The Chosen

by S. M. Stirling

  "Hauptman—"

  "Shut up." Gerta ejected the magazine, returned it to the pouch on her belt beside the holster, and snapped a fresh one into the well of the pistol. "Come."

  She put her hand on the lieutenant's shoulder and guided him aside a few steps, leaning toward him confidentially. Young as he was, she didn't think he mistook the smile on her face for an expression of friendliness; on the other hand, she was a full captain and attached to General Staff Intelligence, so he'd probably listen at least a little.

  "What exactly did you have planned?" she said.

  "Why . . . ammunition was found in the animal's dwelling. I was to execute him, shoot five others taken at random, and then burn the village."

  Gerta sighed again. "Leutnant, the logic of our communication with the animals is simple." She clenched one hand and held it before his nose. "It goes like this: 'Dog, here is my fist. Do what I want, or I will hit you with it.'"

  "Ya, Hauptman—"

  "Shut up. Now, there is an inherent limitation to this form of communication. You can only burn their houses down once—thereby reducing agricultural production in this vicinity by one hundred percent. You can only kill them once. Whereupon they cease to be potentially useful units of labor and become so much dead meat . . . and pork is much cheaper. Do you grasp my meaning, boy?"

  "Nein, Hauptman."

  This time Gerta repressed the sigh. "Terror is an effective tool of control, but only if it is applied selectively. There is nothing in the universe more dangerous than someone with nothing to lose. If you flog a man to death for having two shotgun shells—loaded with birdshot, he probably simply forgot them—then what incentive is left to prevent them from active resistance?"

  "Oh."

  The junior officer looked as if he was thinking, which was profoundly reassuring. No Chosen was actually stupid; the Test of Life screened out low IQs quite thoroughly, and had for many generations. That didn't mean that Chosen couldn't be willfully stupid, though—over-rigid, ossified.

  "So. You must apply a graduated scale of punishment. Remember, we are not here to exterminate these animals, tempting though the prospect is."

  Gerta looked over at the villagers. It was extremely tempting, the thought of simply herding them all into the church and setting it on fire. Perhaps that would be the best policy: just kill off the Empire's population and fill up the waste space with the natural increase of the Land's Protégés. But no. Behfel ist behfel. That would be far too slow, no telling what the other powers would get up to in the meantime. Besides, it was the destiny of the Chosen to rule all the rest of humankind; first here on Visager, ultimately throughout the universe, for all time. Genocide would be a confession of failure, in that sense.

  "No doubt the ancestors of our Protégés were just as unruly," the infantry lieutenant said thoughtfully. "However, we domesticated them quite successfully."

  "Indeed." Although we had three centuries of isolation for that, and even so I sometimes have my doubts. "Carry on, then."

  "What would you suggest, Hauptmann?"

  Gerta blinked against the harsh sunlight. "Have you been in garrison here long?"

  "Just arrived—the area was lightly swept six months ago, but nobody's been here since."

  She nodded; the Empire was so damned big, after the strait confines of the Land. Maps just didn't convey the reality of it, not the way marching or flying across it did.

  "Well, then . . . let your troopers make a selection of the females and have a few hours' recreation. Have the rest of the herd watch. From reports, this is an effective punishment of intermediate severity."

  "It is?" The lieutenant's brows rose in puzzlement.

  "Animal psychology," Gerta said, drawing herself up and saluting.

  "Jawohl. Zum behfel, Hauptman. I will see to it."

  Gerta watched him stride off and then vaulted into her waiting steamcar, one hand on the rollbar.

  "West," she said to the driver.

  The long dusty road stretched out before her, monotonous with rolling hills. Fields of wheat and barley and maize—the corn was tasseling out, the small grains long cut to stubble—and pasture, with every so often a woodlot or orchard, every so often a white-walled village beside a small stream. Dust began to plume up as the driver let out the throttle, and she pulled her neckerchief up over her nose and mouth. The car was coated with the dust and smelled of the peppery-earthy stuff, along with the strong horse-sweat odor of the two Protégé riflemen she had along for escort.

