The Stone Dogs (14 page)

Why then the widespread belief in a ruralist anti-urban Domination? The most obvious reason is the lower per-capita output and productivity of the Domination's economy. But

"productivity" is anything but a neutral, objective term; instead, it is culturally determined. The Draka maintain a huge unmechanized farming sector because it is, in their terms, highly rational. Shifting to mechanized agriculture would simply transfer serfs from field labor to making and servicing farm machinery, or into supplying and servicing the resulting industrial workers. The net result from the viewpoint of the Landholders, would be to transfer income from landed to industrial capital Increase the drain on the planet's non-renewable resources, and decrease the gentry's quality of life. That it would also greatly increase the overall standard of living is,
from a Draka point of view,
utterly irrelevant; to a Draka, the reason for having industry is to meet the military and security needs of the State, and that the Domination's economy does very well. Here we meet another cause of misunderstanding: the aesthetic and conservationist. Many Alliance citizens assume the importance the Domination attaches to environmental controls implies an antitech attitude similar to our "deep ecologists."

The social roots of Draka environmentalism are wildly different from ours. First this is an aristocrat's conservationism; a collective projection of the Landholder's desire to preserve and improve the family estate. Second, the Draka are long-term thinkers by tradition and inclination. Third and most important they can afford it An economy where industrial productivity is high but even skilled labor very cheap has a greater disposable surplus for sewage-plants and underground transmission lines. It is significant that the one area where the Domination is grossly inferior to the Alliance is in the production of modest consumer durables—our dominant sector, and the driving motor of our economy. There is very little environmental impact to a lavish standard of living when it is confined to a fly-speck of aristocracy; it would never have occurred to a Draka to invent the dishwasher. Here the fundamental truth of the myth we have been demolishing becomes apparent The Draka are perfectly capable of research and innovation, but a few specialists aside, they do not like it. The Draka elite would have been perfectly satisfied if all technological progress had come to a halt in, say, 1910; they have continued to fund research heavily for power-political reasons, not any dynamic internal to their own society. The Draka innovate in response to a perceived need; when the need is satisfied, they stop. Our restless worship of change for its own sake is alien to them alien and repugnant. In a Domination-ruled world, progress would probably gradually taper off and cease within a few generations.

Only the Alliance can take humankind to the stars.

The Mind of the Draka; a Military-Cultural Analysis
Monograph delivered by Commodore Aguilar Ernaldo U.S. Naval War College, Manila

11th Alliance Strategic Studies Conference

Subic Bay, 1972

CLAESTUM PLANTATION

DISTRICT OF TUSCANY

PROVENCE OF ITALY

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

APRIL, 1969

"Mistis."

Yolande stirred and blinked her eyes; Lele was at the foot of her bed, touching the mattress to wake her. Machiavelli was there, too. The cat rolled, flexed its feet in the air and tucked itself into a circle on the other side, tail over nose.

I wish I could do that
, Yolande thought, swinging her feet out and taking the juice, yawning and stretching.

"Momin', Lele," she said, rising and walking over to the eastern window and leaning through the thickness of the stone wall. There was just a touch of light over the trees, and the last stars were fading above. The air was cool enough to raise bumps on her skin, but there were no clouds. It would be a warm day, and sunny.

"Terrible about Marco, Mistis," Lele said. News spread fast on a plantation. "Whatevah could he want to hurt Rahksan fo'?" She began laying out Yolande's hunting clothes. There was indignation in her voice; violent crime was very rare in the countryside. And Rahksan was very much a mother-figure to the younger housegirls, which said a good deal. Favorites were not always so popular.

"Who knows?" Yolande said, forcing the memory out of her mind and starting her stretching exercises; she felt sluggish this morning, and sleep had come hard in the dark loneliness. She lay down on the padded massage table, and felt the blood begin to flow under the serfs impersonally skillful hands.

"Ali quite the hero, Mistis," Lele continued in a dreamy tone, pausing to rub a little scented oil into her palms. Rahksan's son was popular with the younger wenches, too, for entirely different reasons.

"Lele, be quiet,
" Yolande snapped. The serf subsided, quelled as much by the sudden tension in the young Draka's muscles as by the tone. "Is Mistis Venders up yet?"

