The Domination

Chapter Three

LYON, PROVINCE OF BURGUNDIA

DETENTION CENTER XVII

APRIL 1947

Tanya von Shrakenberg eased herself to her feet, leaving the half-empty cup of coffee on the table and gently uncurling the small solid weight of her daughter. Not so small anymore, either; arms and legs just starting to lengthen out, she would have the rangy height of the von Shrakenberg line, even if her coloring took after her father’s maternal ancestors. Tanya looked down at the fine-featured oval face, already losing its puppy fat and firming towards adulthood, and stroked one cheek.

I wonder if I could catch that? she mused, in painter’s reflex. Difficult, when so much of an image like this was your own response to it; that was the weakness and strength of representational art, that it relied on a common set of visual codes . . . Oh, shut up, Tanya told herself. Critics theorize, you’re a painter.

The girl murmured without opening her eyes, turning towards her waiting nurse and nuzzling her face into Beth’s wide soft chest. Tanya felt a slow warmth below her heart, and reached out to draw a light finger down her cheek. Mother, painter, soldier, Landholder, she mused. All true, but which is really me, the me I talk to inside my head? Knowledge was a thing of words, but you could never really reduce a human being to description. Still less a child, whose self was still potential, before the narrowing of choice. She felt a moment’s sadness; children changed so fast, the one she knew and loved reshaping into someone else as she watched.

“Shall Ah wakes her, Mistis?” Beth asked.

“Let her rest,” Tanya replied. Not enough sleep last night, and then the long drive down, the family gathering in Paris had been enjoyable but strenuous for all of them, a good thirty adults and more children. The first opportunity since the War, now that travel was getting back to normal and demobilization nearly complete, and most of those still in the Forces able to get leave. A good deal of useful work, besides the socializing; plans had been made, political and otherwise, and the dozen or so younger members who were settling in Europe had compared notes.

Damnation, Tanya thought, catching herself on the back of the chair. Balance going again. Pregnancy always did that to her.

She looked around the office, eager to be gone but reluctant to face the bother of the trip; the air smelled of coffee and food from the buffet and the peculiarly North European odor of very old damp stone, so different from the dry dust-scent of her birth province, Syria. At Evendim, her parents’ plantation in the Bekaa Valley, the days would already be hot. From her old room in the east wing she could watch the sun set over the Lebanon mountains to the west, down from the snowpeaks and the slopes green with the forests of young cedar her people had planted; over the terraced vineyards in patterns of curving shadow; slanted golden sheets between the tall dark cypress that fringed the lawns behind the manor.

They tossed in the evening cool, the wind down from the mountains faintly chill against your skin while the stone of the window ledge was still blood-warm from the day’s sun. Sweetness from the mown lawns, delicate and elusive from the long acres of cherry orchard blossoming between the greathouse and the main water channel; sometimes the sound of a housegirl singing at her work, or faint snatches of the muezzin calling his flock to prayer, down in the Quarters.

No use getting homesick, she chided herself. It was probably just this damned depressing city . . . Tanya had been a Cohortarch in the Archonal Guard Legion when she saw Lyon last, back in ’45; burnt-out rubble, and the natives sick and hungry enough to eat each other. Things had improved a little, but not enough.

Or it could just be pregnancy, the aches and itches and the continual humiliating need to pee. It was unfair: some women went into the sixth month hardly showing at all . . . Thank Freya this was the third; one more and she could count that particular duty to the Race done. Or no more if it was twins again; her family ran to them. Children were delightful and no particular bother; if anything, between the servants and the eight months a year at boarding school required of all young Draka, you scarcely saw them enough. She glanced over at Gudrun, the bright copper hair resting against Beth’s dark breast. Sleep was the only time you saw her still; where all that energy came from was a mystery. But having them was something she would rather have skipped, the whole process was stupid and barbaric, like incubating and then shitting a pumpkin.

“Thank you for your time,” she said. “It’ll help; stonemasons and electricians and bookkeepers are in demand. I expect you’ll be glad when the other Directorates and the labor agencies get set up proper an’ things normalize.

“It’ll be good to get back home,” she said more quietly, to Andrew. Her brother looked up, unhooking the borrowed electroprod from his waist and smiling.

“The new place is home already?” he asked, lifting one eyebrow.

The movement pulled at the scar on his cheek, exaggerating the quizzical gesture.

