The Stone Dogs (2 page)

Alexandria Herald

May 8, 1962

CLAESTUM PLANTATION

DISTRICT OF TUSCANY

PROVINCE OF ITALY

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

SEPTEMBER 1, 1964

Eric von Shrakenberg paused at the edge of the steps, looking up at the constellations of the northern hemisphere. This was the north front of his sister Johanna's Tuscan plantation manor; the stone pathway wound up to the crest of the hill under ancient trees, oak and cypress and chestnut. They had been here long before the Eurasian War, but the new masters of Europe had changed the patch of forest to suit their tastes. He could hear the tinkle of water ahead, smell the damp scents of new-cut grass and flowers; roses, he thought, opening their blooms to the hot Italian night. Sweat tickled his flanks under the linen of his
djellaba
robe, under the leather of the shoulder-holster harness beneath it.

For a moment, he considered going back to the birthday party, rather than seeking out his sister and her husband.
No
, he decided. The people were salt of the earth, no doubt about that.

Local planters, of course, overseers, Combine and League execs from the nearby towns… not many of them personally known to him.
And face it, provincial
, he thought.
And politics keeps me
in Archona too much, and Johanna and Tom seem to have
grown on to this place like a pair of barnacles
.

He would not have thought it of her, or of Thomas Ingolfsson either, when the man had been a neighbor and a friend and a rakehell fighter pilot in his sister's squadron, back during the War…
Well, time and marriage and children do change us
, he thought, and walked up the steps. The stone was smooth and warm and slightly gritty under his bare feet.

"Shhhh, Lele!" Yolande Ingolfsson hissed.

The night was quiet on this side of the hill; the house was visible only as a glow through the treetops ahead of them, the noise of the guests less than that of the crickets and nightjars and the slow rubbing of branch and thicket. Away to her right in the valley were the lights of the Quarters, but the party there would have ended sooner, the plantation-hands had to be back at their work tomorrow, getting ready for the vintage.

The serf girl beside her looked subdued. Yolande sighed to herself as she squirmed on her stomach past the topiary bush.

This whole birthday party for Ma had been
boring
. The gifts were stupid stuff, mostly: statues and paintings and jewelry, or Combine shares and like that. She gritted her teeth. And her cousin Alexandra von Shrakenberg had been put in charge of the children's part of the celebrations, and that was… was…

impossible
, she decided; that was the word. Being ten was impossible, too.

Alexandra's only thirteen, that's only three years older than
me
, she thought resentfully.
Stuck-up
. Because she was in Senior School; all she could talk about was the
serious
things they had to study and the
boring
love affairs at school and how her parents' estate in France was prettier than Claestum…

Yolande heard voices and string-music from uphill. There was a waist-high circle of clipped hedge ten meters before them. Her eyes
estimated the ground
the way the instructor at school told the children. The slope here was down from the wooded crest, and to the north; there was an artificial stream coming down, falling through a stepped marble trough in a chuckling tumble.

Cypresses on either side, opening out into circles around the pools, each with its benches and flowerbeds, and the hedges around those. So.

She looked back at Lele. The serf girl was nearly her age. Deng the foreman's daughter, one of
Yolande's
birthday presents, given to her like a puppy five years ago.
I'm getting too old to
play with serfs
, Yolande decided. Tantie Rahksan's son Ali had been fun, always ready to climb and stuff, but he had gotten all sullen and close-mouthed lately. Lele was better, but she was so weak and slow… All serfs were, of course. Yolande sighed imperiously, then led the way at a stop-motion leopard crawl toward the hedge; they were on clipped grass, which made it easier to move quietly. Reconnaissance was fun; there was a thrill to spying on the grownups, and you could hear things they wouldn't say in front of a child.

Dew chilled her chest and stomach as she crawled; mouth open and breathing light and regular, the way the trainers said.

Test your path, touch it lightly. Don't look at anything bright, it cripples your night-vision. She reached the hedge, rolled under the bench and curled her body to lie under it, a hand's-breadth back from the prickly leaves; it was whitethorn, not the shaggy multiflora used for field-boundaries out in the working part of the plantation. Lele followed more clumsily; they lay head to head, feet pointing in opposite directions along the circle.

