The Domination, page 48
“Ceylon,” Lebrun said. “The von Shrakenbergs have relatives there. The Draka took it from the Dutch in 1786; their ancestors, rather—they were still a British colony then. And here is one the mistress did the drawings for herself.”
A German farmhouse burning under a bright winter sun, the pillar of black smoke a dun club in the white and blue arch of the sky. Dead cattle bloating in the farmyard, torn by ravens, one crushed into an obscene pancake shape by the treads of a tank. Skeletal trees about the steading, their branches like strands of black hair frozen in a tossing moment of agony; a human figure hung by the neck from a branch, with snow that drifted into his open mouth. Self-propelled guns were scattered back across the fields, the long barrels elevated, their slim lines broken by the cylindrical bulkiness of muzzle breaks and bore evacuators, the vehicles half invisible in mottled white-on-gray camouflage. In the foreground a group of figures, Draka soldiers bulky in their white parkas and flared bucket helmets. They were grouped about the bow of a Hond battletank, under the shadow of its cannon.
The detail was amazing for a medium as coarse as mosaic. The nun could make out the eagle pommel of a knife, duct tape about the forestock of a rifle, a loop of fresh ears dangling from a belt—and recognized faces. Tanya von Shrakenberg rested her palms on a map spread over the sloping frontal plate; her bulbous tank commander’s communication helmet weighed down one corner. Marya stooped to peer at the other figure, a man who tapped a finger on the map and pointed with the drum-magazined assault rifle in his other hand.
“Master Edward?” she asked.
“Exactement,” Lebrun replied. “Note that there is a caption.” The two women stepped back to view the cursive script below the mural: The Progress of Mankind. Lebrun laughed with a rattle of phlegm. “Our owners’ sense of humor,” he said, and led them into a stairwell that was old stone and new wood, stained and polished.
“Observe: we are on the ground level, behind the lesser tower of the east wall. Behind there is Mistress Tanya’s bedroom; not to be entered without permission.”
He began climbing the spiral staircase, slowly and with pauses for breath. “At least I will no longer have to climb these stairs . . . The second floor, library. Not to be entered unless you have the privilege. And here—the office.”
The door swung open, and they blinked into bright daylight. The office was a room fifteen feet by thirty, the last ten jutting out onto the final stage of the square tower that formed the southeast corner of the manor. It had originally been open between the rectangular roof and the waisthigh balustrade; the renovations had closed it in with sliding panels of glass. They had been pushed back, and a pleasant scent of cut grass and damp earth was blowing in. Bookcases and filing cabinets lined the walls; two desks flanked the entrance, neatly arrayed with ledgers, blotters, adding machines, pens, telephones.
“Where you will work,” Lebrun said. He walked forward to the tower section. “The owners’ desks. Mistress Tanya uses this as a studio, as well; she says the light is good.” His cane tapped on the smooth brown tile; he settled himself with a sigh on the cushioned divan that ran beneath the windows.
Marya stepped up to look at the canvases on the walls: landscapes, several portraits of a dark-haired Draka girl in her teens. Two paintings were propped on easels. One was completed; it showed a man standing nude beside a swimming pool in bright sunlight. Master Edward, she thought. But younger. Younger and without the scars, water beading on brown-tanned skin and outlining a long-legged athlete’s body of taut muscle, broad-shouldered and thick-armed without being heavy. The other was three-quarters complete, a watercolor of a nude female figure lying on a white blanket beneath a vine trellis of pale mauve wisteria. The treatment was free, the brush strokes almost Impressionist, sensuous contrasts of dappled sunlight, flesh tones, hair.
“My daughter,” Lebrun said, pointing with his cane. “I am, I fear, something of a disappointment to her, hard as she wheedled to get me this position. She will persist in believing that I will live another twenty years; only natural, in one who has lost so much.” He peered shrewdly at Chantal. “Ah, Mademoiselle Lefarge, you are thinking that there is not one of us who has not lost much. Remember, if you please, that each of us has his breaking point, the unendurable thing.”
