The Domination, page 63
“No.” He looked up at the tone, and saw tears glitter behind the spectacles. “A temptation to mass murder and I fell. Hundreds . . . thousands could have been killed, Mr. Kenston. Thousands of innocents, women, children. The earth itself for hundreds of square miles, that was what I risked. I am a murderer, Mr. Kenston, I who never harmed a living soul before that day. That is what the Draka have done to me!” Softly: “And the alternative was to give them a power for murder beyond conception. What I did will delay it, at least. If I have no part in it, perhaps some of the guilt will wash off me, perhaps . . . that I must believe.”
Qualms later, Kustaa thought, and turned to speak to the faceless shadow voice. “This you have to help me with, by God,” he said.
“We agree. For this, we agree. What do you need?”
“A place within a hundred miles of the Atlantic, where an aircraft can land and take off. A grass field a hundred meters clear would do. Some manpower, if possible.”
“You have the means to signal?”
“In that leather case your man took from my car.”
“Ah. Tell me no more, I may guess, but . . . ” The voice withdrew, and there was a murmur of conversation, footsteps returning. “Mr. American, another will come to stand where I am. Approach closely, but do not attempt to make out a face. A name will be given you, a location, a password. But first . . . do you, by any chance, know the Cartwright system?”
“Sign language? Yes, why?” One of a number of bizarre skills Donovan insisted his field men learn.
The Austrian looked up sharply, shaken from thoughts that his expression said were less than pleasant.
“Excellent, so does the good professor here. With your so-ingenious cover story—do not be disturbed, only two know of it and I am one—it will account for his presence. I suggest you pass him off as your servant in the medical sense as well; we have applied an appropriate tattoo. You will grasp that this is a facility useful to us . . . And now another will impart the information you seek. A place within the distance you specify; about guards and helpers, I will have to think. Perhaps.”
Chateau Retour, Kustaa repeated to himself. Sister Marya Sokolowska. The escargots of Dijon are very fine. That last brought a slight smile; he supposed food codes were natural in a continent that had been hungry for some time.
“Now, you will be returned to your autosteamer,” the voice said. “Please, the blindfold—” A masked man had come to stand beside the dolly with its so-ordinary looking box of green-painted steel; Kustaa sensed he was young from his stance, could smell fear and another odor, fecal. He wrinkled his nose slightly. What the hell, I hope he hasn’t shit his pants, the American thought. Oh, well, they’ve been efficient so far.
“Shit!” The green-uniformed serf technician ripped the earphones from her head with a violence that set the van rocking slightly on its springs, clutching at her ears.
“Report!” Andrew von Shrakenberg snapped from the map table, and the tech’s spine stiffened, shaven head locking in eyes-front despite the pain that crinkled her eyes almost shut in an involuntary grimace. Above on the roof the motors of the directional loop antenna whined, searching.
“Mastah, signal irregular, compatible with movement through built-up areas an’ steel-frame buildin’s, stable fo’ the last five minutes, then, ah, shit, sorry Mastah, blast a’ static an’ lost signal.”
The Draka’s lips peeled back in a snarl, but his finger stayed steady on the map, resting on the last spot where the lines from the two vans crossed.
“Cause?” he barked.
“Power line, anythin’ givin’ off strong radio impulse, tha’ thing would’ve shut down to prevent surge burnin’ out circuits, Mastah, I doan’ know.”
Specialized training, Andrew thought bitterly. Necessary, but it did not give the sort of broad base of knowledge from which intuitive leaps spring. Well, the creative intelligence is supposed to be your job! he told himself as his hand stabbed down on the send button.
“All Strike units, all Strike units, execute Downfall on last position posted. Now! Do it people, let’s go!”
His hand swept the Holbars from the table, and he dove through the open rear doors of the van, rolled, came up running.
“FREEZE! THIS IS SECURITY! DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND PUT YOUR HANDS UP OR YOU DIE!”
