John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Molt’s gaze wandered down the street, where the crowd thickened at the one Admin-sanctioned casino. He considered going up for blackjack. But no one in the casino was permitted to lose more than ten newbux in cred, nor win more than twenty, and there was no way, in Molt’s view, you could work up a good gambler’s sweat when the stakes were so low.

The other clubs and cafés were articulated in bright, brassy, circus-rococo colors, neon-trimmed and flashing, but it was all Admin operated; and to Molt it looked like a miniature setup for children, like the department store “Santa Claus Lane” of his boyhood.

“See the fucking elves making toys,” he muttered. Even the Strip’s pornography parlor was watered-down, the porn softcore and revoltingly well photographed. Tasteful. Not much fun at all.

He lit a syntharette, not because he wanted one, but because this was one of the few areas in the Colony where the nico-vapor was permitted. And because there was nothing else to do. Just nothing else to fucking do.

Molt was a heavy man with a brickish complexion and sharp blue eyes and a tousle of rusty hair. He leaned both elbows on the plastic table, his cup of three percent beer between his hands. He wore genuine faded Levi’s, and a real-wool knit pullover, dull yellow, holes at the elbows and shoulder seams. Bonham—a sad-eyed man with thinning brown hair, a long nose—wore a gray pilot’s uniform without insignia, two-piece, the short jacket taut across his wide, flat chest. He wasn’t a pilot, which is why the uniform had no insignia. The uniform was supposed to help him pick up women. Like Molt, Bonham was a pilot’s second, which officially made both men Technic Union. Both had two years of college and, socially, both looked down on technickis. But both men were Neo-Marxists and in the political abstract regarded the technickis as brethren workers.

Bonham had a way of fading in and out of conversations like a radio with a faulty frequency modulator. He could be dreamy and then diamond-hard analytical, by quick turns. He leaned back in his chair, one hand toying with an empty glass, his mind somewhere else.

“Bonham,” Molt said, leaning forward, lowering his voice meaningfully. “Fuck these tourists. You want to go to that club they got in the Open?”

Bonham stared glassily at a smudged cloud on the ceiling.

“Joe, dammit!” Molt said sharply.

Bonham snapped his eyes down from the cloud. “Yeah, I heard you. Japanese tourists. Pain in the ass.”

“I asked, You wanna go to the club in the Open?”

“The Tavern on the Green? Out in the Admin’s Open? You know what that place costs? Three bux for a cup of tea.”

“Yeah? It’s just—I never been there. But now that you mention it—I can’t feature those prices. Forget it.”

“Of course, the cost is one way they keep it exclusive, keep the technics and the maintens out. I say we spend the money and make ourselves seen there. A Statement, man.”

“Isn’t worth the price.”

“It would be for the principle of the thing.”

“I can’t afford the principles. And I’m on probation. If you get drunk, start making speeches, you’ll get us into shit with Security.” He shook his head dolefully. “Hey, Joe—those new Security bulls they got are mean. Fuck it, let’s wait for the Afters. You can get something that’ll get you drunk, lose some real money, get yourself sick like a man ought to be able to.”

Bonham nodded. “Something in that.”

The talk and the place were ordinary, and that felt all right: they were between duty-pulls, they had a week, and they could amble through everything and the week wouldn’t have to go as fast as usual, if they were careful.

But everything was going to change in twenty minutes.

“You catch the news about the Admin bimbo?” Bonham asked.

“One bimbo at a time. I’m gonna go see—”

“Kelly? She costs more than she’s worth, Molt.”

“She digs me.”

“Whores pretend, Molt, that’s all. They’re consummate actresses, for one role and one only. And don’t try to tell me you made her cum—”

They went on like that for a while, neither man attending the conversation with his whole mind. And in fifteen minutes everything was going to change.

“So what’d you see onna news?” Molt asked, at last.

“Rimpler’s daughter. Cute little thing but super-chilled, I heard. She was taking some kubs out into the Open and one of ’em refused to come back, made a great speech how they were being cheated of their fair share of Open. Spengle made her look like—”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did hear about that. Somebody had a handset on the shuttle and—yeah, the technickis on the shuttle were glued on that one, man.”

“Smart move, whoever set that up,” Bonham mused. “There’s a protest tomorrow. You wanna come along?”

“Maybe. But… you know, Christ…” The two men exchanged commiserating looks and sighed. They’d be surrounded by technics yammering technicki at the demonstration. But they had principles to live up to. Molt shrugged. “Where’s it going to be?”

“Corridor D-five.”

“Yeah, okay. What the hell.” He looked at his watch. “Let’s go to Bitchie’s, it’s probably open for—”

“Is that all you ever think about? Listen, you hear about the SWS readings for the dorm sections?”

“The what? Oh. No. What about it?”

SWS: Solar Wind Shield. The atmospheric envelope generated at the Ice-Lode Station. There were persistent rumors that the Admin crews didn’t keep the shield’s regularity field in place over the Colony’s technicki section; that they were indifferent to cancer risks for technickis.

“The reading was negligible, that’s what. About as much field as my mother has testicles.”

“The field has to be uniform for the Colony to go on working at all.”

They argued Colony politics for the next ten minutes. Molt was the voice of moderation. Social Democrat to Bonham’s Post-Trotskyite. At least, that’s the way Molt was until he got angry, scented violence. But just now, he was quiet as a bomb before it explodes.

In five minutes everything was going to change.

The waitress, Carla, wandered by the tables, picking up glasses, yawning. She was a horsey bleached blonde with a Reservationist’s tattoo half showing through her body stocking. Molt and Bonham exchanged banter with her for four minutes.

In one minute, everything would be different.

Carla went inside to bring out two more weak beers. She came out a minute later, without the beer, her hand clapped over her mouth.

“What’s the matter?” Bonham asked. “What’s the story, Carla?” Molt asked. Their questions jumbled together.

She looked at them, her bloodshot blue eyes stricken, her face paler than usual. She mumbled something through her hand.

Scared by inference, Molt irritably pulled her hand from her mouth and said, “Dammit, Carla, transmit!”

“The Russians. I heard it on the vid just now.”

“The Russians what?” Molt asked, thinking, Oh, shit, maybe they finally launched the big ones.

“They blockaded the Colony. Activated their laser platforms, the battle stations… Got ships hanging out there… They won’t let our shuttles through. We’re cut off. ”

Bonham was scared and looked it. But the fear melted away in Molt, and he realized he’d been waiting for this. He’d been holding something back for a long time. This meant he could let it all out. He could kill a few assholes.

Because everything was different. Now.

The rainstorm had blown onward. The sky had cleared, except for a soft breakage of clouds, light blue against the dark blue twilight.