Yolande shivered slightly inside herself; she had often wondered whether her generation had the iron of the ones who had fought the Eurasian War. India had been a sideshow, compared to that.
"That why yo' pushed to let those Alliance types yo' took go?" John asked. The servants gathered the plates and spread sweetmeats and pastries; her brother selected a walnut and crushed it between thumb and forefinger.
"Well, we traded them, fo' that lot of serf technicians." An embarrassing incident, when a robot personnel capsule had gone derelict on the way to the Phobos station; nobody but the Alliance had been in position to rescue them. "Left them with egg on they faces, too, when most of the serfs wanted back in."
Her mother snorted derisively. "Well, did they think we sent convicts fed on scraps into space?" she said. "Or that we'd select people without strong ties here to send to a risky frontier zone?"
"Quite possible they did think that," Yolande said, remembering. "I talked to some of the prisoners… they adapted pretty well; we only had to execute two or three…" And none among the born-serf workforce; Harry was tickled pink about that. "And they know less about us than we do about them." She frowned. "Of course, the type we got, near as yo' can translate they'd be Class IV or V serfs, here. Wotan knows, a serf learns as little about the Alliance as we can manage. I suppose their overlords do likewise."
"Never thought I'd see yo' talkin' down hatred and vengeance, sist —" John started, as his wife kicked him under the table.
Yolande's voice turned remote as her gaze. "I—I'll handle the vengeance, John," she said. "Hopefully, I'll handle the Yankees as well. Vengeance an' hate… that's my burden, and little joy of it I've had. None of it will give me back what I lost. That's what I want to spare our children."
There was a moment of awkward silence. "I hear yo' took one of the prisoners in fo', hmmm, personal cultural anthropology. Good? Wench or buck?" Mandy said, changing the subject with a joke.
The elder Ingolfsson's chuckle was strained. Ah, the Race Purity Laws, Yolande remembered. Fifty years ago, in their youth, it had been a hanging matter for a Citizen woman to lie with a serf male—an ancestral habit from which much else sprang. Contraception and equality of rights within the Citizen caste had made the law obsolete, and the new style of reproduction had rendered it outright silly, well before repeal in 1971. It had still been a matter for sniggering jokes when Yolande was a teenager; she found the younger generation appallingly casual about the whole matter. Mandy had always thought it vilely unfair, of course; but then she was just entranced with the male of the species.
"Wench," Yolande said, with a mock-severe frown of reproof at her schoolfriend and sister-in-law. "I'm an old-fashioned girl, myself. No, actually, I didn't touch her. Nice little thing, might not have minded keepin' her, but I sort of promised." She frowned, selected a confection of puff pastry and cream with fruit. "Coffee, Bianca. Did talk a fair bit; it got right borin' at times out there." She shook her head. "I'd read about them, of course. Seen viewers an' such. Still hadn't realized how downright strange they are. It'll be a relief when they're broken to the Yoke; the thought of it makes my brain hurt, frankly." She paused. "Might look little Alishia up, Iff'n she survives the conquest."
"Oh," she continued. "I'm goin' to be needin' some staff, fo' the townhouse in Archona. Probably be based out of there for quite some time. Need a round score, good cook, assistants, set of housegirls, the usual. Driver, mechanic… hmmm. Junior nurses, to help Jolene; she'll be doin' clerical stuff again as soon as she's up. Glad to buy Claestum stock, if yo' can spare it." The plantation was actually overstrength; pa had been a little lax about enforcing birth control in the early years, and the chickens were coming home to roost. She saw the others exchange a glance and a smile.
"Well," said her father. "No problem, but it'd be unwise to stock a city home all from a plantation. Should buy some locals as well; maybe from a creche-trainer. Don't usually hold with the creche product, but yo' Jolene certainly worked out."
"Eric would help out," Johanna said. She sighed. "It is nice to see one's children doin' well," she added.
Yolande caught herself glancing out at the light, steady rain once more. It would be chill, out there. Misty and muddy, and the trees would be bare, and the smell would be of wet earth and rock and vegetation.
