John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

But the tide of sheer yearning rose up in her and pushed mightily at the glass pane, which turned out to be ice because it didn’t break but melted in warm, salty sensation. As Lila slithered onto her, pressed succulently large lips over hers, ground her pubis onto Claire’s—not too hard, the way a man will when he’s clumsily trying to turn a woman on, but with firm tenderness and a suggestion of suction so that labia sucked on labia. They rocked together, and Claire basked in the ecstatic surprise of heightened sensory input as she drank Lila’s skin with her own, letting her hands skate the impossibly perfect engineering of the feminine curvaceousness of Lila’s back, the supple fullness of Lila’s ass. With her eyes shut, she seemed to see what she felt, a synesthesia of tactile sensations translated into the visual, Lila’s elegant arcs abstracted into swirls of ruby mist and exquisite ellipses of mouse-fur gray. Their tongues, entwined, were translucent, comma-shaped bubbles that became one another and then writhed happily apart and came together again with impudent stickiness…

A fulsome ache came into her stomach. Lowering itself into her groin.

As if sensing the ache’s arrival, Lila moved off her—a sense of fleeting tragedy; wash of sweet, cool air—and knelt beside her, exploring with her fingers, chasing hot fish of sensation up from their dark caves. And then dipping to meet them with her mouth.

Oh, Claire thought, no. I couldn’t do that.

Lila didn’t insist. But after a while Claire found herself turning onto her side, pressing her head between Lila’s smooth thighs, probing for the wet, warm place between the petal-shapes of wool. And after a time, a gong shivered, shivered, shivered…

It seemed like years later but it had been only an hour when the door opened and someone stood there, backlit in the yellow hall light.

Lila and Claire had rested. They had just begun again. Somewhere, sometime, they’d had another pipeful. And they’d begun kissing again, exploring each other’s breasts with the satisfying slowness of the utterly relaxed.

And then someone had opened the door. Claire looked over. It was Dan. Hard-Eyes. Torrence. Staring.

Staring like he couldn’t believe it had happened to him twice. And maybe because he couldn’t believe it was Lila this time.

“How many times,” Claire murmured vaguely, “is he going to walk in on me with people? This is ridiculous. Doesn’t anyone knock in this place?” She sank back on the bed, giggling.

After a moment Torrence closed the door and they heard his footsteps recede.

“Poor Torrence,” Claire said. Suddenly feeling cosmically sad for him.

Lila comforted her.

“The files Stoner turned over are essentially the stuff of allegations,” Witcher said. “It’s useful though. It’ll help. Of course, the CIA can claim we fabricated the files. But this” —he tapped the screen—“this they can’t deny.”

“They can claim it was computer-generated,” Smoke said. “But we can provide video for independent analysts. They’ll analyze it and see it wasn’t computer-fabricated, prove it’s authentic. Along with the general impact of Kessler’s propaganda spotters and the stuff Stoner gave us, it should wake up the media.”

“Like a beehive in their beds,” Witcher agreed. “That is—the media the SA doesn’t control…”

Smoke and Witcher were in the briefing room, standing together at the blackboard-size instruction screen. It was a cool night on Merino, almost eleven p.m., but the island was quite awake. They could hear the clank of rifles on buckles as sentries walked by to relieve the guards at the rear fence. Mosquitoes whined in bloodthirsty frustration at the window screen. From the distance came the dulled thud and blurred chant of music as someone got in their R and R.

Smoke wondered what it was like to relax at a party and, well, to dance. To laugh and slap friends on the back and dance and feel at one with a party without trying. He’d never been able to do that sort of thing, and he envied it. He thought about Alouette, sleeping now, and he missed her.

His mind swerved hastily back to priorities. He turned to look again at the screen; the crow, on his shoulder, made a raspy caw and fluttered his wings at the motion. Smoke and the crow gazed thoughtfully at the stilled image on the big, inch-thin videomonitor.

It was an image of the president of the United States. President Anna Bester, America’s own Maggie Thatcher, out in a snowy field, in tan overcoat, brown pantsuit, and high gold rubber boots, walking with a fat man in a tentlike white mackintosh; she was talking earnestly to him. The president had none of her usual charismatic composure, was missing her look of it’s-all-under-control-and-I’m-sanguine-about-the-future-despite-the-gravity-of-the-situation. She was scowling. The scowl showing the lines of her late middle age in spite of her face-lift.

The fat man was Sackville-West, Head of Security for the Second Alliance International Security Corporation. The SA’s Head Inquisitor, Witcher called him.

Witcher hit the button, and the vid began to play again; as if responding to a choreographer, the president and Sackville-West began to move, walking in matched stride. The image was a little unstable; it drew back for a wider angle that took in two Secret Service men, expressionless and wearing shades as they had for generations—old-fashioned dark glasses had become their totem of office, like the archaic costume of a British Beefeater.

“It’s amazing they didn’t spot the bird’s eye,” Smoke said. The crow made a creaking sound in its throat, as if in agreement.

Witcher spread his hands and put on a comical expression of false modesty. “My outfit makes the best surveillance equipment on the planet. And on the Colony. Anyway, the sky was with us, the cloudy backdrop, the diminished light, not much reflection. The surveillance bird is treated with something we call chameleon spackle, blends in with the backdrop. Also, the snowfield dazzled them some. And we were simply lucky. For example, the two Secret Servicemen were watching the woods almost exclusively. They were thinking assassins, because she was so out in the open, not surveillance. They really have become embarrassingly incompetent lately. It’s a national scandal.”

Witcher rewound the video a little and turned up the volume. They heard bits and pieces of the conversation, perhaps forty percent of it.

“Shame about the sound,” Witcher said. “They spoke softly. There was noise from the wind and boots in the snow.”

“There’s enough,” Smoke said.

As they heard Sackville-West say, “Madame, the Fourth Estate, to put it bluntly, is the enemy of this enterprise. The media must be kept under strict rein. We…” Garble. “If the Emergency Powers are…” Garble. “…intolerable situation unless we take strict…” Garble. “…bottom line is this, Madame: To paraphrase Pastor Crandall, ‘In order to take control, one must first take control!’”

The president’s scowl vanished; she actually laughed out loud.

Then she became grave once more. “Possibly I will be granted some power of control over the media, by Congress—there is precedent, after all, in World War Two the media was more controlled than people know—and in the Iraq War media access was strictly controlled. And we are at war. If I’m granted the powers to control the media, I’ll use them, and once I have them, I see no reason to have to relinquish them. But in order to establish police control, we’ll need coordination with your…” Garble. “…not sure of the timetable. In the meantime we’ll eliminate…” Garble.