Under the Yoke

by S. M. Stirling

  He nodded. "Same on the industrial front, or so the people from the Combines tell me. Overall output about equivalent to ours, or nearly, but the methods are so bloody different, it's a mess. Had a fellah in from the Ferrous Metals Combine, actually broke down an' cried after doin' a survey; said the Poodles had thirty-six times the number of different machine-tools we did, all of 'em needin' a skilled operator, all split up in tiny little factories. Puttin' together a compound system for the factory-serfs is a nightmare, either dozens of little ones and supervisory costs eat you alive, or you pen the workforce in a few big ones and have to spend hours a day truckin' them back and forth to their jobs. Or consolidate the machines, means losin' months of production…"

  Andrew raised a brow. "Yo're beginnin' to sound like my distressingly liberal cousin Eric, he thinks we should hold off on modernizin' the Europeans, at least the Western provinces, supervise 'n tax them instead." A laugh. "Maybe-so I should report yo' to Security, sir?"

  Vashon forced himself to echo the laugh. Eric von Shrakenberg was a sore point with the Security Directorate, but after all, he was Arch-Stategos Karl von Shrakenberg's son. And he had never quite qualified for a Section-IV detention, "by administrative procedure." Not quite. He sighed, clicked heels:

  "Service to the State," he said in formal farewell as the von Shrakenbergs turned to leave.

  "Glory to the Race," they replied; the adults, at least. Gudrun put her head back through the door for a brief instant, stuck out her tongue and fled giggling.

  They will definitely bear watching, Vashon thought, seating himself again and propping one hand under a chin. Damn planters should teach their children more respect. The closed-circuit monitor was still flicking on its random survey of posts important enough to rate surveillance; an indulgence he found restful when he needed to concentrate, even if the system was supposed to be primarily for accessing records from the basement filerooms.

  Aristocrats, his mind continued. A relic of the Domination's early years, when wealth meant acres of cotton and sugar and tobacco, and the younger son's drive for an estate of his own had been the motive force for expansion. Oh, granted, the conquered territories' farmland had to be reorganized into line with the Domination's practice, although he had privately thought some sort of large scale state-farm system might be more efficient. But this was not the 1780's, or southern Africa; in these times power grew out of mines and forges, machine shops and steel mills… better to concentrate scarce personnel on Security work and getting Europe's industrial machine back into full production: that was the real prize of the War, not the vast reaches of Russia and Siberia and China. The Domination and the United States had been roughly equal in GNP before the war, but the long struggle with the Yankee-dominated Alliance would need all the productive capacity that could be had, the Americans grew so fast.

  He shook his head. His were a conservative folk, where circumstance allowed; even if three-quarters were city-dwellers now, the white-pillared mansion and its fields still had too strong a grip on their imagination. And to be sure, the officer corps was still infused with the planter-aristocrat ethos; most of the Janissaries were recruited from the estates as well; and the Supreme General Staff were no fools, sitting there in their aerie at Castle Tarleton overlooking Archona.

  Archon, the title of the Draka head of state; Archona, the city named for that office. An old town by the Domination's standards, founded in the 1780's; the first of the string of industrial centers that ran north to Katanga, core of the Domination's strength, mines and hydro-dams, universities and steel mills and power-plants…

  It was a long time since he had seen the capital, away south in its bowl of hills, where the high plateau began its descent toward the Limpopo river. Not since the victory celebrations; he had had a good seat, in the bleachers erected in front of Transportation Directorate headquarters on the Way of the Armies, a kilometer short of Victory Gardens and the two-hundred-meter stained-glass dome of the Assembly building. A bright summer's day, the sky a blue curved ceiling, light blinking off colored marble, tile and brick and glass, shimmering on the leaves of the roadside trees and massed flowerbanks. He remembered the noise all around him, shouting, crying, laughing. The old, the young, the wounded, who had waited and worked here on the home front, and the first scattering of demobilized veterans. Crazed with release, victory, the return of sons, daughters, lovers, with the memory of the dead scattered from the English Channel to the South China Sea. Himself crying out with them through a throat gone right and dry, one with the many-throated beast, pouring out its triumph and its grief.

