“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Straight through, Arch-Strategos.”
* * *
“Tell you the truth, I’d forgotten the bloody thing,” Yolande said, as they seated themselves.
“I . . . never have, Mistis,” Marya said, touching the cuff with the fingers of the other hand.
The capsule was the standard passenger form, a steel-alloy tube five decks high. There was an axial passageway with a lift platform, a control bubble at the bow and a thrust nozzle and reaction-mass tank at the other. There were the usual facilities, and a small galley. Nothing elaborate—cargo versions didn’t even have a live pilot—but quick and comfortable. The usual load was several hundred passengers, although this flight would be hers alone; a seven-hour flight, under 1 G.
She sighed and looked around the lounge, empty save for herself and Marya; Tina had gone to lie down in water-cushioned comfort. This was a wedge-shaped section of the topmost passenger deck, set with chairs and loungers and tables. A long section of the wall was crystal-sandwich screen. Yolande touched a control, and the wall disappeared. Smooth metal showed a half-meter away. Clanking sounds, and it began to move; magnetic fields were gripping the capsule. They slid sideways with ponderous delicacy, then into a vertical shaft. A slight feeling of acceleration, like an elevator. That lasted five minutes, past more blank metal; they were rising through one of the many passages that honeycombed the central lift shaft.
“Ah.” They were out, on the hectare-broad pentagonal metal cap; flat and empty now, no other launches just now. The dome stretched around them, and dimly through it she could see the landscape below. From above and close-by the structure of the dome was more apparent, the layers of gold foil and conductor sheathing.
“Stand by for boost, please.”
She swung the lounger to near-horizontal. Not that the acceleration would be anything to note. Below her lasers would be building to excitation phase, mirrors aligning. A rumble, as the pumps began pushing liquid oxygen into the nozzle. Whump. Thrust, pushing her back into the cushions, building to Earth-normal. She sighed again, glanced over at Marya.
“Marya,” she said. The other woman looked up. “What am I to do with you?”
“What you will, Mistis.”
Yolande laughed with soft bitterness. “What I will? Now there’s a joke.” She brooded, watching the lunar landscape grow and shrink behind the windowscreen, the ancient pale rock and dust, the roads and installations her people had built. “Duty . . . I was raised to do what is right; duty to the State, to the Race, to my family and my friends and to my servants. For the State and the Race, I’ve helped preside over a useless nonwar that shows no signs of endin’ except in an even mo’ useless real war that will destroy civilization, if not humanity. My best friend I failed . . . not least, by failure to let go of grief. My family?”
She sighed and stretched. “Well, my children have turned out well. And I’ve been a good owner to my serfs, with one exception. You, of course. It was wrong to torture you, hurt you beyond what was necessary to compel obedience. Actin’ like a weasel, to assuage my own hurt.”
“Are . . . ” Marya hesitated. “Are you apologizing to me, Mistis?” There was an overtone of shock in her voice.
Yolande opened one eye and grinned. “It’s rare but not unknown,” she said. More seriously: “Marya, I know you’ve never accepted the Yoke, not in you heart. But you behavior’s been impeccable for more than twenty years, which means my obligation is to treat you as a good serf. I . . . seriously violated that, back when.” Her smile turned rueful. “I’d consider letting you go, were it practical. Or just giving you a cottage on the Island and letting you live out y’ years.” She owned one of the Seychelles islands outright, but seldom visited it.
“Mistis? May I speak frankly?” Yolande nodded, and the serf continued. “You don’t feel in the least, ah, disturbed about enslaving me, but using this”—she raised the controller cuff—“makes you feel, mmm, guilty?”
Yolande linked her hands behind her neck. “Slightly ashamed, not guilty; such a bourgeois emotion, guilt.” She frowned. “Not about—yes, enslavin’ is the correct term, I suppose—no. You not of the Race; I am. My destiny to rule, yours to obey and serve. Obedience and submission: protection and guidance. Perfectly proper.”
The Draka studied the serf’s face, which had taken on the careful blankness of suppressed expression. “One reason besides Gwen I’ve kept yo around, not off somewheres clerkin’ or something. You so different. It’s refreshin’, keeps me on my toes mentally, like doin’ unarmed practice against different opponents. Here.” She snapped open a case on the table beside her, brought out two pair of reader goggles. “I’m promotin’ you to Literate V-a.” That gave unlimited access to the datastores. Except for information under War or Security lock, of course, and Citizen personal files; it was the classification for top-level civilian-sector serfs. Very rare for someone not born in the Domination. Yolande tossed the other pair to Marya and put on her own; they had laser and micromirror sets in the earpieces so that you saw the presentation on an adjustable “screen” before your eyes.
She sighed again. One more time at the data, and maybe I can make sense of it.
Chapter Nineteen
CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE
ARCHONA
DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA
MARCH 27, 1998: 1700 HOURS
“Sweet—mother—Freya,” Yolande said, looking wide-eyed at her uncle. Rank and station, the slight residual awe this office evoked, all vanished. “Shitfire!”
“Both appropriate,” he said, rising stiffly and walking to the sideboard. “So is a drink . . . Arch-Strategos.”
For a moment even the news she had just heard could not block a stab of concern. He looks so much older. Nearly eighty, but with modern medicine that was only late middle age. Still straight, but he moved with care, and the lines were graven deeper into the starved-eagle face, below the thick white hair. It was a killing job, this; his pallor was highlighted by the dark indigo of his jacket and the black lace of his cravat. Then the immensity of what she had heard swept back, and she felt her stomach swoop again. My teeth want to chatter.
She accepted the glass and knocked half of it back: eau de vie. The warmth spread in her belly, and she closed her eyes to let the information sink in.
“Uncle, this is the best news I’ve had since . . . Loki, I don’t know.”
“Is it?” He sank down behind the desk. “Is it really?”
Yolande looked up, met the cold gray eyes, and refused to be daunted. “Uncle Eric—Excellence—I’ve spent the past decade dead-certain convinced that we were headin fo’ the Final War without a prayer of comin’ out on top. You just gave me hope—fo’ myself, not so important; for my children and the Race, rather more so!”
He nodded and rested his face in his hands for a moment before raising his drink.
“Now you know, daughter of my sister, what only a dozen other people outside Virunga Biocontrol know—and we’ve kept the ones who worked on the project locked up tighter than a headhunter’s heart.”
For an instant his voice went flat-soft. “Yo realize, even the suspicion that yo might reveal this would mean a pill?”
Yolande held one hand in a gesture of acceptance. A bullet in the back of the head was an occupational risk at the highest levels of command and power. “And when is acceptable saturation?” she continued.