The Stone Dogs (66 page)

Gone. She dropped to her knees and bent forward, heedless of the ends of her hair trailing in the foam.
Gone.

Yolande looked back to her daughter with a smile. "That seemed to go well, honeychile," she said.

Gwen nodded and lay back on the deckchair to spare the serf intrusive eyes. "Thank yo', ma," she said.

Yolande shrugged.
How strong and beautiful, and how sweet
with it,
she thought. It was an ache in the chest, pride and love beyond bearing.
Me and Myfwany—you have the best of us both

, she thought.
Of
both your mothers.
Marya was still down by the water's edge.
Or all three.

Gwen took a fig from the basket and nibbled. "Almost a shame to be leavin'," she said happily. "It's been a good three days, just yo' and the sibs, ma."

"Liar," Yolande said amiably. "Y'all are indulgin' me, and I know it. Yo' thoughts are divided about equal between the new ship an' dancin' the mattress gavotte with Alois; he's likewise, and polite to me because he's got long-term designs on yo'.

Holden is bored in the manner of six-year-olds, and Nikki,—she shrugged again; her oldest son was fifteen—"likes it here because there are a whole new set of housegirls to lay. Plus good spearfishing."

Gwen laughed, turning her eyes skyward. "
Lionheart's
a real beauty, though, ma," she said musingly. "Gods, when we took her out fo' the shakedown! Deuterium-boron drives've got it all
ovah
the older types, the exhaust's
all
charged particles." Her voice took on a dreamy tone. "Fifty thousand tonnes payload, she's fitted out like a liner! Even a spin-deck at one G. Only- - "

"Gwen."

"—two months to Pluto! Granted we'll be there a year settin'

up the base, but—"

"Gwen, honeychile,
I was on the design committee."

Her daughter laughed and waved acknowledgment. "Sorry, ma."

"You've been noble not talkin' shop, Gwen. I recognize true love when I hears it."

"And, well, I
am
sorry to be leavin' yo'. And not… Know what I mean?"

"Oh, yes, child of my heart, I know
exactly
." A long laugh, and she reached up to squeeze a shoulder. "Fo' reasons too numerous to state,' I'm feeling first-rate just now. But yo' are always a…

string of lights around my heart, child. Ah, here comes Marya."

Gwen rose. The serf stopped at arm's length and threw back her head; she had never stooped, but Yolande thought she saw a different curve to the neck. "Thank you, Missy Gwen," she said.

The young Draka embraced her. "Always welcome, Tantie-ma," she said. "Well—"

Her mother made scooting motions. "Alois and yo' have notions on how to spend the afternoon. Honestly, with an eighteen-month cruise ahead of yo'—"

"Ma!. "

"But youth will be served. Or serviced—"

"Ma!"
Mock-indignation.

"Run along, yo' Tantie-ma and I will find some way to pass the time." Yolande winked, and thought she caught a hint of real embarrassment on her daughter's face.
One thing that hardly
changes,
she thought.
It never seems quite natural when the
older generation doesn't lose interest.

"Strange, Mistis," Marya said, watching the child she had borne walk away into the palms and oleander and hibiscus.

"How so?" Yolande turned her attention back to the serf. Her half-hour by the waves seemed to have composed her, at least.

The coffee-brown synthtan suited her, as well.

"When… when she was little, she was so helpless as I held her.

Now I can feel how gentle she's being hugging me, and she could crush me like an eggshell. Strange to remember her so tiny."

"True enough. Lie down here."

Marya sat beside the Draka, wrapping her arms around her shins and laying her head on her knees.

"You want me?" she said, smiling faintly.

"Yo' and a snack and a nap befo' dinner," Yolande said. "Settle for the snack and nap if yo' tuckered out."

"Not yet," Marya said, with the same slight curve of her lips.

"You have been very… energetic, since Archona."

"Good news does that to me, and no, I can't tell you what."

CLAESTUM PLANTATION

DISTRICT OF TUSCANY

PROVINCE OF ITALY

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

APRIL 4. 1998

"Hello, Myfwany," Yolande said, sitting by the grave with her elbows on her knees. Wind cuffed at the spray of roses.