"I think," she said, "I'll get a slicker cape and a horse and go fo' a ride. Gods, if yo' knew how I'd missed fresh air, and the hills, and water I didn't turn on out of a tap. And I need the exercise, we used a 1.5-G spun minihab but it wasn't the same. Don't wait supper, I'll have somethin' sent up from the kitchens. See yo' in the mornin', I'll take the baby around then to show the ghouloons." The gene-engineered guardians trusted scent better than sight, and far more than words.
"Have a good time, darlin'," her mother said.
"And when yo' get back," her father said, to the others' laughter.
"Damn, I feel good," Yolande said quietly. The ride had been just what she needed, cold and physically demanding, a chance to feel at one once more with the earth that had born her, hour after hour until moonrise. And it had washed out the last of the tension from the ride down from orbit, cursing the interminable delays, the flight across the Mediterranean knowing that half the Citizens in the western provinces were following by viewer and smiling. The ride, and a long soak in the baths, and steam and massage from friendly expert attendants who had known her all her life. Now she felt alert and sharp-set, ready for her meal.
Shouldn't take long, she thought, opening the door of her suite by the tower. The kitchens always had someone on standby, and it wasn't as if the staff were overworked. You know, she told herself meditatively, I'm even glad that Yankee bitch made it alive to Ceres. That news had come through while the Subotai was making rendezvous with the relief flotilla.
Though more for the children's sake than hers. I really don't like hurting little ones, even when it's necessary. Uncle Eric's right, though; we hurt ourselves more than them if we… get out of proportion. Her eyes narrowed, lost in thought, as she walked through the lounging room and up the stairs, dropping her robe. Even then, she felt a minor surprise when something went away when you dropped it, instead of floating irritatingly at hand. f It's her man I want, anyway. I certainly don't regret the grief I've caused him. And he'll know they were under my hand,for all. Build the rest o days. Him, I'll kill. The rest of my revenge, it'll be enough to put the Alliance under the Yoke once and a better world for mine and Myfwany's children.
There was a fire crackling in the bedroom hearth, and a meal laid out on a trolley table next to it. Her favorite, stuffed lobster with drawn butter, salad, and—
"Who the hell are yo'?" she asked the wench kneeling beside the table.
She rose, wearing a dazzling smile and a ribbon like a bandolier from shoulder to hip, with a large bow and a card attached to it. About twenty, raven hair falling to her waist, pale creamy skin; the straight delicate features and full-curved lips of a Michelangelo painting. The card was extended in one slender-fingered hand. Nice fingers, Yolande thought dazedly, as she unfolded it.
Enjoy, it read; signed by her kin.
"I am Mirella… Antonio the gardener's daughter, Mistis? And I am a gift, to serve you."
"Is that so?" Yolande said, falling back into the Tuscan of her earliest years and feeling laughter bubbling up beneath her breastbone. Those impossible, presumptuous — She shook her head helplessly. "Is that so, wench? And what do you think of the idea?"
"Oh, I wish very much to serve you,"—a coy glance —"perfectly, in all ways, Mistis."
"Why?"
"Well… Everyone knows, you are land, Mistis. And very beautiful. And…" the smile turned slightly urchin as the rest came in a rush. "And that you are going to the great city, Archona, and if I please you I will fly there away from here where nothing ever happens and see the lovely palaces and everything, and become a head housemaid before I am old and withered and not have to clean floors any more, and ha
ve a room of my own and pretty things and maybe even learn to read as they say all the servants do in the great city. Mistis."
Yolande sank into the chair, laughing until the tears flowed, then looked up at the wench's uncertain glance. "Well, Mirella, I like a serf who's honest. We ought to get to know each other better, before we settle your life." She patted the cushion beside her; there was plenty of room. It had been her favorite curl-up-in-front-of-the-fire-and-read-chair, when she was a child. "First, sit here and let's see if you like lobster."
