Under the Yoke

by S. M. Stirling

  "Ex-cuse," he said, taking the Pole by the arm. Ernst interpreted his signals, his eyes going wide in surprise.

  "My master says… ah,excuse—" Kustaa signaled further and the Austrian's eyes narrowed in understanding. "My master says, could he have the use of this wench?"

  The nun's arm went rigid under his fingers, and she wheeled around on him with a look of pure hatred in her eyes before they dropped in the worst imitation of meekness he had ever seen. Tanya stared at him, began a peal of laughter and ended it in a cough.

  "No offense, Mr. Kenston, no offense, yo' don't know her. Ahhh…" She looked at the nun: Kustaa could see her evaluating the stocky figure, graceless in its thickset strength. Not what a Draka looked for in a wench, at all, or comely by the separate standard a Citizen male used for women of his own caste, either.

  "No offense, but this'n isn't trained or suited fo' erotic service. Really, iffn yo' don't like the one sent to attend yo' this mornin' "—so his guess had been right— "there's a dozen others, prettier an' mo' enthusiastic."

  "Pu-lease," he grated. Sweat had started out on his forehead, and his smile was more of a rictus. Perfectly genuine desperation, if the cause was one the Draka could not suspect. "Pu-lease, thu-is one." He put a hand to his throat, as if the effort had strained his damaged vocal cords.

  Tanya stepped closer, put a firmly sympathetic hand on his shoulder and steered him a few steps away. He was suddenly, surprisingly aware of her scent, a mixture of fresh-washed body and some slight violet-based perfume. "I'm ashamed to admit it," she said with low-voiced sincerity, "but that one won't answer yo' bridle, sir. Stubborn an' we haven't broken her to it, a work horse an' not a playpony."

  "Pu-lease," and a rasping cough.

  "Mr. Kenston, suh, if it's a nun yo' has to have, well, there's one on our neighbor's place down the road a spell, I'll phone over an' borrow. They've got a Carmelite, nice bouncy little thing, they might have her original robes 'round someplace an'—"

  He shook his head vehemently; from what he had heard he was straining the limits of hospitality, but a Class III veteran could push pretty far, There was a sickening fascination to it, as well, a realization that this could actually have been happening. Nobody knew but him… No need to hide his emotions now, just the opposite.

  "Suh, I warn yo', she'll have to be subdued, an' even then once yo're into her she'll be dry an' refuse to move." A sigh, at his obdurate face. "Yo' might need help gettin' her stripped and spread, do yo' want her drugged or a couple of hands to help? No?"

  Another sigh. "Well, Mr. Kenston, I'm tryin' to be mindful of a host's obligations, but I really can't spare her any time today, in fact she'll be workin' overtime until after dinner. So, if yo'd like somethin' in the meantime?" He shook his head again. "Well, if yo' insist, suh. I must insist that she not be marked or injured. We don't allow anythin' too rough here, I'm givin' yo' fair warnin' of that. Clear? Then I advise yo' to tie her legs to the bedstead first thing."

  Tanya turned, a puzzled and half-angry frown on her face; she shrugged at Marya, who was standing with her hands clenched at her sides. "Well… this mastah seem's determined to have yo' fo' a mount, Marya. Attend his room aftah yo' finished work, and serve his pleasure. And no slackin' today. Understood?" The nun continued to glare at the ground before her feet, until her owner barked sharply: "Is that understood, wench?"

  Marya's head came up slowly. For an instant Kustaa felt an eerie prickle of deja vu as the fresh-cropped hairs at the base of his skull struggled to stand upright. Then he remembered where he had felt it before: Java, when the "disabled" pillbox had come back to life, and the turret-mounted cannon lifted its muzzle with a whine of gears. The Polish woman nodded once, with a curt snap, her square pug face held like a fist, then turned on a heel and stalked away. Her heels clicked like gunbolts closing on the marble floor of the vestibule, amid the statuary and the downslanting rays of crisply golden summer-morning light.

  He became conscious of a hand under his elbow and shook himself loose again, turning to follow her out into the bright sunlight with its smells of garden and dusty gravel and the slightly oily smell of distillate. A six-wheeled car waited at the foot of the stairs, and the driver sprang down to open the doors.

