"We brunettes are obviously an inferior race," Marya said, as she rose to throw the napkin in the wastebin; the usual obsessive New Yorker neatness.
I guess this really is still home to her.
To his surprise, she laughed outright at the marquee.
"Maman still gets really upset at that sort of thing; spits in the street and crosses to the opposite side. Not surprising, all things considered." More seriously: "Particularly after she opened up to Anna about what happened to her; a lot of it was in
The Kisses of
the Enemy
, remember the sensation that one made?"
Fred nodded. Anna von Shrakenberg was uniquely well-placed to write a novel set in the Domination, having been born there herself, a serf concubine's bastard.
"Maman admired the book," he said. For certain someone would have told him if Marya and their mother were talking enough to discuss that sort of thing. "Even if she couldn't read it more than a page at a time. But when ABS-Pathway started sniffing 'round' for a movie contract Anna had to spend a solid day convincing her she wasn't going to sell out. You know," he considered meditatively, "I've always wondered… You're a lot closer to Maman than I ever was, really. You fought with her less.
Why was it you were the one who ended up barely talking? Not that Maman and I can really
talk,
but she tries."
She gave a sigh. "
Because
she and I were more alike. She didn't try to live through you, and I had to fight harder to break away. Good old Latin double standard, too…" A pause. "How do we loll Ekstein, by the way?"
Fred suddenly felt the chill of the November afternoon, and turned up the collar of his uniform greatcoat. "Well, we'll have to be careful how we use local assets. Remember Paris."
She winced. That had been in 1951, just after her fourth birthday, but nobody in the OSS was going to forget. A team had gotten into the household of the Draka military governor of northern France and poisoned her and her staff at a banquet.
Felice Vashon had been an animal even by Draka standards; the idea had been as much humanitarian as anything, a threat to restrain the worst mass-murderers.
"Bad tradecraft," she said. "Even worse psychology." The Domination's aristocrats did not respond well to threats, and the Security Directorate had caught some of the locals who helped insert the OSS specialists. Ten thousand serfs from the pens and compounds of Paris had been impaled along the avenues, dying slowly on wooden stakes rammed up the anus. "Remember Barcelona, come to that."
Barcelona had risen against the Yoke in '52; hundreds of Citizens had died, and the last survivors had been pulled out by helicopter. An hour later, the city had gone up in a gout of radioactive flame.
"The Snake idea of riot control, a one-megatonne sunbomb,"
he said.
"Necessary, from their point of view," Marya said dispassionatly. "They probably hated to do it, in their own backyard. Europe was shaky then, still primed to explode at the slightest sign of weakness. I doubt that they'd do that now, especially since the locals are all
owned
by somebody. Vested interests, you see."
He laughed. "You have been around Uncle Nate a lot recently, Captain Sister. I recognize that detachment."
"Detachment?" She turned and looked at him. "Actually, I've been researching more of the family history." She reached inside her greatcoat, carefully tore a strip of gum in half and began to chew. He noticed suddenly that her nails had the slightly lumpy appearance of a reformed biter. The Mexican habit of gum-chewing had been spreading north since smoking went out of fashion.
"She never told you? Maman wouldn't. She saved that for Anna, more than got into the book. Anna told me; we're still friends. There… was a gang-rape in Lyon, when Maman was arrested; her and her little sister. Didn't know we had an aunt, did you? Still over there, under the Yoke."
A long silence. "Detached? No, I'm not in the least detached.
I'm going to warn you straight up, brother, what I am is a fanatic. A reasoning fanatic.
I've got a debt to collect."
"Remind me never to establish a credit account at your bank,
ma soeur,
" he said. "Lunch?"
"Why not. As long as it isn't the canteen," she replied.
That's the problem with a French mother, it sort of spoils
you for fast food,
he thought.
