John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“What are the social and environmental factors that bring this reaction about in people?”

“There’s some evidence that sociobiological factors may be at work. For example, population density. Up to a certain level, high population density promotes a kind of adaptive acceptance of many kinds of people—but there’s a breaking point. After the breaking point of population density is reached, people feel constantly threatened by other people. They tend to group with their own ethnic and cultural types increasingly in an instinctive search for protection. All this is aggravated by poverty, lack of opportunities, depression, a general sense of frustration. People look for someone to blame for all this, and they naturally blame groups of people who’re obviously different, like other ethnic groups. They tend to be perpetually scanning for differences in other people that might represent a threat.

“Another factor is the breakdown of useful family structures, the ephemeral quality of families, a trend that developed at the end of the last century. This combined with pervasively ephemeral cultural trends to produce ‘wandering self-image.’ People became vulnerable to identification with mass-marketed imagery. They began to feel reduced to pixels on a TV screen themselves. In the immensity of society—an immensity shown them every day in the Grid—they felt insignificant. So they turned—and were led—to excessive identification with their own race to give them a handle on identity.”

“You’ve intrigued me by saying that people are ‘vulnerable to mass-marketed imagery,’ that they’re being ‘led.’ What exactly…?”

“There are organizations at work who recognize these trends as useful to them. They use them to build political power, or more accurately, to seize political power. In part two of Wave of Darkness I demonstrate—with plenty of evidence—that the Second Alliance and Rick Crandall’s Second Circle church organization—these days they call it ‘His Church’—are conspiring to promote racism in the United States, in order to facilitate their own political ends, and that they are instrumental in a new Fascist power grab in Western Europe. I have new information that has not been incorporated into the current Wave of Darkness. Proof that this racist organization has the ear of the president of the United States . That they are—to put it bluntly—working very closely with her to scrap the Constitution, and take power here.”

“Take power.” The interviewer looked almost disappointed. As if he’d decided Smoke was just another crank.

Crandall snorted with pleasure. “Go ahead, tell ’im another one.”

“I have brought proof,” Smoke said. “I propose to show that proof here, on this program, for the first time anywhere.” He opened a briefcase, took out a tiny datastick, and handed it to the interviewer, who gave it to a technician.

Crandall sat up straight in his chair. He swiveled to his right, punched a button on his remote-control unit. A face appeared on one of the screens in the stack to Hayes’ right.

“Yes, Reverend?” the face asked. A woman, that’s all Hayes could tell from where he stood.

“Get me Chancelrik at Chicago Worldtalk. Fast!”

Smoke was saying, “…hard to say where the SA’s insinuation into federal government began, although it seems to have been in partnership with the CIA for many years. Last year they exchanged their own new techniques for submarine-silencing to the Department of Defense in exchange for participation in Defense planning committees and other projects…” Then Chancelrik came onto Crandall’s commline.

Hayes heard him say, “What can I do for you, Rick?”

“You monitoring channel fourteen?”

“No. I was…”

“Never mind. Monitor it now. ”

“Gotcha. Okay, I’ve got it. That’s what’s-his-name, Smoke, isn’t it?”

On the screen Smoke was saying, “…were photographed covertly by operatives of the New Resistance.”

The screen showed the president of the United States walking through a snowy field with a fat man Hayes didn’t recognize. “Sackville-West,” Smoke called him.

After the vid ran, the interviewer and Smoke came back on. The interviewer looked shaken. “Of course it has been analyzed for falsification?”

“It has. And it’s available to anyone for that same analysis. It’ll be out on the Internet, every corner of the Grid.”

“Holy fucking shit.” Chancelrik’s voice.

“There’s more,” Smoke said.

“God in heaven,” Chancelrik said.

Another image came on the screen. Swarthy-looking men were opening crates in what was probably the hold of a ship. Harsh lights brought in for the filming. Smoke’s voice-over: “Here we have video provided by the Israeli Mossad of the inspection of cargo of a ship called the Hermes’ Grandson. The Resistance intercepted the ship and turned its contents over to the Mossad. This is a Second Alliance ship—here you see SA prisoners—and it’s packed stem to stern with artillery, illegal devices for interrogation, antiaircraft missiles.” One by one the items were shown as Smoke ticked them off. “And this carton contains nerve gas. We found two tons of nerve gas on the ship. The SA’s legal presence in Europe is as a peacekeeping and police force. It would have no legitimate use for nerve gas, missiles… And if they are confiscations why didn’t they tell anyone they confiscated these things?”

“We can claim the New Resistance stocked the ship, made up some of its own people to look like SA troops,” Chancelrik said.

“Shit,” Crandall said. (Making Ben look at Crandall with surprise.) “If it was by itself, we could make it look like it was bullshit. But along with the video of Bester talking to that incompetent tub of lard and the damn book… well, do what you can. Make this go away—or I swear I’ll make you go away, my friend.”

He cut Chancelrik’s connection and cut into another line. “Johnston?” Head of Second Alliance International Security for the United States.

“Yes, Reverend?”

On the screen, Smoke was talking about CIA files that had come to his attention recently. He was talking about a man named Kupperbind. He was talking about a campaign to purge the ranks of CIA Domestic of blacks and Jews. He was talking about files—he admitted they’d been stolen from the CIA—that discussed the CIA’s part in the initiation of a European apartheid.

Crandall was saying, “Johnston, Jack Brendan Smoke. Tagged. Quietly as possible—but kill him! Try to make it look like he was killed by… radicals. A power grab or something. And tell Sackville-West I want him here by tonight. Here, in person!” His voice breaking, almost weepy with anger.

Tagged. Make it look like an accident or like someone else did it.

“Smoke entered the country under heavy guard two days ago, recorded some interviews yesterday, and left this morning, Reverend. By private jet. The jet was bound for Mexico City. We followed by satellite recon to Mexico City, but after that… Witcher’s people are in control of the airport there. Smoke changes planes in Mexico City and we lose track of him. Mexican immigration so far has either been recalcitrant or too inefficient to…”

“No excuses! Find him. Make him dead —but make it look good.”

“Recon post Seven is about sixty-five miles southeast of Iraklion,” Steinfeld was saying, tapping the coast of Crete on the map. “The post is the SA’s key Mediterranean reconnaissance center. It coordinates satellite surveillance, it monitors transmissions of all kinds, collates information from their various outposts in Europe. SA troops there number—if the Mossad is right—less than a hundred. Artillery and missile defense is minimal. So it’s underdefended, it’s vulnerable. The Greek government—or the SA occupation government, to be more accurate—has about three hundred men stationed within an hour of Post Seven. But by the time they’re mobilized to give Seven assistance, we’ll be well away.”