The Stone Dogs Read online

  Marya looked away. Stoddard continued. "Can you do it?" Lefarge pressed his fingertips into his forehead. Could he kill a friend, a man who trusted him? Another thought twisted the knot below his stomach tighter. He would have to live at close quarters with him. Laugh at his jokes, pass the salt, never let show that anything was different…

  "I can," he said. And that was a bitter thing to know about himself, as well.

  Marya relaxed, and brought her right hand up from under the table. Lefarge's eyes widened; there was a gun in his sister's hand, an ugly stubby little silenced custom job. For the first time in his life, he felt his jaw drop with surprise; she flushed and looked down. Stoddard reached out and slipped the weapon into his own hand, pointed it out into the night and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing. The young woman's head whipped around, and she gave the general an accusing stare. "You claimed there was evidence he might be involved!" she said.

  "Circumstantial evidence," the general replied. He snapped the clip out of the weapon and thumbed the square rounds of caseless ammunition out. "He was a close friend of someone we knew had gone over. Actually, I never doubted him."

  He smiled bitterly. "Fred, you just passed a test. Your test is willingness to eliminate McLean. This little charade was hers. Marya was lucky; the information we gave her about you wasn't real. We just needed to see how she would react if it was real." The expression lost all resemblance to good humor. "This is what I told you, long ago. This business of ours, it takes… a different sort of courage from a soldier's. A soldier,"—his voice stumbled for a moment—"may have to sacrifice his life. More is asked of us; we get the danger without the glory, such as that is. For us, there's the dirty business that has to be done; we may have to sacrifice a friend, a brother… our own sense of honor." He slid the material back into the attache case, stood. "I'll be in touch."

  Stoddard left by the back gate, walking toward an inconspicuous steamer. Two of the silent men followed, one taking the wheel. There was an almost imperceptible whump of water hitting a flash-boiler, and the vehicle slid away.

  "Shit, what a night," Lefarge said, a shakiness in his voice.

  "Shit." A hand fell on his, and he looked up to meet his sister's eyes. "Would you have shot me?"

  "If I thought you were a traitor?" she said, gaze level. "Yes." The eyes glimmered suddenly, in starlight and moonlight. "I'd have cried for you after… but yes."

  The moment stretched. "Thank you," he replied. Their fingers met and intertwined. "Merci, ma soeur," he said again, in their mother's native tongue.

  Presently he sighed. "Look… can you drop me back at Maman's hotel? I'd… like to see Cindy again."

  "I understand. It's not far from mine."

  "But not the same hotel as Maman?" he said, with a faint smile.

  His sister's was more wry. "Maman's never going to accept that I don't have a vocation, Fred," she said.

  "Christ, when the Sisters sent that bloody delegation around to explain you were a perfectly good Catholic, just not suited—!" It was an old anger, a relief to slip into it.

  Marya shrugged. "Hell, I might as well be a nun, the chances I'm going to get in this line of work… Fred, Uncle Nate told me a little bit more about how he got Maman out of France, back in '47."

  "Oh?" Thank you for changing the subject, he thought. I need something to calm me down first. "Her resistance work and so forth?"

  "Fred… Maman was in the Resistance, all right. But she wasn't Uncle Nate's contact. She wasn't supposed to come out at all."

  "What? Look, I know there was an agent in place, I'm named after the man, but—"

  "Shh. That nun that Maman told us about, Sister Marya? She was the Resistance contact. Maman just got dumped in the same place, bought out of a Security Directorate pen in Lyons by a planter. She… found out about the operation they were on—you can guess it was weapons research—and… well, threatened to blow the cover unless she was pulled out of there. The whole extraction phase went sour; your namesake was killed, so was the nun… Had to kill themselves, rather. Maman's considered it her fault, ever since."

  "Mary mother. No wonder she was so set on getting you into the Order!"

  "Expiation, and more than that, Fred. There wasn't any husband killed by the Snakes."

  "You mean she wasn't pregnant then?" He blinked bewilderment. Maman? Maman had an affair after she got to New York? He had never seen his mother miss Mass or confession in all his life; and he still remembered the thrashing she had given him when she caught him with that women's-underwear catalog under the bed.