"Yes, Mistis," the serf replied. "She—" There were foot-steps, and Yolande turned her head to watch as her friend climbed the stairs. She was already dressed in hunting clothes, boots and chamois pants, pocketed jacket of cotton duck with leather pads at the elbows, wrist-guards and a curl-brimmed hat.

"How y' feelin', sweet?" Myfwany said softly.

"Pretty good," Yolande replied, and realized it was true, suddenly. The achey feeling was gone, and her body was rested and loose. She arched her back against the masseuse's fingers, sighing with contentment as her friend perched one hip on the table by her shoulder and began braiding her hair with swift deft motions.

"Ever taken the big cats befo'?" Myfwany said.

"Nnnno," Yolande replied. "Little harder there on the small of the back, Lele… No, just wildcat. Foxes, of course, an' wolves now and then. Plenty of deer. John has, though, lion an' tiger an'

leopard, gun an' steel-huntin' both." Her people usually took game smaller than Cape buffalo on horseback, with javelins or lances, terrain permitting.

Lele finished the massage, carefully rotating knees and ankles to ensure suppleness, and brought the clothes. Yolande turned to look over one shoulder; Myfwany was watching her dress with frank pleasure, still half-sitting on the table with one leg swinging. Draka had little body-modesty—the nudity taboo had been dying in her grandmother's day—but the feeling of being watched with desire was strange.
I like it,
Yolande decided. It was like being stroked all over with a heated mink glove, tingly and comforting and exciting at the same time.

"Ready fo' some huntin'?" she asked, buckling the broad studded belt and bolstering her pistol. Automatically, her hands checked it; ejected the magazine, pressed a thumb on the last round to make sure it was feeding smoothly, worked the action, reloaded, snicked on the safety, and dropped it back into the holster, clipping the restraining strap across behind the hammer.

"Ready fo' that, too," Myfwany said. "Where's that brothah of yours?"

"C'mon, let's go roust him out; much longer and the sun will dry out the scent."

They clattered down the stairs, jumping four or five at a time with exuberant grace. Out through her rooms and down the corridors, past the sleepy early-morning greetings of the House staff, up and about their sweeping and polishing. They passed through the library complex, a series of chambers grouped around an indoor pool, two stories under a glass-dome roof; galleries ran back from it, lined shoulder-high with books, statuary, paintings. This had always been one of her favorite indoor parts of the manor, for reading or music or screening a movie; last year they had gotten a Yankee wall-size crystal-sandwich unit, the first in the region.

Off to one side a group of serfs was sitting about a table littered with papers, printout, coffee-cups, and trays: the senior Authorized Literates, managerial staff at their morning conference.

"Hio, Marcello," Yolande said, waving them down as they made to rise. That still felt a little strange. "No, go on with yo'

breakfasts, everybody."

Marcello was Chief Librarian, a lean white-haired man in his sixties who had been a university professor before the War.

Normally that meant Category 3m71, deportation to a destructive-labor camp, but her mother had thoughtfully snapped him up from a holding-pen while scouting out the estate on recovery-leave in '42. Yolande returned his smile; he had been an unofficial tutor of sorts when she was younger. Not that she was under house-staff direction anymore—no Draka child was once he turned thirteen and carried weapons— but there were fond memories. She nodded to the others she recognized: the paramedic from the infirmary, the schoolteacher—these days, even a plantation taught one child in five or so their letters—and the librarian's son and daughter, understudying as replacements in the usual way.

"We're off huntin'," she said to the elderly Italian serf. "Tell the Lodge we'll be there in bout' half an hour, an' have somethin'

sent to the armory, coffee an' a snack, will you?"

"Gladly, Mistis," he said. "I'll see to it." His accent was odd, much crisper than the usual serf slur, and as much British as Draka in intonation; she remembered some of the neighbors saying he talked too much like a freeman for their taste. He hesitated, then continued:

"Will, ah, any of the Family be at the funeral, Mistis?"

Yolande scowled, then forced her features straight and her mood back to where she wished it. "No. I wouldn't think so, all things considered."

Usually the Landholders of Claestum put in a brief appearance at such affairs, as a token of respect. The other serfs at the table exchanged glances, then returned their eyes to their plates and documents. Some estates would have hung an attempted murderer's body up in the Quarters for the birds to eat, as an example.

