The serf lay back and Yolande straddled her, running her hands from the black woman’s knees up over thighs and hips, circling on the breasts and starting over. Jolene arched into it, squirming and making small relaxed sounds of pleasure. Yolande savored the contrasting sensations, the firm muscle overlaid with a soft resilient layer of fat. Not flabby, but so different from a Draka, she thought.
“You do this with the brooder, Mistis?” Jolene asked through a breathy chuckle.
“Maybe,” Yolande said, running her fingernails up the other’s ribs. That brought a protesting tickle-shiver. “If she’s pretty an’ willing’. I’m goin’ pick her for hips, health, an’ milk, not fuckability.”
She leaned herself forward slowly, until they were in contact, hips and stomach and breasts, then kissed her. Mint and wine, she thought languidly. There were times when this was exactly what you wanted: friendly, slow and easy. It might be the crèche training, but with Jolene she always felt affection without the risk of the wench getting excessively attached, which was embarrassing and forced you to hurt them, eventually.
“Mhhh . . . I’d . . . I’d like to do it, Mistis,” Jolene said. “Have you baby.”
Startled, Yolande rose up on her hands and looked down into the other’s face. “Why on earth?” she said. The movement had brought her mound of Venus into contact with the serf’s, and she began a gentle rocking motion with her hips; the other slipped into rhythm.
“I . . . like babies, Mistis.”
“Hmmm. Up a little harder. You can have you own, anytimes; take a lover or a husband, I don’t mind.”
“Thanks kindly, Mistis, not yet. I hopes to travel with you sometimes, see them faraway places. But you away lots next little while. An’ . . . well, you knows I gets friendly with Marya? No, not like this, just she don’ have many to talk to. Other Literates at Claestum sort of standoffish, ’specially with her.” Yolande winced slightly, remembering her early treatment of the wench. It would mark Marya with dangerous misfortune, in the eyes of most.
“Then, she don’t have much to talk about with, with the unClassed.” The vast majority on a plantation, illiterate and forbidden even the most limited contact with information systems.
“Marya good with babies, but Gwen gettin’ to be a holy terror; we kin”—she ran her hands down her owner’s flanks, gripped her hips to increase the friction of the slow grind—“kin help each othah. ’Sides,” she said, raising her mouth to the Draka’s breasts, “I like the idea.”
“Mmmm. All right, I’ll take you in to the Clinic and have you seeded. Now shut up an’ keep doin’ that.”
* * *
Bing. The bedside phone. Yolande raised her mouth from Jolene’s. “Shit.” Bing. Bing. Bing. “It isn’t goin’ away.” Not that it was all that late, she had only been back from the Amphitheater two hours.
Her left hand went to the touchplate, keying voice-only. Her right stayed busy; not fair to stop now. “Yes?” she said coldly.
“Uncle Eric here.” An older man’s voice, warm and assured. “If I’m not interrupt—”
Jolene shuddered and stiffened, crying out sharply once and then again.
“Ah, even if I am, niece, I’ve got a gentleman here I think you’d like to meet an’ some matters to discuss. Half an hour in the study? Strictly informal.”
“Certainly, Uncle Eric,” Yolande said, breaking the connection. “Senator, possibly Archon-to-Be, war hero, Party bigwig, darlin’ of the Aerospace Command, he-who-must-be-obeyed by new-minted Cohortarchs, shit,” she muttered, looking down. Jolene was smiling as she lay with her eyes closed, panting slightly. “Got to go fo’ a while, sweet wench,” the Draka said.
Jolene’s eyes opened. “Half an hour, the bossman said,” she husked, swallowing. “Five-minute shower, five minutes fo’ a loungin’ robe and sandals. Ten-minute walk; that leaves ten minutes. No time to waste, Mistis-sweet, you just lie back there an’ put you legs over my shoulders.”
Yolande threw herself back and began to laugh. I wonder, she thought in the brief moment while thought was possible, I wonder what he has to say?
The study was book-lined, with the leather odor of an old well-kept library; there was a long table with buffel-hide chairs, and another set of loungers around the unlit hearth. A few pictures on the walclass="underline" old landscapes; one priceless Joden Foggard oil of Archona in 1830 with a smoke-belching steamcar in front of this townhouse, a nude by Tanya von Shrakenberg. A few modern spacescapes. The doors to the patio had been closed, and the room was dim; a house girl was just setting a tray with coffee and liqueurs on the table amid the chairs. There were three men waiting for her. Uncle Eric; nearly sixty now, and looking . . . not younger, just like a very fit sixty: the hatchet-faced von Shrakenberg looks aged well. His eldest, Karl, thirty-six and a Merarch already, like a junior version of his father with a touch of his mother’s rounder face and stocky build; also with more humor around his eyes.
They rose, and she saw the third man was still in evening dress rather than the hooded djellaba robes she and her hosts were wearing. A rather unfashionable outfit, brown velvet with silver embroidery on the seams and cuffs, and a very conservative lace cravat. An unfashionable man, only fifty millimeters taller than she, broad-built and bear-strong; you could see that he might turn pear-shaped in middle age among any people but Draka. A hooked nose, balding brow, and a brush of dark-brown beard.
“Greetings,” she said politely, gripping his wrist. “Service to the State.”
“Glory to the Race,” he replied; the return grip was like a precisely controlled machine. His accent was Alexandrian, like the Board chairman this morning, but with a human pitch and timbre. And a hint of something else, unplaceable.
“Doctor Harry Snappdove, my niece, Cohortarch Yolande Ingolfsson,” Eric said, with a smile at her well-concealed surprise. “I am on the Strategic Planning Board, Yolande,” he said.
They all sank into the chairs; the house girl arranged the refreshments and left on soundless feet.
“I felt,” her uncle continued, “that it was time you and I started . . . talkin’ occasionally on matters of importance, beyond the purely social.”
His voice was genial as they sipped at the chocolate-almond liqueur, and the other two turned politely toward her, but for a moment Yolande felt as tense as she had before the Appointments Board. Then the mellow contentment of her body forced relaxation on her mind, and she sent a thought of silent gratitude to Jolene.
“Hmmm. Ah, Uncle . . . am I to presume I’m bein’ invited into the infamous von Shrakenberg Mafia?” The factional struggles within the Party had been getting fiercer these last few years, and it was well-known who led the controlling circle of the Conservative wing.
Eric laughed soundlessly. “Wotan, are they still callin’ it that?” Seriously: “You’re reaching the point where political commitments become necessary.” Yolande nodded slightly; that was almost true. The Domination had never been able to afford real nepotism; you had to have plenty of raw talent to get promoted. Still, it had never hurt to have family and Party connections.
“The Party is going to split soon,” he continued. Yolande felt a cold-water shock at the casual tone, the equally casual nods of the other two. The Draka League had always been there in the background of her life, like the atmosphere.