  The ground shook beneath him as the tanks of the Archonal Guard thundered slowly by. Filling the air with the burbling throb of their engines, trim in silver and black parade paint, the red bat-winged dragon of the Domination on their glacis plates, its claws clutching the slave-chain of mastery and the sword of death. Black squat beetling shapes of the infantry carriers, with the helmeted heads of the crews rigid in the open hatches; long-barreled self-propelled cannon; other legions of the Citizen Force with battle-honors hanging from their eagle standards; endless cohorts of marching Janissaries expressionless as automatons. Roses and frangipani and streamers of colored paper flung like sprays of summer rain from the sidewalks and the windows of the buildings, the surf-roar of massed voices louder than engines. Thunder overhead as well, fighters and strike-planes, the new jet-propelled models and clattering helicopters, still a dazzling innovation then; the stink of burnt hydrocarbons, flowers, the heavy smell of dense-packed humanity.

  The floats had followed, drawn by chained and naked prisoners of war from a dozen armies, decked with captured flags, bearing symbolic booty. Russian furs and grain and timber, Finnish glassware, ingots of Norwegian aluminum heaped about jade Buddhas and katanas and kimonos, Flemish lace like piles of snow-froth, silk tapestries of Lyon, paintings and sculptures, machine tools, crates of priceless vintages, sturdy workers and picked wenches in national costumes or nudity emphasized by silver manacles. Musicians and dancers and tumblers walking alongside, throwing golden eggs into the crowd. Message-eggs with slips of paper that might grant anything, from a bottle of Chateau d'Yquem to a Leonardo plundered from the Louvre to an estate in Tuscany. Last of all a train of older men, bewildered in their dunces' caps and fools' motley, bearing signs on poles listing their ranks and titles: enemy leaders on their way to the ceremonial pistol-bullet through the head on the steps of the Archon's palace.

  He sighed; that had been a good time. A time to be at one with the Race, when they could relax from the long years of grinding effort and feel the pride of a great accomplishment. Limitless vistas of power and possibility opening out before them… Another sigh. The warriors fought their open battles against uniformed opponents, and when the foreign armies were beaten retired to their estates; he was left with the endless twilight warfare against the enemy within, ferreting out the last maquisards in the hills, breaking up sabotage rings, policing the pens and labor-compounds of the administrative Directorates and the industrial Combines. Routine work back in the Police Zone, but it took extreme measures to get any worthwhile effort out of the newly conquered territories.

  Strategos Vashon adjusted the controls of the monitor; now it was showing one of the interrogation chambers, belowground in another bow to tradition. A chamber of antiseptic white tile, easy to wash, scattered instruments of chromed steel and wire; a frame for lowering subjects slowly head-first into a vat, the old-fashioned stretch-and-break models. Two Psy-Ops officers in green, with the usual dark bib-aprons, but the procedure was something new, outlined in last month's circular from headquarters.

  The subjects were seated facing each other, two Poodles, locals; a father and son, both probably couriers for what was left of the underground. A more important case than most, since their network was suspected of contact with the American OSS, Office of Strategic Services, the Alliance's secret-intelligence and covert operations apparat. He leaned closer, adjusted the grainy black
-and-white picture until the dark stubbled face of the older man came close, sweat and rolling eyes above the gag; he was strapped naked into a steel chair with electrodes at the classic points, testicles, anus, nipples, ears, toes, wires and copper disks taped to his olive skin. The passive partner. The secret policeman worked the controls to swivel the camera; the younger subject was similary outfitted, with one difference. There was a switch under his right hand, a simple pressure-activated on-off plaque. One of the officers was explaining in slow bored French:

  "… as long as you keep that pushed down, the current will flow through your father. Release it, and it will flow through you. The current increases each time you push or release the button. When that meter"—he pointed—"goes into the red zone, it will be approaching the killing range. Understand?"

  The young Poodle was not screaming, not yet; you could hear the effort it took to force reason into his voice.

