John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“This is insane.”

“The SA has arrested Tellini.” Torrence’ voice. “We told you he was NR to see if he would be arrested. He was. They didn’t try to salvage him with extractors. I guess they bought the bullshit about our extractor techniques being too subtle to detect. They took him away and shot him, in front of his men. He was loyal SA. He was never really our mole. That means you told them our story about him.”

“I see,” Karakos said. “Disinformation.” His own voice sounded very far away to him. “And you acted your part very believably, Torrence.” There was a strange kind of relief in him, and it came as a surprise. He closed his eyes against the light, but opened them when Steinfeld said:

“I must insist you keep your eyes open, Jean. So you used the radio to tell them about Tellini and our people in Bari saw them take Tellini the Cutthroat away. And that is some good to come from this, anyway. And you’ve told them we’re going to Italy—so they’ll be here sooner. How soon?”

“It doesn’t matter if you know—you’ll leave in time, I’m sure, anyway. They are coming in two hours from now. Just before dawn. Now please. My eyes hurt.”

Steinfeld lowered his light, so the others lowered theirs too.

“Put the bag down, Jean.”

Karakos thought of running. Useless. He dropped the bag. “I won’t make any more transmissions for you. They have made me so I will not knowingly do anything against them.”

“Yes. The extractor.” Steinfeld was silent for a few moments. They could hear the sawing of cicadas, the muted rumble of the sea. “I had hoped to take you back to the States, perhaps restore you to yourself with our own extractors. But we could never be sure of you—we couldn’t know for sure we’d taken out everything they put in. So…”

“I understand.” Karakos felt airy, distant from things. No fear at all.

Steinfeld came toward him and took his arm, and they walked off into the night together.

“Where will you go?” Karakos asked.

Steinfeld told him, because in a few moments it wouldn’t matter what Karakos knew. “Now, we go on the assault. Sicily. While most of their forces are here, attacking our empty base. Afterwards, Haifa. Israel. The Mossad have set a base for us up there.” Steinfeld sounded as if he might cry. But his grip on Karakos’s arm was like a beartrap. “You know, I hate these extractors, Jean. Look what they force us to do. And what do they leave us—what are we to believe in? We can’t even believe in our enemies. There is no trust at all now. And can I even trust myself? Who knows, maybe someone put me under an extractor once and told me I believe what I believe. If beliefs are so malleable, then we are nothing but computers in flesh, and that is a very ugly thought, Jean.”

“I think… I think there is something more. Even when I do the SA’s work—and I admit I could never have done anything else, once they changed me—but even then, there was a… a kind of shadow of something. Maybe cast by my soul. A taste of regret, of longing for… I don’t know.”

“It is a great relief to hear you say that, my friend.” Steinfeld stopped walking. They stood together in the middle of a field, and Karakos looked up at the stars. He heard Steinfeld cocking his pistol. Steinfeld said, “Thank you for restoring my faith in the soul, Jean. Thank you, and I’m sorry…”

Then came the father of all thunders, and the starry night up above them poured icy cold down into the hole Steinfeld’s gun made in his friend’s head, and filled his mind with forever.

Torrence found Claire sitting in the kitchen, sipping from a little porcelain bowl of tea she held in both hands. She was wearing her fatigues and boots, her rifle leaning up on the table beside her, ready to go. They were short-handed; no one would be staying behind this time. She didn’t look at him when he came in. He stood awkwardly in the doorway. He looked at the night-blanked windows, and then at the bulb over the wooden table, and then back at Claire. She still wasn’t acknowledging him.

“Claire… I’m sorry about Lila.”

She sat the bowl down hard enough to make it slosh onto the table. “Is Karakos dead too? Was that the shot I heard?”

“Yes. Ask Steinfeld. He was…”

“I know!” She glared at him. “And you told me so.”

“Look, that’s not what I’m…”

“Bullshit. You’re glad she’s dead. And he’s dead.”

“You really rate yourself highly. Glad Lila’s dead? She was one of the best. We’d be better off losing you.”

The words had come out of him on a wave of anger, and he regretted them.

She went red. But her shoulders slumped and her face crumpled. He went to stand beside her and she turned and she was in his arms like a stone falling into a well.

“I’m sorry, Dan. She was hard to lose.”

The shouting of the NR and the droning of helicopters brought Bonham awake. He sat up in fear—sounds at night did that to you when you lived with these bastards.

He went to the window; there was an iron grating over it. Bonham had been arrested earlier that night, and brought here and given a sedative. They had insisted he take it. And they locked him away. He was still muzzy from the sedative but it had nearly worn off and all that noise… and now he saw what made it. A number of big helicopters and two cargo trucks. They were just slamming the doors on the trucks, which went grindingly away almost immediately. The NR were getting into the copters… and Claire was with them.

Bonham pulled on his clothes, then went to the door and tried to open it. Still locked. There was a piece of paper on the floor, a corner of it still under the door. He picked it up, turned on the light and read the message penned in big block letters on the ruled paper. It was from Claire.

We are leaving you here. The SA is coming. Try to break out and you might survive. Some of us wanted to execute you, so this isn’t so bad. The people you betrayed on the colony are free now, and you were never one of us, and you don’t know anything else that could hurt us so Steinfeld said you could live. Good luck.

“Good luck,” he muttered. “Thanks, bitch.”

He looked around the room. The bedframe was all there was to use. He pulled the mattress and boxframe off, disassembled the metal frame, and took one side of it in his hands. He began to batter at the door.

The Israelis were committed. “Everything short of declaring war,” they told Steinfeld. “And yes—your request for back-up in a preemptive strike has been granted. We can give you eight Z-90 fighter-bombers and two escort air-to-air fighters.”

The Mossad’s surveillance satellite had given them the details of the SA’s European HQ. It was shaped like a skewed four-leaf clover. (“Or an iron cross,” someone said), with four broad approaches, between the ancillary buildings, to the main operations building. It was eight miles east of Palermo on the Tyrrhenian Sea; was protected with radar, and with satellite surveillance, and with missile emplacements; with cannon and a no-man’s-land of mines and concertina wire.

The SA’s aviation unit sent its squadron out at four a.m. The Israeli radio listening posts picked up the departure codes identifying the copters accompanying the jets. And the radiomen of the six NR transport copters accompanying the Mossad’s complement of fighter planes knew those codes. The six transport copters had been repainted to resemble SA copters. As they approached the base, the SA radar techs demanded they identify themselves. The transports gave the SA code.

“You’re back early,” one of the SA radiomen said.

“Yeah, we’re ahead of schedule.”