John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

High on the wall to the right was a glass mirror panel that housed the offices and once had provided a vantage for spying on shoplifters.

He went to the steps leading to the offices. He was looking for Chilroy.

He found him in Interrogation 9, at work. He was a trim, muscular young man, keen on dieting and working out; brisk, friendly, eager to please, generally considered on his way up. Watson disliked him for his cheerful willingness to impress everyone by overworking, never letting you forget he was overworking; and for his insincere geniality. He knew that some of his dislike was fear of Chilroy’s ambition.

“Colonel Watson!” Chilroy said brightly, making sure his face lit up as he registered recognition of his superior. “This is an honor, sir!”

“Hullo, Chilroy. Bang at it as usual, I see.”

“I’ve cut back, sir. Never more than fourteen hours a day.”

It was a small room, perhaps once used for detaining shoplifters. The walls were institutional green. There was a doctor’s examination table in the middle of the room. On it, strapped down under a dangling light, was a nude, pasty-skinned, Hasidic Jew, bearded, with the curls behind his ears, the classic nose right out of one of the old German propaganda posters. Watson made a face. This was the most demonstratively Jewish of the Jews. The man was shaking his head from side to side, muttering in what sounded like a mixture of French and Hebrew, bloody foam trailing from the corners of his mouth. The leather restraints creaked with his convulsive movements as Chilroy applied a smoking, white-hot electric instrument to the Jew’s twitching skin, talking as he did it like a video metal-shop teacher demonstrating a soldering iron. “Some of them just seem to have the wrong brain chemistry for the extractor, and the damn thing is so expensive to use, we’ve fallen back on old-fashioned techniques.”

“What is it you’re trying to find out here?”

“Ah…” Chilroy looked nonplussed for a moment.

Watson enjoyed that. He’d forgotten why he was torturing the man!

“Oh, ah,” Chilroy said, “we’re trying to ascertain the whereabouts of his Rabbi. The Rabbi’s an activist, a partisan.”

“His Rabbi? Do I have the file on this man?”

“Yes, sir, we sent it to you by wifi. I just hope it gets through with the other material we’ve sent along. The New-Soviets have been scrambling again.”

“Mmm. Not important for the moment. Don’t spend too much time on him. He isn’t worth it.”

Not that Chilroy knew fuck-all about interrogation, anyway. He was too young for the job. He had no subtlety. He was a sociopath, with the requisite inability to feel empathy, and in that department he was ideal. He’d grow into it. Eventually Watson would have to see to it he learned the fine points. The shortcut to a man’s secrets was the destruction of his sense of self-worth. Psychologically undermine him with humiliation, force him to identify with his interrogators. Physical torture did that, of course, for a time. But psychological torture was more effective in the long term. Watson had learned both techniques from CIA interrogators.

But it was hopeless to try to pass it on to Chilroy now, though Watson had the fatherly impulse to try, despite his dislike of the boy. One takes a pleasure in teaching the young the skills of adulthood. Later, later. Just now, something simpler…

Watson said, “You know, Chilroy, the technique you’re using is time-consuming.” Watson looked at the welts and blisters on the Jew’s skin. “And a man can steel himself against it with some success. Much faster to bring in their family, play with the children a bit; these Jews have strong family instincts.” He glanced at his watch. “I wish to see the American.”

“Certainly, sir. This way.”

They went down the hall to a padlocked double door. Chilroy opened the lock, removed the chains, and drew his side-arm. “The man is dangerous. He’s under sedation, and he’s handcuffed to a pipe, but…”

Watson nodded. Inside, they found an emaciated American soldier named Hayes sitting on the floor, cuffed to an iron pipe that ran floor-to-ceiling, staring at the barred window of the old storeroom. His left hand was bandaged; he’d lost several fingers. His eyes were red-rimmed, his hair thatchy. He twitched.

“His name is Hayes, sir.”

“And the Army doesn’t know where he is?”

“Not so far as we know. He’s AWOL.”

Watson said sharply, “Hayes!”

Hayes looked at him. Then at his cuffs, then back at Watson.

Watson could guess what Hayes was thinking.

“I see why you drew your gun,” Watson muttered.

“Yes, sir. He’s a killer. He’s from one of those drug-enhanced units. He’s quieter now that we took him off the amphetamines and hormones the American military had him on. But…”

Hayes murmured something—not to Watson or Chilroy or to himself, but, it seemed, to the shaft of light angling down from the window.

“He talks to a bird, Colonel. An imaginary bird. A parakeet. One of our patrols found him wandering the streets, talking to this imaginary bird, in English. We ID’d him with the DNA tag.”

“I see.”

He might be too far gone to use. But it would take a while for the drugs to really wear off completely. A better diet, a detoxification program, and probably something could be done with him.

Looking at Hayes, Watson felt that, indeed, something could be done. They’d have to rebuild much of his personality, in any case. And, of course, he’d need a new face.

Colonel Watson felt a queasy déjà vu, a sense of destiny unfolding. This man was to be his weapon.

Hayes growled deep in his throat like a whipped cur that had never been broken.

“I think he’ll do nicely,” Watson said.

Karakos walked moodily into the barn, past the men rolling the small, bullet-scarred copter back into place. He climbed the rickety wooden stairs to the radio room, hoping to find Claire.

But it was this man Bonham who was on his mind.

“I talked to Pierce before he died,” Bonham had said that morning in the hold. “I was helping out in the infirmary and… I was the last one to talk to him. You look surprised. You thought he was dead, right? You were in a hurry to get to that radio, seems like, so you were sloppy. He told me: You shot him. There could only be one reason for that.” He lowered his voice. “You’re Second Alliance, my friend.”

“I ought to kill you for that insult.”

“Don’t play the game with me, Karakos. Pierce wasn’t delirious. He was sure. So am I. But it’s okay. You think I like this cornball operation of Steinfeld’s? I don’t care about politics, man. I’m sick of this scene.”

Karakos waited, listening. Wondering if he could kill this man here, make it look like an accident. No one would mourn him much. Bonham was a skinny, flabby, rat-faced man—what he had become had made him more rat-faced, somehow, than he would have to be—and he was easy to dislike.

“I’m sick of being held prisoner,” Bonham said. “I want to go back to the States. I figure you can help me. Get me a pass from the SA, a guarantee of safe passage. In exchange I can give you some information they’d love to have: I know who the top New Resistance people are on the Colony. Only Steinfeld and Witcher and Smoke know that, besides me. You help me and I’ll help you, tit for tat, and I’ll keep my mouth…”

“Shut it now,” Karakos had whispered, looking up at the square entrance to the hold in the metal ceiling. Torrence had appeared up there.

There was still time to decide about Bonham. The man was dangerous, untrustworthy. But the information about the Colony could be very useful indeed.