Kustaa dropped to the ground in instant combat reflex as the amplified voice roared in their ears, like the shout of an angry god. Hard concrete thumped at him, ignored in a surge of adrenaline that brightened the murk as it flared his pupils wide. Multiple echoes, as if it was sounding throughout a complex of buildings, broadcast from half a dozen sources. The skylights shattered, and round objects fell through, to burst hissing. Tendrils of mist snaked through the gloom, then sprang into brilliant blue-white as searchlights played on the roof and reflected electric-arc glare within.
Voices shouted, there was a rapid thudding of feet, and Kustaa felt a swift tug at his heel as he snaked forward and yanked the Austrian off his feet and behind a lathe. Hands reached out and dragged the man away, and someone called in French, in Lyonnaise dialect: “American! We have him! This—”
A stab of tracer went by above, the light bullets pinging and whining off metal and stone. The OSS agent’s hand went over his shoulder and stripped the shotgun free with a surge of cold elation at the thought of targets. A Draka voice, shouting, “You headhuntin’ fools! Take ’em, boys! Bulala! Bulala!”
Shots were flickering through the half-lit immensity of the factory shed, and Kustaa could see the flash and sparkle of ricochets running across the motionless machines like sun flicker on moving leaves. Men and women dodged, fired, screamed. Boots slammed on concrete, and a shadowy figure loomed, helmet bulking, bulbous-nosed with its gas mask. Kustaa rolled up to one knee, snaked the battle shotgun around the drill press which sheltered him, fired.
Crung. The heavy weapon bucked against the muscles of his wrists and forearms, lost. The solid slug hammered through the fleshy part of the uniformed man’s thigh, spinning him around in a circle before he pitched to earth; the last wild burst sent rounds close enough to the American to sting with spalls flicked out of the pavement, nearly killing him by chance where aimed fire was useless. The wounded man thrashed in his small square of open space.
“Ah’se hit, Ah’se hit!” he screamed, the first half of the shout muffled by the mask he ripped off before pressing both hands to his thigh, as if trying to squeeze shock-shattered bone and flesh back together. His blood flashed from red to black in the strobing light, as the searchlights played back and forth above.
Bullets flicked at the prostrate figure, and struck; his second scream was shrill, wordless. Another man followed him, but this one leaped over the lathe the soldier had blundered into; headfirst, landing in a perfect forward roll just beyond the writhing casualty. He was masked, but there was no helmet on the bristle-cut red hair, and he had a machine pistol in each hand, firing at muzzle flashes and glimpsed movement.
“Get him out, get him out!” the man shouted through rubber and plastic. Branggg and a burst hammered the machine by Kustaa’s ear, brangg, and a scream as a Resistance fighter pitched back, brangg and another dropped without sound. Behind the Draka the thrashing Janissary was being dragged away, as the submachine guns snapped their three-round bursts with killing precision and the hands behind them moved like oiled metronomes.
Kustaa’s second round took the man in the stomach. At close range the heavy buckshot did not have room to spread much; it pulped a circle of chest and stomach the size of a small dinner plate. Even then, the muzzles wavered up toward the target that had killed him before the second charge let the Draka’s intestines spill forward into his lap. One, the American thought, with chilling satisfaction, his mind seeming to move in layers like the leaves of a book. Behind him the voice was shouting in gutter argot.
“Jean, drop that dolly, drop it; Ybarra, you two, get that box and out. American, this way!”
Kustaa had never felt less like a berserker, or himself. There seemed to be an infinity of time for thought: They are dying to buy me seconds. On hands and knees, he followed the voice into the gun-shot dark.
“Well, here’s our tracer,” Vashon said, nudging the brown-streaked metal casing that was wired to the underside of the overturned dolly.
Andrew grunted in reply, watching as the stretcher with the shrouded bundle passed by. “Always were a little reckless, Corey,” he murmured. Around him the factory lights had been reconnected, and Security techs were swarming with their cameras, measuring cords, fingerprint kits. Busy locking the door on the empty stable, he thought.
“But why wasn’t it functioning?” the Strategos asked the senior technician, who had opened the feces-streaked container with gloved hands.
“Damned if I know,” the man replied, frowning at the circuit board with its black transistor beads. “Have to take it to the lab.” He spoke loudly to override the wailing scream of a field interrogation going on a few yards distant.
