John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

And it was getting dark. It was nearly time to begin…

Claire and Torrence stood on the top deck with the coxswain, looking through the gloom at the rocky coastline. A soft wind coming up the coastline from the south carried the sweet rot of brine and the diesel reek of the other amphibious boats, obsolete old buckets that still ran on diesel. There’d been some real progress toward electric and hydrogen-cell powering before the war—but all that was stalled. The last oil reserves were being gutted.

The sky was a thin sheet of amber above the sunset; the sea was a heaving infinity of copper and verdigris. The engines rumbled; the wake hissed behind them as the boat carried them south, a quarter of a mile out from the coast. Claire could just make out the bulky shape of Steinfeld in the lead boat, hunched over a chart.

“I wonder if Steinfeld is lost,” she said, for something to say.

Torrence took the remark seriously. “There are hardly any beaches on this island. He’ll know it when he sees it. Everything else is rocks and cliffs.”

She nodded and shifted her assault rifle to her other shoulder. It was getting heavy. Torrence looked at her as if he might offer to carry it. She could see him think better of it.

“What are you smiling like that for?” he asked suddenly.

“Nothing.”

He shrugged and went down the gangway; Claire watched him go, wondering what she’d done to annoy him.

She’d seen him put up with grueling conditions of all kinds; with cold, hunger, wounds, and firefights to make a seasoned veteran piss his pants in fear—and he’d shrugged it all off. But say the wrong thing, hurt his feelings, and he sulked like a little kid. He had become a professional fighting man and at the same time he could sometimes be absurdly immature.

His immaturity was exasperating, but… it had a certain appeal.

And when he made love, he was as patient as he was passionate. Still…

Did she want to commit herself to him?

And then, silently, she laughed at herself. Worrying about emotional commitment as if she were some cow-eyed Long Island debutante. The chances were excellent that they were going to be dead in a month or less.

Even without the likelihood of death in the assault on Sicily, there were half a dozen other deaths incubating in the teeming corridors of possibility. The New-Soviets could move in on Malta, take it over, imprison them all, enslave or kill them. The SA could find them, bomb them in their hideouts, or send in commandos to slaughter them in their beds. Or she could find her way to the States—and Praeger’s hirelings could locate her. Kill her. Or the Third World War could escalate into nuclear holocaust. A fire-storm death, or a slower demise from wind-carried fallout… or death by cold and starvation in a nuclear winter…

And with all that heaped on my plate, I’m thinking, Should I commit myself to Torrence?

She shook her head and told herself , Bury those feelings. Feelings about anything long-term. The desire to make a home somewhere. Bury it deep, but don’t kill it. Not yet.

“You look quite thoughtful,” Karakos said, coming onto the deck. He had a pleasant accent and a mild, unassuming expression. He’d been cleaned up, and in the week he’d been there, his face had filled out a little. It was not a handsome face but it was attractively masculine, mature, deeply etched with character, and sometimes his eyes showed just a hint of the suffering he’d been through.

He hadn’t talked about what he’d been through, what he’d seen, except to say that most of the time he’d been in solitary confinement in a room too small to stretch out in. He seemed unable to talk about his imprisonment at the hands of the SA, and that was understandable.

He stood at the rail beside her, gazing into the gloom. “Stars are coming out,” he said. “We get caught up in trying to stay alive, we forget to look at things like that.” He glanced at her. Smiled. Boyish, that smile. “But I guess, Claire, you’ve had enough of seeing the stars, eh? Up there.”

The Colony. The screw pinning her stomach to her spine bit another thread deeper. It showed on her face.

“I have said something that hurts?” he said.

He put his hand on her arm and smiled sadly, as if to say, I’m sorry. There is enough pain.

His touch felt good. It felt… she wasn’t sure.

But she found herself looking up at the sky, wondering—as the screw tightened another turn—if in fact her father was dead.

“You look lost,” Karakos said. “I, myself, am feeling lost. I’m wondering if I belong. ”

She glanced at him. “You’re tired of fighting,” she suggested. “I don’t blame you.”

“It isn’t that. It’s… I feel as if Steinfeld doesn’t want me here.”

“Are you serious? You have a great reputation in the resistance. Steinfeld has nothing but respect for you.”

“And yet—he has told me nothing about what our plans are. I’m participating in an exercise to prepare for a mission I know nothing about. I’m not used to that.”

She hesitated. She was one of half a dozen people who knew about Steinfeld’s plan for an attack on the Sicilian SA base. The others knew an action of some sort was planned, but they didn’t know where and when. It was best that few as possible know. “Steinfeld’s told almost no one. It’s not that he doesn’t trust the people he’s not telling—it’s his fear that they might be caught by the enemy before the assault.”

Karakos snorted. “And he thinks I would talk?”

“All the willpower in creation won’t help you against an extractor.”

“Extractors! It is a myth that the SA has them in Europe! They are extremely rare, expensive devices!”

“How the hell do you know it’s a ‘myth’?” Torrence asked as he stepped onto the deck from the gangway.

He was staring at Karakos’s hand, which was still on Claire’s arm.

“One of their people confided in me,” Karakos said briskly, removing his hand from Claire’s arm. “I got him to talk…” He shrugged. “He said they spread the rumor they have extractors so that prisoners will talk freely, will assume it’s hopeless to hold back.”

Torrence spat over the rail into the hissing sea. “Bullshit!”

Karakos shrugged again and moved stiffly away, down the ladder.

Torrence looked at her expressionlessly. “What did he want to know?”

“What makes you think he wanted to—?”

“Claire— what did he want to know? ”

She stared at him. “He was understandably concerned to know about Steinfeld’s assault target.”

“Was he. I don’t trust that son of a bitch. Not with our plans, and not with you.”

“Dan, you’re being childish.” She broke off as Lila came up the ladder. Lila was captain of their assault unit, a tall woman with night-dark skin, wearing gray-black cammie fatigues. They saw her starlit silhouette and the glitter of her eyes. Claire had often wondered about her. Lila could speak English, French, and Martinique pidgin fluently—but speaking was something she rarely did. She was one of those people who communicated more with the subtle posture of her body, her eye contact, her timing. She made Claire think of Yukio.

Lila was neat, compact in all her movements, graceful even when loading and firing a gun. She never seemed at a loss for something really useful to do; never distracted or spaced-out. When there was a lecture on strategy she listened raptly, not taking her eyes off the speaker. When there was work to do she did it vigorously and gave it her full attention. When she was done and there was really nothing more to do, she slept, just like that. She’d lie down, and she’d be asleep in seconds. She didn’t even snore.