Drakon (33 page)

She came back and sat cross-legged on the foot of the bed.

Jennifer made a face. "Diet pills?"

"No, it's a metabolic adjustment. Increases your appetite, if anything—eat whatever you please—but it puts your body's static burn up even more." She smiled. "Trust me."

Jennifer blushed again, down to her breasts. Gwen watched with enjoyment, which made the flush worse.

"This isn't . . . ah . . . isn't like me," the New Yorker said, looking out the window.

Gwen made a graceful gesture. "Think of it as a matter of personal chemistry," she said. "No big deal. Besides, it had been a while for you, hadn't it?"

"Yes. You too?"

"No, I don't believe in passing up an opportunity for pleasure," Gwen said. She grinned. "You may have noticed. Come on, let's have a shower and then you can get back to your room before your colleagues wake up."

***

That plan was launched, like a javelin—better, like a cunning shipkiller missile, with its own mechanical intelligence. It would strike or miss, and she would act accordingly. Dismiss it.

"I've been realizing how much homesickness must affect you humans."

"More than you?" Alice said from the lounger, looking up from her magazine,
Architectural Digest.

"Much," Gwen said. "Your lives are so short, and yet this world you've made changes so quickly."

Something—perhaps the way the sun flickered through the bougainvillea on the coral-rock wall outside—prompted a memory.

First century,
she thought. Back visiting on Claestum in Tuscany; she'd been . . . yes, a section-director on the Mars project then, glad of a break from space habitats.

Riding down from the hills, with a gralloched deer slung over the pack horse behind her. Rough slopes, the rutted earthen track and the slow clump of hoofs, the panting breath of the hound-beasts at heel.

Summer smells of arbutus and thyme, leaf mold, horse, dog, the meaty scent of the deer carcass. Creak of leather and rattle of javelins in the holster before her knee; a flash of shy movement in the bushes, a glimpse of great brown eyes—a faun, still new and rare then. Stabbing flickers of light as she rode out into the valley fields, with the slow warm wind bringing her scents from miles beyond. Through an orchard of gnarled old apple trees—memory within memory, the sloping field new-planted with thin saplings—and into a grain field half reaped, the line of
servus
and the rhythmic flash of their sickles. Crimson poppies among the tall corn, the way the tunics stuck to the workers' flanks, the sweet mild smell of their sweat.

Three centuries ago,
she thought. Yet—if only she could breach the wall of universes that separated her from it—nothing essential would have changed. Young oaks would have grown to great trees, the great-great-grandchildren of those reapers would reap the same right-yellow grain in the same fields; the younger cousin who held that land would be at home in the manor. All memory was strong with her kind, but this one had more than vividness. The
impact
was still there, as tangible as the rich taste of the venison roasted with mushrooms, or the cool blue eyes of cousin Cercylas, the turn of his hand as he gestured.

"It's odd to think of you being homesick at all," Alice said.

Gwen looked up at her. Only three weeks since the embryo implant, not enough to alter her scent much. The language of her body had already changed, relaxed, tension draining out of the muscles around her mouth and in her neck day by day. It flattered her, and brought out the ripe-peach texture of her skin.

Also she thinks better when she's calm and happy.

"We're not altogether self-sufficient," she said gently. "We have our families, friends, likes and dislikes. Any social animal gets attached to their framework. For that matter, you're part of mine, now—it's a family relationship, in a way, and a fairly close one."

The Australian looked down at her stomach and traced it with her fingertips. "Yes, I suppose so.

Funny I can
remember
being upset about what you were doing to me, but I can't recall the
feeling
anymore. Everything just seems so . . . nice. I'm really looking forward to the birth, and having the baby to raise."

"So am I," said Gwen, uncoiling from the window-niche.

I must see that she has a few of her own, in a couple of years,
she thought.
I'll breed her to
Tom, perhaps.
Establish a brooder-line for the new infant, as a birth-gift. It would be her first clone, after all; Draka rarely cloned themselves. A little different from the traditional sperm-and-egg or egg-to-egg gene merging.

