John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Praeger, damn him, had had a water shower installed. The technickis had heard about it, every last one of them, an hour later.

Praeger. president of UNIC’s on-Colony board. The sick feeling in Rimpler’s gut returned when he thought of Praeger.

He stepped out of the shower, and it sank back into the tiled wall. He went to the mirror, punched 8 on the numbered row of buttons beneath the glass; the mirror reversed itself, showing him its shelved backside. He found the anesthetic spray and coated the welts on his back with it. Again with some regret. Then he dressed in Japanese house pajamas, airy blue silk, and found Claire in the living room. His stomach tightened as she said, “Hi, Dad,” with a friendly enough smile, nothing censorious in her eyes.

“How you doing, babe?” he said, bending to kiss her on the forehead. He hadn’t seen her for almost two weeks.

“Dad—I’m okay, but—”

He sat down across from her, thinking, She seems coiled up.

She wore a light, soft gray suit with a triple-flap skirt; her lips were pursed, her cheeks hollowed.

“You’re going to give me more details about the wonderful viddy interview you did—” He laughed breezily. “Forget it! It was a put-up job and by now everyone’s realized it.”

“Dad…”

And then he saw the tension in her posture and the knuckles white on her knees. He thought, Shit, it’s Praeger again.

“Dad, when you asked for a four-day in-house vacation—”

“You think it was bad timing? Right after your screw-up with the little technicki kid? I told you—”

“Dad!… No. But—I only just found out that you had a no-calls up. I mean, no one could figure out why you weren’t making a statement…”

“Well—sure. How could I have a vacation, a retreat, if everyone’s calling me with the Colony’s problems? There’s a dozen people happy to—”

“Dad…”

This time her voice actually broke. He stared. He hadn’t seen her show her humanity like that in years; not since Terry died.

“For God’s sake, Claire, out with it.”

“Dad, when you sealed the place off, you left it open for LSSE. Right?” There was accusation wrapped in the sarcastic twist she gave to “Right?”

He laughed nervously. “Well, of course!”

LSSE: Life-Support Emergency. There hadn’t been an LSSE. Impossible.

“Dad—there was an LSSE. I mean—this is the sort of thing that keeps happening with you.” She was in her bitchily maternal mode now. “Things are flying to hell around you and—Dad, there was a Bright Red. Full alert. And Praeger gave orders that you were not to be told. I mean, I don’t know that for sure but… he must have.”

He felt himself sinking. “What was it?” His voice a crust.

“Dad—”

“Will you stop saying that and just tell me !” His fear of her vanished. He was standing now, arms straight at his sides.

“The Russians have blockaded us. We’re in the war. The last supply ship was boarded. Captured! There hasn’t been another. No ships outgoing. They’re even jamming communications. We get through now and then—”

“Why didn’t you come to me before? I mean—how long has it been?”

“Three days. Dad, I couldn’t get through to see you till today. And you had your screen down. The riots—we couldn’t get through because of the riots.”

“Riots.”

“A man named Bonham has been asking for a general strike. There are four of these organizers really pushing it—a man named Joseph Bonham, a man named Samson Molt—”

“Oh, don’t tell me their names, tell Security, I’m not the local thought police. Shit.” He found he was staring at his decanters on the table. Wanting a drink and not having the courage even to reach across the table. Afraid the Colony was so fragile it would shiver apart if he moved. His shell, his armor. His insulation from Earth.

“These people are saying that now we’re cut off from Earth the techni-class has got to demand rights or they’ll be completely powerless when it comes to martial law.”

“There’s something to that.” He laughed bitterly. Now his hands moved of their own violation—squirting gin into a glass. He swallowed it and shuddered. “Praeger’ll want—martial law, want to completely subjugate the technickis because of the state of emergency.””

“You agree with these people?” More reproach than surprise.

He shrugged, took another drink. Laughed. “Riots!” Shaking his head in wonder. “I designed this thing…” He gestured vaguely at the walls, meaning the Colony itself. “And still it’s three days before I know we’re blockaded. And having riots.”

“Dad—Praeger didn’t want you to know.”

They looked at one another, and the implication hung in the air between them. She gave it verbal shape. “I think there’s going to be a coup. I think UNIC wants to take the colony over completely.”

FirStep floated in the sea of space, a city afloat in the void.

And Freezone floated in the Atlantic Ocean, a city afloat in the wash of international cultural confluence.

Freezone was anchored about a hundred miles north of Sidi Ifni, a drowsy city on the coast of Morocco in a warm, gentle current, and in a sector of the sea only rarely troubled by large storms. What storms arose here spent their fury on the maze of concrete wave-baffles Freezone Admin had spent years building up around the artificial island.

Originally, Freezone had been just another offshore drilling project. The massive oil deposit a quarter-mile below the artificial island was still less than a quarter tapped out. The drilling platform was owned in common by the Moroccan government and a Texas-based petroleum and electronics products company. TexMo. The company that bought Disneyland and Disneyworld and Disneyworld II—all three of which had closed in the wake of the CSD: the Computer Storage Depression. Also called the Dissolve Depression.

A group of Arab terrorists—at least, the US State Department claimed that’s who did it—had arranged a well-placed electromagnetic pulse from a hydrogen bomb hidden aboard a routine orbital shuttle. The shuttle was vaporized in the blast, as well as two satellites, one of them manned; but when the CSD hit, no one took time to mourn the dead.

The orbital bomb had almost triggered Armageddon: three Cruise missiles had to be aborted, and fortunately two more were shot down by the Russians before the terrorist cell took credit for the upper atmospheric blast. Most of the bomb’s blast had been directed upward; what came downward, though, was the side effect of its blast: the EMP. An electromagnetic pulse that—just as had been predicted since the 1970s—traveled through thousands of miles of wires and circuitry on the continent below the H-blast. The Defense Department was shielded; the banking system, for the most part, was not. The pulse wiped out ninety-three percent of the newly formed American Banking Credit Adjustment Bureau. ABCAB had handled seventy-six percent of the nation’s buying and credit transferal. Most of what was bought, was bought through ABCAB or ABCAB related companies… until the EMP wiped out ABCAB’s memory storage, the pulse overburdening the circuits, melting them, and literally frying the data storage chips. And thereby kicking the crutches out from under the American economy. Millions of bank accounts were “suspended” until records could be restored—causing a run on remaining banks. The insurance companies and the Federal guarantee programs were overwhelmed. They just couldn’t cover the loss.

The States had already been in trouble. The nation had lost its economic initiative in the early twenty-first century: its undereducated, badly trained workers, the outsourcing of jobs and manufacturing made US industry unable to compete with the Chinese and South American manufacturing booms. The EMP credit dissolve kicked the nation over the rim of recession and into the pit of depression—and made the rest of the world laugh. The Arab terrorist cell responsible—hard-core Islamic Fundamentalists—had been composed of seven men. Seven men who crippled a nation.