“Of course. Chateau Retour’s mine, and Edward’s”—she laid a hand on her stomach—“an’ our next will be born there. Evendim stopped being home a long time ago, it’s Willie’s.” Draka law and custom demanded a single heir for an estate, usually the eldest. “We can visit, but that isn’t the same . . . I worry about you, brother mine; where’s the place you can call home? Officers’ quarters in Helsinki? We fought the War, let the next generation do their share. There’s still some good landholdings ready for settlement, down in the Loire valley. You should get yourself a mate, stop wastin’ all your seed on the wenches, make a place for y’self. The Race has to build, or what’s the conquerin’ for?”

“Maybe after my next hitch,” he said absently, pulling the folded cap from under his shoulder strap and settling it on his head. “Loki’s hooves, I’m barely thirty-odd; still plenty of time, unless I stop a bullet, and good Janissary officers are scarce. An’ Finland will be a while bein’ tamed. A while, surely.” He blinked, and she could see his consciousness returning, pulled back from the forests and snowfields of the Baltic. “Meanwhile, leave the motherin’ to Ma, she’s been bombardin’ me with the same advice since we reached the Channel.”

“An’ the young fogey should shut up about it, eh?” Tanya reached to stroke her daughter’s forehead. “Wake up, sweetlin’, time to go down to the cars.” To her brother: “Well, don’t forget to visit, before they post you back east. Some good hunting a little up valley; boar and deer, at least. And we’ve still got crates of that stuff you picked up, in the attics. Should get it cataloged soon.”

Her brother laughed and took the yawning Gudrun from her nurse, tossing her and holding her up easily with his hands beneath her arms; she smothered a smile and responded with an adult glower. “Not too old to play with y’uncle, I hope?” he said, and continued over his shoulder to his sister: “It took a two-ton car to drag the lot you got out of Paris, as I recall.”

He turned to the Security officer. “Thanks again, Strategos Vashon.”

The secret policeman closed a folder, rose and circled the desk to take the offered hand, give a chuck under the chin to Gudrun as she sat on her uncle’s shoulder. “No trouble,” he said. “A relief from my other problems, frankly; and I knew your granduncle Karl, we worked together after the last war.” Unstated was the fact that Karl von Shrakenberg was now an Arch-Strategos of the Supreme General Staff; there was always an undercurrent of tension between the Directorates of War and Security, the Domination’s two armed services. It never hurt to have a favor due. “Nothin’ but problems; sometimes I’d be glad to be back home, promotion or no.”

Tanya nodded to the murals of rocky hills and plains covered in long lion-colored grass. “There, Strategos?”

He shook his head, fitting another cigarette into the ivory holder. “That’s North Katanga, where I was born; I meant Bulgaria. Sofia’s home; I worked out of there from 1920 until the Eurasian war started. Probably why they sent me here, similar problems.”

Tanya shrugged. “Ah, Sofia; pretty town, had a leave there durin’ the War . . . ’43, I think.” A grin. “Gudrun here’ll take care of the Yanks, eh, chile?”

Brother and sister nodded approvingly as her hand made an unconscious check of the knife in its leg sheath.

Vashon laughed dutifully. “Maybe our grandchildren,” he said with sour pessimism. “If then.”

“That ol’ stretched-thin feelin’?” Andrew said, swinging the girl to the ground.

Vashon shrugged. “Ah, well, it’s only two years since the War ended . . . so much gained, and at relatively negligible cost.”

“Didn’t seem quite so negligible in the Guard,” Tanya said dryly, hitching up the elastic waistband of her trousers. “An’ the Fritz didn’t seem so exhausted, not when they damn near shot my tank out from under me, half a dozen times.”

Vashon spread his hands in an apologetic gesture. “Negligible in relation to the booty,” he said. “Half the earth, an’ half mankind; two-thirds, with what we had before. It’s assimilatin’ it that’s going to be the problem. We aren’t a—”

“—numerous people, and nobody loves us,” Tanya said, completing the proverb as she crossed to the windows, leaned her palms against the strong armor glass. “Doin’ my best about that, Strategos. Perceptible improvement here, since I saw it last.”

The Security officer scowled. “Partly because so many of the labor force don’t have anything to do but shift rubble.” He stubbed his cigarette out with a savage gesture. “Damn that sack! Waste: waste of raw materials, waste of skilled workers, waste of machinery. We could have used it, the Police Zone is still run-down from lack of maintenance durin’ the War an’ having trouble retooling.”

“What’s the point of victory, without looting?” she said lightly. The clouds were thinning, a good augury for the trip home.

“To take what they make and grow—for which we need them alive, and their tools. More important than stealin’ their jewelry, no?”