Yolande applied her eye to a natural gap.

Ooops
, she thought. It was her mother and father, sitting at their ease in the pool; a housegirl was on one of the inner benches in the background, strumming on a mandolin. The pool itself was a circle of white-and-green marble two meters across, with water entering and leaving by the top and bottom ends.

Tantie Rahksan was there, too, laying out a tray with wine and fruit and a waterpipe. That was unusual: Tantie had been with Ma
forever
, and she never did menial's work. Supervised the house staff, and she had run the nursery before the Ingolfsson children were of school age. She was quite old, too, nearly as old as Ma, nearly forty. From Afghanistan; you had to look in the history books for that, it wasn't there any more.

Oh
. Tantie Rahksan had drawn her tunic over her head, and gotten into the pool, too; all she had on was a string of beads around her waist. It was funny, she didn't look all that old. Field wenches were just solid and brown and lumpy when they were forty, and the ones in the Great House got fat, mostly, but Rahksan was all curvy still. Her breasts floated up when she sat between Yolande's mother and father, handing them each a glass of wine. They drank some, and gave Rahksan sips out of their glasses, and passed the mouthpiece of the waterpipe back and forth. Yolande made a face; kif, she could smell it. Children weren't supposed to use it; she had snuck a quick puff once, and it had just made her feel heavy and sleepy.

I'd better leave
, she thought. Pa was kissing Rahksan, and Ma was touching her breasts. Tantie Rahksan was sort of squirming and making sounds, and her hands were stroking the Draka on either side of her. Yolande felt her ears burn, as if they were turning bright red at the tips, and a weightless feeling in her stomach. There were books and tapes about sex in biology class at school, of course, but children weren't supposed to watch, and it was
really
impolite, and Ma might strap her if she found out.

Yolande looked up, and met Lele's wide eyes. She laid a finger across her lips and prepared to squirm backward, when she heard a voice from beyond the other side of the pool.

Trapped
! she thought. A tall man at the north side could see the stretch of lawn they must cross to get to the next downslope terrace.
Oh, boy, I'm really going to get into trouble now
!

Longingly, she thought of her bed in the tower room and the new
Young
Draka's Illustrated Odyssey
Uncle Eric had brought her.
Oh
, shit,
that's Uncle Eric
!

"Oh. Sorry," Eric said, seeing that his sister and brother-in-law were busy, and half-turning to go.

"No matter," Thomas Ingolfsson said. "Just amusin' ourselves.

Settle in, if yo' were lookin' fo' us."

"Was at that," Eric said. Rahksan emerged dripping from the pool to take his robe; he looked her over with reminiscent pleasure.
Still a fine figure of a wench
, he thought, remembering times on the ancestral von Shrakenberg estate in southern Africa. She gave him a pouring smile and folded the cloth by the pool's curb, the Tolgren 10mm neatly on top.

"Ahh, that feels good," he said as he sank in across from the pair. The cool water seemed to wash more than his skin, relaxing tensions he had not known were there. He ducked his head under and threw the wet hair back from his forehead. "Good to slow down fo' a while, too," he continued, lying back against the glass-smooth marble and sliding down on the underwater shelf that acted as a seat.

"No more news about Sofie?" Johanna said, taking up her wineglass.

"Thank yo'," Eric murmured as Rahksan waded across with another for him. "No, not since this mornin.Those lung transplant operations are still tricky…"

"Wouldn't have minded if yo'd stuck it in Archona," Johanna said' Eric nodded gratefully; his sister had always liked Sofie, even though his wife came from what passed as a lower class among the Citizen caste.

"Yo' know Sofie, wouldn't hear of it," he said. A scowl:

"Wouldn't stop smokin', either."

Tom shrugged. "If'n I knows our Sofie"—his voice made an attempt at a hoarse soprano—"
People who expect to live a long
time don't join the paratroops, and if I hadn't done that I
wouldn't have met Eric
. And think that clinches the argument."

"Well,
now
she's goin' to quit," Eric said, and for a moment his voice went entirely flat. Then he shook off the mood. " Relief to get away from all the politics, too."

