The ship swayed again, this time from the torque of her central propeller as she started ahead dead slow.
I was so frightened. . but I'd never have spoken to Dad again if he'd permitted a massacre like the ones I watched.
I had men like your father serving under me, Raj said. They could only guess at the things Center would have known, but they still managed to act the way I'd have done.
The City of Dubuk whistled again, long and raucously, as all three propellers began to churn water in the direction of home.
I've always thought those people were the greatest good fortune of my career, Raj added.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gerta Hosten spat in the dry dust of the village street.
"Leutnant, just what the fik do you think you're doing?" she asked.
"Setting the animals an example!" the young officer said.
"An example of what-how to show courage and resistance?" she asked.
The subject of their dispute hung head-down from a rope tied around his ankles and looped over a stout limb of the live oak that shaded the village well. He spat, too, in her direction, then returned to a cracked, tuneless rendition of "Imperial Glory," the former Empire's national anthem. Two hundred or so peasants and artisans stood and watched behind a screen of Protege infantry; the town's gentry, priests, and other potential troublemakers had already been swept up. The packed villagers smelled of sweat and hatred, their eyes furtive except for a few with the courage to glare. The sun beat down, hot even by Land standards on this late-summer day, but dry enough to make her throat feel gritty.
Gerta sighed, drew her Lauter automatic, jacked the slide, and fired one round into the hanging man's head from less than a meter distance. The flat elastic crack echoed back from the whitewashed stone houses surrounding the village square and from the church that dominated it. The civilians jerked back with a rippling murmur; the Protege troopers watched her with incurious ox-eyed calm. Blood and bone fragments and glistening bits of brain spattered across the feet of the Protege who had been waiting with a barbed whip. He gaped in surprise, lifting one foot and then another in slow bewilderment.
"Hauptman-"
"Shut up." Gerta ejected the magazine, returned it to the pouch on her belt beside the holster, and snapped a fresh one into the well of the pistol. "Come."
She put her hand on the lieutenant's shoulder and guided him aside a few steps, leaning toward him confidentially. Young as he was, she didn't think he mistook the smile on her face for an expression of friendliness; on the other hand, she was a full captain and attached to General Staff Intelligence, so he'd probably listen at least a little.
"What exactly did you have planned?" she said.
"Why. . ammunition was found in the animal's dwelling. I was to execute him, shoot five others taken at random, and then burn the village."
Gerta sighed again. "Leutnant, the logic of our communication with the animals is simple." She clenched one hand and held it before his nose. "It goes like this: 'Dog, here is my fist. Do what I want, or I will hit you with it.'"
"Ya, Hauptman-"
"Shut up. Now, there is an inherent limitation to this form of communication. You can only burn their houses down once-thereby reducing agricultural production in this vicinity by one hundred percent. You can only kill them once. Whereupon they cease to be potentially useful units of labor and become so much dead meat. . and pork is much cheaper. Do you grasp my meaning, boy?"
"Nein, Hauptman."
This time Gerta repressed the sigh. "Terror is an effective tool of control, but only if it is applied selectively. There is nothing in the universe more dangerous than someone with nothing to lose. If you flog a man to death for having two shotgun shells-loaded with birdshot, he probably simply forgot them-then what incentive is left to prevent them from active resistance?"
"Oh."
The junior officer looked as if he was thinking, which was profoundly reassuring. No Chosen was actually stupid; the Test of Life screened out low IQs quite thoroughly, and had for many generations. That didn't mean that Chosen couldn't be willfully stupid, though-over-rigid, ossified.
"So. You must apply a graduated scale of punishment. Remember, we are not here to exterminate these animals, tempting though the prospect is."
Gerta looked over at the villagers. It was extremely tempting, the thought of simply herding them all into the church and setting it on fire. Perhaps that would be the best policy: just kill off the Empire's population and fill up the waste space with the natural increase of the Land's Proteges. But no. Behfel ist behfel. That would be far too slow, no telling what the other powers would get up to in the meantime. Besides, it was the destiny of the Chosen to rule all the rest of humankind; first here on Visager, ultimately throughout the universe, for all time. Genocide would be a confession of failure, in that sense.
"No doubt the ancestors of our Proteges were just as unruly," the infantry lieutenant said thoughtfully. "However, we domesticated them quite successfully."
"Indeed." Although we had three centuries of isolation for that, and even so I sometimes have my doubts. "Carry on, then."
"What would you suggest, Hauptmann?"
Gerta blinked against the harsh sunlight. "Have you been in garrison here long?"
"Just arrived-the area was lightly swept six months ago, but nobody's been here since."
She nodded; the Empire was so damned big, after the strait confines of the Land. Maps just didn't convey the reality of it, not the way marching or flying across it did.
"Well, then. . let your troopers make a selection of the females and have a few hours' recreation. Have the rest of the herd watch. From reports, this is an effective punishment of intermediate severity."
"It is?" The lieutenant's brows rose in puzzlement.
"Animal psychology," Gerta said, drawing herself up and saluting.
"Jawohl. Zum behfel, Hauptman. I will see to it."
Gerta watched him stride off and then vaulted into her waiting steamcar, one hand on the rollbar.
"West," she said to the driver.
The long dusty road stretched out before her, monotonous with rolling hills. Fields of wheat and barley and maize-the corn was tasseling out, the small grains long cut to stubble-and pasture, with every so often a woodlot or orchard, every so often a white-walled village beside a small stream. Dust began to plume up as the driver let out the throttle, and she pulled her neckerchief up over her nose and mouth. The car was coated with the dust and smelled of the peppery-earthy stuff, along with the strong horse-sweat odor of the two Protege riflemen she had along for escort.
Wealth, I suppose, she thought, looking at the countryside she was surveying for her preliminary report. Warm and fertile and sufficiently well-watered, without the Land's problems of leached soil and erosion and tropical insects and blights. Room for the Chosen to grow.
"We're in the situation of the python that swallowed the pig," she muttered to herself. "Just a matter of time, but uncomfortable in the interval." That was the optimistic interpretation.
Sometimes she thought it was more like the flies who'd conquered the flypaper.