The Stone Dogs (40 page)

The doctor looked up from his screens. "She's hyper-ventilatin' and on the edge of adrenaline-blackout," he said dryly, giving Yolande a resentful look. "One cc dociline." She could read his thought:
Damned amateurs messing up a
medical procedure
.

Fuck you
, she thought back.

Marya's straining relaxed a fraction, and sanity returned to her eyes.
Good
, Yolande thought.
It would
be terrible if she went
mad.

" Wwwwhat—?" the serf shook her head angrily, as if trying to fling the stammer out of her mouth. "What are you doing to me?"

Yolande rested a hand on her stomach. "Seeding yo' womb,"

she said quietly, looking into the other's eyes. "Myfwany left me her ova. They don't have the egg-mergin' technique mastered yet, or I'd do that. So we're clonin' her; yo're to bear the egg."

The serf froze for a moment, then began to throw herself against the restraints, hard enough to make them rattle; it took Yolande a moment to place the sound she was making. A growl.

The two meditechs frowned without looking up from their instruments, and the doctor swore aloud.

"Prey's
prick,
Tetrarch!" His hand touched the controls. "
Two
cc dociline, an' if yo' don't stop interferin', I won't be responsible fo' the procedure!"

Yolande nodded, but spoke once more to the serf. "Marya."

She raised the controller box; the anger drained out of the serf, and she whimpered. "If the pregnancy an' nursin' go well, I won't use this on yo' again.
If they don't, I'll lock it on until yo' die!

Understand me, wench?"

A frantic nod. Then Marya's eyes darted down as the meditech touched her.

"Dona you worry, little momma," the meditech was saying from between the serfs legs. "This just take a
momento
." She had an aerosol can in her hand; with careful, swift movements she applied a thick pink foam to the genital area and lower stomach.

"Now just wait a minute."

"Nnnnno!" Marya bit at the corner of her lip. Yolande looked up; the other meditech had rolled her sleeves back to the elbow and thrust both hands into a claver. There was a flash and hum, and when the technician withdrew them they were covered in a thin film that glistened like solidified water where the highlights caught it. "Allll right, Antonia," she said.

"Hnnn!" from the serf on the table. Yolande followed her eyes; the meditech was wiping off the foam with cloths that had a sharp medicinal smell, moving down from belly to anus; the hair came with it. The Draka could see the muscles of Marya's belly and thighs jerk as the tech followed with a clear sharp-smelling spray. The pinkly naked flesh gleamed.

The serf with the molecular-film gloves replaced her co-worker. "Whata you think we win the bridge tournament?"

she said casually, spreading the subject's vulva with her left hand. With her right she ran an experimental finger into Marya's vagina. "If that crazy Giuseppe no—Jesus-Mary-Joseph, she tight like stone!"

Yolande pushed down with the flat of her hand. "Marya, relax," she said in a clear, clipped tone. After a long moment she felt the serf loosen into obedience.

"Thank you Mistis, thata better," the meditech said. Her companion handed her an instrument like a speculum, giving it a quick spray of lubricating oil from another aerosol.

"Agg. Nhhhhnng." Marya's voice, as the meditech inserted it with a series of deft, steady pushes. She gave the threaded dilator at the base two turns and hooked fold-out supports over Marya's thighs to hold it in place.

"Please! God, please!"

The doctor whistled through his teeth. "Catheter now, Angelica," he said.

"Giuseppe, he crazy like fox," the other tech said, unreeling the end of a spool of what looked like black thread from a machine on casters. It rolled near. "Here. He say you play too cautious, you lose alia time."

The gloved meditech threaded the tip of the catheter through the instrument and into Marya. "Master Doctore?"

"Good, anothah ten millimeters. Careful now. Very slowly."

Yolande stroked Marya's stomach and watched the wild, set eyes that stared down between her legs. "Good, that's it."

"Hmmm. Acidity balance good, uterine wall looks good…

getting a reading… Let's boost… All right, here we go."

Yolande looked down at the shuddering body on the couch, imagining a tiny form with red birth-fuzz lying in her arms; she smiled, and for a moment the weight of hatred lifted.