It was pleasant to be thinking of ordinary domestic matters like this; pleasant and a little premature.

Wouldn't do to forget this is just a little enclave of normalcy here,
she reminded herself. Beyond that horizon lay a vast feral wilderness to be subdued.

Gwen yawned and stretched. "Back to work No rest for the wicked."

EARTH/1

February 20, 445th YEAR OF THE FINAL SOCIETY

(2445 A.D.)

Tolya Mkenni had traveled a good deal via the Web—neural induction wasn't quite the same as being there, but it came fairly close. The last three years had been different:
physical
travel not just to the high-caste
servus
resorts of eastern North America but all over the planet on the Project's business, even to Luna. Not least to the clinic in Apollonaris where she'd been given the supreme honor of another lifespan. And now she was bound to Archona itself, to appear before the lords of the State. It was almost as thrilling as it was terrifying. She shifted slightly in the comfortable seat of the transport.

"Mirror," she said.

A space before her turned silver and then showed a three-dimensional image of herself. Not much different from what she'd seen for most of the past eighty years, except that the little signs of age—wrinkles at the corner of her gray eyes, threads of silver in her shoulder-length wheat-blond hair—were gone or going; the tone of her brown skin had turned youthfully resilient.
Another
three-quarters of a century,
she thought.
I may see my great-grandchildren born.
Amazing; only a few hundred of her breed had been granted that, in all the centuries of the Final Society. Woven into the left corner of her neat brown tunic was a stylized circle with a gap, symbol of another honor almost as great: Draka-level access to the Web and unlimited personal mobility.

See that you deserve it,
she told herself sternly. Aloud: "Visual, external."

Walls and floor vanished from sight around her. Atoms locked in powered stasis, the wedge-shaped hull of the vehicle could not glow with heat. The air around it could, and that was just fading as the speed dropped from orbital to transonic. Below was the huge glittering of the Atlantic, empty save where sails marked pleasure-boats or once where the vast smooth curve of a robot harvester slid by beneath the surface. They passed over the coast, over what had once been the Kalahari desert. The Race had long ago decreed that it be lush green savannah and jungle kept inviolate for the hunting they so savagely adored, empty of habitation save for the crumbled remains of ancient mines.

A minute, and cultivation showed below. Tolya leaned forward with interest; this was the ancient heartland of the Domination, where the destiny of the planet had been hammered out and the Final Society born. Blocks of cropland showed green and dull-gold, between copses of forest and wider expanses of grazing. Widely spaced manor-houses dotted the surface, each with its dependent village of
servus
cottages; but the land showed an archaic network of roads, even the long-disused embankment of a railway. Abandoned cities were woodland also above the ruins of home and forge and factory, some showing a core of habitation still. Air traffic was heavy, dots of silent brightness streaking past her transport.

Archona still stood huge, sprawling along the basin and ridge that separated the great highveldt plateau to the south from the blue distances northward. Twelve million souls had dwelt here when the city was at its height, back in the first century. Even then manufacturing had been moving spaceward, mainly a matter of automaton-machines; population followed more slowly, to Luna and the opening of Mars, the reclamation of the Americas. With the Web, there was little need for clumping together, and
drakensis
had a need for open space even stronger than their human-Draka ancestors. Still, this was the capital of the Solar System, cultural as well as political. Half a million of the Race lived here, many transients; six times that many
servus,
for their masters' multifarious uses and pleasures. Many of the buildings dated back four centuries or more, marble and colonnade and stained-glass domes amid avenue and grove and garden.

"Clearance," the machine said. "Clearance for private pad, Archonal Palace."

The vehicle made a neat curve and then sank downward. The tips of cypress trees dropped by on either side, and then a broad open field snowed. Its surface was a dense tough mat of tiny flowers, blue and white and crimson; when the transport folded down a section of wall into a ramp and formed stairs, she could smell a faint scent of lilac and musk from the blossoms crushed beneath the ten-meter hull. A Draka waited below, in the high-collared black uniform of war. A gesture cut short Tolya's bow.

