Marching Through Georgia (11 page)

"And I've been working up some stuff on the domestic angle,"

he said, indicating the interior with a nod. "How the Draka live at home."
Some of which won't see the light of day until after
the war
, he added silently.

The two young Draka stared at him. "I hope," Johanna said carefully, "you aren't under the impression that
most
citizens live this way." She waved a hand, indicating the Great House. "Or maybe you do? I've read some American novels about the Domination that are real howlers."

"Well, most Draka are quite affluent," he replied. "And I did get the impression that most citizen families were serfholders.

"Oh, yes," Eric said. "You have to be an alcoholic or a retard to be really poor, and then they just put you in a comfortable institution, sterilize you and encourage life-shortening vices."

Dreiser blinked. Eric was a decent enough sort, but half the time he just didn't seem to
hear
the things he said.

"Yes; well over ninety percent hold
some
serfs," Johanna said, propping a foot on the plinth of a statue. It was an onyx leopard, with ivory fangs and claws.

"But… hmmm, last census, three-quarters held ten or less.

Half five or less. Look, you know how our economy's set up?"

"Vaguely. 'Feudal Socialism'—that's the official term, isn't it?"

the American said.

Eric sighed. "Carlyle popularized the phrase, back over a century ago. Actually, it just sort of grew. To simplify… big industries are owned by the State, by the free-employee guilds, or by the Landholder's League."

"That's sort of like a cooperative for plantation owners, isn't it?" Dreiser said.

"Plantation
holders
. We don't have private ownership of land, strictly speaking. That's what the League started out as, yes.

Branched out into shipping, transport, processing, then banking.

Nowadays, hmmm, take the Ferrous Metals Combine. Iron and coal mining, steel, heavy engineering. Ten percent of the shares are owned by the War Directorate; used to be more, they started in with cannon-foundries. Thirty percent are owned by the Ferric Guild. The rest are shared by the State and the Landholder's League. The same is true in varying proportions with the others: Capricorn Textiles Combine, Naysmith Machine Tools, Trevithick Autosteam, Dos Santos Dirigibles…

"So instead of industry exploiting agriculture, the way it is with you Americans—well, the von Shraken-bergs get a third of their income from the League, apart from what four thousand hectares brings in."

Johanna stretched and yawned. "So these days, most citizens are city-dwellers—technicians, engineers, overseers, bureaucrats, police agents, artists, schoolteachers… The
salatariat
not the
proletariat
."

Eric snorted. "Feeble wit, sister dear. Actually, it's more complicated than that. There's a, hmmm, 'private sector'—small business, luxury goods, mostly. And, for example, guess who lobbies for a higher standard of living for the factory-serfs?"

"Nobody?" Dreiser said coolly.

The Draka laughed. "Actually, the League," Eric said.

"Plantation agriculture means farming for sale; 91 percent of the population are serfs, after all. The better the Combines feed and clothe their workers, the more we sell. In the old days we sold abroad, but that's out of the question nowadays—we're just too
big
."

Johanna nodded and tossed her robe over one shoulder.

"Adieu, Bill, Eric; see you at dinner." Rahksan rose to follow her.

"You two discuss the whichness of wherefore; time enough for work when the leave-pass is up."

Dreiser watched her go. Colored light reflected off marble and fresco to pattern her skin, which rippled smoothly as she swayed across the floor. He indicated the block, with its knives, and the exercise floor. "That sort of thing is impressive as hell, especially the chucking-each-other-about part," he said, as the women left.

"Oh, you mean the
pankration
? Actually, we got most of that from the Asians, oddly enough. Despite the Greek name. Back in the 1880's, when we imported a lot of coolies. The overseer tried to touch up a lot of Okinawans with his sjambok and found out they had ways of personal mayhem… bought their contracts, learned it all, and set up a
salle d'armes
."

"Ah," Dreiser said again, making a mental note. "Surprising how well your sister stands up to you, considering the advantages."

