John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

She stood for a moment in the door of the bedroom, looking at Torrence in the indirect light from the floor lamp. She felt all right about getting back into bed with him, now. He looked normal, relaxed, friendly. He was lying on his back, hands behind his head, nude under a sheet; she could see the outline of his penis angling to one side like a clock’s hand at three o’clock.

She felt a sexual stirring, which played tag with the half-suppressed sense of loathing left over from the dream… Paradoxical, going from a loathing of male murderousness to the damp edges of desire—some kind of primeval programming… The killers can provide food, shelter… She shuddered. But the desire didn’t go away…

“Want to tell me about the nightmares?” he asked.

“No.”

“You sure? Maybe it’d help.”

“ No. Men are arrogant. Think they can analyze everything, cure everything.”

She could see a flicker of resentment in his face. He’d been trying to help her.

“Did Steinfeld decide for sure?” she asked.

“About the raid? Yes.”

“What, um, are they going to do with Bonham?”

He glanced at her, probably wondering how she felt about Bonham. She’d promised herself to Bonham, and in return he had agreed to get her safely down to Earth. He’d done his part; she’d reneged on hers.

He said, “I don’t know. Bonham seems to think we have some kind of obligation to him. He wants money, a passport, transportation to the States. He claims he can give us some useful information about the Colony—he did say one thing that grabbed Steinfeld’s interest. That Crandall’s planning to use the Colony as his headquarters once the New-Soviet space blockade is lifted. But I don’t think Steinfeld trusts Bonham enough to let him go.”

“When he’s frustrated, he’s dangerous.”

“We’ll watch him.” He turned on one elbow, looked at her for a moment, bent and kissed her. Claire responded, but weakly.

Then she turned her head away.

She felt her face contort as she fought tears.

“What’s wrong, Claire?” he asked, with as little pressure as possible in the question.

She bubbled it out all at once, her voice pitching on the edge of a whine. “I’m all—all just… shit… It’s weird, I was wondering when this’d… see, I’ve been… with you guys, I’ve been killing people. I never thought I could really kill anyone. It seems so—this is a smug term but—so unevolved. And then I got caught up with you guys… and I killed those men. And I didn’t feel anything about it! It was so amazing how I didn’t feel disgust or remorse or… or anything. But I guess I did, because it’s all coming out now. Here, where the pressure’s less. It comes out in the nightmares and—God, when I saw you kill people with that shotgun… I mean, you’re all my friends, and my friends are tearing bodies apart with these tools made for tearing bodies apart, and… how could I just accept it?”

He absorbed this for a few long moments. Then: “Like you said, you didn’t accept it. But you coped with it. You think there was anything else we could’ve done?”

“Yes. We could have let them kill us. Maybe that would be better than having to tear people apart.”

He didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Finally she looked at him and asked, “You mad at me?”

He shook his head. “No. I do know what you mean. But, Claire—they’re planning another Holocaust. All the signs point to that. If we don’t stop them, more people will be murdered.”

“We have to murder a few to keep them from murdering a lot?”

“That’s it. If you insist on calling what we do murder.”

After a moment she said, in a small voice, “I guess. I guess it makes sense. But—”

“I know how you feel. It’s like nothing makes sense when you see it happening. I felt the same way more than once.”

“But, Danny… you like killing people.”

He tensed. “What? No! Or… the truth is, I do and I don’t.” He seemed desperate, then, to change the subject. He turned over, sat on the edge of the bed. “I like this old house. I wonder who it belongs to, really. You know, the others are all crammed together in six rooms. Steinfeld was almost sentimental, giving us this room to ourselves. Something about morale—theirs as much as yours and mine. Hey!”

He’d noticed light glinting off something half-hidden behind a rack of thirty-year-old yellowed English paperbacks on a wall shelf. The glint of a bottle. He got up, crossed to it, pulled it out. Accidentally tipping an old collection of Clive Barker stories onto the floor.

“Scotch!” A stubby, triangular bottle, half full of amber liquid. Pinch, it was called.

He brought it back to the bed, unscrewed the cap, and sloshed some into the empty water glass on the bedside table. Drank off half. “Damn!”

“Well, don’t hog it.”

Twenty minutes later they both felt considerably more relaxed. In fact, she felt a little too relaxed. Any more Scotch and she’d get the spins.

Then she was in his arms, felt her body acting almost on its own, undulating against him in that way he liked…

They kissed for a long time and then…

“No, wait,” she said.

He flinched. His erection was so rigid it looked painful.

She smiled apologetically. “I want to, but… we can’t actually fuck, okay? It’s too much like something in my dream. It’s too much like stabbing tonight. But maybe…”

He relaxed as she ran her still Colony-soft fingers over him, drew sensations from him, began to squeeze and pump.

He was lying sideways, his head tilted over hers so he could kiss her, trace her lips with his own tongue, her right breast nuzzling his chest as he gently parted her labia with the index and middle finger of his right hand, dipped into the wet core of her, gathering a little lubricant onto the tip of his finger, running it up onto her clitoris. She groaned and pressed against him, her hand working at him… Some minutes later she gasped, bucked her hips, and he let go the orgasm he’d been holding back… holding it back with an exquisite desperation… and he came, too, across her heaving belly.

Later still, as he sat up to pour them both a drink, they heard a truck approaching, saw lights prying at the shade from the drive outside.

He looked out the window onto the front of the house.

Two men he remembered from the Mossad were getting out of a van, carrying submachine guns. Now there was a third man walking ahead of them into the house, unarmed but apparently not their prisoner. One of our people, he thought, straining to see who it was.

The man seemed to feel Torrence watching. Just before stepping onto the porch, he looked up at the window. Torrence saw his face clearly then.

“Who is it?” Claire asked.

“It’s Michael Karakos,” Torrence said.

Watson was summoned to the Comm Center, in the Lyon SA installation, at three in the morning.

His bedside console had chimed, its screen lit up with three sets of identical numbers: 33-33-33. The code for the SA’s final authority. Watson dressed hastily, woke his personal bodyguard, Klaus, who always slept in his clothes, and together the two of them trudged across the frozen mud of the compound, past the guards at the checkpoints, who stepped reluctantly from their heated stations to approve passage. Watson and Klaus continued into the cube-shaped building with its rooftop orchard of antennas and sat-dishes.

Watson was mildly surprised to see that the big, warm, console-crowded viewing room was dark—except for a single green-glowing screen at the far side.