John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“There it is,” Stedder muttered, withdrawing the drill. He took a flat tool from his case, began to pry on the edge of the metal panel in the door.

“If we get in,” Russ said, “you’re going to have to help me remove something and put something else in. You might be a little… well, you might not like what you see. When you see it, don’t ask me why it’s there. It was a stupid idea. It’s incredible to me that Admin put it into effect.”

Stedder snorted, and, frowning with concentration as he worked on the creaking panel, surprised Russ by saying, “Ja, but you know worldly people have stupid ideas and carry them out all the time. There are very educated people who think that a real nuclear war is something a person can win… That the atmosphere, the ecology, that these things would absorb any amount of poison and everything would be fine.”

With a sulky rasp, the panel came free and fell on the metal floor with a rattling clank. He glanced up at Russ and again surprised him by grinning. “You have a look on your face that says you did not think I would speak that way, like a man who thinks, eh? You’re very much one of the Admin to think that, Russ Parker.” He took another tool from his case, looked into the panel, murmuring, “So we’re going to find one of those kind of stupidities in here? The intelligent person’s stupidities. That’s what I came to the Colony to get away from.” He bent to look deeper into the panel, put a hand on the door to steady himself. “Things like…”

He screamed and went rigid, his neck cording, lips drawing back to show his teeth in a skull’s grimace, his whole body shaking. The smell of burning flesh, a wisp of smoke.

Russ kicked at Stedder’s hand, hard, with his rubbersoled boot. It clung, smoking, to the wall, seemed as immovable as the root of an old tree. But he kicked it again, as hard as he could, and Stedder’s hand came free of the panel.

Stedder stopped shaking. But he toppled onto on his back, face contorted, eyes staring. And the death’s-head grin was permanent.

Russ tried artificial respiration, tried to pound Stedder’s heart into re-starting. But it was like trying to revive a mannequin.

He stood up, shaking, and looked at the door to the computer housing. It was sealed with some nonconductive synthetic. The floor wasn’t electrified. But the door was wired for electricity. There shouldn’t have been enough voltage to kill a man. But Rimpler had seen to it that there was.

Russ bent, looked into the open panel. A cryptic tangle of wires. Some of them metal-cased. They could be electrified. Russ didn’t know anything about electronics. No way he could open the door on his own.

He looked up at the camera near the ceiling. Saw its lens, irising as it focused on his face. Maybe there was enough Rimpler left to reason with. “You… you built this colony, Rimpler. It is a legacy to you, man. Little by little you’re destroying it. Stop it. Give it up. Let me in. Let me help you .”

This is crazy, Russ thought. It’s not as if Rimpler could reply.

But Rimpler did reply, in a way. With a hissing sound from up near the ceiling. The sound of air being sucked out of the air lock.

Russ stared at the ceiling gate, dumbfounded.

Rimpler was draining the air out of the room.

“Stop it!” he shouted. “This is… you’re…” Hopeless to try to talk to him. To it.

He turned to the door behind him. Tugged on the wheel.

“Oh, no.” Unbudgeable.

Already he felt pain in his ears, an ache in his lungs, headache as air pressure dropped. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs, and held it, afraid his lungs would collapse. He heard a pounding in his temples, felt the tautness in his chest become a strangling sensation as he turned, snatched up a wrench from the tool case, used it to bang on the door, frantically. Waste of energy.

Explosives. Had Stedder brought explosives? No, dammit, the council had vetoed that idea: blowing the door could damage the Life Support equipment behind it, send the whole Colony haywire.

The damn entry door was thick; the guards on the other side might not hear him. Hell, they might be gone.

Because maybe… maybe it wasn’t Rimpler who was pumping the air out. Maybe it was Praeger. Using this chance to get rid of him, lay the blame on Rimpler.

In which case he was a dead man.

Bang on the door. Can’t hear the sound of my own banging anymore. But keep banging.

My breath. Got to take a breath. Don’t. You’ll lose pressure in your lungs, they’ll collapse. Hold it.

The hissing had almost stopped. In its place was a high-pitched hum. Some effect of losing air pressure on his ears. God, the pain in his eardrums was unbearable. Something was going to burst.

Metal squealing and a cloud of darkness closing around him.

Rush of cool air on his face. Feeling cold. Then hot, a hot flash. A series of hot flashes rippling through him. He opened his eyes.

“Chief Parker?” the man in the helmet asked him. Directly overhead, looking down.

Russ took another deep breath. “I’m okay. You guys heard me bangin’, huh? Jesus Christ, you took your time.”

They were in Praeger’s office. Russ, Praeger, and Van Kips. The two of them on the other side of the desk from Russ. A desk built for two, it seemed. The room well lit this time…

“We have no choice,” Russ was saying.

Praeger said, “A team of technicians, working at it for a while. Insulated equipment, pressure suits…”

“Not enough. I’ve been looking at the security setup for the LSS. There’s more he can do. But what worries me is what else he’d do to the rest of the Colony.”

Russ remembered her touching Praeger, arousing him while the RM17 exploded on the screen, and a surge of nausea swept him.

He shook himself and took a printout from his pocket, passed it across the desk to Praeger. “It happened about the time Stedder was drilling through the door. A pipe exploded over the day-care center. Two kids nearly drowned in sludge. He meant that as a warning to us. He won’t let us tinker with him. He won’t give us time to break in the way you want to. He’s got the capability of killing us a section at a time or the whole Colony almost at once. I think he’s probably self-destructive.”

“Dr. Tate disagrees with you,” Van Kips pointed out, her voice silkily contemptuous. “He’s the psychiatrist, not you.”

“That thing—or Rimpler, if you want to call it that, he… it… it’s too unpredictable to take chances like that. We have to cut the power down to local battery units. Emergency minimum. He can’t operate on that. Life Support will hold out long enough for us to break in, and he won’t be able to stop us.”

“And the radics will use the blackout as an opportunity to run rampant.” Praeger put the tips of his fingers together. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Russ stared at him. “What?”

“We have a report of a rumor you’re collaborating with the radics.”

“That’s bullshit.” Russ’s hands were suddenly clammy with cold sweat. “There’s always a hundred stupid rumors.”

“What you’ve proposed suggests to me that this particular rumor isn’t ‘bullshit.’” He pronounced the word in mocking imitation of Russ’s southwestern accent.

Van Kips was smiling, looking at the door.

Fucking hell, Russ thought.

“I’m under arrest?” he said.

The door hushed open behind him. He felt the guards standing there.

“What are you going to do about Rimpler?” Russ asked.

“Work with a team. Protect them.”

“There is no protecting them, because they’re part of the Colony, and the Colony’s at Rimpler’s mercy.”