Eric ran fingers through his short, damp hair. "Size and reach, or gender?" he said. "Incidentally, watch what you say on that subject when we get back to the field. Lot of women are still pretty sensitive about that sort of thing; there was a long controversy about it when I was a toddler and you still find the occasional shellback conservative. You might be able to get away with turning down a duel, being a foreigner, but there are some who'd… react."

"React how?" the American asked.

"They'd break your bones."

"You re serious? Yes, I see you are. Thanks, Eric." The Draka shrugged. "You'll understand it better when we're in the field,"

he said.

Both love and hatred can be frustrating emotions, when
their object is not present My father had sent me away. Not
that I missed him overmuch; it was not he who had raised me,
after all. But he had sent me away from the only home I had
ever known, from those who had loved and cared for me. How
could I not hate him? But I was a precocious child, and of an
age to begin thinking. In Philadelphia I was a stranger, and
lonely, but I was free. Schooling, books, later university and the
play of minds; all these he had given me. at the risk of his own
life; there was nothing for me in the Domination. And he was
my father; how could I not love him?

And he was not
there;
I could not scream my anger at him.

or embrace him and say the words of love. And so I created a
father in my head, as other children had imaginary playmates:
daydreams of things we would do together—trips to the zoo or
Atlantic City, conversations, arguments…an inner life that
helped to train the growth of my being, as a vine is shaped by
its trellis. Good training for a novelist A poor substitute for a
home
.

Daughter to Darkness: A Life

by Anna von Shrakenberg

Houghton & Stewart New York, 1964

OAKENWALD PLANTATION OCTOBER 1941

Arch-Strategos Karl von Shrakenberg sipped carefully from the snifter, cradling it in his hands and looking down from the study window, southwest across the gardens and the valley, green fields and poplars and the golden hue of sandstone from the hills…

One more
, he thought, turning and pouring a careful half-ounce into the wide-mouthed goblet. One more, and another when Eric came; he had to be careful with brandy, as with any drug that could numb the pain of his leg. The surgeons had done their best, but that had been 1917, and technique was less advanced; also, they were busy. More cutting might lessen the pain, but it would also chance losing more control of the muscle, and that he would not risk.

He leaned weight on the windowsill and sighed; sun rippled through the branches of the tree outside, with a cool wind that hinted of the night's chill. He would be glad of a fire.

Ach, well, life is a wounding
, he thought. An
accumulation of
pains and mannings and grief. We heal as we can, bear them
as we must, until the weight grows too much to bear and we go
down into the earth
.

"I wish I could tell Eric that," he whispered. But what use? He was young, and full of youth's rebellion against the world. He would simply hear a command to bow to the wisdom of age, to accept the unacceptable and endure the unendurable. His tongue rolled the brandy about his mouth.
Would I have stood for that
sort of advice when I was his age
?

Well, outwardly, at least. My ambitions were always more
concrete
. He rubbed thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose, wearily considering the stacks of reports on his desk; many of them were marked with a stylized terrestrial globe in a saurian claw: top secret.
I wanted command, accomplishment, a
warrior's name
—
and what am I
? A glorified clerk, reading and annotating reports: Intelligence reports, survey reports, reports on steel production and machine-tool output, ammunition stockpile reports…

Old men sitting in a basement, playing wargames on sand
tables and sending our sons and daughters out to die on the
strength of it
, he thought. You succeeded, won your dreams, and
that was not the finish of it
. Not like those novels Eric was so fond of, where the ends could be tied up and kept from unravelling. Life went on… how dry and horrible that would have seemed once!

Stop grumbling, old man
, he told himself. There had been good times enough, girls and glory and power, more than enough if you thought now most humans had to live out their lives.

Limping, he walked down one wall, running his fingers lovingly along the leather-bound spines of the books. The study was as old as the manor, and had changed less; a place for the head of the family, a working room, it had escaped the great redecoration his mother had overseen as a young bride. His eyes paused as he came to his wife's portrait. It showed her as she had been when they had pledged themselves, in that hospital on Crete, looking young and self-consciously stern in her Medical Corps uniform, doctor's stethoscope neatly buttoned over her breast and her long brown hair drawn back in a workmanlike bun.

