“Lot of it’s space-made,” he said. In appearance it was a virtually featureless rectangular box; there was a barrel at one end, with a thinner rod above, and a cushioned buttplate at the other; a pistol grip below, and a stubby telescopic sight above.
“Loads from a cassette, two hundred rounds,” Donal continued, and slid a long box through an opening just above the buttplate. “Three-point-five-millimeter, but hypervelocity, prefragmented tungsten slug; designers say it’ll only come apart in a soft target. Barrel’s a refractory superalloy, an’ it has a linin’ of single-crystal diamond.”
A smile. “They tryin’ to use that fo’ spaceships, thrust plates, but even in vacuum and microgravity it’s stone tricky. Thissere’s an intermediate use. Charge the first round by turnin’ this knob in a complete circle. The slide here sets cyclic rate, up to two thousand rpm; at that, you gets a three-round groupin’ less than twenty-five-millimeter apart at eight hundred meters. Max effective range ’bout one thousand. Here,” he continued, unloading the weapon, “sight on somethin’.”
Fred took the weapon in his hands; it was superbly balanced, although it felt a little odd to have the action right by his ear and the grip halfway down the rifle. No heavier than the Springfield-12s he had trained on, lighter than the IM Holbars-7s the Domination was using now. The sight lit as his eye came into line, with the peculiar glassy brightness of electro-optical imaging . . . and a red dot in the center of the field. The Draka heard his surprised grunt.
“Laser sightin’,” he said. “Where it falls, there you hit. Frequency filter in the sight, you can see it an’ the target can’t. Adjusts fo’ range, as you up the magnification.”
“Excellent, we’ll take two,” the American said calmly, fighting down his glee. This was an advantage a Draka agent wouldn’t have anywhere in the Alliance.
“Ah . . . I’m afraid they’re six thousand aurics each.”
He pretended a wince; quite a sum, by Draka standards. A little more than the basic Citizen stipend. A standard low-skilled serf could be bought for a hundred and seventy-five.
“Hmm . . . well, yo want the best, goin’ after bushmen. They do have rifles, aftah all. Yes, two. An’ the usual; nightsight goggles, some light body armor.”
“Well, the measurin’ rooms are this way—”
“Jesus, I just can’t believe it was that easy,” Marya said.
Her brother laughed, guiding the Bushmaster down the access ramp and onto the road marked City Center. That tone meant she had completed the sweep; the instruments in their perscomps were swift and thorough. For the moment he felt good, relaxed and strong and confident. The air rushing in through the opened window was cool, smelling of brackish river and warm asphalt pavement; the greenery and bright-colored buildings of the freemen’s city showed ahead.
“No . . . Did you know, there was a time when you could get guns like that back home?”
The road was four-lane and raised on a five-meter embankment, narrower than a limited-access route in the US; more steamdrags, more buses, fewer private cars. And the Domination used rail transport more than his people. A checkerboard of streets was passing on either side, residential from the look of them. Brick-built walkups, patterns of red and white, an occasional square of decorative tile. Elite housing, individual family apartments for the literate class of industrial serf. Sidewalks, trees lining the streets. He could see the odd building that looked like a church, others that might be schools or stores . . . No, ration centers, the goods would be distributed rather than sold. It might almost have been an older suburb of an American city . . .
Marya touched his arm. There was an iron cage hanging at one of the intersections below, with a man in it, almost level with them. The sign wired to the bars read saboteur, there was a crowd of children gathered below, watching or throwing rocks. At first he thought the man inside was dead—nothing so skeletal could be alive—but then one of the stones bounced through the bars and a stick-arm waved.
“Shit,” he said softly. Pictures were not like the real thing. Something prickled at his eyes, and he turned them back into the windstream as the car went past. His head just rolled on his shoulders. He couldn’t have been watching us.
“You were saying?” Marya continued. He glanced aside at her: flawlessly composed. Of course he couldn’t see past the dark sunglasses . . .
“You’re a cool one,” he said.
She turned her head to look at him, smiled. He felt a slight chill wash away the nausea. “I’m saving it up,” she said.
“Yes . . . oh, the guns. Back before the War, you could buy military-style rifles, handguns, the lot. The Constitution, you know: ‘A well-regulated militia . . . ,’ the right-to-bear-arms clause.”
She frowned in puzzlement. “Oh, you mean the Army Reserve? Well, even these days, a lot of them keep the personal weapons at home.”
“No, nothing to do with the military. Those are under seal and inspected pretty often, anyway. Not just people in hunting clubs, either. Anybody. Cheap pistols, sawed-off shotguns, the lot.”
She shook her head. “Live and learn . . . I know why the Draka always carry iron, they want to be able to kill at any time. What possible use could—” A shrug. “Never mind. Let’s check in, and then we’ll start working magic on the hotel infosystem.” She pulled off the sunglasses and chewed meditatively on one earpiece. “Because I suspect magic is what we’ll need.”
Chapter Nine
HOTEL MIRABELLE, NANTES
LOIRE DISTRICT, TOURAINE PROVINCE
DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA
APRIL 4, 1973
God that thing’s ugly, Marya thought, looking at the ghouloon. The transgene animal was big, for one thing, about three times her brother’s weight. Basically a giant dog-headed baboon, four-footed most of the time but able to walk or sprint on its hind legs. The thumbs on feet and hands were fully opposable, and the forehead was high and rounded. The biocontrollers of Virunga had started with Simien mountain baboons, then added something from leopard and gorilla and the jag hond . . . but there was more than an animal’s intelligence behind those eyes. Human genes as well, a mind that knew itself to be aware and could think in words. It wore a belt, and a long knife and pouch.
They were in one of the dining courtyards of the hotel, out under the mild midmorning sun; little fleecy clouds went by overhead, like something out of a Fragonard painting. Her brother and her and the Draka they had met: Alexandra Clearmount, a woman in her thirties, nearly their own age—a geneticist. The ghouloon was of the first “production batch.” It had attracted a good deal of attention, although Draka considered it ill-bred to stare; the serfs were frankly terrified of it.
“. . . mass production,” she was saying. “So costs ought to come down pretty steadily. The War and Security Directorates’ve got large orders in already.”
“They can be used in combat?” Fred sounded politely skeptical. A waitress brought their platter of shrimp and crudités.
“Fo’ some things. Not much technical aptitude, not intelligent enough, but they’ll make killer infantry. Eh, Wofor?” She laughed and tossed a shrimp.