He waved a hand at their expressions, shaking his head and settling his head back into the cushions, eyes closed. Then they opened, rheumy but sharp. “Please, mesdames, no pity.” Slowly: “I have regrets enough, myself, but no complaints . . . I was born in 1885, did you know? In Paris; ah, Paris before the Great War . . . they do not call it la belle epoque for nothing. It was truly a golden age—not that we thought so at the time!” Another shake of the head. “Every generation thinks its own youth was a period like no other; mine had the misfortune to be right.” Silence for a moment.
“We were very arrogant . . . we believed in Reason and Democracy, and greatly in Science; together they would abolish war and poverty, unlock the secrets of the Universe, exempt us from history.” A dry laugh. “Indeed, history has come to an end, but not as we imagined. Not as we could imagine. I was born into the pinnacle of Western civilization, and I have lived to see it fall by its own folly. When I was a young man, the Domination was no more than a cloud on the horizon, an African anachronism that had somehow acquired the knack of machine industry.”
His hand tightened on the head of the cane. “Our god Progress would destroy them, we thought. Which it would have done, of a certainty, had we not committed deicide; here in the heartland of enlightenment we made the Great War, and Hitler’s war which was nothing but its sequel. That was what let the barbarians inside the walls: we were undermined from within, we conquered ourselves, we Europeans. And so I will die a slave, and my child and my grandchildren after her.” He paused. “The Draka . . . they are an abominable people, in the mass if not always as individuals. But do not blame them for what has happened; blame us, us old men. We deserve our fate although you do not. I have seen a world die, and while watching this new one being born has a certain academic interest”—he rose, his gaze going to the door at the rear of the room—“I can see what it must become, and have no desire to live in it.”
Louder, in English: “Good morning, Mistress. I trust you slept well?”
Tanya von Shrakenberg yawned as she padded into the room on silent bare feet, feeling a pleasant early-morning drowsiness. She had never been able to sleep past sunrise, no matter how late the night before. Six hours is plenty, she thought, as the two new wenches made awkward attempts at the half bow of informality, and she took another bite of the peach in her right hand.
“Mornin’, Jules,” she said. “Slept well enough, when I did.” Tanya finished the peach and flicked the stone across the room with a snap of her wrist. It struck the metal of the wastebasket with a crack and pattered down to the bottom in fragments; she pulled a kerchief from one sleeve of the loose Moorish-style djellaba she wore to wipe hands and mouth.
What I really want is bacon and hominy, she thought. And another two cups of coffee. And a cigarette. That would be against the doctor’s orders, though; cut down on the caffeine, no tobacco, restrict the fats and salts, limit the alcohol . . . Shit, the things I do for the Race, she thought. Can’t even ball with my husband. She grinned and rubbed a red mark on the side of her neck: there were some remarkably pleasant alternatives . . .
Tanya walked past the elderly Frenchman and leaned a knee against the divan. There was lawn below, and then low beds of flowers where the ancient moat had been filled in a century before. She squinted against the young sun beyond, as it outlined the beeches and poplars of the gardens that separated the manor from the first belt of orchards; light broke through the leaves with a flickering dazzle, a nimbus about shadow-black trunks and branches, and the birds were loud. She had spent some time learning them: the hollow cry of hoopoes, golden orioles fluffing or giving their distinctive raucous cat-screams. Tanya laid a hand on her stomach. Someday I will bring you here, little one, and teach you how to read the birds’ songs, she thought.
To work. She turned to the serfs. “Relax,” she said. “You’re goin’ to be livin’ under my roof the rest of your days; get used to talkin’ to me. Relax.”
The nun already had, to a schooled implacable calm that would waste no energy. Twenty-seven, Tanya thought. Probably too old to ever be completely tamed. A pity; she was brave and intelligent, the most difficult type to train, but the most valuable if you could. Chantal was easier to read and would be easier to handle, in the long run: a fiery type full of hatred. Tight rein and rope, spur her and let her break heart and spirit against it. Tanya considered her more carefully, and called up memories from the inspection at Lyon: sullen pouting mouth, full dark-nippled breasts, tucked-in waist, round buttocks and thighs, and a neatly thatched bush. Lush little Latin bunch of grapes, she thought consideringly; at the best age for her type, too—the bloom went quickly. And just the sort of filly Edward likes to ride. I’ll remind him when she’s had a few weeks to rest up; a little regular tuppin’ and a few babies could be just what’s needed to get her tamed down and docile.