"John's through here," she continued, as they came out an arched doorway and into a long arcade. Cool air and dew from the gardens to their right; they cut through, and into her brother's rooms. "Hio, Johnny?" she called.

The lounging room was empty, with only the sound of moving water and music playing. A Cerraldson piece, quiet and crystal-eerie, the
Conquest Cantata.
Yolande had never liked it, it always made her think of the way serf-women cried at gravesides, which was odd since the sound wasn't anything like that. But somehow there was laughter in it, too… The outer room of John's suite was larger than hers, since he used it for entertaining, and surfaced on three sides with screens of Coromandel sandalwood inset in jade, mother of pearl, ivory, and lapis; they could be folded back to reveal the cabinets, chiller, and displays. The furniture scattered around the lavender-marble floor was mostly Oriental as well; there were a few head-high jade pieces, Turkestan rugs, and a familar bronze Buddha in the ornamental fishpond that ran through the glass wall into the garden beyond.

" Slug-a-bed!" Yolande said indignantly. "An' there he was, goin' on about how we should make an early start. Come on, Myfwany, we'll tip him out an' throw him in with those ugly carp."

There was a colonnade through the garden, which was mostly pools and and lilies. "Ah, 'Landa, maybe we should call ahead—"

Myfwany said as they pushed through carved teak doors and down a hallway.

"Johnnnny!" Yolande chorused, clapping her hands as they turned past the den into the bedroom. "C'mon, yo' big baby, sun's shin in' and we got an appointment with a kitty-cat! Oh."

John Ingolfsson was sitting half-dressed in one of the big black-leather lounging chairs. Colette was kneeling across his lap, and wearing nothing but anklets sewn with silver bells. They chimed softly as her feet moved. Her owner's mouth was on her breasts, and her hands kneaded his shoulders; the tousled blond hair fell backward to her heels as she bent, shuddering.

She gave a sharp cry of protest and opened her eyes as John raised his head and looked at his sister with an ironical lift of eyebrows.

"Yo'
might
knock, sprout," he said dryly, lifting the wench aside and setting her on her feet as he rose. "Or even, iff'n it isn't askin' too much, use the House interphone."

Yolande tossed her head, snorted and set her hands on her hips. "All afternoon, all night an' yo'
still
can't think of anythin'

else?"

She eyed the huge circular bed. John's other two regular wenches, Su-ling and Bea, were there in the tangled sheets. Bea was sitting, yawning and rubbing her face, smiling and making the slight courtesy-bow to the two Oraka girls. She was a big black woman, Junoesque, older than John, a present from relatives in the southlands given when he turned twelve. Yolande nodded back. She had always rather liked Bea; the wench was unassuming and cheerful and unsulky about turning her hand to ordinary work. Su-ling made a muffled sound and burrowed back into the sheets. Well, who could blame her…

"Should see what we'uns had to make do with in those border camps," John said. He stretched, naked to the waist, showing the classic V-shape of his torso. Smooth curves of rounded muscle hard as tile moved under tanned skin, like a statue in oiled beechwood. Not heavy or gross, the way an over-muscled serf who could lift boulders might be; graceful us a racehorse in motion. She felt a glow of pride. Even by Citizen standards, he was beautiful.

"Men," Yolande continued. "Hmmmph. It's a wonder we let yo' vote."

Colette was standing panting and ignored, sweat sheening her long taut dancer's body. Yolande caught a glare of resentment from the huge violet eyes, frowned absently at her. The serf glanced deliberately from Myfwany to Yolande and back, smiled ironically and made the full obeisance from the waist, palms to eyes and fingers to brow. The Draka girl gritted her teeth. The wench needed a good switching; John spoiled her.

"Colette did sort of distract me," he was saying mildly. "Meet you in the armory in, oh, no mo' than five minutes."

"Sho'ly, John," Myfwany said, touching Yolande on the arm.

She giggled as they left the bedroom, flapping one hand up and down in a burnt-finger gesture. "Oh, hoo, hoo, quite a sight!" she said.

Yolande blinked surprise at her. "Who, Colette?" she asked.