  "Well, well, yo've turned out to be a man of… interestin' interests," Tanya said to him.

  "Th-ank you," he said, anxious to choke off curiosity.

  A shrug. "I'll have restraints an' some oil-cream jelly sent up," she said. "And a silk switch." A snuffle of laughter. "I warn yo', though, the last man to get anythin' into that one got scant joy of it. I'll tell yo' the sad story of Horn-dog on the way up." She rapped on the back of the driver's seat. "The winery, Pierre. An' maybe yo' could tell me a little 'bout what you saw in Lyon, been a while since I was there."

  Lyon? Kustaa mused. Somehow I don't think so.

  Chapter Thirteen

  WANDA THE WELDER TO KEEP JOB, EXPERTS SAY

  Sociologists and economists at the Department of Labor say studies recently completed have refuted the common expectation that large numbers of women who took up the jobs of absent men during the Eurasian War—the "Wanda the Welder" phenomenon—will go back to homemaking now that peace has returned.

  "Too many women have become used to the independence provided by the healthy weekly paycheck." said Maribelle Aquino, statistician and spokesman for the Department "especially in areas, such as the southern Hispanic states, where such opportunities were rare before the War. This income has become part of family income, essential to the perceived standard of living. Not to mention the example of the armed services, where women are now employed in all non-combatant roles, and some, such as flying transport-aircraft, which would have been considered impossible before the war. Very little now remains of the traditional concept of a 'man's job.'"

  Dr. Aquino said that the only factor which could have reversed the trend would have been a substantial increase in the birth rate, which some preliminary figures during the War seemed to indicate. "But the so-called 'Baby Boom' turned out to be more like a blip," she commented, noting that a slight increase in the northern states was more than overmatched by the continuing decline in births among Americans of Hispanic and Asian backgrounds. The ever-increasing labor shortage, due to the general economic boom, the enormous demands of post-War reconstruction, and the continuing high defense spending necessitated by the confrontation with the Domination should extend and consolidate the trend, she predicted.

  From: "Women and the Post-War World"

  Ladies House and Garden Journal

  Suarez Publishing Corp.. Havana.July 28, 1947

  LYON, PROVINCE OF BURGUNDIA

  AIRSHIP HAVEN

  11:00 HOURS

  JULY 28, 1947

  The Issachar was approaching Lyon from the north. Kustaa let his eyes drop from the pale turquoise haze of the sky to the land droning by six thousand feet below. The Savoie Alps were passing by to the east, dark-blue with distance and higher than the airship itself; below, the Rhone trough was widening out, a patchwork of varicolored orchard, vineyard and field and the russet-brown of ploughed earth. Vehicles moved insect-small along the long straight roads, trailing dust-plumes like the white-gray feathers of sparrows; the river itself was blue-brown, with hammered-silver patches downstream where banks of pebbles broke the low level of the summer waters. An aircraft passed, climbing, a swift flashing of combined velocity, and there were two more dirigibles in sight, long whale-shapes laboring north against the backdrop of mountain.

  The American took another sip of the single beer he had allowed himself; Danish, excellent, mellow amber with just the right hint of bitterness, biting at the back of his throat. Methodically, he probed at his nerves. Not bad, he thought. Still a little shaky. Hamburg had been bad, very bad indeed; he was running through cover-identities faster than Donovan had planned for. The danger was different from combat-strain, more like a night-ambush patrol; less intense, but it didn't end. Worse than the danger was
the effort of simply being a Draka for so long; having them hunt him through the Finnish woods had been simple by comparison.

  He'd been skipping a good deal of the multiple tasking Donovan had planned for, as well; it was even worse tradecraft than he had anticipated. Endangering the indigenous networks that were all the OSS had to build on, until it could somehow infiltrate the Domination's own organizations.

  Shit, endangering me, too. Now I know too much; I've got to get back. Straight to Lyon, but the delays had put him right back on schedule. With any luck, the coded messages had been sent out for the last week. With any luck, there was still someone there to pick them up. With any luck and a day at the races, I'd be rich, he mused.

  "Docking in ten minutes," the voice over the intercom said. "Docking in ten minutes. All passengers please be seated until docking is complete."