  Wealth, I suppose, she thought, looking at the countryside she was surveying for her preliminary report. Warm and fertile and sufficiently well-watered, without the Land's problems of leached soil and erosion and tropical insects and blights. Room for the Chosen to grow.

  "We're in the situation of the python that swallowed the pig," she muttered to herself. "Just a matter of time, but uncomfortable in the interval." That was the optimistic interpretation.

  Sometimes she thought it was more like the flies who'd conquered the flypaper.

  * * *

  "Mama!"

  Young Maurice Hosten stumped across the grass of the lawn on uncertain eighteen-month legs. Pia Hosten waited, crouching and smiling, the long gauzy white skirts spread about her, and a floppy, flower-crowned hat held down with one hand.

  "Mama!"

  Pia scooped the child up, laughing. John smiled and turned away, back toward the view over the terrace and gardens. Beyond the fence was what had been a sheep pasture, when this house near Ensburg was the headquarters for a ranch. Ensburg had grown since the Civil War, grown into a manufacturing city of half a million souls; most of the ranch had been split up into market gardens and dairy farms as the outskirts approached, and the old manor had become an industrialists weekend retreat. It still was, the main change being that the owner was John Hosten . . . and that he used it for more than recreation.

  "Come on, everybody," he said.

  The party picked up their drinks and walked down toward the fence. It was a mild spring afternoon, just warm enough for shirtsleeves but not enough to make the tailcoats and cravats some of the guests wore uncomfortable. They found places along the white-painted boards, in clumps and groups between the beech trees planted along it. Out in the close-cropped meadow stood a contraption built of wire and canvas and wood, two wings and a canard ahead of them, all resting on a tricycle undercarriage of spoked wheels. A man sat between the wings, his hands and feet on the controls, while two more stood behind on the ground with their hands on the pusher-prop attached to the little radial engine.

  "For your sake I hope this works, son," Maurice Farr said sotto voce, as he came up beside John. He took a sip at his wine seltzer and smoothed back his graying mustache with his forefinger.

  "You don't think this is actually the first trial, do you, Dad?" John said with a quiet smile.

  The ex-commodore—he had an admiral's stars and anchors on his epaulets now—laughed and slapped John on the shoulder. "I'm no longer puzzled at how you became that rich that quickly," he said.

  If you only knew, Dad, John thought.

  wind currents are now optimum, Center hinted.

  "Go!" John called.

  "Contact!" Jeffrey said from the pilots seat, lowering the goggles from the brow of his leather helmet to his eyes. The long silk scarf around his neck fluttered in the breeze.

  The two workers spun the prop. The engine cracked, sputtered, and settled to a buzzing roar. Prop-wash fluttered the clothes of the spectators, and a few of the ladies lost their hats. Men leaped after them, and everyone shaded their eyes against flung grit. Jeffrey shouted again, inaudible at this distance over the noise of the engine, and the two helpers pulled blocks from in front of the undercarriage wheels. The little craft began to accelerate into the wind, slowly at first, with the two men holding on to each wing and trotting alongside, then spurting ahead as they released it. The wheels flexed and bounced over slight irregularities in the ground.

  Desp
ite everything, John found himself holding his breath as they hit one last bump and stayed up . . . six inches over the turf . . . eight . . . five feet and rising. He let the breath out with a sigh. The plane soared, banking slowly and gracefully and climbing in a wide spiral until it was five hundred feet over the crowd. Voices and arms were raised, a murmured ahhhh.

  The two men who'd assisted at the takeoff came over to the fence. John blinked away the vision overlaid on his own of the earth opening out below and people and buildings dwindling to doll-size.

  "Father, Edgar and William Wong, the inventors," he said. "Fellows, my father—Admiral Farr."

  "Sir," Edgar said, as they shook his hand. "Your son's far too kind. Half the ideas were his, at least, as well as all the money."

  His brother shook his head. "We'd still be fiddling around with warping the wing for control if John hadn't suggested moveable ailerons," he said. "And gotten a better chord ratio on the wings. He's quite a head for math, sir."

