John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Claire had a vague urge to make friends with Lila. But in the two weeks she’d known her, she’d never seen her make small talk. Or talk about herself. Or smile.

Lila gave them each a headset. “We hit the beach in about twenty minutes. Torrence will be in charge of Platoon A for this unit, I’ll be in charge of B; Torrence will also be under my command.”

Torrence and Claire nodded. Steinfeld had already told them the chain of command.

“The objective is a ruined building. It used to be where they pressed olives. We are to blow it up with MPGs, then we secure what remains. A will be approaching first; B on radio command. Do not fire weapons without confirmation. The new code applies.”

She went on for a few minutes more. Without stumbling on a single word, without a need for clarification, holding their eyes with the intensity of her gaze.

When she was done, Torrence nodded and went down into the troop transport deck area, to where the others sat on the benches, talking softly.

Lila turned to go—and then stopped, seemed to hesitate.

Claire watched her in fascination, relieved to see her showing some human uncertainty.

Lila turned to Claire and looked her in the eyes. She smiled.

She reached out, tentatively, and touched Claire on the cheek. She turned and went down the ladder. Claire stared after her, amazed.

She saw Lila talking to Karakos, below. Torrence on the other side of the boat, fairly glaring at them. What was with Torrence? “I don’t trust that son of a bitch,” he’d said.

Claire shook her head and shrugged her rifle off her shoulder. She held it in her hands and prepared to rehearse a massacre.

“No,” Alouette said. “It didn’t hurt.”

“How about now?” Smoke asked her.

“No. But it is making a little itch,” she said, reaching up to touch the spot on the back of her head. But she drew her hand back, remembering she wasn’t to touch the incision.

“The itch means it’s healing up,” Smoke said. He wasn’t sure if that was really true but he wanted to reassure her. “But if it starts to swell or anything, you must tell the doctor.”

They were sitting together on the examination table in the clinic. The miniblinds were halfway closed; the subtropical light slanted brilliantly to the cement floor, next to the white bulk of the magnetic-resonance-holography machine.

Across from them, in a locked glass cabinet, other silicon chips—actually, each was a matrix of many nanochips—were laid out on the black foam-rubber tray like a display of individual fish scales. The room was warm. Alouette wore white shorts. She had no top on, because the doctor had been examining her but she was far from budding breasts. Smoke was wearing an islander’s white cotton shorts, and buttonless overshirt. They sat on the table, swinging their legs, waiting for the doctor to come back, each being brave for the other.

“Before they put it in, I understood this thing, this chip,” she said. “But now I wake up and I don’t understand it.”

“You’re having what we call cold feet, I think,” Smoke said. “That’s normal.”

“Cold feet. Like… de peur de un hoyo?”

Smoke smiled. She’d mixed French and Spanish. The island had been colonized by the Spanish first, then the French, then the Spanish fought to take it back, then the French once more… wrested back and forth like a child between divorced parents. The result was a mix of French and Spanish, in the names and dialect of the islanders. De peur de un hoyo. The fear of a hole. An island expression; being afraid to walk about at night, for fear of falling in a hole. “Yes,” he told her, “ de peur de un hoyo. It’s the same idea. Afraid to go forward because you’re not sure what’s there.”

“I understand what’s there. But…”

“But at the same time you don’t? I know the feeling. It’s to protect you, Alouette. The chip will use your bioelectric field to communicate with us. When you get a little older you can use it to help you think about problems. It could save you. Neural-interface chips have been tested for twenty years. I’m convinced that this one is safe… I didn’t decide to give this chip to you overnight. It connects with your brain and—well, I was afraid it might be dangerous. But we are…” He hesitated. He didn’t want to frighten her. But there was a war going on. There was a war within a war. And because she had been adopted by the NR, she was part of the war. Probably, she would see some of it. He had to prepare her. “We are all of us in danger. This will protect you against that danger, a little. Its risks are outweighed by…” He looked for a way to explain it in words she’d understand.

“We’re in danger because of the Fascists?”

“Yes. And lately… I’m afraid the CIA is looking for us. We think they’ve been spying on the island with a satellite. They’re very dangerous. They’re working with the Second Alliance.”

“CIA…?” She frowned. “James Bond’s friends?”

He blinked at her. “Who’s James Bond?”

“They showed him on video night in the auditorium. He’s a spy hero. He’s from England. He has a friend named Felix who’s from the CIA who helps him sometimes.” She drew her feet up onto the padded table, crossed them, and scowled over a blister on her heel. She prodded it, squeezed it.

“Leave that alone,” Smoke said. “You’ll get it infected or something.”

She turned and poked the foot at his stomach, laughing. He caught her ankle and held it, tickled her foot. She squealed and pulled it away, and almost fell off the table. Smoke grabbed her, his heart pounding. God. What if he lost her like that. Something stupid. Fall and hit her head.

She regained her balance, and lowered herself to the floor. She looked up at him gravely. “The CIA are trying to hurt us?”

“They’re… not James Bond’s friends in real life. They’re a sort of secret government within the government of the USA. Every so often the rest of the government catches them at something they shouldn’t have been doing and they, um, rein them in a little. Like a dog on a leash. But the dog gets away again eventually. And it has again.”

“What did they do that they shouldn’t have been doing?”

“Oh God. Maybe we’d better wait till you’re older. It’s complicated.”

She gave him her chilliest glare. There was something very adult in it that made him laugh. “I’m not stupid,” she said.

“I know. Okay. Well—I’ll give you some examples. After World War Two the CIA recruited Nazis—like Klaus Barbi, a man who tortured and murdered a lot of people in France. They recruited them to be spies. Later on they helped them escape to Central America and South America. These were the worst kind of Nazis, too… Something else the CIA has done is… well in the past it has overthrown democratically elected governments.”

A certain distance in her eyes told him he’d lost her on that one.

Smoke went on, “You know what democracy is. You know what elections are.”

“Oh, yes.” That glare again.

“I know, I know you know.” He smiled. He put a hand to his right shoulder. Empty. The crow wasn’t there. The surgeon wouldn’t let him bring him in here. He was in a cage, poor fellow, for the moment. “Anyway, um, America pretends to approve when a country elects its own government democratically. But in the twentieth century the American CIA used covert operations—secret spy operations of a very ugly sort—to overthrow and assassinate some very decent democratically elected leaders. Like a man who was elected president of Iran. This was mid-twentieth century. He wanted to nationalize the oil industry, which wasn’t convenient for American companies. So they pushed him out—they said he was a Communist, but he wasn’t—and they installed the Shah instead and that led to a generation of torture and killing and repression, things the Shah did to people who disagreed with him, all with the help of the CIA, and that, the repression, that led to a revolution run by people who hated us. The Ayatollah. It was a big mess. And the CIA overthrew the democratically elected president of Guatemala—I think this was in the 1950s—ah, they overthrew him because he wanted land reform to help the peasants and that was not convenient for an American company called the United Fruit Company. They said he was a Communist and they got rid of him. He wasn’t a Communist but they said he was. Then they set up a military dictatorship that tortured and murdered people for generations. They did this in Chile and a lot of places. There was always a big mess afterwards. They always made things worse for everyone. It was a question of protecting the interests of big American companies who had a stake in the…”