"Blastocyst's in the uterus. That's the egg in the womb to you laypeople," the doctor chuckled. "All right, Tetrarch, one seeded brooder. Virtually certain to take, anyway. Leave her here until tomorrow, she ought to be immobile. Intend to bring her back fo'

the bearin'?"

"No," Yolande said, with a slight smile. "We've got a perfectly good midwife on our plantation. Look at me, Marya." The serf looked up, licked her lips. Wisps of hair were plastered to her brow, and Yolande pushed them back with one finger, and touched her navel with the other hand. "Yo're going to bear Gwen fo' me, Marya, an' suckle her. That's how yo' serves me and the Race, now. Understand?"

The serf jerked slightly. The meditech had withdrawn the speculum and catheter; the two technicians laid a cloth over Marya's crotch and adjusted the stirrups so that her legs were together with knees up. One waited patiently with a blanket, while the other stripped the thinfilm gloves from her hands. The doctor rose.

"Yo' can pick her up tomorrow. Unless yo'd care to sit with her."

"No," Yolande said. The meditechs draped the blanket over the serf, rucking it around her neatly and freeing one hand next to a plastic cup of water. "No, I've got a date." This was better than inflicting pain, but she did not want to stay and watch.

"And Marya here needs to be alone with her thoughts, hey?"

SUPERCONDUCTORS TO BE MANUFACTURED IN SPACE

[NPS] It was announced today from Alliance Space Force headquarters In Monterrey that earlier, unconfirmed reports of the manufacture of room-temperature superconductors on the Freedom One orbital platform were true. Intelligence sources indicate that similar work is being done by the Domination's space-fabrication researchers, and in any case the process has proven to be so simple that any competent materials engineer could rediscover if given a sample.

The implications of this discovery are profound. Space Force spokesman Josepha Sherman said. The midrange

barium-copper-oxygen-rare earth superconductors, which were discovered in the late 1950s and require liquid-nitrogen cooling, have already found many applications. The new compounds have unlimited current density capacities, and remain superconductive up to the antiferromagnetic transition temperature, in the area of 330 degrees Celsius. While they require zero-gravity processing, the materials required are common, and eventually the superconductors will be no more expensive than aluminum cable. Applications in electric motors, power transmission and storage, transportation and computers are obvious and revolutionary. Others too numerous to mention will be found; for example, with the new materials shielding against solar-flare radiation becomes much easier.

Space and Science Digest

"New Materials from Space"

March 20, 1966

SOUTH WIND WAITING ROOM

CASTLE TARLETON, ARCHOHA

ARCHOHA PROVINCE

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

MAY 3, 1982

"Candidate Centurion Yolande Ingolfsson, please."

Yolande laid down the perscom board and nodded at the Auxiliary who stood waiting, hands folded and shaven head bowed. The South Wing was part of the original core of Castle Tarleton, two-story quadrangles of native sandstone and granite.

These were buildings erected as garrison-fortress against tribesmen armed with spears; now the descendants of those tribesmen swept the floors, and decisions made here sent warriors and ships to fight beyond the orbit of the moon.

And determine the fate of junior officers,
she thought nervously as she rose and settled the peaked cap on her head, following the serf out the yellowwood door and down the outside corridor. This hearing was something of a formality, for the members of the Assignments Board would have arrived at their decision days ago.
Not a formality for me! And I can still fuck it
up.

The corridor was the usual type in the Old Territories, solid wall on one side and arches on the other that looked in on the courtyards, on fountains and trellises and plants in giant stone pots. The inner wall bore trophies of arms and banners, faded cloth rippling in the thin highland air, noon sunlight bright on the old polished iron; shovel-headed Nguni spears and coats of Dervish chainmail, Mauser rifles and Spandau machine-guns. It was a perfect early-fall day, dry and warm with only a few high clouds. Yolande fought down a childish impulse to stop and check the alignment of her tunic or the polish on her boots; the garrison blacks were as immaculate as attentive servants could make them, and it was irrelevant anyway.

