John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“We each get a copy, Stoner,” Brummel said. “That was the deal,” he added, as Lopez accepted the manila envelope from Stoner.

Stoner said, “They’re both there.” He was looking out the window of the cafetamine shop at the glassy maze of the lower levels of the capitol mall.

It was almost ten at night, and the shops lining the corridors of the vast subterranean mall were mostly closed. Some of the cases were dark, some were lit up but forlornly motionless; they displayed clothing and mindtoys and designer medinject units and ninja gear and sporting goods and vidinserts; the glass of the cases reflected one another, so the goods were layered in reflection, collaged with skewed squares of shine; one case mixed by reflection with another, a jumble of enticements; like a premonition, Stoner thought, of the coming time when the stuff ends in the city dumps, jumbled together again.

He felt empty and hopeless tonight; he felt bought and sold. Passing information to the enemy.

Think of the family.

Lopez slurped at his Styrofoam cup of speed-spiked ersatz coffee as Brummel looked at the little datastick in the envelope. Which was stupid; it wasn’t as if you could tell anything by looking at some loose stick. Stoner shifted in the hard booth, rested his elbows on the synthetic white tabletop, his chin on his meshed fingers. A waxy cruller, made of God knows what, sat untouched on a paper napkin in front of him .

Stoner asked, “When do you get me out of the country?”

“After this stuff is looked at good,” Lopez said.

“Work on your grammar,” Stoner said. “How about we find a booth, I pay for the computer time, you read through it quick right there?”

Brummel looked at him. Perspiration glazed his dark skin. “You got a reason to worry?” He glanced at the corridor, then over his shoulder at the shop. It was empty, except for the Japanese kid behind the counter.

Stoner hesitated.

The three men sat bolt upright in their seats as the room shook with a sudden roar, the windows and tabletops vibrating; the Korean boy had switched on an iPod, blasting the heavy-metal squeal of a neopunk band. The lead singer was jeering:

Stoner winced. “Yeah,” he told Brummel, “I always got reason to worry. I don’t think anyone’s on me tonight. I don’t see how they could have us under voice surveillance here when they didn’t know—and we didn’t know till ten minutes ago—where we’d have our meeting. But you’re stupid if you don’t worry.”

“Come on, please, let’s get out of here,” Lopez said.

They left the shop, walked down the echoing corridor together, past a crowd in front of a cinema octoplex, Stoner asking, “What about the booth?”

“If we can find one with a working drive,” Brummel said, nodding.

A bald man in a saffron robe was ranting at the octoplex lines. “Those of us who know these are the last days of man,” he shouted, “demand that the suffering of innocents cease! Today I make another sacrifice, my flesh for their flesh, one ounce of flesh a week until the war is over!” He held up an arm and used a hunting knife to pare off a chunk of the heel of his hand; blood ran down the blade, twined his wrist; he screamed but completed his cutting; some of the crowd groaned in revulsion; others laughed.

Someone yelled, “You’re not really serious unless you cut off your dick!”

The man in saffron opened his robe, took his penis in hand. An SA cop on a jitney rolled around the corner, pulled up next to him…

Stoner, Brummel, and Lopez turned a corner, hurrying away from the scene. Behind them there was a piteous scream.

They found a number of “Grid-in” booths at an alcove in the next corridor. There were twelve—seven were vandalized, scored with graffiti, their cables hanging out.

One of the booths worked. Stoner tapped its keyboard for “isolated reading” and then entered the stick files. He stepped aside, let Brummel and Lopez go through it, knowing he was taking a chance. They could always take the stuff and ditch him, leaving him twisting in the wind. Or kill him.

“I have something else, of course,” he murmured, “something I’m keeping back till I’m safe and out of the country. Something very useful to the NR.”

“It looks all right,” Brummel said, stepping out of the booth, not concealing his excitement very well. “It—” He broke off, staring past Stoner at the bend in the corridor.

Stoner turned to look. A Second Alliance bull, this one without a helmet, was staring at them. He raised his arm, spoke into his wrist. Then turned away, was gone around the corner.

Just a routine check, Stoner told himself. He said, “When do we go?”

“We’ll be in touch. I’ll contact my sister,” Brummel said.

Stoner held Brummel’s eyes. “Soon.”

“Soon as we can make it.”

“How soon is that, dammit?”

“A few days.”

“ Sooner, ” Stoner barked. He moved off toward the escalator leading to the parking structure.

In the parking lot he started his Guatemalan Rapido and drove out into the weirdly abstract, arrow-marked lanes between cars. Seeing a light in his mirror. Another car starting

Just someone going home from the mall. Everyone goes out the same way, after all.

But when Stoner was out on the street, he turned at the next corner, and the car behind him turned too: A Ford Hydro Shuttle hanging back but tailing him. He took another turn, arbitrarily, watching it.

The stranger turned too.

They weren’t bothering to hide that they were tailing him. Which meant they wanted to scare him—or they were about to come down on him.

He sensed somehow that they were going to take him. Now.

He pulled up at a crowded restaurant and bar, doubleparked, went inside as calmly as he could, going from deserted dark street into brassy lighting, noise, laughter.

“Yes, Sir, are you here for dinner?”

“I’m meeting someone in the bar,” Stoner said.

He tried not to run, managed to keep it down to a trot, as he hurried into the bar, past it to the credfone booths. He slid his card into the fone slot, and the screen lit up. Stoner punched his home number, waited breathlessly, glancing over his shoulder. No one was following him in yet—but they could have put a bird’s eye on him.

His wife’s worried face appeared on the screen. “You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. But… anything going on at home?”

She shook her head.

“Okay. Your sister there?”

She nodded.

“Okay. I want you to make that little trip to see your mom.”

Her eyes widened. “Okay.”

He cut the line. She knew what to do. She’d arranged it with her sister. Her sister would put on her clothes, get in the car, drive out of the garage as fast as she dared, drive off to Falls Church, where her mother lived. They’d think she was going to her mother’s. The sister wasn’t a twin, but she looked enough like her from a distance that it might work. The surveillance crew, with luck, would follow the sister.

His wife and daughter would go out the back, through the neighbor’s yard to a friend’s house, call a cab. They’d meet at a certain motel in Baltimore.

If it worked . If the Company was fooled. There was a chance: God knows CIA Domestic could be fooled.

Stoner went to the men’s room. The window was nailed shut. He took off his coat, balled it around his fist, smashed the window glass, hoping the noise from the bar would cover it. He broke out tile jags from the window frame, climbed on a sink, wormed through the frame onto slimy asphalt, expecting someone outside to grab him as he came out. No one there. A wet, trash-gunked alley.