The ghouloon caught it out of the air with one hand, holding it between finger and thumb, sniffing curiously. Then he ate it, exposing intimidating fangs, and a long pink tongue washed the black muzzle.
“Wofor good fighter,” he said. The voice was blurred but understandable. “Wofor brave. Wofor smart.” He slapped at his chest with his hands, a drumlike sound.
For a moment Marya’s eyes met the bronze-gold slit-pupilled gaze of the transgene; she could see the lids blink and the wet black nose ruffle slightly to take her scent. Abomination, she thought. That was what the Church taught, and for once she agreed wholeheartedly. The Draka woman was talking to Fred again, leaning forward with interest.
Lucky, Marya thought. Lucky that they had stumbled on someone heading for the Sologne Forest Preserve. The Conservancy Directorate usually rented out the hunting rights to the smaller preserves to groups of neighboring Landholders, in return for maintenance work. Very economical, but it made it difficult for an outsider to get a permit, and Draka law and custom were not easy on poachers. This Clearmount had connections with the local planters—She might even be a relative, Marya thought ironically—and could get them into a hunting party. Even more lucky that she’s interested in Fred and not his sister. Not that she wasn’t prepared to make the supreme sacrifice, but . . . Better him than me.
Citizen sexual mores were a tricky subject. Their instructors had gone into detail, tracing it back to child-rearing patterns . . . One thing Draka had never been was puritanicaclass="underline" sadomasochistic hedonists, that was the term the psychs used. The boys had concubines from puberty on, or casual sex with any serf woman they wanted; that was a tradition dating back to their Caribbean origins and beyond. Not many pious middle-class Protestants in the bloodlines of this nation. Citizen women had been legally barred from any contact with serf males until quite recently, though, and it was still socially unacceptable. Given the sex-segregated boarding schools, the Draka neoclassicism and the near-total lack of erotic inhibition otherwise, she supposed a tradition of homoeroticism was natural enough. For that matter, young women generally wanted more romance in the mixture; that didn’t seem to hit men until true adulthood. So young Draka women faced a perpetual shortage of interested men. Marya’s mouth quirked, remembering her own teenage years.
I always suspected courtship was something adolescent males put up with because it was the only way to get laid, she thought. This more or less confirms it.
Draka teenage boys got all they wanted, and tended to be profoundly indifferent to females of their own caste, who could say no. So girls were thrown back on each other; they were supposed to grow out of it in their early twenties, theoretically. Most did, to the extent of marrying and bearing children; granted, there was really strong social pressure to do that, as well. The agent grinned to herself. The Draka woman’s come-on to Fred had been disconcertingly blunt. That’s logical, too. In the Alliance countries sex was something that women had and men wanted, and men had to conform to the indirect approaches women preferred. Here, precisely the opposite.
I wonder what hunting boar with a spear is like? she thought meditatively.
* * *
SOLOGNE FOREST PRESERVE
PROVINCE OF TOURAINE
DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA
APRIL 10, 1973: 1030 HOURS
“Shit!” Myfwany said, reining in her horse. “What a complete cockup!”
Yolande nodded agreement, switching her reins to the spear hand and wiping her hair back from her forehead with the other. The rain had given way to a steady drizzle, just enough to keep them soaked and replenish the low mist drifting through the trees. They had halted in a clearing, a hectare or so of knee-high purple heather amid old-growth oak; the chill cut to the bone beneath the leather and wool of their hunting clothes. Discomfort could be ignored; they were also lost, which was rather more frustrating. She reached for her hunting horn and blew, a dull rooo-woo-rooo sound through the endless patter of rain on leaf. The air was raw and full of the smell of marsh, vegetable decay, and wet horse.
“Hear that?” she asked, standing in the stirrups and cupping a hand to an ear. Their mounts stamped and blew, shaking their heads in a jingle of bridle and bit. Far away came the belling of hounds.
“Sa,” Myfwany said, her head coming up. “Think they caught the scent again?”
“We can hope. C’mon, this way.” The Sologne was a half-million hectares of wilderness, but the keepers tended to the paths at least.
SOLOGNE FOREST PRESERVE
CHATEAU MOULIN
PROVINCE OF TOURAINE
DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA
APRIL 4, 1973: 1000 HOURS
“Out!” the Security Tetrarch said. The serf flinched back from the deadly quiet of the tone. “You brainless slut, you supposed to keep track of him!”
Mei-ling swallowed and straightened. “Mistis, Mastah Dave doan’ like it, when we keeps him too close. We supposed to make him happy, aren’t we? Anyways, Bernadette with him.”
The green-coated secret police agent looked down at her control board and keyed a sequence. “Then why isn’t she carryin’ her transponder? Oh, hell.” Another touch on the board. “Decurion, turn out the ghouloons, let’s see them earn their keep. No alarms, our little electronics wizard don’t like the bars of the cage showin’.” She stood, shrugging into a waterproof jacket. “Come on, wench. Show me where they might have gone.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Mandy asked, as Yolande and Myfwany reined in. John looked up from overseeing the serf huntsmen who were rigging the nets between the big beech trees, waved, went back to work.
“Where have we been?” Myfwany grinned and waved at the surrounding forest. “Y’all were supposed to keep everyone in sight or hearin’ of the dogs. Fo’ that matter, where the hell are we now?”
A faint shout came from the woods ahead. The trees were tall here, thirty meters or more, but widely enough spaced that patches of underbrush flourished, spiny thorn and witch hazel. They all swung down, dropping their reins. Yolande swallowed and took a firmer grip on her boar spear; it was a head taller than she, with an oval point as broad as her hand and a steel crossbar beneath to prevent a tusker from driving itself up the shaft to gore a hunter. The nets made a deep funnel, with them at the apex . . . it was a slightly disconsolate feeling, as the servants led the mounts away to safety.
Damn, but I’m still light for this, she thought. No more than a hundred fifty tall; strong for her weight, but wild pig had heft. “Shut up, you crybaby,” she whispered to herself under her breath, inaudibly. Aloud: “Where are those city-bred, the ones Alexandra picked up?” There was a slightly patronizing note to her voice; the pair had seemed nice enough, but she thought her cousin could do better . . . and had been a little undiscriminating, since her divorce. Oh, well, not everybody can find the right one, she thought charitably, sparing a quick glance for Myfwany. They all faced the gap in the net, spreading out to twice arm’s length, just close enough to give support. A horn blew ahead of them, and John came trotting back toward them.
“Don’t know,” Mandy said with a shrug. John stopped to give her a brief hug before taking center position; Yolande noted how they were almost of a height, now. Mandy’s really filled out, she thought, with a slight envy. I’m always going to be like a sylph beside her. And it looked as if she might be a sister-in-law . . .