Mary would have helped
, he thought, raising his glass to her memory. She had been better than he at… feelings? No, at talking about them when it was needful. She would have known what to do when Eric became too infatuated with that damned Circassian wench.

No, he thought grudgingly.
Tyansha understood
—
better
than Eric. She never tried to get him to go beyond propriety in
public
.

He had tried to talk to his son, but it had been useless. Maybe Mary could have got at him through the girl. Mary had been like that—always dignified, but even the housegirls and fieldhands had talked freely with her. Tyansha had frozen into silence whenever the Old Master looked at her. Tempting just to send her away, but that would have been punishing her for Eric's fault, and a von Shrakenberg did not treat a family serf that way; honor forbade. He had been relieved when she had died naturally in childbirth, until…

Mary could be hard when she had to be
, Karl thought.
It was
a tool with her, something she brought out when it was needed.

Me… I'm beginning to think it's like armor that I can't take off
even if I wanted to
.

The Draka had made more of the differences between the sexes in his generation, although less than other peoples did. The change had been necessary— there was the work of the world to do, and never enough trustworthy hands—but there were times when he felt his people had lost something by banishing softness from their lives.

Well, I'll just have to do my best
, he thought. His hand fell on a rude-carved image on a shelf—a figurine of Thor, product of the failed attempt to revive the Old Faith back in the last century. "Even you couldn't lift the Midgard Serpent or outwrestle the Crone Age, eh, Redbeard?"

A knock sounded. That would be his son.

Haven't seen the inside of this very often, since I was a boy
, Eric thought, looking about his father's study.
And not often
under happy circumstances then. Usually a thrashing
. There was nothing of that sort to await today, of course; merely a ferewell.
Damned if I'm going to kneel and ask his blessing,
tradition or not
.

The room was big and dim, smelling of leather and tobacco, open windows overshadowed by trees. Eric remembered climbing them to peer within as a boy.

Walls held books, old and leather-bound; plantation accounts running back to the founding; family records; volumes on agriculture, stockbreeding, strategy, hunting. Among them were keepsakes accumulated through generations: a pair of baSotho throwing spears nearly two centuries old, crossed over a battle-axe—relics from the land-taking. A Chokwe spirit mask from Angola, a Tuareg broadsword, a Moroccan
jezail
musket, an Armenian fighting-knife with a hilt of lacy silver filigree…

And the family portraits, back to
Freiherr
Augustus von Shrakenberg himself, who had led a regiment of Mecklenberg dragoons in British service in the American Revolution, and taken this estate in payment. Title to it, at least; the natives had had other ideas, until he persuaded them. Six generations of Landholders since, in uniform, mostly: proud narrow faces full of wolfish energy and a cold, intelligent ferocity. Conquerors…

At least that was the face they chose to show the world
, he thought.
A man's mind is a forest at night. We don't know our
own inwardness, much less each other's
.

His father was standing by the cabinet, filling two brandy snifters. The study's only trophy was above it, a black-maned Cape lion. Karl von Shrakenberg had killed it himself, with a lance.

Eric took the balloon glass and swirled it carefully to release the scent before lifting it to touch his father's. The smell was rich but slightly spicy, complementing the room's odors of books, old, well-kept furniture, and polished wood.

"A
bad harvest or a bloody war
," the elder von Shrakenberg said, using the ancient toast.

"Prosit," Eric replied. There was a silence, as they avoided each other's eyes. Karl limped heavily to the great desk and sank into the armchair amid a sigh of cushions. Eric felt himself vaguely uneasy with child-hood memories of standing to receive rebuke, and forced himself to sit, leaning back with negligent elegance. The brandy bit his tongue like a caress; it was the forty-year Thieuniskraal, for special occasions.