There was another nearby, now, her father's. There were a few clouds today, white and fluffy. The air was just warm enough to be comfortable sitting still, with an undertone of freshness that was like a cool drink after the tropical heat.

"Tina's coming along well," she continued. "Gods, it'll be interestin' to see what a merger of my genes and yourn comes out to! With all the little improvements they puttin' in these days."

The wind ruffled the outer leaves of the flowers. They were still a little damp from the sprayer in the arbor where she had picked them. Yolande leaned forward to smell the intense wild scent.

"And Gwen… ah, love, yo'd be proud of her. Assistant Com officer on this new ship, the
Lionheart.
Exploration voyage, really; establishin' a study-base for the outer system and the Oort clouds. Cold out there… Hope it works out for her. Hope she settles with Alois, he's a good sort."

She smiled and touched the flowers and the short dense grass.

"And there's somethin' else. Wotan and the White Christ, it's so secret I hardly dare tell yo', sweet! Gods witness, I'd begun to despair of the whole Domination, we seemed to be goin'

nowhere, until Uncle Eric let me in on the secret. Been in the plannin' since,"—she swallowed—"since befo' India. A chance to put an end to the struggle, once and fo'all."

Yolande stopped for a moment.
This is the most painful
pleasure of my life
, she thought.
"I'm…
worried, though.

About Uncle Eric. He's… not frightened—it's just so easy to be indecisive at these levels, love! Always easier not to decide. He hates the idea of usin' it, takin' the risk. Even of the killin'

involved." Slowly: "I admit it, love, I don't like the idea either.

The fighters… they take they chances, same as I. Always hated hurtin' the helpless, and as fo' throwin' sunfire across the land…"

she made a grimace of disgust, looking out across the hills of her birth-country. Birds went overhead, a flock almost enough to hide the sky for an instant.

She hammered a fist on her knee. "But what can we
do
, love? I could live with the thought of everythin' bein' destroyed, when there was no choice. Now there
is
. And the longer we wait, the worse. Ah, Myfwany, it's so hard to know what's
right.
"

Shaking her head, she rose and dusted her uniform. "I wish yo' were here, honeysweet," she said. "I promise… I'll do my best fo' the children. Goodbye fo' now, my love. Till we meet again."

"What the hell is
that?
" Marya exclaimed. "Mistis," she added hastily.

"That," Yolande replied, "is the most expensive toy evah built."

She had managed to shake most of the crowd of officials at Florence Airhaven; even the officer from Tech Sec, who was reasonably interesting when he got onto the yacht's construction.
Enough of crowding
back on Luna,
she thought, and besides, she had checked out fairly thoroughly on the simulators. They were almost alone on the floater; even this backwater had modernized maglev runways, now. The craft before them was not something it had seen before, or most other airhavens in the Domination, either. Ninety meters long, a slender tapering wedge; the bottom of the hull curved up at the rear into the slanted control fins. There were control-cabin windows at the bow, scramjet intakes below the rear edge. And what looked like a huge four-meter bell pointing backward at the stern.

"It's from the test program fo' the fifth generation pulse-drives, the Rex class. A sliver of afternoon light fell within the thrustplate, and glittered off the lining. "Synthetic single-crystal thrustplate, stressed-matrix/mag equalizers, deuterium-boron-11 reaction. They had two of the first units left ovah. Decided to try matin' them to a heavy scramjet assault-transport; first Earth-surface to deepspace craft ever built, is the result." A Yankee might have junked the test units, but Draka engineers had a rooted abhorrence of throwing anything that still worked away.

"The power-to-weight's good enough yo' could take off on the pulsedrive," Yolande continued, as they came to the lift and stepped on board. It hummed quietly and swept them past the black undersurface heatshield; the top of the craft was dark as well, but the texture was subtly different. "Though that wouldn't be neighborly. Actually it's a waddlin' monster in atmosphere, and mostly fuel tank inside; liquid hydrogen, of course. Got good legs, though; that reaction is energetic. Yo' could make it to Mars or even the Belt, iff'n yo' didn't mind arrivin' dry."

They stepped through the open door. It swung shut behind them, and she took a deep breath. Filtered air, the subliminal hum of life-support systems; pale glowpanel light, and the neutral surfaces of synthetic and alloy.
Space,
Yolande thought.

