Under the Yoke

by S. M. Stirling

  "An' yo've got to see my new white Caramague horse, she's a beauty. Uncle," Gudrun said. "Pa gave me a real Portuguese bullfighter's saddle, with silver studs."

  "So yo've been tellin' me for the last week, sweetlin'," he said, stooping for her hug. "Maybe-so I will; been a while since I done any riding."

  Tanya embraced him as he straightened, feeling the huge and gentle strength of his arms as they closed around her, the slight rasp of his mustache on her neck, smelling cologne and soap and leather. She dug her fingers fiercely into the hard rubbery muscle of his neck.

  "I love you, brother," she whispered.

  "An" I you, sister," he replied quietly; stepped back, saluted and strode away into the crowd.

  She looked down, to find Gudrun scowling at the unseemly adult display of emotion, took her hand despite an effort at evasion, pushed through the swinging doors. While I can, she thought, giving it a quick squeeze. They grow so quick.

  The waiting room was quiet and dim, walled in rose silk and eighteenth-century tapestries, with lecterns bearing photo-catalogs. The attendant at the desk in the corner was busy with an argumentative exec from Capricorn Textiles who was waving a requisition for a thousand loom-tenders; Tanya idly flipped open one of the leather-bound catalogs, leafing through the front-and-side shots and brief descriptions of skills.

  "Ma," Gudrun said.

  "Hmmm?" Tanya looked down; her daughter was craning sideways to see the photographs.

  "Ma, could I buy a serf?"

  "Whatever fo', my heart?"

  "Well, for a maid."

  "Yo've already got two body-servants, sweetlin'."

  The red brows frowned, drawing a crease between them; Tanya felt her heart turn over with warmth at the gravely serious expression. Gudrun had the innocent greed of childhood; horses had been her latest passion, she would have filled the stables at Chateau Retour if she could… but clothes and attendants had been a matter of profoundest indifference, until now. They do grow up, she thought wistfully.

  "Well, Beth's nice," Gudrun said, reaching behind to pat the nursemaid on the arm, "but I's too grown now to be looked after by a nurse. An' Miriam's good at fixin' up my things, but she's so old, she never wants to do stuff like run or swim or ride or climb things an' it's no fun telling her to."

  Her mother winced inwardly; Miriam was all of twenty-two, eight years younger than herself. Well, to ten a parent is ancient beyond worlds anyway, she told herself.

  Gudrun continued, as if checking off a carefully thought-out list. " 'Sides, Ma, Beth 'n Miriam were gifts; at school, the older girls are tellin' us that we need to learn serf-handlin' with one of our own. I've saved up my allowance, honest."

  Tanya controlled a smile. Why not, she decided. Good news should come in twos.

  'Tell yo' what, daughter," she said seriously. " 'S true that a new maidservant's a good idea, but buyin' here isn't; quality's uneven, an' we don't have rightly enough time to check. When we get back to the plantation, we'll go over the young wenches together"—she held up a hand at the beginnings of a pout—"an" when you pick one, I'll sell her to yo', right proper an' legal, with the papers and everythin', an' you can take her along to school for the fall term. Thirty aurics. Deal?"

  Gudrun considered, nodded. They slapped palms in the countryside gesture for sealing a bargain, and Tanya continued.

  "Now fo' some news; yo're moving schools." She laughed at the expression of surprise; Gudrun had been attending back in Syria Province. All Citizen schools in the Domination were boarding institutions, but usually in the same province as the child's home, at least; it was a long trip from the eastern Mediterranean.

  "New one being put in, jus' north of us, to match the boy's school down near Chinon." Draka schooling was sex-segregated below the University level. In theory to allow children and adolescents undistracted time for their studies and premilitary training, although she suspected it was just as much a simple case of institutional inertia: the system worked well and nobody had reason enough to push for a change. "Yo'll only be two hours' drive away, close enough to visit home on weekends."

  The girl gave a squeal of joy and bounced up to hug her with arms and legs. "Whoa, darlin', I'm not shaped right for that right now!" Tanya picked her daughter up, tossed her in the air, placed her down on her feet and tousled the bright bowl-cut hair. "I'm happy too, darlin'." She sighed. "Well, let's pick up the goods an' get home."