  Kustaa finished his beer and waved to the stewardess, staring out the slanted window beside him. The airship lurched as she reached across him to pick the glass off the veneered aluminum table, and a half-full bottle on the tray in her other hand toppled, sending a stream of amber-colored Tuborg splashing off the rim of the birchwood platter and into his lap. He began a yell, remembered to turn it to a strangled grunt and sank back into the seat.

  The girl was on her knees beside his chair, reaching out with a cloth that trembled in her shaking hands to mop at the stain on the front of his fawn-colored trousers.

  "Oh, Master, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please, let me help, please, master—"

  The lilting Swedish accent was raw with fear as he irritably snatched the towel and hastily wiped off the worst of the mess. Looking down he saw huge cornflower-blue eyes starring with tears, and a mouth working with terror.

  "A-ll right," he grated, keeping to the strangled grunt that his cover allowed. "G-o."

  She righted the bottles on the tray with frantic speed, wiping the floor plates. Froze again when she saw who was looking her way; the senior stewardess, a born-serf in her thirties with a hard flat Kazakh face and a leather razor strap on a thong around her wrist. They were both in the same livery, a smart tailored jacket with a long V neck and a pleated skirt of indigo blue, but the older woman did not have the Swede's look of vulnerability in it. She came over with a brisk stride, her low-heeled shoes clicking on the roughened-metal planking, muffled over the rugs.

  The offending woman (No, girl, Kustaa decided. Seventeen, maybe eighteen) stood and held the tray before her; there was a slight rattling from the glasses and bottles, a quiver she could not suppress.

  "Yo" wish punish this slut yo'self, Mastar?" The Kazakh's English was Draka-learned, with the hint of a barking guttural beneath; Kazakhstan had been the northernmost of the Domination's conquests in the Great War, a generation ago. About when this one had been born, he estimated. Her face held no more than her voice or the posture of her well-kept body: precisely trained deference.

  "N-o," Kustaa said, waving a casual hand. "Is nothing." As much as he could say, as much as he could do. You're here to observe and report, he reminded himself savagely, behind a mask of detachment as perfect as the serfs.Follow orders, dammit!

  The Kazakh nodded. "Rest assured, Mastar, she no sit fo' week." A jerk of the head, and the blond girl walked staring past them, through the cloth-curtain door behind the bar. There was a murmur of voices, one pleading it had been too little time since the last strapping.

  The American rubbed at his eyes. I thought I was tough, he thought wonderingly to himself. Every little bit pushes you a bit further. Fuck it, I want to be home, away from these people!

  "Not a bad little piece," the man across the table from Kustaa said idly.

  He was an exec from the Dos Santos Aeronautics Combine, up from the Old Territories to oversee conversion of European facilities. A square-faced man in his fifties, conservatively dressed by Draka standards, down to the small plain earrings and Navy thumb-ring, smelling of expensive cologne. It mingled with the leather-liquor-polish scent of the long room along the lower edge of the dirigible's gondola; this was a short-range bird, shuttling between the larger European cities, not equipped with overnight cabins. No rows of bus-type seats, as there might have been on an American equivalent, though. Scattered tables for four, and freestanding armchairs, and a long bank of canted windows giving a view of the ground below.

  "Not bad at all," he continued, with the air of a bored man making conversation. There was a flat smack of leather on flesh from the curtained alcove, thin yelps of suffering giving way to a low broken whimper. "Wonder how she strips."

  "Black an' blue, now," the Air Corps officer beside him said. "Yo'd have to let her get on top."

  She laughed at her own joke, more than mildly risque by the Domination's standards, began stuffing flies in the flat attache case before her, then frowned. "That's a bit much," she said, and raised a brow at Kustaa. He nodded vigorously.

  "Enough, there," she called, and the sound of blows ceased. Yawning, the pilot glanced idly out the window and exclaimed:

  "Look! Just what I was talkin about, Mr. Sauvage." The exec followed her pointing finger, and Kustaa's eyes joined his. They were over the military section of the airhaven north of the city, the usual tangle of runways, hangars, workshops and revetments. The usual expansion-work going on as well, the iron ordered standardization of the Domination being overlaid on the more haphazard pre-War foundations. Long modular buildings, a chaos of dust as the road-net was pushed out. Neat rows of fighters, older prop-driven models and sleek melted-looking jets. Strike aircraft, twin-engine Rhinos mostly, grim and squat and angular with their huge radial engines and mottled paint; they had been known as the "flying tanks" during the Eurasian War, for their ability to absorb punishment. Kustaa's OSS antennae picked up at the sight of the electrodetector towers, but they were basic air-traffic control phased-pulse models; no real need for air-defense here, he supposed.