  Maurice Farr smiled acknowledgment without taking his eyes from where his son flew above their heads. The steady droning of the engine buzzed down, like a giant bee.

  "It works," he said softly. "Well, well."

  "Damned toy," a new voice said.

  John turned with a diplomatic bow. General McWriter probably wouldn't have come except for John's wealth and political influence. He stared at the machine and tugged at a white walrus mustache that cut across the boiled-lobster complexion . . . or that might be the tight collar of his brown uniform tunic.

  "Damned toy," he said again. "Another thing for the bloody politicians"—there were ladies present, and you could hear the slight hesitation before the mild expletive as the general remembered it—"to waste money on, when we need every penny for real weapons."

  "The Chosen found aerial reconnaissance extremely useful in the Empire," he said mildly, turning the uniform cap in his fingers.

  McWriter grunted. "Perhaps. According to young Farr's reports."

  "According to all reports, General. Including those of my own service, and the Ministry."

  The general's grunt showed what he thought of reports from sailors, or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Research Bureau.

  "They used dirigibles, you'll note," McWriter said, turning to John. "What's the range and speed? How reliable is it?"

  "Eighty miles an hour, sir," John said with soft politeness. "Range is about an hour, so far. Engine time to failure is about three hours, give or take."

  The general's face went even more purple. "Then what bloody f . . . bloody use is it?" he said, nodding abruptly to the admiral and walking away calling for his aide-de-camp.

  "What use is a baby?" John said.

  "You're sure it can be improved?" the elder Farr said.

  "As sure as if I had a vision from God"—or Center—"about it," John said. "Within a decade, they're going to be flying ten times as far and three times as fast, I'll stake everything I own on it."

  "I hope so," Farr said. "Because we are going to need it, very badly. The navy most of all."

  "You think so, Admiral?" another man said. Farr started slightly; he hadn't seen the civilian in the brown tailcoat come up.

  "Senator Beemody," he said cautiously.

  The politician-financier nodded affably. "Admiral. Good to see you again." He held out a hand. "No hard feelings, eh?"

  Farr returned the gesture. "Not on my side, sir."

  "Well, you're not the one who lost half a million," Beemody said genially. He was a slight dapper man, his mustache trimmed to a black thread over his upper lip. "On the other hand, Jesus Christ with an order from the President couldn't have saved those warehouses, from my skipper's reports . . . and you're quite the golden boy these days, after facing down that Chosen bitch at Salini. We can offer her a better one than her colleagues appear to have found at Corona,'" he quoted with relish. The senator's grin was disarming. "What with one thing and another, grudges would be pretty futile. And I have no time for unproductive gestures, Admiral. You think we'll need these?"

  "Damned right we will. Knowing your enemy's location is half the battle in naval warfare. Knowing where he is while he doesn't know where you are is the other half. We've relied on fast cruisers and torpedo-boat destroyers to scout and screen for us, but the Chosen dirigibles are four times faster than the fastest hulls afloat. Plus they can scout from several thousand feet. We need an equivalent and we need it very badly, or we'll be defeated at sea in the event of war."

  "Which some think is inevitable," Beemody said thoughtfully. "I'm not entirely sure—but the news out of the Empire certainly seems to support the hypothesis. Admiral. John."

  "People can surprise you," Farr said reflectively as the senator moved through the crowd, shaking hands and dropping smiles.

  "Beemody knows when to jump on a bandwagon," John said. "And he's big in steel mills, heavy engineering—a naval buildup will be like a license to print money, to him. And he's no fool; I've done enough business with him to know that."

  "Darling," Pia's voice broke in. She hugged his arm; the nursemaid was behind her with the child. "Father." Her eyes went up to the aircraft that was circling downward above them. "I would love to do that someday."

  John put an arm around her shoulders. "Maybe in a few years," he said. "Here comes Jeffrey."