  "Yes, she was… We're half-Draka, brother."

  For a moment Frederick Lefarge saw gray at the corner of his vision, and then his skin crawled as if his body were trying to shed it. Oh, it made no legal difference; by Domination law, only those born of Citizens on both sides were of the ruling caste. But— He made a wordless sound.

  "I know," Marya replied. "I threw up when I heard; I've had a week or so to get used to the idea now. But you can see why, why she's never looked at another man, why she was so dead set against me going into intelligence work. Any sort of field where there was a chance I might be captured." She pressed the button for the waitress. "I think you need a stiff one; then I'll drive you over."

  "Cindy, Cindy!"

  "Honey, what is it?" Shock and concern, and fear of what could have harrowed him so.

  "Hold me, will you? Just hold me."

  Chapter Seven

  In theory, the Alliance for Democracy began as just that: an alliance of sovereign democracies— some, such as the Empire of Brazil democratic by courtesy only. In fact, it was an arm of American policy, the creature of the United States. By 1941 all Europe and most of Russia were under German control- Japan had taken Hawaii invaded Australasia, and was raiding the coastal U.S. as far south as Panama. The Domination of the Draka was mobilized, visibly awaiting an opportunity to jump. Britain, her Indian dependency and the Australasian Federation were glad to follow the American lead; the only choice was to be eaten alive by one or the other of the predators. South America had known it lived on American sufferance since the U.S. finally pushed its borders to the Isthmus of Panama in the 1860s. When the Eurasian War ended with the Domination in control of three-quarters of the planet everyone realized that the Alliance had to be made permanent; the alternative was the Draka labor compounds and a serf identity-tattoo on the neck.

  Paradoxically, it is the transformation of the Alliance into a quasi-state which has caused our present problems with the Indian Republic. Member nations retain considerable autonomy, but the Grand Council and Assembly of the Alliance now control interest rates and other macroeconomic levers as well as setting military policy. For most members, this has been opportunity rather than hardship; the low-tax, minimal-regulation approach which even the Democratic Progressive party here in the U.S. embraces has proven widely popular. Some feel too popular, as the rocketing growth-rates of the smaller members of the Alliance erode the relative dominance of the United States. India has proven the exception to the general rule, mired down by the fanatical unwillingness of its religious groups to coexist and by the Fabian socialism its ruling class inherited from the British. Despite prosperous enclaves such as Bombay, most Indians remain subsistence peasants, the last large group of peasants in the world. Poverty breeds demagogic charges of exploitation and cries of "corruption" by American "materialism." The growth of neo-Qandhian pacifism, with its claim that the nuclear balance of terror is absolutely immoral, is especially worrying.

  And the Domination, with its usual cold cynicism, is actively fishing In these muddied waters.

  The Indian Republic

  Achillies Heel of the Alliance

  by Ernesto Perrez

  U.S. Weekly ChronicleNation's Bilingual Newsmagazine

  Since 1912

  Managua, NicaraguaNovember 1 1972

  NEW YORK CITY

  FEDERAL CAPITAL DISTRICT

  DONOVAN HOUSE
r />   NOVEMBER 20, 1972

  "Not going to the Inauguration, general?"

  Nathaniel Stoddard snorted without turning from the window and brushed at his mustache. It was nearly solid gray now, only streaked with sandy brown, like the rather untidy mop of hair he kept in an academic's shag-cut. Getting older, he thought. Older and creakier and more weary… Is it time to retire? He probed at himself, with the same ruthless analysis he might have used on an agent under strain. No. Still flexible, not making too many mistakes. You couldn't overvalue yourself either; if you were indispensable, you weren't doing your job properly.

  "Work to do," he said, in a voice that carried the flat vowels and drawl of Boston. "The OSS never sleeps."

  Frederick and Marya Lefarge were waiting patiently in their seats, still in tropical kit, looking a little rumpled from the two-hour flight from India, a little worn from tension and sleeplessness. Harder than they had, after the work he had put them through these past four years. Easy with each other, and that was important; this had been their first mission together. There were jobs a team like this had an advantage in.

