Free The Stone Dogs by S.M. Stirling Page A

areas where the houseserfs were at their nightly scrubbing and polishing. Her own door, looking more familiar now somehow.
    "Missy?" That was Bianca, yawning and blinking up from a mat by the entrance, tousled in her nightgown. Machiavelli yowled and circled until she picked him up; the cat settled in to purr as she rubbed behind his ears, sniffing with interest at the shrimp scent on her fingers.
    "Jus' turn down the bed, put this stuff away, then go to sleep,"
    Yolande said, padding through to her bedroom. How do I feel?
    she asked herself, with relaxed curiosity. Tingly from the swim, tired from that and the dancing. Relaxed.… Happy, she decided.
    Maybe that's part of growin'. When you were a child happiness was part of the day, like sadness over a skinned knee or sunlight on your face. Then one day you knew you were happy, and that it would pass.
    "Tomorrow's also a day," she muttered to herself, setting the cat down on the coverlet. She yawned hugely, enjoying the ready-to-sleep sensation; that was odd, how it felt good when you knew you could rest, and hurt if you had to stay up. The bed was soft and warm; she nuzzled into the pillow, and felt the cat arranging itself against the back of her knees. "Tomorrow.".

CHAPTER THREE
    The War? We didn't think about the War while it was on. We thought about the next mission, then staying alive for the next five minutes. Get back and we thought about sleep or food or a cigarette, or getting laid. Maybe about "after the War," but that was a daydream… but when It was really afterward, yes.
    Then we thought about It. Something as big as the Eurasian War can't be understood from the inside, not while you're in the belly of the beast. What did we think? We were… shocked, I suppose. We were a more matter-of-fact generation than yours, you know. You youngsters have grown up with things getting really strange —yes, you're tired of hearing that. The War was something new under the sun though; there'd never been a world war in an Industrialized world before. A tenth of humanity died in those seven years, that's just numbers, but we up at the sharp end, we saw it. Worse than that because it was concentrated, no fighting on our soil, thank Wotan, not much on the Yankee's, either. Elsewhere, though, by '46 it was a enamel house. I'm not using a metaphor, you could travel hundreds of miles and not get out of sight of human bones. You'd see a city, and someone would say it was Shanghai or Minsk or Bruges or Heidelberg, but It was all rubble. Just mounds of dirty brick and stone with bits of reinforcing-rod standing out. Sometimes melted by firestorms, and the stink . Freya bless… tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of bodies down under the buildings, smothered by the fire or nerve-gassed.
    We were tired, by the end, very very tired. Tired and sick of it.
    Gods know, we're not a squeamish people, but… It changes you, that much killing, first you stop even thinking about alternatives.
    Life in the abstract loses its meaning, then your own life does.
    Life and death, good and bad, it all starts to blur.
    It takes a lot of rest to recover from. If you ever do.
    From: Notes to My Children
    Journal of Thomas Ingolfsson:
    April, 1950
    CLAESTUM PLANTATION
    DISTRICT OF TUSCANY

    PROVINCE OF ITALY
    APRIL, 1969
    The aircar was a Trevithick Meerkat, a little crowded with six.
    Shiny new and smelling of fresh paint and synthetics; civilian production had just gotten under way, and they were still expensive enough that only the more affluent Citizens could afford them. Yolande, Myfwany, and Mandy were squeezed into the backseat, with Muriel in the front and Veronica on her lap, careful not to jostle the driver. He was a serious-looking young serf, thin and very black, flying cautiously. Trained at the Trevithick Combine's works in Diskarapur in the far south; a pilot and two mechanics had come with the aircraft.
    "Oh, hurry up, boy," Yolande said irritably, as he banked the car into a circle