CHATEAU OF MOULIN
PROVINCE OF TOURAINE
DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA
FEBRUARY, 1973
The chateau was south of the Loire, in the Sologne; a nobleman by the name of Philippe du Moulin had built it five centuries before. For most of the time since it had been a hunting seat, for the Sologne was an area of poor acid soils, of marsh and forest. When the Draka came they decided that the effort of reclamation was not worth the cost. Too many richer lands lay desolate, their tillers dead in the slaughterhouse madness of the Eurasian War; the remaining French peasants were deported elsewhere, or set to planting oak trees. For two decades the mansion lay empty, until the Security Directorate needed a place of refuge for a defector with very specific tastes.
"Here he is," the Farraday Combine representative muttered with throttled impatience. "At last."
The Tetrarch from the Directorate of Security shrugged and raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness, then let them fall back to the surface of the table. There were three terminals and keyboards built into it, the only outward sign of modernity in the room with its tapestries and suits of plate armour.
"Hi!" David Ekstein said, as he bounded in. The Security officer winced and looked away.
Not quite so
disgusting as he
was,
she thought resignedly.
"Dave, it's really
impo'tant
not to keep people waiting," the officer said.
"Oh, gee, sorry, Cathy," Ekstein replied. He was in his mid-twenties but already the wiry black hair was thinning on top: a short man with a sticklike figure that turned pudgy at face and waist and buttocks. Acne-scars, and his skin was still wet from the pool, mottled brown from the sunlamps. Bitterly, she told herself that the defector probably thought he was fitting in with Draka custom by coming to the business meeting in a black pool-robe…
Tetrarch Catherine Duchamp Bennington gritted her teeth and smiled back at him. Officially she was Security liaison here.
Actually, I'm bear-leader to this little shit,
she thought. Much of her effort was spent keeping him away from Draka. He was officially an honorary Citizen, but half an hour in normal society would have left him with a round dozen challenges to pistols at dawn.
Not that he was nasty, just…
like a damned smelly fat puppy,
she thought. Providential that a castle in France had been his private daydream, so they could immure him in the middle of this hunting-preserve. Even better if they could have stuck him in an SD property in Africa or Russia, but the orders were for soft-hand treatment. You could see why. Creativity was so delicate a quality, and this slug was a hothouse flower of the first order.
"Meiling was playing handball with me, and I really wanted to win," he continued.
At least that was going well. The Directorate had bought him two dozen concubines, every one of them from the top creches and with special training to boot. The Domination wanted full value from David Ekstein, and the wenches were leading him with patient subtlety into healthier habits. He had already lost a good deal of weight. It was unlikely that Ekstein would ever be anything remotely resembling what a Citizen should be, but with luck, in a few years and fully dressed he could avoid arousing actual disgust. His social skills had been marginal at home and were nonexistent here, but with careful management that could be handled. The Eugenics people had a sperm deposit in their banks, anyway.
"So, what's your problem?" he continued, rubbing his hands and turning to the exec. "I thought those designs were pretty good, really." Servants bustled in with trays of coffee, fruit, and breakfast pastries.
"Ahhh—" the exec began. The electrowafers were excellent, and had opened up a whole new range of near-space applications, not to mention the eventual civilian uses. "Well, we're havin' real quality problems. Seventy percent rejection rate, even on our best fabricators, an'
we needs those wafers
."
He caught himself just in time, not mentioning the use to which the sensor-effector systems would be put. The American—the ex-American, he reminded himself—-was a defector, after all, and quite startlingly naive politically, but it was better not to remind him of certain things without need.
Ekstein frowned, took the data cartridge from the man and slipped it into the table unit. His hands skittered over the keyboard and the ball-shaped directional control; Bennington noted how their clumsiness vanished, turning to fluid skill. "Hey, no problem," he said after a minute. "It's the amorphous layer that's causing it. You're getting uneven deposition. How do you—"
Tetrarch Bennington tuned out the technical discussion and stared moodily out the mullioned windows of the salon. It was a cold bright morning outside; the courtyard's brick pavement was new-swept, white snow in the mortar-grooves between herringbone red brick. Gardens laced with white-ice hoarfrost, fairy-silver grass, and black treetrunks beneath hammered-metal branches, flowerbeds pruned back and dormant beneath their coats of mulch-straw. The edge of the forest was a black wall, and the surface of the moat clear gray ice. It would be warming soon, though. She. was a bananalander from Natealia, born in Virconium, and the clear freshness of the Northern spring never failed to enthrall.