“Don’t—don’t—don’t—”
“Would close contact with a, oh, an X-ray machine’ve done it?” Andrew asked.
“Yes, even a fairly light dosage; nothin’ that would do a human bein’ any harm. These-here bitty things is sensitive to any sort a’ energetic particles. Scarcely likely here, Merarch.”
Andrew locked eyes with Vashon. “Well. Pull in you double?”
The older man ran a hand through the dense sable cap of his hair. “Nnnno, Merarch, I don’t think so. No, he’ll try really hard; be difficult fo’ him to make contact, of course . . . but worth waitin’ fo’. They’ll go to earth, of course . . . ”
“And we’ll dig them out.” Andrew smiled. “Oh, Mr. Yankee, I’m beginin’ to dislike you.” His eyes went up to the man pinned to the wall. The Holbars was across his chest on its assault sling; his hand found the pistol grip, squeezed. Two dozen muzzles pivoted toward him, then wavered away in puzzlement or indifference.
Andrew looked up at the slumped corpse with the neat line of holes across its chest, wondering why he had killed the serf. He felt the answer roll through the undersurface of his consciousness; it was there, but his mind refused to analyze it.
“Enough,” he said. “Tomorrow, then, Strategos.”
Chapter Fourteen
CHATEAU RETOUR PLANTATION
TOURAINE PROVINCE
AUGUST 3, 1947: 0200 HOURS
It was the quiet hours after midnight, the time of deepest sleep, the time when old men die and young ones lie awake and shiver with an emptiness glimpsed at the heart of things. The wind had died, and the stars shone soft and huge through the damp clear air; grass gave off its heavy scent as the dew beaded on stems, but the flowers were curled in on themselves, petal folded over petal. Mysterious creaks and rustles sounded through garden and field, stalks rubbing one on the other in the slow cellular swellings of growth and decay. A light went by on the river, drifting downstream silently, then others passed overhead with a quiet throb of engines and a long torpedo shape black against the moon.
Below, a fox crouched and barked shrilly as the dirigible passed, then went about his rounds with swift paws that moved the leaves hardly more than his black questing nose. Green bush crickets sounded, strident bursts of sound fading into the empty spaces, and a midwife toad pipped from the borders of the lake.
In the Great House of the plantation, this passed . . .
“Non.”
Tanya woke at the stirring, from a dream where burning rubble collapsed again over the vision blocks, and ventilators poured smoke. For a moment she was bewildered, expecting first the engine growl and the thunder of the falling building; then she recognized the harsh feel of the sleeping bag, starlight and the bulk of her tank above.
Home, she thought. I am home. Smooth silk against her skin, the near-absolute blackness of her own bedroom, underneath her the wavy resilience of a bed whose mattress was water-filled cells. No prickle of dirt or sweat; clean smells of fabric and wood and the garden odors from beyond the curtains. No light except the radium dial of the clock on the table across the room. She sank back into a half-drowse, smiling to herself. It was a pleasure like waking up early on a school holiday as a child, just so you could realize that you were free to go back to sleep. Her own home, bulking solid about her. Edward, the twins, the new-born pair, all near at hand.
“Non.”
The bed was big enough that Solange’s thrashing had not touched her, but the sound and the flowing transmitted through the liquid mattress brought her fully awake. With a sigh, Tanya slid over until her hand touched the smooth warmth of the serf’s back; the Frenchwoman was curled into a fetal ball, and her owner could feel the shudders of nightmare running under her skin. A mumble in her native tongue; pleading, Tanya thought, and she could catch “Poppa” and “Maman” occasionally.
Damn, thought this was tapering off, the Draka mused to herself. Aloud: “Wake up.” A firm, arm’s-length shake. “Wake up, Solange.”
The younger woman convulsed, shot into a sitting position and screamed twice, shatteringly loud; Tanya winced, but kept her hand between the other’s shoulder blades. The Draka could imagine it from times when the light had been on, the serf’s hands plastered to the sides of her face, eyes owl-wide and unseeing. Her quick shallow panting echoed through the room, slowing gradually as the rigid lock of her muscles relaxed. When her hands sank from her face, Tanya pulled her down and close; Solange pushed her face into the angle of the Draka’s neck and clung within the circle of her arms, shivering quietly.