  "What do you want? What do you want me to do? For the love of God, tell me what you want, please—"

  The Security officer continued: "Current on in five seconds. Five, four, three—"

  The boy was shrieking even before the current hit; his father's head was moving back and forth in the padded clamp, a silent nonononono. Vashon smiled. The treatment would continue until the passive subject was dead, of course; the Psy-Ops theorists swore that it was more effective at breaking the will than any amount of raw pain, better even than sensory deprivation. Once it was over, the subject knew, right down to the subconscious level, that he would do anything, absolutely anything, rather than stay in that chair… and then they would bring in his sister and mother, and explain what he was going to do after they released him. The Security Directorate would have another conduit, ready to be activated if the Americans tried… oh, to smuggle out more of the captive scientists working for the War Directorate's Technical Section, or to get saboteurs into the plutonium-refining plant at Le Puy. There would be no repetition of that embarrassing affair with Heisenberg and the rocket-ramjet researchers, in the chaotic period right after the War. Credit where credit was due—this technique was based on German Gestapo research, but it had the malignant beauty of a concealed razor-blade in a melon.

  His smile broadened. Perhaps they would get an American. The ancient enemy, the hereditary foe; the Domination had been founded by refugees from their Revolution, its self-evident lie that all men were created equal. Loyalists from Virginia and Georgia and the Carolinas, hounded from their homes and plantations by the vengeful Whigs… The smile became a grin as the first incredulous gut-deep grunt came from the speaker, as the subject felt the electricity having its way with him. The Vashons were much the same mixture as most Draka, American Loyalist, Hessian, Icelander, miscellaneous nineteenth-century immigrants. But their male line had been French, originally; emigres in 1793, one step ahead of the Committee of Public Safety's guillotines.

  Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, he thought with a stirring of almost sensual pleasure at the base of his stomach. You thought you'd won, you peasant filth; now you're going to pay. "Ahh, how you will pay," he murmured aloud.

  He turned down the volume and pulled another file from the in-stack. There was the work of the day to attend to.

  In the corridor outside the office Tanya took her brother's arm. "You know, Andrew, I was never particularly squeamish," she said meditatively. "Killed my share in the War, Wotan knows, an' not all of 'em were shootin' at me. We grew up in the New Territories, after all." Syria had been pacified and settled during the Great War, but not officially transferred to the Police Zone, the area of civil government, until 1937. "Is it my imagination, or is Security goin' hog-wild these days?"

  He spread his hands as they strolled toward the elevator, their bootheels scrunching in the carpet. "Necessity, sister mine: if yo' think this-here's bad, you should see Finland. We're applyin' a methodology of conquest developed while we overran Africa, Iron Age barbarians, an' the Middle East, mostly starvin' diseased peasants subjected to somebody since Babylon an' before. We killed the native elites an' stepped into their shoes; what freedom did those villagers around Evendim have, before Pa 'stablished the plantation? Not that they just rolled over an' spread—read his journals: plenty of trouble with religion an' wenches an' so forth in the first few years; we're too young to remember it. But once they'd submitted, if anythin' they were better off; higher standard of livin', certainly, better housin' and medical care.

  "These West-Europeans, they doan' have that Asian sense of bein' victims of Fate; not yet, at least. They're literate, these were real democracies at least until the Fritz conquered them back in '40. The Russians are damn-sure easier, Stalin cleared the way for us. Breakin' the countries west of the Elbe to the Yoke goin' be a long, bloody business. Three generations, minimum, even after we've wiped out mass literacy; folk tradition can be almost 'z bad."

  Tanya frowned, slowing her pace and letting Cudrun and her nurse move forward out of earshot before dropping her voice."Tell the truth, I'm a little concerned about Timmie and Gudrun, an' the new baby. Wouldn't want any of 'em soft, but watching too much killing and pain too soon isn't good either; serfs are inferior, but they're not dumb beasts or machinery. Think of them like that an' you start underestimatin' them; also… yo' can lose something, a sort of basic respect fo' life, I've seen it happen. Then y'lose respect for yo' own life, an'—" She stopped, shook off worry as they overtook the others. "Ah, well, take the days as they come."