Andrew snorted. “My Legion was in on that sack, Strategos. We took twenty, thirty percent casualties between the Rhine crossin’s an’ here. Janissaries aren’t field hands or houseserfs; you need to give them proof positive of a victory. Lettin’ them loose in a town, drinkin’ themselves wild, pickin’ up pretties and riding the wenches bloody is the best way I know. Does wonders for morale, sir; wish there was somethin’ equivalent on antipartisan duty.”

Vashon composed himself and donned a smile. “At least with you settlers gettin’ agriculture in order, we won’t have to sell much more oil to the Yanks for wheat to feed Europe with. How’s it going, over there along the Loire, Cohortarch?”

She stretched. “Jus’ Tanya, Strategos; I’m in the Reserve now. Well as can be expected, all in all; the French were good farmers, but they pushed the land too hard durin’ the War. Shortages of fertilizer and livestock, equipment, horses . . . Lovely country, fine climate, grow anything well kept . . . but Frey and Freya, the way things are cut up! Fields the size of handkerchiefs, little hamlets ‘n’ villages all over the place, goin’ take a generation or two to get things in order.”

He nodded. “Same on the industrial front, or so the people from the Combines tell me. Overall output about equivalent to ours, or nearly, but the methods are so bloody different, it’s a mess. Had a fellah in from the Ferrous Metals Combine, actually broke down an’ cried after doin’ a survey; said the Poodles had thirty-six times the number of different machine tools we did, all of ’em needin’ a skilled operator, all split up in tiny little factories.”

Andrew raised a brow. “You’re beginnin’ to sound like my distressingly liberal cousin Eric. He thinks we should hold off on modernizin’ the Europeans, at least the Western provinces, supervise ‘n’ tax them instead.” A laugh. Maybe-so I should report you to Security, sir?”

Vashon forced himself to echo the laugh. Eric von Shrakenberg was a sore point with the Security Directorate, but after all, he was Arch-Stategos Karl von Shrakenberg’s son. And he had never quite qualified for a Section-IV detention, “by administrative procedure.” Not quite. He sighed, clicked heels.

“Service to the State,” he said in formal farewell as the von Shrakenbergs turned to leave.

“Glory to the Race,” they replied; the adults, at least. Gudrun put her head back through the door for a brief instant, stuck out her tongue and fled giggling.

Below was an internal alleyway, a narrow street closed off when the Security complex was established. Tanya looked up at the gaps of blue sky between the long tatters of cloud and breathed deeply; the chill was leaving the wet air, and some hopeful soul had hung pots of flowering impatiens from the eaves on either side, slashes of hot pink, coral and magenta against the browns and grays of the stone. The alley was lined on both sides with agency showrooms, the Settlement and Agriculture Directorate liaison office, a few restaurants, outfitters. It was crowded to the point of chaos, not least with construction crews making alterations; civil settlement in France was just getting under way and receiving priority as a matter of State policy. Every settler needed labor, even if it was only a few household servants. Planters in soft working leathers, bureaucrats in the four-pocket khaki working dress of the civil service, Combine execs in suits of white linen and Shantung silk . . . Serfs of every race and kind and degree pushed through.

Sort of irregular, she thought as she stopped before the Stevenson & de Verre office, a converted house. That was the largest agency in the Domination, with hundreds of branches. Back—she stopped herself—back near the old home, even in a small provincial town like Baalbeck, it would have been much larger. Showrooms and auction pits, holding pens, workshops, medical facilities; in a major city like Alexandria or Shahnapur, a complex of creches and training centers . . . Here there were only the offices and catalogs and a simple fitting-out room, with the serfs in the Security cells.

“Well,” she said, stopping on the worn stone steps of the shop. “Take care, brother mine; y’all remember the door’s always open.”

“An’ you’ve got to see my new white Caramague horse, she’s a beauty, Uncle,” Gudrun said. “Pa gave me a real Portuguese bullfighter’s saddle, with silver studs.”

“So you’ve been tellin’ me for the last week, sweetlin’,” he said stooping for her hug. “Maybe-so I will; been a while since I done any riding.”

Tanya embraced him as he straightened, feeling the huge and gentle strength of his arms as they closed around her, the slight rasp of his mustache on her neck, smelling cologne and soap and leather. She dug her fingers fiercely into the hard rubbery muscle of his neck.

“I love you, brother,” she whispered.

“An’ I you, sister,” replied quietly; stepped back, saluted and strode away into the crowd.

She looked down, to find Gudrun scowling at the unseemly adult display of emotion, took her hand despite an effort at evasion, pushed through the swinging doors. While I can, she thought, giving it a quick squeeze. They grow so quick.