John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

He turned away with an anguished internal wrenching. Stumbled through the wash of sounds and lights and monochrome people to the dressing room; to guitar and earphones and the safer sonic world.

“You gave him to me,” Steinfeld said, leaning close to Purchase so he could be heard over the noise of the bar. “And I give him back. And I think we’ll both keep him.”

Purchase smiled and nodded. “Stisky’s a find. A piece of luck.”

Purchase was a big, sloppy-bodied man, his hair thin and his face wide. You could hear him breathe, even when he was at rest. But he laughed easily, and he didn’t miss much. The two men liked one another, though they were NR for different reasons. Steinfeld had shaped the NR in the image of his own idealism. It was an extension of his convictions—some would say, his almost perverse obsession. Purchase worked for Witcher, Steinfeld’s chief source of funding. But no, Steinfeld reflected, as they slid into a booth in the Freezone cocktail bar, Purchase worked for himself. That should have made him suspect. Only, it didn’t. Steinfeld trusted him more than he trusted some of the NR’s political zealots.

“Any problem with the blockades?” Purchase asked, toying with his gold choker.

Steinfeld’s brow furrowed. “Yes and no. I got through—but it was close this time. No one actually fired on us. But they would have if they’d picked up on us sooner. Sometimes I feel like asking Witcher’s pilots not to tell me if we’re tracked. I’d rather not know if I’m about to be shot out of the air…”

“You bring anyone else through?”

“A few people. We can’t get more than a handful out at any one time… and it’s a risk with just the handful. I won’t be taking many more of these trips…” He grimaced and changed the subject. “That’s a silk suit, isn’t it? It’s a little hard to tell in these lights, but I think it’s blue ?”

“It is. Dark blue silk.” Purchase signaled for a drink. When the puffy-eyed waitress arrived, yawning, rubbing her temples, he said, “I want something big and glittery in an enormous glass. You choose. Something sweet. Sweet as whoever it was kept you up so late last night.”

She almost smiled. “Something with a plastic mermaid? A little paper umbrella?”

“Both the umbrella and the mermaid are absolute necessities.”

“I’ll have a scotch, please,” Steinfeld said. “On the rocks.” They watched her walk away. She was wearing a gown that picked up wifi signals at random as the signals passed through the room and reproduced Web imagery down the svelte length of her. Collaged faces, mostly fashion models and breakfast-cereal-kids, rippled across her ass and the back of her thighs.

The bar was at the edge of a disco. Minimono droned and thudded on the dance floor. Lights whirled like UFOs landing in an old movie Steinfeld had seen as a boy.

They had to lean over the transparent plastic table to talk, but they’d picked the booth to discourage bugging.

The lights tinted Purchase’s face, changing his color as if some expressionist painter were experimenting with his portrait. He was pinkish red dappled with blue when he asked, “How’d Stisky take to training?”

“A fish to water. The more rigorous the better. Well, he was a priest, once, after all… Does he have a name yet?”

“John Swenson. The cover had a good foundation: there was a John Swenson born the same year as Stisky. Died five years later. Looked a lot like Stisky did as a kid. His death went unregistered in his hometown—died in a boating accident with his parents on vacation, they all drowned. Death registered in Florida but never entered in computer records. We’ve put all the rest together. Worked up a set of false memories for mem-plantation… I think we’ve got some likelies, to take the implants…”

The expression on Steinfeld’s face made Purchase say, “You’ve got qualms about mem-plants?”

“This business of toying with people’s memories—I don’t care which side it is doing it—no, I don’t like it. It’s—” He shook his head.

“Too close to interfering with the soul?”

Steinfeld said, “I am not sure I believe in the soul. But yes, it’s too close—to interfering with the soul.”

“We’re up against it. Outnumbered. We’ve got to use all the tools at hand. If it’s any comfort, we don’t implant our own people. We should, but we don’t. Just the enemy.”

Steinfeld shrugged. “So be it. How high can you place him?”

Purchase fidgeted, looking unsure of himself. The waitress came back with their drinks. Purchase’s was some sort of phantasmagorical daiquiri. A cartoon character flew across the waitress’s stomach (What was his name? Something the Gremlin) to be replaced instantly by a hydrogen-cell vehicle crashing head-on into another, both bursting into flames. “Cars are crashing in your stomach,” Purchase told her.

“That explains my heartburn,” she said, snicking Purchase’s Worldtalk expense account credit card through the credunit on her hip. She gave the card back and walked away, Marilyn Monroe waving at them from the small of her back. Monroe’s breasts superimposed for one delectable instant on the waitress’s buttocks.

“People are wearing the Grid now,” Steinfeld said.

“Just pray to Gridfriend they don’t make wallpaper like that. Come to think of it, they probably are making it…”

Steinfeld smiled; the smile was barely visible through his beard. He wore a cheap black-and-white flatsuit, a bit tacky here, but passable.

Purchase said, “I think… think, mind you… I can place Stisky—or Swenson, now, if you like—I think I can place Swenson in the Second Circle itself, after a short, ah, probationary period. Within a few weeks.”

Steinfeld looked sharply at Purchase. “It took us three years to get Devereaux into the Second Circle. And that was fast advancement. He was in the lower echelons, as you call it, two years and then—”

“I know all that. But…” Purchase leaned nearer. “But I’ve gotten to know Crandall’s sister. We modeled her transactional script patterns. She has an affair every two years—almost to the day! Usually something torrid. Then Rick gets rid of them or she loses interest. We believe that her next one will be somewhat more serious. And it’s due in a week—and that’s when I’ll introduce her to Swenson. She has a growing need for long-term emotional security. We studied her preference profile: Swenson would be her archetype, which is why we picked him. She meets Swenson, Swenson romances her—and we both agree he’s got the talent for that—and she will bring him with her. And of course he’s done very well in their lower echelons.”

“You’re very certain of that.”

“I’d swear to it: bet a cool million on it.”

Steinfeld nodded. “A million. Well—you’ve just invoked the deity that means the most to you. I’m impressed. All right. If it gets that far… Devereaux might…”

Purchase shook his head. “You don’t really think Devereaux is going to come through, do you? Do you know who’s the new SA Security chief? Old Sackville-West. Devereaux’s the nervous type. Old Sacks will smell that.”

“Then he may smell our Swenson.”

“I think not. Swenson has the talent. And he’ll have Ellen Mae’s support. Trust me.”

They took a moment to work on their drinks. Steinfeld looked down, through the table, and through the floor. The floor was transparent; the disco jutted from the side of a highmall rising two hundred stories over the main Freezone helicopter port; far below—and directly below—radio-controlled copters rose and landed, dragonfly bright in the ocean-burnished sunlight.