandant, herself. Vice Commandant and Operations Chief, Alman Witter. Weapons, Power, Lifesystems, Construction, Civil Administration. The Security commander, in headhunter green—a surprisingly reasonable sort, she had found, with a weakness for terrible puns. The Aerospace Command chief. The civil administrators. In four years she had come to know them all quite well; twelve-hour office days were something they all had in common. Except during emergencies, when it was rather more.

There's irony for you
, she thought. Yolande Ingolfsson was niece to the Archon, an Arch-Strategos, and scion of two of the oldest Landholder families in the Domination. Wealthy in her own right even by Landholder standards, owner of several dozen human beings directly, and of thousands if you counted interests in Combine shares and other enterprises. And she actually had less leisure than a State-chattel serf clerk toiling away in one of the anonymous offices below her feet, and not much more in the way of personal freedom.
Well, a little more. I have all sorts of
choices. Who I go to bed with, and what clothes I
wear
. She looked down at her uniform.
Sometimes.

"For this we conquered the world," she muttered under her breath, then looked up. The Earth was in
well, it would get
its invariant place on the horizon, and she could make out the shield-shape of North America.
Not all the
world; it will be
better once we have.
Her teeth barred for a moment, and then she forced relaxation.
Ah,well it would get boring with nothing
more to do than swim, hunt, and make love.

"Strategos Witter," she said formally to her second in command. "Citizens," to the others, "I expect to be back in about a week."

There was the usual exchange of civilities, but only Witter stayed with her as the metal rectangle rose a handspan and floated off into the three-story arch in the cliff; there was a mesh of superconductor laid below the tiles.

"Thomas was notably uncommunicative about the patrol incident," he said.

The skid was moving through a long corridor cleared for her use into a great circular ball, overlooked by ramps and walkways.

The hall stretched out of sight in either direction, encircling the launch stations; crowds thronged it, away from the Orpo-cordoned path to her gate. Arches were traced on the walls, covered in brilliant mosaics; the sights of the solar system, mostly. Jupiter banded in orange and white, or the rings of Saturn against the impossible sky-stalk rising out of the hazy atmosphere of Titan. A few landscapes from Earth. And endlessly repeated above, the Drakon with its wings spread over all. She heard murmurs, foot-slither: a troop of new-landed ghouloons following their officer, peering about and hooting softly in amazement. One forgot himself and bounced two meters in the air, slapping at his chest and shoulders for emphasis as be spoke.

"Ooooo," he burbled.
"Big big. Big."

"Merarch Irwine had his orders," she said.

"Meaning, shut up?" the other Draka replied.

"Not quite. But all is not as it appears, Alman. I'm goin' down to find out. I may find out something; I may not. In any case—"

"There are Things We Were Not Meant To Know!" he replied.

The skid stopped before a final door. "Exactly," she said, stepping off the platform as it sank to the floor. "See yo' next Thursday."

"Service to the State."

"Glory to the Race." She turned to the doorguards. "Scan."

One of them touched a control; something blinked at her eyes, like a light flashing too quickly to be noticed.

"Arch-Strategos?" the tetrarch said. "Ah, ma'am. Yo' serf, the tall one." Yolande turned; he was indicating Marya. "She's cuffed, but yo' don't have the controller-activator on yo'."

"Thank yo', Tetrarch, but I think I'm safe from my housegirls,"

she said dryly, tapping her fingers on her belt. He flushed and stepped back with a salute.

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "Straight through, Arch-Strategos

."

"Tell yo' the truth, I'd forgotten the bloody thing," Yolande said, as they seated themselves.

"I… never have, Mistis," Marya said, touching the cuff with the fingers of the other hand.

The capsule was the standard passenger form, a steel-alloy tube five decks high. There was an axial passageway with a lift platform, a control bubble at the bow and a thrust nozzle and reaction-mass tank at the other. There were the usual facilities, and a small galley. Nothing elaborate—cargo versions didn't even have a live pilot—but quick and comfortable. The usual load was several hundred passengers, although this flight would be hers alone; a seven-hour flight, under 1 G.

She sighed and looked around the lounge, empty, save for herself and Marya; Tina had gone to lie down in water-cushioned comfort. This was a wedge-shaped section of the topmost passenger deck, set with chairs and loungers and tables. A long section of the wall was crystal-sandwich screen. Yolande touched a control, and the wall disappeared. Smooth metal showed a half-meter away. Clanking sounds, and it began to move; magnetic fields were gripping the capsule. They slid sideways with ponderous delicacy, then into a vertical shaft. A slight feeling of acceleration, like an elevator. That lasted five minutes, past more blank metal; they were rising through one of the many passages that honeycombed the central lift-shaft.

"Ah." They were out, on the hectare-broad pentagonal metal cap; flat and empty now, no other launches just now. The dome stretched around them, and dimly through it she could see the landscape below. From above and close-by the structure of the dome was more apparent, the layers of gold foil and conductor sheathing.

"Stand by for boost, please."

She swung the lounger to near-horizontal. Not that the acceleration would be anything to note. Below her lasers would be building to excitation phase, mirrors aligning. A rumble, as the pumps began pushing liquid oxygen into the nozzle.
Whump.

Thrust, pushing her back into the cushions, building to Earth-normal. She sighed again, glanced over at Marya.

"Marya," she said. The other woman looked up. "What am I to do with yo'?"

"What you will, Mistis."

Yolande laughed with soft bitterness. "What I
will
? Now, there's a joke." She brooded, watching the Lunar landscape grow and shrink behind the windowscreen, the ancient pale rock and dust, the roads and installations her people had built. "Duty… I was raised to do what is right; duty to the State, to the Race, to my family and my friends and to my servants. For the State and the Race, I've helped preside over a useless non-war that shows no signs of endin' except in an even mo' useless
real
war that will destroy civilization, if not humanity. My best friend I failed… not least, by failure to let go of grief. My family?"

She sighed and stretched. "Well, my children have turned out well. And I've been a good owner to my serfs, with one exception.

Yo', of course. It was wrong to torture yo', hurt yo' beyond what was necessary to compel obedience. Actin' like a weasel, to assuage my own hurt."

"Are…" Marya hesitated. "Are you apologizing to me, Mistis?"

There was an overtone of shock in her voice.