"Well, Archona
is
the capital," Johanna said. "Some grapes, Hahksi… which is why I stay away from it as much as I can." She cocked an affectionate eye at him. "Yo' know, brothah dear, I always figured Pa pulled in his polit'cal debts to get yo' the Senatorial seat just so yo' could write those damn subversive novels without gettin' a pill from the headhunters."

A Senator had a certain immunity from the Directorate of Security, even for offenses that would merit a pistol-bullet in the back of the head for an ordinary Citizen.

Eric turned his hands up from the edge of the pool and raised the palms. "Think that's how
he
thought about it." Eric's own war record had not hurt, but that was something he preferred not to remember. "I… it's a matter of responsibility." He grinned.

"Service to the State," he added.

"Glory to the Race," they muttered back, in the obligatory formality.

"Well, just between thee an' me, the headhunters are still tryin' to trip me up. Tried to block me from the Science and Technology section of the Strategic Plannin' Board, but failed."

"Oh,
ho
, we are movin' up in the world," Tom said. "Why, though?"

"Well, partly… yo' heard of Louise Gayner? SD Merarch, 'fore she retired. Representative from North Angola, now. Has it in fo'

me, personal. Damn it, the headhunters spend half their time tryin' to steal research from the Yankees; how do they expect us to
apply
it, if'n we don't make mo' use of the serfs? We've got to keep this creakin' anachronism of a social system workin'

somehow
. Field hands don't need to know how to read, factory-serfs can do without it. Even ordinary Janissary infantry soldiers could, though it's inefficient and we're givin' them all basic now. Bookkeepers an' secretaries and technicians, we could get away with rote-learnin', but times are
changin'
. Computers and space between them, they're the frontier of power… less than a hundred million Citizens in the Domination, a billion and a half serfs, we need millions with
real
education—"

He stopped, relaxed once more. "Sorry, didn't mean to launch into a campaign speech."
Though it wouldn't hurt to have
friends in the local sections of the Landholders' League and the
Party
, he thought. That brought sadness; would there never be a time again when he could wholly discard his work?
Probably not

, he decided.

"Tell me bout' it," Johanna said. "Just got one of those tiny brains ourselves; wonderful, if we didn't have to have the League send round a technician every month. Speakin' o' space," she continued, "how we doin'?" She looked up; was there an edge of wistfulness there? Eric suspected flying the family plane did not leave his younger sister
completely
satisfied…

"Not bad, not bad at all. The scramjets are workin', and the Technical Section people say the next lot will even be as safe as Russian roulette. That giant magnetic catapult dingus on Mt.

Kenia is on schedule. And we're copyin' that Yankee pulse-drive thing. Sounds insane, throwin' atomic bombs out behind yo' ship fo' propulsion, but evidently it works."

He yawned, slightly tired, slightly disoriented still from the long flight up. Always a little bewildering, to go from winter to summer. It made you conscious that you really did live on the surface of a globe. Eric glanced up; none of the new moving stars in Earth's firmament was visible just now, but they were there.

The Alliance and his people had two orbital platforms each now, and the tiny new stations on the moon.
It changes your
perspective
, he thought.
How I envy those youngsters up there
.

Johanna sighed. "Better be gettin' back to bed," she said. She and her husband rose, and Rahksan moved to towel them down and hand them their clothes.

"Mistis?" Eric looked up; the Afghan was crouched by her owner's feet, fastening the sandals. "Mmmm… maybe Mastah Eric want an attendant here?"

Eric smiled. "Don't let me deprive y'all," he said politely. There was a rustling sound; the Draka froze and reached out for their gunbelts. A moment passed.

Tom laughed, and snapped fingers for the serf with the mandolin. "Fox, or a rabbit. Haven't had bushman trouble here fo', oh, seven, eight years… Yo' stay here then, Kahksi; we can always teach Elizabetta heah a new tune," he said. Johanna chuckled and threw an arm around his waist.

"See yo' in the mornin', brothah," she called over her shoulder as they left.

Rahksan moved the refreshments closer and slid into the water again. "Masta Eric, yo' hasn't changed one li'l bit," she said, half chidingly. He smiled at the familiar accent. It was the serf dialect of the Old Territories, below the Zambezi, the speech of his childhood, the sound of home.