“Well,” she said. “Jules here understands the workin’s well enough; just doesn’t have the energy for it. He’ll stay to show you the books for a week or two; an’ you can come to me or Mastah Edward with problems. Here.”
She walked to one side of the room, where bamboo-framed maps were hinged along one edge to the wall, and began flipping through them like a deck of cards.
“These are overhead maps of the plantation, done up from aerial photographs an’ the old French survey maps; shows all the field boundaries, crops, buildin’s, an’ so forth. An’ this”—she swung open the stack to expose one in the middle—“is how it’ll look in fifteen years, when we’ve finished. The ones in between are year-by-year plans for the alterations.” They clicked by, movement like a time-exposure photograph. Fields flowed into each other, and new hedgerows ringed them, arranged into a simpler pattern of larger plots. Internal roads snaked out from the manor and its dependencies; watering ponds and stock dams; the scatter of farmsteads and hamlets vanished, consolidated into a large village to the southeast of the Great House, except for a tiny clump at the north end of the map, where low hills marked the boundary of the property.
“Bourgueil,” she said. “That’s the old winery an’ the caves they used for storage. Those hillsides are the best fo’ quality vines.”
A quick riffle past the maps. “So, with these we can tell what’s to be planted, where, at any given time, what buildin’ projects are to be completed when, an’ so forth. Now, these show the manor, Quarters and outbuildings; as they were when we arrived, then at six-month intervals, up to completion in five years or so. This here is an overall view of the Loire Valley, from Decize to the sea, markin’ the boundaries of the plantations and where the towns and cities will be.” It was an emptier landscape than the present, the scatter of smaller towns gone, the woods spreading farther.
“Over here,” she continued, “are the personnel files. Complete personal records on every serf, updated monthly or as needed. This set with the combination lock contains the passes serfs have t’ carry off the property. These are the supply ledgers . . . ”
Marya sat and strained to absorb the information; it would be best to be efficient. The accounting system was well organized, easy to understand. Very routinized, designed to function almost automatically once the decision makers had set a policy.
“ . . . an’ these-here are the inflow-outflow ledgers,” Tanya concluded. “Mostly from the Landholders’ League—that’s the cooperative agency. We send them bulk produce, they process an’ market it; we order supplies an’ tools, they deliver. Debits an’ credits’re automatic ‘n’ itemized, sent round from League regional HQ in Tours. Over time, we’ll most likely have other outlets; estate-bottled wine an’ fresh produce direct to restaurants an’ suchlike.” She sketched in the other equipment: the photo reducer to prepare microfilms for storage and the appropriate governmental agencies, the teleprinter, the brand-new photocopier.
“Now,” Tanya said, “I, my husband, or one of the overseers will generally be spendin’ a few hours a day in here, but you two’ll be doin’ most of the routine work—I may buy another clerk if it piles up. The headman down in the Quarters has two bookkeepin’ staff of his own, an’ they’ll be coordinatin’ with you. Detailed check by one of us once a week, and the League audit is twice yearly. You work eight to seven, half-hour for lunch—it’ll be brought up—five days and a half-day Saturday with the usual holidays; as long as the work gets done, we’re pretty relaxed.”
A smile. “If it doesn’t get done, there are punishments rangin’ from bendin’ bare-ass over a chair fo’ a few licks with a belt to things you’d really rather not know about.” She pointed a finger at Marya. “You’re in charge; that makes yo respons’ble for errors by Chantal as well as your own. Chantal, remember your sister; both of you, remember that you could be scullions or fieldhands.” A warmer expression. “That’s the pain side; if things go well, plenty of, hmm, incentives. Not least, smooth-runnin’ plantation easier for everybody, serf an’ free alike.”
As she turned to go, Marya spoke. “Mistress?”
The Draka stopped and glanced her way.
“What is that?” Marya pointed; a plinth: waisthigh, covered with a white cloth.
“Ah, one of mah attempts at sculpture. ’Bout finished.”