"Oh," the exec was saying. She glanced up with a start. Her coffee had gone cold, and she signed for the serf to bring another.
"Oh, well… Why didn't we think of that?" He looked down at the screen, rubbing his brow in puzzlement.
The American grinned. "Hey, man, it always looks that way.
That should get you down to, hmmm, fifteen percent rejections, easy. Null-G applications of amorphous silicon deposition are tricky; it's not my specialty, you know, but I think that's the way to go. Especially with EV channels and particle-stream etching, you know."
"Many thanks, suh," the exec continued, as the terminal downloaded the details into his attach case and clicked completion. He shook hands with the ex-American. "Service to the State."
"Have a nice d—h, Glory to the Race," Ekstein replied.
The room fell silent as the exec left. There was a crackle from the big fireplace, a glimmer of flamelight, and pale winter sun on polished stone and wood. Ekstein sighed, shifting restlessly and then moodily taking another croissant. The serf moved in deftly to sweep up the crumbs around his plates. She was a pert little thing, in a uniform of short skirt and white cap and bib-apron that had been another of Ekstein's eccentricities. He ran a hand up her thigh, but half-heartedly, even when she leaned into the clumsy caress and smiled.
That's a bad sign
, Bennington thought.
He's not screwing
anything that moves, anymore.
"What's the matter, Dave?" she said quietly as the serfs left.
He slumped in the chair, hands resting loosely between his knees.
"Oh, I don't know," he said, frowning. "I… I feel lonely, I guess."
"Hmmm, I thought yo' were lonely befo'," she replied. Every word and gesture was going down on record for the SD psychs to mull over, but you had to get a personal gestalt to really know an individual. Besides, he
was
like a puppy; you wanted to see him wag his tail. "Yo' girls not givin' satisfaction?"
"No, no, they're great!" he said. "Meiling and Bemadette especially." His face puckered a little. "Yeah, I was real lonely.
Only… Well, sometimes Bernie and Izzy and Pedro would come over, and we'd have beer and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, and play Knights and Sorcerers on my old Pacifica. I sort of miss it, I guess. I can play against myself here, but it's not the same."
He looked up, and his eyes were misty. "Say, Cathy, maybe you could get me an online terminal, and I could patch into Pan Net? Then I could play them remote."
Bennington sighed inwardly; you had to swat a puppy if it piddled on the rug, but it wasn't pleasant. She forced a warm smile. "Mmmm, Dave, I don't think we could do that. I mean, the other end wouldn't allow it." Probably true, and no way the SD
would let an OSS op get a line on this prize.
He blinked. "Look," she continued, "yo've been workin' too hard, Dave. What say, in a month o' two, we fly down to Nova Cartago or Alexandria. We'll go out to some of the nightspots, meet a few "
carefully
selected
—"people, relax, hey?"
He nodded, halfway between interest and listlessness. She crossed around the desk, put an arm about his shoulders. "An' in the meantime, we'll have cook make us up some peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches,"—
Mother Freya, the things
I do for the Race
—"an' yo' can teach me how to play Knights and Sorcerers, Meiling and Bemadette will sit in."
OSS STATEHOUSE
STATE OF VIRGINIA
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
JANUARY, 1973
"Goddammit, my brains are going to run out my nose!"
Marya said, and grunted as she bench-pressed the weights again.
"Ninety-nine,
one hundred."
The link-rod fell back into its rest with a clang. She took a deep breath; the room smelled of sweat, hers and others, of oil and machinery and the straw matting on the floor. The lights were sunlamps, to give them the appropriate tan, and the walls were lined with mirrors.
"That's,
'Gods curse it
, mah
brains
is goin'
run out
mah
nose
,'
" the instructor said. "Repeat it, Lefarge."
She lay back on the padded exercise bench and repeated the sentence in Draka dialect, turning her head to watch the instructor. He was a defector from the Domination, about twice her age: an unremarkable man, medium-brown hair and eyes and an outdoorsman's weathered face. He was doing one-handed chinups while he listened with a slight frown of concentration on his face.