  Chapter Four

  … which is not to say that the Domination was totally unique. Like Rome or Macedonia it had its beginnings as a 'marcher'stats, on the fringes of civilization, expanding at the expense of wholly alien and less advanced peoples and thus gaining access to population and resources on a scale impossible to the states of the core area. Like Czarist Russia it was essentially imposed from above, using imported technology, organization and in the beginning personnel to impose Western standards of rationality and efficiency on an uncomprehending and hostile peasantry. Established by coercion, it was a state that existed primarily to maintain its own armed forces, which in turn maintained and expanded the state; a circular arrangement much like the classical Prussian formula. Indeed, the society that resulted bore considerable resemblance to Prussia: an aristocracy of uncouth militarists ruling a brutalized peasantry of landless serfs. As in Prussia the state was created from nothing by a generations-long act of collective will, producing a political culture that exalted discipline, service to the state, the military virtues, ruthlessness. and a hard, unsentimental realism.

  What gave the Domination its relentless dynamism was. essentially, a series of 'accidents.' If the Netherlands had not entered the War of the American Revolution in 1779. Southern Africa might not have been available for Loyalist settlement might even (although this seems unlikely) have remained a backwater for generations. The thirty-year period of the French Revolutionary wars gave the early Draka a period of cultural and partial economic isolation, crucial to their development Geological accident ensured that the high spine of south-central Africa was a treasure house of gold, diamonds, coal, copper, iron, manganese, with a native population numerous and hardy enough to sustain the shock of conquest and furnish a labor force, yet technically backward enough to be successfully dominated by a small minority of immigrant conquerors with the simple technology of the eighteenth century. If great navigable rivers had been available, nothing more than another colonial export-economy of mines and plantations might have developed: the isolation of the plateau forced the beginnings of the great complex of industrial cities between the Orange river and Katanga which formed the basis of the Domination's power-machine…

  The Age of Domination

  By E.P. Hobsdown

  Nicoifield and Weidenson

  London. 1987.

  LYON, PROVINCE OF BURGUNDIADETENTION CENTRE XVIIAPRIL, 1947

  Therese had been crying when the guard thrust her through the side door of the serf-dealer's office, into the holding-bay.

  "Anybody goan' sign for thissere piece a' shitbitch?" he said, giving a final flat-palmed shove between her shoulder blades that sent her sprawling on the floor; she was unbound, but the guard was a hulking man, muscle under fat, a baton in one hand and lead-backed brass knuckles on the other that held the clipboard. His green coverall was faded, and there was no weapon on his webbing-belt.

  The room was a four-meter cube with wooden benches along the walls, dusty and empty and dim, silent save for Therese's sobs as she crawled toward her sister. Chantal broke forward and hugged the slight girl to her; Marya sat trembling on the brink of action, suddenly acutely conscious of the slats digging into her naked flesh. Beside her, she heard Yasmin take a long breath and then rise; the serf-girl had only just come in from the main section of the shop.

  "I's the one," she said calmly, striding forward, trim in her jacket and skirt. The guard saw her, straightened slightly at the clothes and manner; only slightly, and his smile was insolent as he transferred his gaze back to the nude prisoners and e
xtended the sheaf of documents. Yasmin took it, read, signed, pivoted on one heel and slammed the pasteboard flat across the side of the man's face with a full-armed swing.

  Crack. The sound seemed loud as a gunshot in the musty stillness, and the nun felt time slow in gelid coldness as her stomach clenched; the green-uniformed man loomed a head higher than the dark serf-girl, and Marya saw the tension in her back. None of it showed in her voice as she spoke, even when the fist with its glove of spiked and weighted metal pulled back.

  "Is that how yo' treats yo' momma? Yo' sistah? Tings not hard enough fo' the po' little wench, yo' big, strong man gotsta make 'em worse?" Marya could make out the angry red right-angled mark of the clipboard as the man paled in rage; it had not done any great harm, but a blow like that carried an unmistakable significance in the world of the Domination.

  "Yo, cain' talk to me like that-there, wench! I's Security; yo' blind?" He jerked his chin at the skull markings on his collar.

  "Ohhhh, dearie me," Yasmin drawled, and Marya could suddenly see the expression of mock-fear even though the girl's back was turned. "Whut have I gone an' done? I's jes' pissin' mahselfs with fear; watch me throw mahself on mah back 'n spread outa tremblin' respec' fo' yo' awesomeness, chain-dog."