  The wire door of the elevator cage scissored open. "And I miss yo', brother, I really do; it's not just the War and different postin's, we've been drifting apart and yo've been getting too wrapped up in hard an' bitter things. I'm not naggin', leave the future to itself, but drop by after the harvest this fall. The wine's fantastic, the place grows everythin' to perfection, I've got old Cindy from Evendim as head-cook and three of the best chefs in France… Nice bunch of neighbors, too, when we get the chance to socialize; three-quarters of the Guard who weren't heirs took out grants thereabouts when they stood the veterans down. Plantations, mostly; construction partnerships, restaurants… Hell, the crew of the Baalbeck Belle took estates on both sides of me; my gunner spent the War fightin' with my loader and then they went'n married, and the same with the driver an' Sparks. Come down, party a little, hunt, feast, let yore heart have room to breath." A smile and a gentle pinch on the arm. "And you really should get that booty tallied."

  "I'll drop by; put those two wenches I found you to work on the loot, if you want, 'n can spare them from bookkeepin'." He winked. "An" bedwenchin'."

  Tanya smiled sourly, recognizing the signs of a gentle but firm refusal to pursue a subject further. "Not for me; doctor's orders, nothin' rough or deep. I'm not even sleeping with Edward, much less teachin' a wild mare how to play pony for me. Ah, well, Solange is sweet and willin', but it's a bit like living on Turkish Delight; tasty and nourishing, but after a while you crave meat." A wiggle of eyebrows. "Plenty for you, though; one good thing about this-here inconveniently advanced country, they're not worn-out hags at twenty-five." She laughed. "Edward and I're going to need them, in a year or two, when Timmie hits puberty. Recallin' you at thirteen, y'had half the wenches on Evendim sittin' down careful."

  "Ah," he said with a nostalgic chuckle, "nothin' like that first fine flush of hormonal frenzy. Not that you felt that way at the time," he added thoughtfully.

  She shrugged. "Gender difference, I suppose. Seems to take males twenty years to learn that personalities are what makes it more interestin' than masturbation. Though," she added, with a mock-malicious smile, "there's women I could name that never did grasp the distinction either. Present company excepted."

  "What, never?" he said slyly.

  "Weeell, after a battle sometimes, just to remind myself I's alive."

  They exited into an internal alleyway, a narrow street closed off when the Security complex was established. Tanya looked up at the gaps of blue sky between the long tatters of cloud and breathed deeply; the
chill was leaving the wet air, and some hopeful soul had hung pots of flowering impatiens from the eaves on either side, slashes of hot pink, coral and magenta against the browns and greys of the stone. The alley was lined on both sides with agency showrooms, the Settlement and Agriculture Directorate liaison office, a few restaurants, outfitters. It was crowded to the point of chaos, not least with construction crews making alterations; civil settlement in France was just getting under way and receiving priority as a matter of State policy. Every settler needed labor, even if it was only a few household servants. Planters in soft dark working leathers, bureaucrats in the four-pocket khaki working dress of the civil service, Combine execs in suits of white linen and Shantung silk, serfs of every race and kind and degree pushed through.

  Sort of irregular, she thought, as she stopped before the Stevenson & de Verre office, a converted house. That was the largest agency in the Domination, with hundreds of branches. Back—she stopped herself—back near the old home, even in a small provincial town like Baalbeck, it would have been much larger. Showrooms and auction-pits, holding pens, workshops, medical facilities; in a major city like Alexandria or Shahnapur, a complex of creches and training-centers… Here there were only the offices and catalogs and a simple fitting-out room, with the serfs in the Security cells. Of course, Europe was still too raw for the usual procedures, only recently out from direct military government; still in the initial process-and-sort stage, the mass transfers to the Combines just beginning to hit full stride. Direct sales to private holders would continue until the situation stabilized; for that matter, Tanya and her husband had rounded up the basic labor force for Chateau Retour directly, with only a few lochoi of Order Police to help with the culling and neck-numbering and registration.

  "Well," she said, stopping on the worn stone steps of the shop. "Take care, brother mine; y'all remember the door's always open."