John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Stoner hesitated. It seemed he had to give them something…

Maybe he ought to blow this whole thing off. Grab Janet and Cindy, head out on his own somewhere.

The Company would find him if he tried it on his own. He needed an underground route that someone had already set up.

The decision hovered on the edge of his will, just out of reach. And the lights on the train went out.

The three men ignored the blackout. The lights went out on the subways all the time. Light from outside strobed the windows as the train shot past the tunnel lamps, flickering Brummel’s face in and out of darkness. On, off, on, off; light, dark; trust and no trust; trust and no trust; on, off…

Then the train’s interior lights came back on.

Stoner made up his mind. “I’ll get you something that no plant would give you,” Stoner said. “They’ve taken me off the SA/NR stuff, but I can still access the files on library console; I’ve still got high clearance. I’ll get you something…”

But not his ace in the hole. He’d keep that back till he really needed it: the fact that there was an Second Alliance agent planted in the European NR. Someone close to Steinfeld himself. He’d hold on to that as a final bargaining chip. Maybe never have to tell them about it at all. It went against his grain, his years of training, to give them even an iota of classified stuff. And he was going to have to give them a hell of a lot more than an iota.

It made Stoner feel sick inside.

He had no naïve ideas about who the good guys were. The SA had basically taken over the CIA; the Second Alliance yobbos were racists and true fascists. But that didn’t mean their opposition was “good.” Working for an intelligence agency, you got real skeptical of anyone who thought they could clearly identify the “good guys.”

“You bring us something we can really use,” Lopez said, “we get you out of the country, set you up good.”

Stoner nodded. The train screeched into a station.

“We’ll be in touch,” Brummel said, turning toward the opening door.

But both doors leading out onto the platform were occupied. There were eight men standing in the doorways, four in each. And there were knives in their hands.

Men? Almost men, mostly boys. Eight black teenage boys in fragments of military uniforms, bits and pieces, trophies stolen from some of their prey. A drunk serviceman on leave makes an easy victim. Air Force flight jackets with Orbital Army patches, Naval Moonbase patches; fatigues, khakis, dress trousers incongruous with combat boots; goggles, diver’s masks, Army-issue medinject units; Marine Corps ties worn as sashes. Helmets from five services; cunt caps and sailor’s caps. One green beret. The tougher the service, the more prestige in taking the trophy off a serviceman.

As if choreographed—maybe they rehearsed it to scare us, Stoner thought—the eight gang punks stepped left foot first, into the car. Stomp: Their boots came down together. The subway car hooted, and the doors closed behind them. The train began to move.

Stoner thought, I’m stupid.

He’d followed instructions, which meant he’d come unarmed, and it was going to end stupid. Caught up in a scheme to ditch CIA Domestic and you don’t watch where you’re going, you fall into bullshit like this. Like a man running cross-country from bloodhounds, looks over his shoulder, doesn’t see he’s blundering into a barbed-wire fence. Tangled, slashed, bled to death. Stupid.

The one in the stolen green beret was brandishing his Navy Seabee knife. Blued seven-inch blade, leather-banded grip, iron end-knob. Bluing worn off the blade’s razor edge, catching light where it had been recently honed; small nick four inches up the blade.

The details of the knife were forever imprinted in Stoner’s mind.

Run? He glanced over his shoulder at the door into the next car.

“Forget it,” the guy in the beret said. The knife in his hand waved in the air with a sawing motion imparted by the swaying of the car. The train hissed and grumbled and cracked.

Stoner said, “What we got, you can have. This is your turf and we respect that.”

“Then why you bring this suck-ass nigger in the suit whichoo?” Green Beret asked. His head was tilted a little to one side.

The other gang punks moved into an orderly semicircle around the three men.

“I don’t like no suit-nigger on my train.”

Stoner glanced at Brummel. Brummel was impassive. He wasn’t going to bring up the Brotherhood. Rub them even more the wrong way with that. Ohhhh, he’s political, huh? Thinks he’s more righteous than us, zat tight, huh?

“Take money,” Lopez said, digging into his wallet.

“Money isn’t enough,” Green Beret said. His pupils were expanding, shrinking, expanding, shrinking, in waves…

Which drug was it? Stoner wondered.

“Money onna outside, money onna inside,” said a boy in goggles, holding up a polished surgical scalpel.

“Organs pay better,” said a guy in a Marine Corps helmet, grinning. He held up a satchel clinking with jars. The satchel was open, and Stoner could see the bluetinged organs glistening in their preserving syrup.

Stoner felt cold and hollow, like he was a fire-gutted tree cooled to fragile ash. Kick the gutted tree and it falls over, crumbles.

Janet. Cindy.

And then a number of things happened, way too quickly.

The door to the next car banged open behind Stoner; someone back there pushed him aside and ran at the gang; someone else behind the first someone, following close, and Stoner saw them both as he fell back against the vibrating metal wall: two Second Alliance cops, hired by the Transit Authority to patrol the cars, both in armored suits of gray-black cloth, flat black, striated armor reminding Stoner of fencing vests and mirrored helmets, RR sticks upraised, the one in the lead with his machine pistol out, amplified voice booming from his helmet: “YOUR CHOICE IS STOP WHERE YOU ARE OR DIE. I REPEAT, STOP OR WE WILL SHOOT YOU SICK LITTLE ASSHOLES!”

The gang scattered, turned to run, one of them pulling a pistol, firing over his shoulder, the sound of the gunshot lost in the screech of the brakes as the train pulled into another station; the round catching the cop square in the chest but even at close range ricocheting from the armor, smacking through an ad in a ceiling panel that read, The only security is full security!

The cop returned fire with a machine pistol spitting three-shot bursts; the gang punk went spinning and falling; another kid running, dropping the organ satchel, jars rolling, smashing, freeing a kidney, a bladder, a heart, all nice and fresh, the organs skidding nasty wet across the floor to slide into a heap of grimy paper and plastic cans, vital human body parts becoming just more trash; the SA cop swinging the RR club down on the boy’s head. Recoil Reversal stick splitting the kid’s head open like a burst organ jar; his brains splashing, Stoner gagging, kid crumpling, cop catching the others, firing at their backs, running after them into the next car as the train pulled up… second cop cornering two other boys, smashing their faces into their cranial cavities… bodies slumping, cop straightening over them…

It was quiet for a moment as the train paused in the station… and as the cop turned with bloodied club toward Stoner and Brummel and Lopez.

A faceless cop, his head hidden in the helmet; a distorted reflection of the interior of the subway car in its visor…

Stoner got to his feet, turned to follow Lopez and Brummel toward the door. Lopez made it through, but Brummel had to stop when the cop pointed a machine pistol at him and boomed, “HOLD IT, NIGGER, OR YOU’RE DEAD! ”