Chapter Sixteen
The paradox of our times is that information has increased more rapidly than the capacity of the sciences to integrate it and nowhere more so than in physics and cosmology. In the 1950s, we were still uncertain what lay under the clouds of Venus—swamps seemed a sound hypothesis— and the "canals" of Mars had only recently been debunked. Less than a decade later, spaceships and probes were studying every planet inside the orbit of Neptune. We exist in a world bear-lead by engineers, themselves driven by frantic necessity. Our theories are lame, limping things cobbled together to give some rough framework and mathematical basis to the huge constructs we make, and the monstrous puzzles we encounter. And often we ignore vital areas of research simply because there is so much else to be done that is immediately promising. For example, only now are we developing a theory of stellar formation which has any predictive force, and this decades after the space telescopes proved the ubiquity of planets. We now know that planets with life—or at least oxygen-rich atmospheres and liquid water—are fairly common around stars of the general type of Sol; four have been confirmed so far within 50 light-years of Earth. Yet there has been no sustained investigation of Bigetti's Paradox; if life is common, where are the intelligent aliens?
A still more glaring example has recently arisen. Ever since the initial breakthroughs of the decade 1900-1910, we have been treating the quantum-mechanical paradoxes as useful mathematical fictions; some amuse themselves with thought-experiments such as Kubbelman's Rat and its half-life/half-death state in the sealed box.Now these questions are rising, as it were, out of the subatomic world and clamoring for attention—by biting us on the ankle, if nothing else. Our rule-of-thumb engineers stumbled across high-temperature superconductivity, and applied it widely, long before an adequate theory had been produced; we knew that the whole superconductor was in a single quantum state and left it at that. Only recently has it occurred to anyone to conduct the basic experiments necessary to show that quantum phase-shifts can create non-local events—action at a distance, without interval or an intervening exchange of particles.
Now we learn that a piece of superconducting material changes state instantaneously, regardless of distance. The whole basis of relativistic physics is shaken, and what is the response outside the scientific community? "Does this mean better telephones? Can we make a weapon of it?" What we need most urgently is a period of tranquillity, in which our species can assimilate and systematize the breakthroughs of this century.
History in a Technological Age
Ch.XX Reflections and Conclusion
by Andrew Elliot Armstrang, Ph.D
Department of History
San Diego University Press, 1995
CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE
ARCHONA
DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA
NOVEMBER 10, 1991
"That will be all," Eric von Shrakenberg said.
"Excellence," his aide replied, bowing and leaving.
Damned insolence of office, he thought with amusement. The Domination's chief executive was selected for a seven-year term, with no limits on reelection. Hence the Archonate staff tended to become used to an incumbent, set in their ways; he was still running into problems with that, except with the people he had brought in himself last year. The serf cadre were even worse…
"Five minutes," the desk said.
He sighed and seated himself, feeling a little out of place. This shape of carved yellowwood and Zambezi teak… how many Occupation Day addresses had he seen it in, from the other side? On film back during the Eurasian War, on screens of gradually increasing clarity since. 'Wotlan, fifty years! he thought, looking around the big room. Not overwhelming, although the view was spectacular, when the curtains were open; the dome of the House of Assembly was about half a kilometer away. History-drenched enough for anybody, he supposed, thinking of the decisions made here.
And now I sit here and hold the fate of the human race in my hands, he thought. If anyone's listening at the other end of these communicators. Having people obey when he spoke was the difference between being a leader and an old man in a room. A fact not commonly known, and it's better so.
"Incoming signal," the speaker said.
"Receive."
A spot of light appeared at head-height beyond the desk. A line framed it, expanding outward until it outlined a rectangle three meters by three; the central spot faded, and then the rectangle blinked out of existence. Replacing it was a holographic window into the interior of Washington House. Eric knew it was an arrangement of photons, as insubstantial as moonbeams, but still wondered at the sheer solidity of it. Genuine progress, for a change, he thought. You could get the true measure of an opponent this way, the total-sensory gestalt read from every minute clue of stance, expression, movement. The same applied in reverse.
"Madam President," he said, inclining his head.
"Excellence," she replied, with meticulous courtesy.