  "And its agents don't get any sleep either," Fred was saying. "Here we are, just off the Calcutta shuttle, and you don't even give us time to stop off at O'Toole's for a beer."

  Donovan House was at the northern edge of the Federal District, the series of interlinked squares and parks that occupied the center of Manhattan island. More and more of the capital's swelling bureaucracy was being moved out to Long Island or the Jersey shore, but the Office of Strategic Services preferred staying close to the centers of executive power. This office was twelve stories up, overlooking Jefferson Avenue; from here you could see north and south to the Hudson and East rivers. The parade was still moving down the six-lane avenue, between sidewalks and buildings black with the crowds. Paper confetti spun through the air, and the noise was loud even through the sealed double-glazed panes. Another flight of fighters went by ten thousand feet up— contrails and a brief silvery flash—and their sonic booms rattled the furniture.

  My, aren't we noisy today, Stoddard thought.

  The marching youth groups were past, the cheerleaders and bands, the cowboys and vaqueros and Hibernians… Troops now. Squat tanks with their long cannon- swiveling in hydraulic pods above the decks, APCs, huge eighteen-wheeler tractors drawing suborb missiles on mobile launchers.

  It's a good thing the infantry aren't marching, he thought dryly. Messy, after all those horses.

  He took a sip from the coffee cup in his hands, thankful for the warmth. Thankful that he was inside, and not out there in the raw weather; it was damp and cold, the sky stark blue with streamers of cloud. An aircar went slowly by outside the window, down the length of the procession: a light open-topped model with ABS markings, and six ducted-fan propellers in swivel mounts spaced around the flattish oval body.

  The drone of its engines hummed through the air between them, and he could see the blue tinge to the faces of the televid crew in the little four-seater.

  "Better you than me, friends," he said.

  "Sir?" Marya's voice, cool and neutral. In a juster world, maybe she would be my successor, Stoddard thought. She's… not harder than Fred. Cooler, less of a closet romantic. This line of work will do that for a woman. But then, in a juster world she wouldn't have had the extra toughening.

  Stoddard grinned at his proteges. "Just feeling each and every one of my sixty-eight years, Fred, Marya," he said. "And glad I'm not out there courting arthritis." The use of the first name had become a signal between them to drop formality.

  They were all in the wolf-gray uniforms of the Alliance military today: high green collars and epaulets and the American eagle on their cuffs. Frederick Lefarge had a captain's bars, his sister Marya a lieutenant's. The older man a general's oak-leaf clusters, although his position here made his authority nearly equal to that of a member of the Alliance Combined Staff.

  "Not missing the distinguished company?" Frederick had a little more accent than his sister's, Academy mid-American, with a slight trace of East Coast in the vowels; Stoddard noted absently that a linguist would immediately place him somewhere between New York and Baltimore. "The Pope's there."

  "And all sixty-two State governors," Stoddard said, turning back to his desk.

  It was severely plain, like the rest of the office. Plain dark wood, in-out baskets marked "hate" and "love" a telephone, a scriber, the screen and keyboard of a retriever terminal. There was a table and settees for guests, bookshelves that held a mixture of mementos, leather-bound volumes and color-coded ring-binders. Two paintings on the walls, New Hampshire landscapes by Fairish, the chilly perfection of his late period. And two photographs on the desk: one of a plain middle-aged woman and three children standing beside a weathered saltbox home, the other of a young man in a flight suit. That was bordered in black.

  Stoddard gave it a glance as he sank into the swivel chair and filled his pipe. "And the College of Cardinals," he continued between puffs. "The Chief Rabbi, Her Honor the Mayor, half the Alliance Grand Council, the Combined Chiefs, His Majesty Georgie the Fifth, the Prime Minister of Australasia… bit of a dog's breakfast. Not to mention the speeches."

  "Bilingual, yet," the other man said, sitting by the table and reaching for a manila folder. "It would make more sense to have them in French or Yiddish, in this town. Or deep Yorkshire."