  She stepped closer. "Security? Where yo' rank badge? Where yo' gun, chain-dog? Security? Yo's a jumped-up strawboss whut ain't talked to nobodies but new-caughts fo' too long." Her other hand dipped inside her jacket and came out with a palm-sized leather folder, snapped it open and held it at eye-level for the man, above her own head.

  "Cain yo' read, hmm? See this? This whut I is; I gots Category I papahs, chain-dog. I's gotta thousand-auric bond posted on me, I's private property—an ol' fam'ly servant, and mah mistis trusts me, an she a von Shrakenberg, an she a Landholder, an' my pa a soldier under her pa. Citizens doan' lay hand to me without they got permission or provocation." She raised the clipboard and slapped him across the other cheek.

  His fist snapped up again. Yasmin laughed; a little breathless, but loudly.

  "Go 'head, chain-dog. All I has't'do is say yo' hits me, an' they trice yo' to the frame an' uses a whip to show the world yo' backbone."

  The fist relaxed; the man's eyes dropped from the intimidating identity-card, past Yasmin's glare.

  "Jes' doin' my job," he grumbled.

  "Yo' job was to brings her heah," Yasmin snapped. "Not to slap her 'round. These wenches is all bought-out now, belongs to the von Shrakenbergs same's me. An' ifn' they didn't,'s that any cause to be treatin' 'em rough? Is they fightin', disobeyin'?" She tore the top sheet from the clipboard and threw the remainder into the guard's face. "Ain't tings bad enough fo' us, withouten we makes it worse fo' each othah? Git outta my sight; yo' makes me sick."

  Yasmin turned as the door closed, drew her hands across her face and then clenched them together while she struggled to control her breathing; looked up with a smile as Chantal brought her sister to her feet.

  "Thank you, Yasmin," Chantal said quietly. Yasmin shook her head wordlessly, then smiled again as Therese stretched out a hand, wiping at the tears on her face with the other and watching the serf girl with wide, astonished eyes. Yasmin took the hand in both of hers, parted it and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Don't worry, little one," she said in slow, careful French. "I look after you now." She leaned forward to kiss the other girl on the forehead, urged her back to her sister's side, then slumped back to the seat beside Marya. The nun turned to study her for a moment.

  Yasmin. Another person it would be better to study carefully, Marya thought. Elegant was the word that occurred to her; pleated blue silk skirt and high-collared jacket with silver-and-lapis buttons, dazzling white blouse, ostrich-skin pumps. Even with a light dew of fear-sweat along her upper lip… Young, not more than twenty, small and slender-built, long limbs and long neck, trim-figured, with an oval face that hovered somewhere between prettiness and beauty; the hair was beautiful, abundant and coal-black and softly curled. Her features looked European but the skin was darker than Italian or even Gypsy, a milk-chocolate color. The serf identity-tattoo stood out bright orange against that brown, below her right ear.

  A trusted servant, though, Marya thought. Be careful.

  "That was brave," she said.

  Yasmin rose again to pace nervously, making an odd rapid up-and-down gesture with her hands and forearms. "Oooo, somtimes I gets so"—she stamped one slender foot—"so… so angry. Some people! Some people!" She shivered suddenly. "They woulda whupped him ifin he'd hit me, but my face'd still be… some people, I swears, give 'em a stick and they acts worse'n Draka, like they was Jesus an' Allah an' the masters' dead gods all put together." She sighed and laughed, relaxing. "Plantation life gets dull, sometimes, but they's a good deal to be said fo' stayin" where everybody knows we. Doan' worry, we home soon an' yo' ain' gonna see no green coats fo' a year at a time."

  "Yasmin?" The girl looked up at Marya's voice. "Is that an Arab name?"

  "Mm-hm," she nodded. "My momma, she Arab. Druze, really, but that no-mattah; a new-caught, like yo'uns. I's house-born, though; on Evendim. That Mistis Tanya's poppa's plantation, it near Baalbeck." Seeing their blank looks, she continued: "Syria Province; I'll show you on a map, sometimes. Cain yo'uns read?"

  Chantal bristled, then relaxed.

  "Can you?" she said, then flushed with embarrassment. "Sorry, Yasmin," she muttered.

  Marya stepped in hastily. "You're a house-servant, then?"

