John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“Reverend Crandall…” Watson paused to contain his anger. He took a deep breath. “Reverend Crandall, I was not in charge of that operation; they didn’t have time to consult me. I was here, shoring up security around the project installation.”

“You want to pass the buck? Fine. But from here on in, Colonel, I want you to leave basic security to Sackville-West. You are to go to our installation in Sicily, immediately, and you are to work from there to find Steinfeld and his people. I want them found, and I want them completely gone from our hair. They’re small, but they’re more dangerous than they look. Steinfeld has a knack for uniting factions. I know the knack when I see it: I have it myself. Take him seriously, Colonel.”

“Reverend…”

But Crandall had cut the transmission. His smiling face rippled as the image faded, the ripple distorting the smile, warping it—or perhaps revealing it for what it was.

And then the holotank was dark.

Watson turned away, stifling a curse. Crandall could still be listening.

A giant’s silhouette hulked in the doorway, across the room. Klaus. When had he moved over there?

Watson frowned in irritation. The man had a way of staring at you…

Watson shrugged. He crossed the room, muttering, “Let’s go.”

A minute later, as their feet crunched the pockets of ice in the compound’s frozen earth, Klaus said, “Colonel…?”

Watson glanced at him. “Yes?”

Klaus stopped in the middle of the compound and looked up at the stars. The stars were reflected, cold and brightly impassive, in the arc of Klaus’s visor.

“Well, what is it, Klaus? It’s cold out here.”

Klaus looked toward him again. At least, his helmet was tilted down. “I could not help but overhear your exchange with the Reverend Crandall. He’s right about security matters, of course…”

“Just who do you think you…”

“But on the whole I question his competence to continue as our leader.”

Watson stared at him, astounded that Klaus would speak treason so bluntly.

Klaus reached up and twisted a series of studs at his neck. The helmet’s visor slid upward. Watson could see his craggy Eastern European face, with its hawkish black eyes and short-clipped black beard, the broad, red-lipped mouth. And he saw conspiracy in that face.

“He’s going to be looking for mistakes, Colonel. And everyone makes mistakes sometime. You make fewer than most, of course. But eventually… and when you slip up, he’s going to over-react, as they say in America. Perhaps the time has come to look for a way to… well, to remove him from real power. He is a necessary figurehead. But there is no reason he should have to be a living one…”

Watson glanced around. There was a guard at the fence, but he was well out of earshot. “You’re suggesting we… but the man’s so heavily guarded.” This is insane. Am I actually considering this proposal?

“Opportunity, Colonel. The opportunity will come. My brother, Rolf, is one of his private guards. The time is not yet here. But it will come.”

“And what do you expect to gain?” Watson’s teeth were chattering from the cold now, but he stood fascinated, staring up into Klaus’s monumental confidence.

“A promotion. Sackville-West’s job. At twice his salary.”

Watson said, “This is a loyalty test of some kind. You’re working for Crandall.”

“You control a staff who can operate an extractor. I will submit myself to it, if you wish. Look into my mind. See the truth.”

After a moment Watson nodded. “Very well. But we will not move against him until I decide the time is right.”

“Of course, sir.” Klaus reached up and snapped his visor shut.

They started back to the officer’s quarters. Watson thinking, Have I made the wrong decision? Have I let my anger with Crandall push me into making a fatal mistake?

Overhead, the constellations turned, swinging slowly, slowly, through the night… and one star crossed the path of another.

Janet Stoner was peering through the slot between two other condos, onto the next street. A boy wearing a transparent anti-acid-rain slicker bicycled by, his tires slicing puddles.

It was Saturday afternoon. The rain had stopped. Everything was soaked in a pearly gray light. Corte Stoner and his wife were on the back terrace of their Georgetown condo, sitting under the rain-scarred plastic bubble. Janet was sitting in the wicker rocking chair, looking pensively out through the plastic pane. She wore a white sweater and cream pants and ticked orange-painted, manicured nails against the wicker chair’s armrest.

Stoner was aware his wife had gained weight in the three and a half years since Cindy’s birth; there were lines at the corners of her eyes, and she was less energetic than she’d been when she and Stoner had married. Yet Stoner was still in love with her, and they both knew it; the knowledge was held in a quiet confidence between them.

Through the open sliding glass doors Stoner could see Cindy—her skin not the dark black of her Mama’s, but more cocoa—sitting raptly in front of the wall console watching a computer generated cartoon in which blond, blue-eyed Danny Angel and his sidekick, Bucky Blast, foiled another plot of the evil New-Soviet scientist, Dr. Darkinsky. Reflected cartoon colors crawled over Cindy’s face.

“You go over everything, Corte?” Janet asked dryly. “You check the Bible in my desk drawer? Might be a bug in there, baby.” She was sitting with her feet tucked under her for warmth. It was a little chilly on the porch. She was looking at the black satchel sitting beside Stoner’s easy chair. It contained detection equipment. Stoner had been at it all morning and into the afternoon. He was fairly sure they weren’t being bugged, at least out here. But he knew it couldn’t last.

“We’re clean so far,” he said.

“If you want to talk to me without worrying about surveillance, why don’t we go out somewhere noisy?”

“I wanted to know about the house. I just wanted to know.”

She said, “You’re taking this pretty seriously.”

“You afraid I’m going paranoid?”

She shrugged. She smiled. “I go with you, baby. Anywhere, even to paranoid.”

He glanced at Cindy. Danny Angel was over, some noon news show had come on. Cindy was spelling words on her I Teach Myself computer, sitting cross-legged and holding the little robin’s-egg-blue console in her lap. Smart kid.

Stoner took a deep breath and told Janet about the Hiring Assessment Program weeding the non-Caucasians and moderates out of the CIA’s power structure; told her about Howie; told her about the Kupperbind file. Told her, last, as unsensationally as possible, about Winston Post.

She was a strong woman. Just a little catch in her voice when she said, “You really think they…” She glanced at Cindy, lowered her voice. “…you think they murdered him?”

He nodded.

“And you think they’re watching you?”

He nodded again. “It’s only a matter of time before they start home surveillance. And they’re already reassigning my workload. I was keeping tabs on NR data. The Resistance people in Europe. They’ve taken me off that.”

“How, uh, how far do you think they’ll go?”

“I don’t know… but right now I think Unger figures to use you against me for leverage, keep me in line behind him, so I support him in everything.”

“What do you mean, use me against you?” She was outraged now. Violated.

“Their rationale is, blacks and other ‘coloreds’ are prone to sympathy with radical groups, because the radical groups are actively anti-racist. So blacks are Security Risks. So is anyone closely associated with blacks.” He shrugged. “They haven’t used the Assessment Program to reassign me, because I’ve got a lot of seniority. Which means clout. I think they’d be more likely to arrange another ‘accident.’”