The Draka pulled the cloth free. Beneath was the model of a tank, about a meter long. Painted clay, the nun assumed, although it had the authentic dull gray and mottle sheen of armorplate in camouflage markings. A Hond III, a squarish rectangle of sloped plates with a huge oblong cast turret—one of the midwar models, judging by the sawtooth skirting plates protecting the suspension: a commander’s craft, from the extra whip antennae bobbing above the turret. A very good model. Detailed down to the individual shells in the ammunition belts of the machine-gun pod over the commander’s hatch, cool brass gleams. And it showed combat damage, one of the forward track-guards twisted and torn, gouges, mud and dust spatters on the unit insignia of the Archonal Guard, and . . .
The nun’s face went white with the shock of recognition. Tanya’s was fluid with surprise for an instant, and then she stepped forward to pull off the Pole’s kerchief. Snapping it through the air she held it over Marya’s head, imitating the wimple of a nun’s habit.
“Almighty Thor,” she said wonderingly, shaking her head. Marya stared at her with mute horror. “We’ve met. Ahhh . . . ’43, late summer. That village—”
Chapter Eight
KALOWICE
MAZOVIA, GOVERNMENT-GENERAL OF POLAND
AUGUST 17, 1943
Warsaw was burning. The cone of it was a ruddy glow on the darkening eastern horizon, matching the huge copper disk of the setting sun in the west. Even at this distance the firestorm gave a smoky taste to the wind, a hint of that sulfur-tinged darkness, the taste of death. The flicker and rumble of artillery were faint, no louder than the hiss of grain stalks against the steel flanks of the Draka armor hull-down on the low crest overlooking the village. Four dozen of them, squat massive shapes in mottled green-yellow camouflage paint with the mailed-fist symbol of the Archonal Guard Legion stenciled on their bows. Their engines thrummed, the roar of free-piston gas generators blending with the power turbine’s hum. Air quivered over the exhaust baffles on their rear decks, and the whip antennae swayed erratically in the breeze.
Loki take the heat, Cohortarch Tanya von Shrakenberg thought, and rubbed a gloved hand over the wet skin of her neck. She glanced back over the rear of the command tank, through the narrow gap left by the hatch cover poised over her head like a steel mushroom-cap.
Behind them trails stretched two kilometers south to the woodlot where the unit had last paused. Broad parallel stripes where the treads had pulped grain and stalk into the earth, arcs and circles across the rolling plain showing where the fighting vehicles had maneuvered. Ten minutes of combat, and the taste of it was still in her mouth, salt and iron and copper, acid in the stomach, ache in the muscles of neck and back. Training helped, prahna breathing and muscle control, the simple knowledge that the job had to be done whatever the state of your emotions . . . and still, every time you knew a little something was gone. A little of whatever it was that kept you functioning while you waited for the armor to buckle under the brute impact of an antitank shell and send spalls flying like supersonic buzzsaws, for the millisecond flame of exploding ammunition, for the slower trickle of burning fuel as you hammered at a jammed hatch. You survived, and lost a little of yourself from within, and knew that one day, if you kept coming, the well would be dry . . .
The German armor was scattered back there among the ruined corn, burning with the sullen flicker of diesel oil in circles of blackened straw, or frozen with only the narrow entry hole of a tungsten-carbide penetrator rod to show reason for immobility. The pakfront of Fritz antitank guns had been dug in along the crest of this . . . not really a ridge, more a gentle swelling.
The Cohortarch shook her head; they were expecting to lie low as their armor pulled back past them to the village, then hit the Draka tanks as they pursued, no doubt. A good trick, but one she had met before; the Fritz were like that: fine tacticians but a little inflexible. Artillery to suppress the antitank, then a slow advance to force the Fritz armor to engage at ranges where Draka APDS shot would punch through German tanks the long way. Bodies lay hidden in the tall grain or draped around shattered half-tracks; her infantry had hunted them down from the turrets and firing ports of their combat carriers. Two Draka Hond Ills remained, victims of shells fired point-blank through the thinner armor of flank and rear, the blanket-shrouded corpses of their crews showing victory could kill you as finally as defeat.
