"Yaz awl tinkin' how lucky yaz bein'," he began, the thick dialect and harsh tone a shock after the master's words. " T be Janissary—faahn uniforms, 't best a' food an' likker, usin' t' whip
'stead a' feelin' it, an' plunder 'n girls in captured towns. Live laahk a fighrin'-cock, walk praawd."
His glance passed across them with scorn. There was more to it, of course: to give a salute rather than the serfs low bow before the masters; excitement; travel beyond the narrow horizons of village or compound. Education, for those who could use it; training in difficult skills; respect. And the mystery of arms, the mark of the masters; for any but the Janissaries, it would be death to hold a weapon. A Janissary held nearly as many privileges over the serf population as a master, with fewer restraints. The chance to discharge a lifetime's repressed anger…
His voice cracked out like a lash. "Yaz
tink't' be Janissary?
Yaz should live's' long
!" He came forward to walk down the ragged line, the hunting-cat grace of his gait a contrast to their ploughboy awkwardness. They were all young, between seventeen and nineteen, all in good health and over the minimum height.
Draka law required exact records, and he had studied them with care. The swagger stick poked out suddenly, taking one lad under the ribs. He doubled over with a startled
oofff
! and fell to his knees.
"Soft! Yaz soft! Tink cauz yaz c'n stare all day up't' arse-end of a plough-mule, yaz woan' drop dead onna force-march. Shit yaz pants when a' mortarshells star' a' droppin.' Whicha yaz momma's darlin's, whicha yaz houseserf bumboys tink they got it?"
He drew a line in the sparse grass with his swagger stick and waited, rising and tailing slowly on the balls of his feet and tapping the stick in the palm of one gloved hand, a walking advertisement.
The serf youths looked at him, at his comrade lolling lordly-wise at the table with a file folder in his hands, back at the humdrum village of all their days. Visibly, they weighed the alternatives: danger against boredom; safety against the highest advancement a serf could achieve. Two dozen crowded forward over the line, and the Master Sergeant grinned, suddenly jovial.
His stick pointed out one, another, up to the six required; he had been watching carefully, sounding them out without seeming to, and the records were exhaustive. Their friends milled about, slapping the dazed recruits on the back and shoulder, while in the background Eric could hear a sudden weeping, quickly hushed.
Probably a mother
, he thought, rising with his father.
Janissaries were not discouraged from keeping up contacts with their families, but they had their own camps and towns when not in the field, a world to itself. The plantation preacher would hold a service for their leaving, and it would be the one for the dead.
Silence fell anew. "In honor of these young men," the general called, smiling, "I declare a feast tonight. Headman, see to issuing the stores. Tell the House steward that I authorize two kegs of wine, and open the vats at the brewery."
That brought a roar of applause, as the family of the master descended from the dais to shake the hands of the six chosen, a signal honor. They stood, grinning, in a haze of glory, as the preparations for the evening's entertainment began; tomorrow they would travel with the two soldiers to the estates round about, there would be more feasts, admiration… and the master had called them "young men," not bucks…
Eric hoped that the memories would help them when they reached the training camps. The roster of formed units in the Janissary arm was complete, but the
ersatz
Cohorts, the training and replacement units, were being expanded. Infantry numbers eroded quickly in intensive operations; the legions would need riflemen by the hundred thousand, soon.
As he swung back into the saddle, he wondered idly how many would survive to wear the uniforms of Master Sergeants themselves. Not many, probably. The training camps themselves would kill some; the regimen was harsh to the point of brutality, deliberately so. A few would die, more would wash out into secondary arms, the Security Directorate could always use more executioners and camp-guard "bulls." The survivors would learn: learn that they were the elite, that they had no family but their squadmates, no father but their officer, no country or nation but their legions. Learn loyalty,
kadaversobedienz
—the ability to obey like a corpse.
His father's quiet words jarred him out of his thoughts as they rode slowly through the crowd and then heeled their mounts into a canter through the deserted village beyond.
"Eric, I have a favor to ask of you."
"Sir?" He looked up, startled.