Even though they were still on the surface, it had an environment all its own. She ducked her head through the connecting door into the control cabin. There were comfortable quarters aft; it was essentially a very expensive yacht.

Not that they're likely to become a hot item anytime soon
, she thought wryly. Even discounting the cost of the drive as part of the research overhead, the
Mamba
would price in at about the combined family worth of the Ingolfssons and the von Shrakenbergs. For now, the Archon and the Commandant of Aresopolis were assigned one each.

She returned the pilot's salute. The control deck was horseshoe shaped, with pilot and copilot forward, Weapons and Sensors to either side on the rear. Only the two pilots were here now, of course.

"Pilot Breytenbach," she said to the number two. "Yo' can go aft; I'll sit in on this." Yolande grew conscious of her servant hovering behind. "Well, come in, wench." Marya flinched slightly, fingering the bare strip on her wrist; the controller cuff would have shocked her away from activated military comp systems like this. Yolande saw her take a deep breath and step forward. Good wench, she thought.

"That crashcouch," she said, indicating the Sensor station.

She swung herself into the copilot's seat and pulled the restraints down. "All yourn, Pilot," she said. He nodded briefly, running his eyes in a last check over the screens.

"Highly cybered," Yolande said, indicating the control panels

."Less yo' has to fight her —
in which case
yo' bumfucked,
because those lasers are a joke
—"menu-commands to take yo'

anywheres within range."

She settled back happily. "I'll take ovah out of atmosphere,"

she said. They would be back to the world of the Commandant's office soon enough.
Tech Sec designs a toy, I might as well use
it,
she reflected. The big vehicle lifted off the runway with the peculiar greasy feel of maglev and turned toward the long reach.

All human beings are conscious of the process of choice, of choosing between alternative courses of action. Yet we are also and inevitably conscious of the
limits
of choice; if we see a three-tonne weight falling towards us, we have the "choice" of jumping or being crushed. Free will may appear absolute in the abstract but in the real concrete world in which we live it often seems a mere illusion, a mental construct. My own opinion is that both propositions are true, and that reality reflects this in a number of ways. First the constraining situation within which an individual finds himself is itself the result of countless previous decisions. It is their sum total forming an interacting field which we can never escape. So instead of an unconstrained fan reaching out in all directions, our choices are more in the nature of a set of tracks within canyon walls. For the most part the walls are narrow; we can veer a little to one side or the other, but the main direction is fixed. Moreover, even to use this small degree of latitude takes
effort,
to move the "wheels" of our path from one set of tracks to another.

Sometimes the canyon walls open out for a time;
then
the fan of possibilities spreads, into a delta of radiating alternatives.

Time presses. One or another alternative must be chosen. Once the choice is made, the course of a life—or a nation, or a world—is set on a new path. And the choice an individual makes becomes in turn immutable destiny for others, foreclosing
their
alternatives.

Such changes of path may be the result of continuous effort or an ever-vigilant readiness to seize the moment Most terrifying of all, they may be the result of nothing more than raw accident…

Meditations on a Life

by Eric von Shrakenberg

Central Press, Archona

2003

DRAKA FORCES BASE ARESOPOLIS

MARE SERENITATIS, LUNA

NOVEMBER l, 1998

0930 HOURS

"Sector Seven, Level Twelve," the transporter capsule said.

The lid hissed open, and Marya stepped out.

"Ident," the guard said. The room was a narrow box with only one exit, brightly lit and completely bare, smelling of cold rock.

The guard was in Security Directorate green, battle-armored and carrying a gauntlet gun; his head turned toward her like a mirrored globe, her own distorted face reflecting off the helmet shield.

She stepped up to the exit and laid her hand against the screen set in the wall beside it. "Marya E77AI422, property of Arch-Strategos Ingolfsson, Commandant, on personal errand."

Her mouth was tissue-paper, and the pulsebeat in her ears roared louder than trumpets. This was action, covert action. It was impossible to disguise, impossible to cover, no matter her skill on the infonet. Recognition sets were embedded in the central brains, and flagging from a station with this priority was direct-routed down to read-only memory. It would stand out, stand out, the minute anyone did a search on her activities today. Even the most dimwitted Orpo would notice someone being in two places at once.