  Stoddard nodded, blowing a cloud of aromatic blue smoke. A fifth of the United States was Spanish-speaking, but that was mostly in the states carved out of old Mexico. New York had always been a polyglot city; the great magnet during the immigrant waves of the 1890s and 1920s, then the primary center for the millions of European refugees just after the War, the lucky ones who made it out before the Draka had the coasts of Western Europe under firm control. The English were the latest wave all along the Atlantic coast; the British Isles were the Alliance's easternmost outpost, and not a very comfortable place to live, these days. It was a little embarrassing, for an old-stock Yankee. He could remember when a British surname was an elite rarity here; now every second waiter, hairdresser, and ditchdigger was a new-landed Anglo-Saxon. Not to mention prostitutes, pimps, street-thugs, and the gangs who were pushing the Mexicans and Sicilians out of organized crime…

  "Well, India's patched up for the moment," Frederick Lefarge said, riffling the folder. "That little scandal about Rashidi and the hamburger killed the Hindi Raj party deader than Gandhi." He laughed sourly. "Why didn't he smuggle something safe, like heroin? For a Hindi nationalist, running a clandestine beef trade…"

  Marya frowned. "Well, I was mostly working with the Indra Samla people," she said. "They were ready enough to believe the bad about Rashidi. Too many Moslems in his background, besides him being their main rival. Still and all, a lot of them had trouble believing he could make a blunder that big."

  "Double-blind," Stoddard said. "He didn't. We framed him."

  The captain sat bolt upright. "Jesus! If that ever gets out—"

  Stoddard took another draw on his pipe. "You were the test, Fred. You took a first-rate team there for the investigation; if you couldn't find our sticky fingermarks, who could?"

  The younger man shook his head and pursed his lips slightly. "I don't… It's not what we're supposed to do."

  "What's the alternative?"

  "He would have won the election. And left the Alliance." A long pause. "How could he be so… stupid's an inadequate word. Are the Snakes bribing him?"

  The general gestured with the stem of his pipe. "Fred, Marya, when you've been in harness as long as I have, you'll learn two things: first, human beings don't have to be stupid to act stupidly, they just need to feel strongly about something. Second, conscious evil is actually quite rare, even rarer than deliberate hypocrisy."

  He cradled the bowl of his pipe between the heels of his hands. "Rashidi is no fool, he's just convinced that American influences are sapping and undermining Hindu culture." A shrug. "He's right, too."

&n
bsp; "Did he think the Snakes would be better?"

  Stoddard smiled sourly. "Actually, there are some similarities between their system and the old Indian caste setup, and the doctrine of karma is the most diabolically effective mechanism for keeping the lower classes in order ever invented… No, the Hindi Raj people certainly didn't want a Draka conquest—they weren't insane. They thought a neutral India could stand off the Domination by itself—with unacknowledged help from us—and successfully industrialize behind tariff barriers without having to accept the, hmmm, culture of individualist rationalism, isn't that the way Rashidi used to put it?"

  "That's insane."

  "No, just wishful thinking. Actually, there are only two possible alternatives for human beings on this planet now. Us and the Domination. One is going to utterly destroy the other and incorporate everything else. It's one of the truths everybody knows and nobody says. The nationalists in India simply refuse to believe it, because believing that would mean that they cannot have what they most want."

  "Stupidity."

  Marya had leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes; now she opened one and chuckled. "Brother, while you were out playing astronaut,"—he winced slightly—"I've been doing more straight political work. Your training's made you overestimate the role of rationality." A wry grin. "Also, you've never had an observer's chance to see how stupid most men are with their pants down."

  Stoddard nodded. "Not stupidity, humanity. Which means this is a battle won, not a war. The discontents continue, and they will find another vehicle."

  Lefarge shook his head. "Hindi Raj is a dozen quarreling fragments; the Progressives will win the next three elections without trouble." A wolfs grin. "And some of those fragments were being paid off by the Snakes. We can use that if they start building momentum again. So much for deliberate evil."

  "A rather petty evil. I've got the reports, and none of them were selling anything vital." He leaned back and blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. "Grafters like that are the political equivalent of tax frauds. They cheat, relying on the fact that most people don't, so they keep their money and get the benefit of the services, too… The Draka lose there by their own racial prejudices. They may not care about the color of the people they enslave, but they do when it comes to granting Citizen status. Best bribe they have. That's the way they got Ekstein."