“I was—I was—” she began.
“Shhh, shhh, I know,” Tanya whispered into her hair, rocking her gently. “It’s all right, all right, you’re not there now.” There were several places Solange went during her worst dreams, and none of them were pleasant.
They lay together in the darkness for quiet minutes; Tanya could feel the serf’s heart beating against hers, fluttering in the cage of her ribs. It slowed, until Solange sighed and moved her face so that their lips touched.
“Thank you, Maîtresse,” she whispered.
Well, I know what comes next, Tanya thought. There was a complex wiggling beneath the sheets as Solange slid out of her panties. Do I want to? She probed mentally at herself; it was only three days since her period had ended, which was generally a low point in her libido. Also she had only been asleep four hours and . . . No, I don’t, she thought. I want to go back to sleep. On the other hand, she’ll he hurt, she needs the reassurance, and besides, in a few minutes I will feel like it.
They kissed, and she could taste the slight salt of fear-sweat on the singer’s upper lip; the stronger mint from her toothpaste; and the natural flavor of her mouth which had always reminded Tanya of apples and earth. A pointed tongue flicked at hers, ran lightly along the inside of her lips. The Draka nudged with her knee and Solange welcomed it between hers, gripping with her thighs.
“You wish to make love, Mistress?” Solange asked breathlessly, a small catch in her voice.
Tanya murmured assent, running her fingers through the serfs hair, marveling at the texture, soft as ostrich down, how it was matched in the fine curls pressing against her leg. Solange’s mouth was moving across her face to the angle of her jaw, feather-light brushes of petal lips and tongue tip, while her hands stroked at Tanya’s neck with only the pads of the fingers touching, just enough to brush the near-invisible hairs. The sensation was an unbearable mixture of caress and tickle; she heard her own breath catch as the pulse speeded in her ears with a long swelling.
Now I want, she thought, smiling silently into the darkness. Now I want. Their bodies moved for long minutes in a subtle mutual urging, and then Tanya rose to hands and knees, while the serf slid beneath her and lower. Her hands are so soft, the Draka thought, as they slid down over her shoulders to cup her breasts and then trace delicately along her flanks. They moved in slow gliding circles as the kisses floated down her throat. Tanya shivered as her skin grew tingling-tight, even her lips feeling swollen, like buds about to burst.
“Ahhh,” she hissed aloud as the mouth closed around a nipple, and made a small convulsive arching of her back when small sharp teeth slid over it, nibbling. All sweet goddesses, that’s hotwired to my crotch, she thought exultantly. Solange moved to the other breast, stroked her stomach.
“I—want,” the Draka said hoarsely.
Solange lay back, wiggling lower, and Tanya could feel hands gliding up the backs of her thighs. The serf’s voice was still a whisper. “Then ride this pony.”
Tanya reached up with her right arm to touch the ivory plaque that controlled the lights. They flickered once and shone dimly on the lowest setting, reflected through gaps between the frosted glass false ceiling and the wall all around the big room. Shadows remained, hinting at a few large pieces of furniture, desk and armoire and massage table, hiding inlay and rare woods and even the colors of the glowing thousand-knot Isfahan carpet. There was a slightly brighter patch above the big bed, and the crumpled black silk of the sheets had a liquid shine around and across their bodies. The Draka lay back, examining the face in the crook of her left arm: spots of bright red high on her cheeks—that was familiar enough from their more usual times together, afternoons mostly—but not the tears that slid quietly from under her closed eyelids, pooling and beading and then running in slow tracks down the sides of her face. It was a contrast to her usual sleepy-smug-catlike expression of satiation, but common on these rare nights when she woke from the terrible dreams. Amazing, Tanya thought. She looks lovely even when she cries; most people get red and puffy.
She bent her head to kiss the tears, the salt taste of melancholy and of life, stroked back the drifting wisps of black hair. A kiss, smelling and tasting the warm flavor of sex, her own and the lighter musk of the serf’s, mingled on their mouths.