  The plane ghosted down, seemed to float for an instant, then touched with a lurching sway. The Wong brothers ran out to grip the wingtips and keep its head into the wind; other workers brought cords and tarpaulins to stake it down. Jeffrey Farr swung down from the controls, pulling off his helmet and waving to the cheers of the crowd. He vaulted the fence easily with one hand on a post, then walked towards his father and stepbrother. One arm was around the waist of a pretty dark girl who clung and looked up at him, laughing.

  "I see you've already found a way to profit from the glamour of flight, Jeff," John said, bending over her hand.

  "Too late," Jeffrey replied. "Meant to tell you, you're going to be best man."

  John looked up quickly, to find Pia laughing at him. "Some things even the wife of your bosom doesn't tell you," he said resignedly.

  And I told Center not to tell you, either, Raj said. There was a smile in the disembodied voice.

  "Well, I haven't told Mother yet, either," Jeffrey said. "There are limits to even my courage."

  "I'm sure your mother will be delighted," the elder Farr said, bending over Lola's hand in his turn. "But not surprised, after the last year. The Empire has conquered both her sons, it seems."

  Pia's face went rigid for an instant, and then she forced gaiety back to it. "A fall wedding, perhaps?"

  Jeffrey nodded. "And John won't escape mine—although I should bar him from the church, the way he got hitched without me there, the inconsiderate bastard."

  John chuckled. "I'm sure you could see it as vividly as if you'd really been there," he said dryly. "How does she fly?'

  "Too businesslike, that's your problem." Jeffrey shrugged. "Sweet, for a machine that underpowered. Very maneuverable, now that the movement of the flaps is extended. The canard keeps the stalling speed low, but I think it'll have to go when you move to an enclosed cockpit; the eddy currents around it close to the ground are tricky. Apart from that, she needs a better engine and something to cut the wind."

  "And you must make a speech about it," Pia said, putting her hand through John's elbow.

  "Damn," he muttered, looking at the assembly.

  About fifty people. Important people, high-ranking military officers, industrialists, reporters for the major papers and wire services, politicians on the military committees.

  "It is part of your job," Pia said relentlessly.

  John sighed and straightened his lapels. Nobody had ever said the job would be agreeable.

  * * *

  "So much for reports that it could not be done," Karl Hosten said, looking down at the summaries.

  Gerta Hosten closed her own file folder with a snap. "Well, sir
, it was scarcely a secret that powered heavier-than-air flight was possible. We are here, and not on ancient Terra, after all."

  "But our ancestors did not arrive in winged vehicles with propellers," the Chosen general said with a sigh.

  Gerta looked up with concern. There was more white than gray in her foster-father's face now, and his face looked tired even at ten in the morning. Duty is duty, she reminded herself. Not all the work of conquest was done out on the battlefield.

  She was back in Corpenik for a while herself. There wasn't much in the way of fighting left in the Empire—former Empire, now the New Territories—for one thing, and for another she was pregnant again, enough months along to rate desk duty for a while. The whitewashed office in the General Staff HQ building was on the third floor; she could see out over the courtyard wall from here, to a vast construction site where gangs of slave labor from the New Territories dug at the red volcanic earth of the central plateau, filling the warm damp air with the scent of mud. Some office building, she supposed; bureaucrats were a growth industry these days. The Land's government had always been tightly centralized and omnicompetent, and there was a lot more for it to do. Or it might be factories. A lot of those were going up, too.

  She looked down at the folder. "According to John's report, the Santies are going to push these heavier-than-air craft mainly because their experiments with dirigibles have been such a disaster."

  General Hosten nodded and pushed a finger at a photograph. It was a grainy newspaper print, showing the ghost outline of a wrecked and burned airship strewn across a bare grassy hillside with mountains in the distance.

  "I am not surprised. Success or failure in airship design is mostly a matter of details, and an infinite capacity for taking pains is our great strength."

  Whereas our great weakness is obsession with details at the expense of the larger picture, Gerta thought, silently. There were things you didn't say to a General Staff panjandrum, even if he was your father.

  "Still, we'll have to follow suit," Gerta said. "Dirigibles are potentially very vulnerable to aircraft of this type, and they could be very useful in themselves."