She may have been added to balance the ticket, but I don't think the Yankees lost when Liedermann slipped on the soap, Eric decided. President Carmen Hiero was the second Hispanic and the first woman to sit in the same chair as Jefferson and Douglas; before that she had been a Republican jefe politico in Sonora, still very unusual for a woman in the States carved out of Old Mexico. Fiftyish, graying, criolla blueblood by descent, mixed with Irish from a line of silver-mine magnates: that much he knew from the briefing papers. Old haciendado family, but not a shellback by Yankee standards; degrees in classics, history, and some odd American specialty known as political science, whatever that was. A contradiction in terms, from the title.
"I regret that I can't offer hospitality," he continued.
She shrugged. "Debatable whether it would be appropriate, under the circumstances. I hope you realize how much trouble with my OSS people I had to go through to allow Domination equipment here."
"And the political capital I must expend to let Yankee electronics in here," he added dryly. "Our Security people are still more paranoid than yours, not least because it is a field in which your nation excels us. Still, we can now be reasonably sure nobody is recording or tapping these conversations." He paused. "Why did yo' agree, Senora?"
The black eyes met his calmly. Almost as much body-language control as a Draka, he thought with interest. Better than some of us do, actually. I wonder how deep it runs.
"I suspect my reasoning was much like yours, von Shrakenberg. The convenience of dealing with essential issues without the circumlocutions essential where things are said in public, without the necessary lies of party politics. In addition, the chance of gaining personal insight into my enemy, set against the risk of him doing likewise. Well worth that risk. Always it is better to act from knowledge than ignorance." Eric nodded, spread his hands in silent acknowledgment as she continued. "Although, por favor, why did you not request such a link with the Alliance Chairman?"
Eric chuckled. "For much the same reason that you would not have agreed, had Representative Gayner's nominee been sittin' in this chair."
Her eyebrows rose slightly. "I would not compare Chairman Allsworthy to your Militants," she said.
"Not in terms of policy… a certain structural similarity in position on our relative political spectra. Perhaps a similarity in believin' too strongly in our respective national mythologies. Besides, the American President is still rather mo' than first among equals."
It was Hiero's turn to spread her hands silently. Certain
necessary fictions must be maintained even here, he read the gesture.
"Turnin' to business," Eric continued, "was it really necessary to tow those-there gold-rich asteroids into Earth orbit? I admit it's industrially convenient havin' gold fall to the same value as tin, but the the financial problems!"
A thin smile; the Alliance currency was fiat money, while the Domination's Auric had always been gold-backed. "You could refuse to trade for gold, and maintain an arbitrary value," she said in a tone of sweet reason.
He snorted. "Thus sacrificin' the industrial advantages, and ending up with all the disadvantages of a metallic standard, all the problems of a paper-money system, and none of the compensatin' flexibility," he said. "Between me and thee, we're movin' to a basket of commodities, although with the general fall in prices—"
An hour later, Hiero leaned back. "Well," she said, "all this indicates several areas of potential agreement." They both nodded; technical discussions were easy, once the top-echelon political decisions had been made. "Perhaps we can move on to others, at later meetings. Certainly we have more of a meeting of minds than I could with your Militants."
Or I with Allsworthy, Eric inferred. Quite true; the chairman had what amounted to a physical phobia towards Draka, taking the nickname "Snake" quite literally.
"Please, don't misinterpret," he said softly. "On some issues of purely… pragmatic impo'tance, perhaps. On mo' fundamental issues of foreign policy, my Conservatives will follow an essentially Militant line."
"Why? If I may ask."
"Because… Madam President, the internal politics of the Domination can no way be interpreted in terms of what yo' familiar with; a word to the wise, to prevent misunderstandin'. The universe of discourse is too different. To call my faction paternalistic conservatives an' Gayner's biotechnocrats is a very crude approximation. Our real differences are on issues of domestic policy—very long-term domestic policy at that, arisin' after we dispose of yo'. Or yo' dispose of us, in which case it all becomes moot, eh? It's extremely impo'tant that we try to understand the parameters of each other's operations, otherwise things could get completely irrational."