"A… command matter. It's the Yankees. They're the only major Power left uncommitted, and we need them to counterbalance the Japanese. We
don't
need another war in East Asia while we fight the Germans, and if it does come we'll have to cooperate with the U.S. Certainly if we expect them to do most of the fighting, and help out in Europe besides."
Eric nodded, baffled. More reluctantly, his father continued.
"As part of keeping them sweet, we're allowing in a war correspondent."
"I should think, sir, knowing the Yankees, allowing a newspaperman into the Domination would be likely to turn them against us, once he started reporting."
"Not if he's allowed to see only the proper sights, then assigned to a combat unit and, ah, overseen by the proper officer."
"I see. Sir." Eric said.
Now, that's an insult, if you like
, he thought. The implication being that he was a weak-livered milksop, unlikely to arouse the notorious Yankee squeamishness.
The younger man's lips tightened. "As you command, sir. I will see you at dinner, then."
Karl von Shrakenberg stared after the diminishing thunder of his son's horse, a brief flush rising to his weathered cheeks. He had suggested the assignment; pushed for it, in fact, as a way to prove Eric's loyalty beyond doubt, restore his career prospects.
The Sefurity case-officer had objected, but not too strongly; Karl suspected he looked at it as a baited trap, luring Eric into indiscretions that not even an Arch-Strategos' influence could protect him from. And this was his reward…
Behind him, Johanna raised her eyes to heaven and sighed.
Maybe Rahksan can ease him up for tomorrow
, she thought glumly.
Home sweet home, bullshit
.
Memo:
18/11/41
ref: 2sm30/Z1
From:
Security Directorate. Alexandria D.H.Q.
Decurion F. Vachon
To:
Stevenson & de Verre. labor Agents
Attn: T. de Verre
Re:
Labor Consignment 2sm30
With regard to yours of the 10th Oct.. please be advised that
the shipment in question is now ready for pickup at Holding
Pen
#17.
above address. Standard terms, net 32 aurics per head
.
Labor units in question are category 3m72 (unsound
elements, liquidated, dependents of) and category 3rn73
(unsound elements, religious cadre) from the occupied zone in
Italy. Milan District Office.
Service to the
State!
(handwritten postscript)
Here's the lot I promised: 123 of them. 12-30. wenches and
prettybucks. Prime stuff, you aren't going to sell these cheap to
wash dishes. The wives and children of the Fascist politicians
and university professors won't give you any trouble but I
advise splitting up the nuns. Their pen's right under my office,
and the bitches have been singing, praying, and chanting fit to
give you the heebies. Had to send in the bulls with electroprods
twice last week to shut 'em up.
Anyway, you owe me for this one, good buddy. The
bureaucratic bunfights I had to go throughl First, Tech Section
tried
to
grab 'em for that hush-hush uranium refining thing out
by the Quattara. then that greasy immigrant Lederman in
Forces Morale Section wanted them for his knocking-shops
…
Edgar sends his regards to you and Cynthia. Still on for
tennis Saturday?
Love Felice
as quoted in:
Under the Yoke: Postwar Europe
by Angleo Menzarotti
Cuba State University Press, Havana, 1977
OAKENWALD PLANTATION OCTOBER, 1941
The car
pulled into Oakenwald's drive three hours past midnight. With a start, William Dreiser jerked himself awake; he was a mild-faced man in his thirties, balding, with thick black-rimmed glasses and a battered pipe tucked into the pocket of his trench coat. Sandy-eyed, he rubbed at his mustache and glanced across at the Draka woman who was his escort-guard.
The car was a steam-sedan, four-doored, with two sets of seats facing each other in the rear compartment. Rather like a Stanley Raccoon, in fact.
It had been two weeks' travel from Washington. By rail south to New Orleans, then ferryboat to
Havana. The Caribbean was safe enough, rimmed with American territory from Florida through the Gulf and on through the States carved out of Mexico and Central America a century before; there were U-boats in the South Atlantic, though, and even neutral shipping was in danger. Pan American flying-boat south to Recife, then Brazilian Airways dirigible to Apollonaris, just long enough to transfer to a Draka airship headed south.
