John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

She and Karakos were huddled in bed, a candle fluttering romantically in a draft from the door. The two of them naked in the soft golden light.

Somehow it was the candle that hurt most.

“It won’t be tonight, Karakos,” he heard himself say, “but next time she’s on the radio, that’s when you’ll talk her into letting you take it over for a while, right? That it?”

“I’m surprised it’s the radio that’s on your mind,” Karakos said with a small laugh. “But what about it?”

“Dan, get out of here.” Claire’s voice was flat, dead.

He looked at her. A dozen bitter remarks rose up in him, vying for his voice, but all he said was, “Okay. Sure.”

He left, seared inside, thinking, Just jealousy?

Just jealousy? Just jealousy? Just jealousy?

He didn’t sleep that night.

And as soon as it was light, he carried his rifle to the beach for target practice.

Kitty Torrence was squatting with her back against the wall, in Bitchie’s After. The room was dimly lit at her end, brighter at the other where the meeting was going on. The walls were metal patchy with posters and faded porn, stitched with graffiti.

Bitchie’s was an illegal after-hours club, in a double-unit that also functioned as a brothel on certain days. The back room was thirty feet by twenty, the floor space taken up by foam-rubber mattresses. She would have liked to lie down. Not here, though. The mattresses stank; she was careful not to touch them with anything but the bottom of her shoes. She wished they’d pick another place to meet—but Bitchie’s was one of the few places Lester’s loose organization of radics felt safe. Admin tolerated Bitchie’s as a brothel; they didn’t suspect it as a meeting place for reformists.

Lester and the new New Resistance rep and Hasid Shood and Ben Vreeland were sitting cross-legged in a circle, talking. Kitty could have taken part, but she felt like hanging back, staying out of it. She got upset when she took part in the meetings. Chu, the NR rep, was a serious, brittle-mannered Chinese woman in a dull blue Pilot’s Aide jumpsuit. She had short, glossy black hair, no makeup, a single silver hoop earring; carried a blue canvas pouch, zipped half shut, and she kept her right hand always on it. Somehow the pouch made Kitty nervous.

“If we call for an investigation, as a group,” Chu said dolefully, “we’ll tip our hand; they’ll know about us a group. If we demand an investigation as individuals, they’ll know about us as individuals.”

“They already know about us as individuals,” Lester said. “Russ Parker called me in. They been watching me.”

“They know about you, and maybe about Shood, but probably they don’t know about Vreeland yet, or about me. I have been very, very careful.” Her voice was almost a monotone. But there was an underlying intensity that kept Kitty’s attention riveted when the woman talked.

“I dunno,” Vreeland said. “I don’t think they got me ID’d. Unless maybe because Sonny was my brother… I dint get involved in nothing before now.” He was a great chunk of a man, short-legged but thick, wide-shouldered. He wore a ship tech’s white jumpsuit, grease-stained with insulation fluid, and a flattop crew cut divided into three technicki signification colors for his earth-home, profession, and seniority. He spoke Standard badly and laboriously. His brother had died on RM17.

“It takes not long,” Shood said. “They will identify us eventually. Me they maybe know, for Silla was very much loud in the Union…” He swallowed hard after mentioning Silla. Shood was a compact, dark Pakistani with mournful black eyes, wearing a paper suit of tacky red and yellow stripes, faded from two days’ wear. He was a computer programmer, and “sharp as a razor,” Lester said. He’d lost his wife to the explosion on RM17.

And I came so close to losing Lester, Kitty thought. And why? Because Lester went to meetings like this one.

“The longer we stay unidentified as activists, the better,” Chu said.

Lester shook his head. “That’s why they got away with murdering everyone on that repair module. Because most of them weren’t publicly declared. So not enough people smell a rat. Well, a lot of people suspect, but most of ’em aren’t sure it was murder because they aren’t sure the people on the ship were anti-Admin. If the people who were killed had declared their stand publicly, the Second Alliance wouldn’t want to kill them; they’d be afraid it’d cause more riots.”

“Perhaps. But for what we have to do,” Chu said, shrugging, “secrecy is the only way. It is hopeless to ‘demand an investigation.’ Nothing will come of it. And the SA will take note of who is doing the demanding. No. There is only one way: to take power. We know the Second Alliance plans for the Colony. The SA plans to man the Colony with their people only. The rest of us will be deported or… who knows? If the New-Soviets surrender to NATO—and it seems possible that soon they will either launch a first strike or surrender—the fascists will transform the Colony into their headquarters. Rick Crandall himself will come here. It will be his… his ivory tower. He will tolerate nothing less than complete dictatorship here. We must prevent that or we lose it all. We begin like this: to stock arms—with great secrecy, with caution—and to make plans to use them. And then to use them, when they are not expecting it. We must take control of Admin Central. There is nothing else to do.”

Shood looked at Chu and then, to Kitty’s surprise, he nodded. “We must take by force.”

Lester looked uncomfortable. He glanced over his shoulder at Kitty. Then looked at Vreeland. “What you think?”

Vreeland said, “It’s suicide. But standing up to ’em any kinda way is suicide too. So fuck it. They gonna pay.”

“Yes,” Chu said. “Standing up to them in any way is equally dangerous. Suicide? I think not, not if we plan very carefully. It would take very few people placed in the right nerve centers to take over the Colony. Getting there is the hard part. But once we’re there, once we have control of Computer Central and Life Support, the people will rally behind us.”

“What if they don’t?” Kitty said, standing. Her legs were going to sleep. Her back ached. She did a few knee bends, grimacing. “What if… what if everyone’s too scared. They won’t know who you…” Who you are? Or who we are? Diplomatically she chose the latter. “…who we are. If people think we’re terrorists, they won’t trust us at the Colony’s control system. The people won’t back us.”

“It’s a risk we must take. One of many. I take a risk coming here at all, meeting with Lester and Shood. I risk my cover. But I must risk it now.”

Lester said, slowly, as if thinking aloud, “I think they’d back us.”

And as he went on, Kitty thought, God damn you, Lester, we have to get out of this thing, not get locked up in it deeper! We have to get out for the baby! But aloud she said nothing.

“People are pissed off,” Lester was saying. “A lot of them suspect the explosion was rigged. And we haven’t got the housing reforms they promised. And the air’s getting bad in the technicki section; it’s still fairly clean in the Admin section. The food’s been shitty, and there hasn’t been enough of it. The curfews—people are going stir-crazy. Claustrophobic. New-Soviet blockade’s preventing Earth visits, and the curfew’s keeping them in their units during off-time. We almost got busted coming over here…”

Chu looked sharply at him. “Almost? How?”