  Yasmin's brows rose. "Does I look like a field-hand?" she said dryly. "I's Mistis Tanya's dresser. Dressmaker, that is, in charge of all her clothes." A sigh. "Back on the old place, that is. Here I's in charge of a dozen Frenchie wenches 'n bucks, an' you'd think they craves whuppin', what with whinin' and work-dodgin' and carryin' on." She sighed again and shook her head. "It goin' age me befo' my time. Hopes y'all has more sense." Brightly: "Well, what do y'all say to a nice hot showah, 'n then we'll get you somethin' to wear? Y' feel bettah clean an' with coverin'."

  Marya's eyes met Chantal's in sudden wordless understanding. Cleanliness in the cellblock had meant being hosed-down with cold water under pressure.

  Hot water, she thought with a wave of longing.

  "Jes fo' now," Yasmin said cheerfully, fitting the light padded handcuffs to their wrists. Therese shrank back with a sound of protest; the dark girl immediately laid the cuffs down and sat beside her, laying an arm around her shoulders.

  "It's all right, Therese," she said, in her accented French. "S'all right, really. Just for the rules, understand; just for a little while. I'm here, nobody will hurt you…" Coaxing, she stroked the younger girl's arm until it relaxed, then slid the metal circlet around the wrist. "See? It don't hurt…"

  Chantal jerked her hands apart to the full twenty-centimeter length of the chain, ignoring the pain in wrists still bruised by the over-tight restraints, and again. The serf-girl frowned, concern on her face; Marya stepped close and shook the Frenchwoman by the shoulder.

  "Chantal! Save your energy for something useful, and your anger. See to your sister, she needs you."

  The communist took a deep breath and turned to Therese, who sat wide-eyed and on the verge of tears again, shrinking from her sister's tension. They were in the dealer's fitting-room, space leased from the Security Directorate by a labor agency and used to process serfs bought out of Central Detention into private ownership; racks of clothes and undergarments and shoes… Yasmin had sneered at the quality, but the drab-colored skirt and jacket, blouse and head-scarf and flat-soled brogans felt solid and warm. Good-quality cotton and wool and leather, with metal snaps and fasteners; better than had been available to ordinary people in Europe since before the War started. Marya smoothed her hair back and tied the scarf tightly; there was ample slack in the handcuffs for that if she was careful. It was a relief to have her hair covered again; the full habit of her Order was a physical impossibility, but even this little felt good.

  "You've been very kind," she said, fighting down a sudden irr
ational surge of optimism and vague friendliness; that was merely the effect of comfort, clothing and privacy and the remembered benevolence of hot water cleansing her skin. As to Yasmin… Marya reminded herself that her confessor had always chided her for an excessive fondness for beautiful things; not to possess them—the vow of poverty had never been a burden to her (she crossed herself)—but to simply know them. The vestments of the mass, the great Baroque churches of Lwow and Crackow, the plainsong, the crystalline semetry of a mathematical soulution…

  The Order of St. Cyril had not been large or wealthy, but it had taught children and cared for the sick and given so many bright and pious girls a window on the life of the mind…

  Old enough to remember teaching secret classes in Polish in Poznan, in Bismarck's time. She had stopped once to show a novice named Marya how to bunch the skirt of her habit under her knees when scrubbing floors.

  1939, when the Bolshevild divided Poland with Hitler. The day in the little village in Malopolska, mist and gray mud and the hating eyes of the Ukrainian villagers who had betrayed them to the Red cavalry. Mother Superior had told the Sisters to forgive them, they were simple peasants and had no reason to love Poles, who had forbidden their language and Orthodox church, which was a heresy but must be combated with truth, not guns—

  "Spit!" the Soviet officer had said to the Mother Superior. "Spit on the cross!"

  Marya remembered the thin pockmarked face, cap with the red star above. Torn mustard-yellow uniform, a smell of old sweat and cheap perfume, a Russian smell. Gaping dull faces of the soldiers, and the long triangular bayonets on their rifles glinting in the rain. His hand slapped the Mother Superior's head back, forth; the wimple of her habit came lose, exposing her cropped gray hair; there was blood on her cheeks, but she signed herself; he struck again and again, until she fell and crawled to kiss the carved rood they had carried from the abbey in Lwow, embracing it where it lay in the slick churned-up clay and sheepdung of the street. The officer stepped back, signing to one of his men; the Cossack grinned, heeled his shaggy pony forward, drew the long guardless saber and leaned far over.