That was where he had acquired his Security Directorate shadow; they were treating the American reporter as if he carried a highly contagious disease.
And so I do
, he thought.
Freedom
.
They had hustled him into the car in Archona, right at the airship haven. The Security decurion went into the compartment with him; in front were a driver in the grubby coverall which seemed to be the uniform of the urban working class and an armed guard with a shaven head; both had serf-tattoos on their necks. The American felt a small queasy sensation each time he glanced through the glass panels and saw the orange seven-digit code, a column below the right ear:
letter-number-number-letter-number-number-number.
Seeing was not the same as reading, not at all. He had done his homework thoroughly: histories, geographies, statistics. And the Draka basics, Carlyles
Philosophy of Mastery
, Nietzsche's
The Will to Power
, Fitzhugh's
Imperial Destiny
, even Gobineau's turgid
Inequality of Human Races
, and the eerie and chilling
Meditations of Elvira Naldorssen
. The Domination's own publications had a gruesome forthrightness that he suspected was equal portions of indifference and a sadistic desire to shock.
None of it had prepared him adequately for the reality.
Archona had been glimpses: alien magnificence. A broad shallow bowl in the edge of the plateau, Ringroads cut across with wide avenues, lined with flowering trees that were a mist of gold and purple. Statues, fountains, frescoes, mosaics: things beautiful, incomprehensible, obscene. Six-story buildings set back in gardens; some walls sheets of colored glass, others honeycomb marble, one entirely covered with tiles in the shape of a giant flowering vine. Then suburbs that might almost have been parts of California, whitewashed walls and tile roofs, courtyards…
The secret police officer opened her eyes, pale blue slits in the darkness. She was a squat woman with broad spatulate hands, black hair in a cut just long enough to comb, like the Eton crop of the flappers in the '20's. But there was nothing frivolous in her high-collared uniform of dark green, or the ceremonial whip that hung coiled at her belt. One hand rested on her sidearm; he could see the house lights wink on the gold and emeralds of a heavy thumb-ring.
He was almost startled when she spoke; there had not been more than fifty words between them in any day of the six they had been together, most just last evening, when she had tried to draw the curtains as they ran parallel to a train for half an hour.
There were tanks on flatcars, hundreds of them,
Bond III
class—massive, low-slung, predatory-looking vehicles, broad tracks and thick sloped armor, the long 120mm cannon in travelling-clamps…
"We're here," she said. His mind heard it as
we-ahz heyah
, like a Southern accent, Alabama or Cuba, but with an undertone clipped and guttural.
I'm on automatic pilot
, he thought, and tried to flog his responses into alertness. He had always been a man who woke slowly, and now he felt sluggish and stupid—a not-quite-here feeling, cramped muscles, stomach burning from too much coffee and too many days of motion. Travel fatigue…
The silence of the halt was loud, after the long singing of tires on asphalt, wind-rush and the
chuff-chuff chuff
of the engine.
Metal pinged, cooling. The driver climbed out and opened the front-mounted trunk to unload the luggage. The policewoman nodded to the dimly seen building.
"Oakenwald Plantation. Centurion von Shrakenberg's here; Strategos von Shrakenberg, too. Old family; very old, very prominent.
Strategoi
, Senators, landholders, athletes; pro'bly behind the decision to let you in, Yankee. Political considerations, they're influential in the Army and the Foreign Affairs Directorate… You're safe enough with them. A guest's sacred, and it'd be 'neath their dignity to care what a foreign scribbler says."
He nodded warily and climbed out stiffly, muscles protesting.
She reached through the window to tap his shoulder. He turned, and squawked as her hand shot out to grab the collar of his coat.
The speed was startling, and so was the strength of fingers and wrist and shoulder; she dragged his face down level with hers, and the square bulldog countenance filled his vision, full lips pulling back from strong white teeth.
"
Well it isn't 'neath mine, rebel pig
!" The concentrated venom in the tone was as shocking as a bucketful of cold water in the face. "You start causin' trouble, one word wrong to a serf,
one
word
, and then by your slave-loving Christ, you're
mine
, Yankee.