An antechamber of pale honey-colored stone, scattered with massive desk-consoles of polished granite; tall windows flooded it with sunlight, the smell of plants and cleaning-wax and old stone, a hint of the great city beyond. There was no sound save for the
tictic
of keyboards and two sets of bootheels. The final door was twice her height, dark red marula wood studded with copper rivets the size of her fist. Two Janissaries stood on either side, bulky and faceless in their impact armor and face-shield helmets; they snapped to attention as the doors swung open and the Auxiliary bowed her in.

"Candidate Centurion Yolande Ingolfsson, Aerospace Force, detached!" the serf announced.

The doors slid shut behind her with a soft
shnnnnk
. The great chamber beyond was dark save for the far wall, and her eyes took a moment to adjust. The picture before her was a hologram, a planetary shot taken close off Jupiter. The great banded disk hung against the black, stripes of blue-white and orange, the huge brick-red swirl of the Great Red Spot to the lower right.

Tiny globes against it were two moons, sulfur-colored Io and silver-bright Europa. For a moment too slight to halt her stride she was light-minutes from Earth, hanging in zero-C before the viewport and lost in the vision of storm-clouds greater than worlds.

The Board was seated at a horseshoe-shaped dais of black stone with its open end toward her. She came to a sharp stop, clicked heels and saluted, fist to breast.

"Service to the State!"

"Glory to the Race," came the reply.

She stood at an easy parade rest with her hands clasped behind her back and boots apart; the Arch-Strategos was in the center, the two lesser officers at either side visible with trained peripheral vision. Smoothly, mind took control of body, slowing her breathing and heartbeat, easing the constriction in her throat. There might be—probably were— medical sensors trained on her.
They expect you to be
nervous,
she thought.
And to
control it well.

"Greetings, Centurion," the Arch-Strategos said. He was an old man, an unmoving gaze whose pouches and wrinkles she could just barely see by the reflected light of the hologram. The voice was dry and cold, somehow papery, suggesting a whisper despite the conversational tone and amplification.

"We are here to review your record and future service," he continued. The hands moved over the screen in front of him; with a shock, Yolande realized he was blind.

The rustling voice continued. Now she could detect an Alexandrian accent, sharper-voweled than most, crisp and hard.

Folk of that city were prominent in highly technical branches of the Forces.

"Excellent but uneven record at the Yalta Academy; academics slightly better than passable, flight record in the top five percent; personnel evaluation as 'possibly lacking in necessary ruthlessness.' Squadron service unremarkable until Indian Incident. Exceptional combat record in the later stages of that conflict. Southern Cross award, second class. Exceptional record since then, first-class honors from the Astronautical Academy course, faultless deep-space ratings since." A pause.

"Evidently the events in India supplied a motivation lacking before."

Yolande felt sweat break out in a prickle along her upper lip, forced memories down beneath the surface.
Later, later.

"Therefore, you are approved for promotion to the grade of Cohortarch in the service of the Directorate of War, least seniority."

A wave of relief made Yolande's skin itch, as if it had life of its own and wanted to crawl free and dance. This was the critical point in a career officer's progress, when you learned if you were tracked for command or not. A Cohortarch in the Citizen Force ground-troops commanded a unit of five hundred, or equivalent.

Rather more in the Aerospace Command, where crews were rarely all-Citizen. This was the beginning of accomplishment, of her life's work of vengeance.

"Congratulations, Cohortarch," the general continued. "Now, do you have any requests as to your next assignment?"

Now what does the scary old bastard want?
she thought frantically. Then: best give them the truth.
"Deep-space warship
assignment,
" she said crisply, from the iron mask of her face.

"Ah." A long wait. "Why?"

"Service to the State, sir. The best opportunity to inflict damage to the enemies of the Race."

"Commendable," the Arch-Strategos said; was it possible there was a tinge of humor in his voice? "Be warned, Cohortarch.

You are on the verge of rank sufficient to hold independent command. The killing lust which is essential in a simple warrior of the Race, even in a junior officer, must now be controlled by a self-discipline more strict than any superior's orders." A long, considering wait. "What is the purpose of harming the enemies of the Race, Cohortarch?"

Oh, shit. He's wondering about my record from the alienist
.

"Suh, to break them to our Yoke."