John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

And SA headquarters, speaking to Karakos aboard the Hermes’ Grandson, had said, in essence: “Take your time, observe, learn what you can about this upcoming assault of theirs; learn about the NR’s infrastructure, especially about their undercover operations in Europe, the States, anywhere. Gather more information about the Maltese base. We will destroy it when the time is right—you’ll have plenty of warning.”

And perhaps now Claire could be induced to give him something about the assault Steinfeld was planning.

She was there, in the radio room. With Lila.

The two women looked up from the decoder as Karakos came in. Lila put the decoder on hold and blanked the screen. Does she suspect me?

“Hello,” Karakos said. He looked at Claire. There were rings under her eyes, and she was pale. She hadn’t slept yet, either.

“Hi,” she said, and pretended to look over something in a notebook.

There was a moment of silence; the only voice heard was the wind’s, singing mournfully in the eaves.

Then Karakos asked, “Can I speak to you, Claire?”

She hesitated, then shook her head. “No, I—I’ve got some new stuff in. I’ve got to get it ready for Steinfeld.”

Just an excuse. She didn’t want to talk to him alone. So that was the way of it. She was having an attack of guilt over sleeping with him. Or perhaps this Lila, who was looking holes through him, had turned her against him.

He could wait. Claire was useful to him; she misdirected the others so that they couldn’t take this Torrence seriously.

He would have her again in time. She was the hard type who wanted very much to let go and be soft, and that sort of woman was easy for him. She put herself in his hands like a gun, and it was a gun he would use.

A windy morning on Malta. The three men stood on a tarmac dock in a Maltese shipyard: Steinfeld, Torrence and Danco. The cliffs of metal hulls rose on both sides; loading cranes, like the skeletons of abstract dinosaurs, reared over them.

They stood in the center of the dock, in a narrow patch of sunshine between shadows from the ships. They were warm from the sun and cold from the wind, by turns.

On Torrence’s right the Hermes’ Grandson was half-concealed by derricks and tarps and other dry-dock devices Steinfeld had used to camouflage the craft from spy satellites.

A number of still-mysterious crates and the prisoners had been removed from the ship, taken to storage and incarceration.

Torrence was exhausted. He hadn’t slept in—how long? Thirty-six hours? Forty-eight? He wasn’t sure. The sunshine hurt his eyes, but it felt good on his neck. He looked down the dock, hoping Claire would show up and ask for him. Maybe she was already with Karakos.

“You look like you need some rest, Dan,” Steinfeld told him.

“What was Karakos’s assignment during the assault?” Torrence asked, massaging the bridge of his nose.

“Radio room,” Steinfeld said wearily. “Why?”

“Did he ask for it?”

“Yes, he said he thought he knew where it was.”

“Did he go alone?”

“No, of course not.” But Steinfeld looked uncomfortable.

“Who was it?”

After a moment’s hesitation Steinfeld said, “Pierce and Griem.”

Torrence said, “And both men were killed.”

“Killed by the SA.”

“How do you know?”

Danco snorted. “Torrence, Karakos is a freedom fighter, the real thing, a man fighting from patriotism—something you would not understand.”

Torrence glared at Danco. Danco only grinned back him.

He wanted to hit Danco right in his grinning mouth. But Torrence held back. He had become increasingly alienated from the other NR lately—alienated both ways. Don’t make it worse.

Torrence turned to Steinfeld. “This morning I was working on the deck, near the hatch where Karakos was. He was down in the hold…”

“I wondered why you insisted on working there. So you could keep an eye on him, eh?” Steinfeld shook his head in exasperation, his beard whipping in the wind.

“Anyway, this time I heard him talking to Bonham.”

“What was Bonham doing there?” Danco broke in with maddening irrelevance.

“Steinfeld sent him over to help unload,” Torrence said impatiently. “I couldn’t hear most of what they said. But Bonham was offering some kind of deal to Karakos. And Karakos said he’d consider it. What I want to know is, what has Bonham got that Karakos would be interested in? What has Karakos got that Bonham could use?”

Steinfeld took a deep breath, expelled it in a long, sighing expression of irritation. “And you said yourself you couldn’t hear them clearly. You could’ve heard what you wanted to hear.”

“Steinfeld, Karakos is your old friend. You don’t want to believe something’s not right with him.”

Steinfeld said, “Torrence, your judgment on the matter is even less objective than mine.”

Torrence remembered that candlelit room, Karakos holding Claire naked in his arms.

Torrence said, “Maybe. But maybe not, too.”

He turned and walked away from them. Wondering tiredly: Are they right? Am I seeing things out of jealousy?

He made up his mind to forget his suspicions. If he could.

Russ Parker was staring at the blank videoscreens, wanting to call the security checkpoints but afraid to use the fone. Afraid of what he’d see on its screen.

They got it out, he told himself. They said it was some kind of sabotage program one of the radics had worked into the system somehow. Despite all the safeguards. The door that had tried to crush him, the breakdowns… yesterday the lights going off and coming on and going off… fire sprinkler systems shooting off at random around the Colony… laughter coming from the intercoms but traceable to nothing. The images of old Rimpler, cackling dementedly.

All part of the hypothetical sabotage program.

And they promised to reprogram the system by one. It was two in the afternoon. It should be done. So go ahead. Turn on the screens…

He took a deep breath, reached out, flipped the switch. The screens lit up. “Type in access number,” said the luminous green words. Parker let out a long, relieved breath and tapped the number for Security Checkpoint One.

A thing with gills appeared on the screen.

It was a sort of head, made of shiny black stuff, like glossy rubber; there were gills or vents on its jowls, corrugated tubes running from its nose and curving into its cheeks; pus running from the bright red, piggish eyes; bald head studded with black knobs. Mouth made of flaps within flaps, each one leaking a separate bright color of viscous fluid.

It was hideous, alien. But it was, viewed as a whole ensemble, weirdly recognizable. Just squint a little and the parts resolved into a distortion of… Professor Rimpler.

The screen’s speaker gave out a sound that was pure mockery, a squawking like the noise made by one of those novelty-shop laughing boxes. Manic, mechanical laughter.

Revolted, Russ switched off the screen. The image faded.

Then, impossibly, the screen switched itself back on.

The rubber face, the squawking.

He reached behind and jerked out the power cord. The screen blanked. He sat back in his chair, trying not to hyperventilate. He stood up and went to the door. He didn’t want to be alone in there.

He went to get the repairmen, and then to the commissary.

While Russ was out, Kitty Torrence came to his office.

“He’s not in,” the secretary told her.

“I’ll wait.”

“I’m sorry, but you’ll need an appointment, and he’s just not seeing anyone right now.”