  And a row of helicopters, gunboats; that was what the Air Corps tetrarch was pointing at. He remembered the smell of burning woods, and the chin-turrets' blind seeking… There were wings on the breast of the officer's uniform tunic, and the Anti-Partisan Cross below that. Probably she flew the choppers; his ears went into professional mode again. He had convinced them that the cripple did not want to be included in a conversation he could not fully share, convinced them to the point that they ignored the human recording system sitting across the table.

  "Look!" she said. "An' tell me those are cost-effective." The exec cleared his throat. "Precision firepower," he said stolidly. "Entirely new application, an' barely a decade since we turned out our first single-seater scout model. Fo' once, we're completely ahead of the Yankees. We have to concentrate on capital-intensive weapons, we're—"

  "—not a numerous people," she finished. "Look again," she continued. "How many of those are on-line, an' how many yanked fo' maintenance? Serious stuff, not jus' cleanin' fuel lines."

  Kustaa checked… yes, three out of seven with the dismounted assemblies that told of more than routine care. Interested, he glanced back at the Draka woman; she was small for one of her race, thin-featured and dark with a receding chin and big beaked nose pierced for a small turquoise stud. For a moment he wondered what had moved her to emphasize her worst feature. Naivety? Defiance?

  "An" that's the problem. Sho' yo' got them to us fast; too fast, they're the best thing since the hand-held vibrator when they workin, but the whole beast is a collection of prototypes, every subsystem experimental. An' the power train is too highly stressed. An' the servos fo' the weapons systems is tempramental; and either they works wonderful or they don't work at all."

  The man examined his nails. 'Technical Section—" he began.

  "TechSec doan' end up in the bundu with the bush-men breathin' down they necks an' only those things to save they ass! Yo' should 'a taken another four, five years makin sure of things, in the meantime produce mo' Rhinos. They can't hover, but they works."

  "And yo' should be simplifyin' maintenance
. As is, we keep the squadrons goin' by keepin' preassembled subsystems on hand, jus' jerkin' anything that doan' work and sendin' them back to the factory." She thrust a thumb at the stewardess, who had emerged ashen-face from the bar cubicle and was walking stiffly about her tasks. "Look, it easy to train the cattle to pour drinks an' fuck, or to dig holes an' break rock. Maintainin' high-speed turbines is anothah matter!"

  The exec rubbed his jaw. "Tetrarch," he said, "my own children are pilots, we are doin' the best we can. There are just so many engineers, aftah all, and any number of projects. As fo' maintenance technicians, that's always been tight. I'd've thought with all these Europeans comin' on the market, fully or partly trained already…"

  "That another thing, we gettin' spoiled by Europe. Richest place we've ever took, an' skills the best part of it. Trouble is, we're livin' off loot; an' consider the social costs of maintainin' that level of trainin' over generations."

  The man glanced from side to side in an instinctive gesture of caution and leaned forward, lowering his voice. "Mo' right than yo' know, tetrarch. We had some bad trouble in South Katanga, just last month." She duplicated his either-way and leaned closer herself; that was one of the important industrial subregions of the central Police Zone, mines, hydro-dams and a huge complex of electrical-engineering and motor works, mostly owned by the Faraday Electromagnetic Combine.

  "Took a lot of the serf cadre out of the plants there fo' the conquered territories, promoted from their understudies, an' shipped in Europeans to do the donkey-work."

  "Uprisin'?"

  "Serious. Citizen casualties, mob of 'em nearly bust out of their compounds into the free zones, turned them back with vehicle-mounted flamethrowers." The pilot winced; there had been nothing like that in the Police Zone in living memory, the sort of measure used in newly-conquered areas. "They had to gas a whole mine. Decided to lobotomize an' ship most of the survivors; three big factory compounds out of order, jus' when demand fo' industrial motor systems is gettin' critical."