"Follow."

Tolya obeyed, stepping up onto the thin disk of the floater platform behind him. Even these last years such closeness was rare; she wiped the palms of her hands surreptitiously on the skirt of her tunic and adjusted her belt. The Master must be restricting his presence, since she felt no more than a tinge of the awe/fear/comfort it usually brought. The floater lifted to ankle height and turned, taking them through the field and up a long flight of granite steps flanked by sphinxes. Doors of fretted bronze opened; they slipped through corridor and courtyard and chambers.

I wish I wasn't so nervous,
Tolya thought; the artwork and statuary moving by were almost enough to distract her, even now. The floater stopped in one last room, domed in carved rose-colored rock crystal; she stepped off at the silent direction, folded her hands before her and waited. Here at least it was no strain not to look about. The walls were murals in bas-relief, in gold and ivory and precious stones, scenes of the Last War and its aftermath; a Draka hand had executed those depictions of triumphant slaughter, rape, and butchery. It was fitting for the Masters to delight in such things, but hers was a gentler breed.

enter.

A soundless order from her transducer as the tall circular door dilated.

She walked through into a smaller chamber of audience; one central chair carved from a block of jadeite, flanked on either side by three more in a horseshoe-shape; the Domination's winged dragon on the wall behind, with the slave-chain of mastery and the sword of death in its claws. The light was a little low for
servus
eyes but enough to see the beings who sat at their leopard ease, in long robes of rainbow color or tight uniforms of plain black. She sank to her knees on the pad provided and covered her hands with her eyes, bowing her forehead to the cool marble of the floor.

"I live to serve," she said.

"And you've served us well," the Archon's voice said. "Raise your head."

She sat back on her heels, swallowing. The Draka rested an elbow on the arm of his chair and his chin between thumb and forefinger; red-blond hair framed the hard-cut regular beauty of his face. Even then, her breath caught slightly at the sight of it.

"Exceptionally well, I understand," he went on, turning his head slightly to one side, toward one of his colleagues.

"Brilliant work," the head of the Technical Directorate said in confirmation. "Tolya's made some fundamental breakthroughs; without her, we'd be considerably further behind the enemy than we are."

Tolya shuddered. War flared beyond the orbit of Pluto; the ferals attacked, the claw of a universe cold and cruel, with only the Masters standing between her folk and oblivion.

The Archon made a single spare gesture with his free hand. "You needn't worry excessively," he said. "Its been too long since we had a war, but matters are well in hand . . . more or less. For now."

"For now," the Director of War said dryly. "And aren't you glad now, Alexis, that I and my predecessor insisted on keeping that 'useless' fleet updated and ready for reactivation?"

"Extremely glad, Chryse," Alexis Renston replied. "Gladder still that we had
some
preparation for the moleholes." He turned his eyes back to Tolya. "Legate Rohm informs me that we'll be able to duplicate the Samothracian technique shortly."

"Yes, overlord," Tolya said. "The energy expenditures will be very large, and you understand . . .

the enemy will be, ah, watching for the other end of any macrocosmic molehole we send toward the Centauri system. I would advise a staggered series in interstellar space covering most of the distance."

"We'll consider that," the Archon said. "Damnation. At best, a restoration of the stalemate."

"Not necessarily," the Director of Colonization said. "When we've beaten the humans back, it opens the universe to us. We anticipated thousands of millennia to bring the galaxy under the Domination of the Race. This will reduce the timescale by orders of magnitude."

"Something that the Archons of the colony worlds may not be entirely happy about," another Director mused. Since they were completely independent, now.

The Archon shrugged. "Needs must—and they
will
need us to defend against the Samothracians.

For that matter, even with faster communications, interstellar government will never be very tightly centralized."

"I agree," the Director of Technics said. "Just because moleholes are fast, doesn't mean they're magic. You still have to expend the same energy for transport you would to put the same mass up to a high fraction of lightspeed, and over interstellar distances that mounts up. We'll probably end up using star-to-star hops and relaying for really long trips."