John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“Ava gowan yehdir upa shuh!”

(Barrabas and Jo Ann and Smoke were carried on the surging tide of the crowd running from the gang, shoving brutally to get onto the Hovercraft. Barrabas watching the fight over a shoulder.)

What followed was a blur, like a cartoon animation of electrons whizzing around the nucleus of an atom; an atom undergoing fission, maybe, as blood spurted, men screamed, guns fired, all of it punctuated by the ugly thud-crunch of elbow and kneespikes ramming flesh.

“Uh killuhfuh meh me bloo’ole Yiby!”

Two of the thrashers went down yelling, one shot through the neck, another through the groin. A third with a bullet through his ankle rode away from the melee like a crane, one-legged on his skateboard.

The Second Alliance thugs were either on their knees—gashed, clothes like circus-hobo rags—or half running, half limping, back to their van. Their guns were mostly scattered across the street. Their security chief was stumbling backward, fumbling with his gun. The thrasher captain bellowed, “Gowasuckerteetsies yarble ya bollkscunts!” and smacked the gun to spin away in the air, grabbed the SA London Security chief by the neck, bent him back, kissed him openmouthed with tongue, bit off a chunk of his lower lip, spun him, and kicked him in the ass so he fell on his face. The security chief scrambled screaming in horror toward the van.

Doing all this, the thrasher captain never lost his balance on his skateboard.

And then came the seesaw sounds of approaching police sirens, and the thrashers whizzed back into their alley.

Smoke’s party stumbled hurriedly onto the hover ferry.

The boat embarked with no delays. The street’s vendors were there to give the story to the police.

But in the glassed-in café on the upper deck of the craft, Jo Ann was crying at the smudged window. “God, that was awful. Those men cut to ribbons! Two of those boys shot dead.” Adding in a whisper, “Was it for us, Smoke?”

He nodded. “Dahlia sent them for sure. Probably bought them a month’s supply of stoke-up, had ’em watching the place. And the thrashers don’t like the fascists.”

“Second Alliance security’ll ring the SA in France,” Barrabas pointed out. “They’ll be waiting for us.”

Smoke shook his head. “There’s a boat going to come out and meet us before we reach the other shore. I’ve got it set up with a bosun on the ferry. The ferry’ll ‘break down’ for a few minutes, about a mile out from France…”

Jo Ann wasn’t listening. “God. Those boys are dead because of us.”

Barrabas put an arm around her. Gave her a white plastic cup of hot chocolate. “Don’t cry for those kids. They live for that sort of thing, love. They’re dead already, most of ’em, from the neck up. Products of the war, in their way. Out of their effing heads.”

She bit a lip and turned away from the window. “Oh, fuck, what did I do?”

Did she mean What have I done? Or What did I do to deserve this?

Barrabas decided not to ask her.

The erstwhile drunk tank in the NR’s safe house was crowded, and the sad thing was, Roseland thought, they were all dead sober. He could have used a drink.

Most of the top Paris New Resistance people were crowded into the room, sitting on folding metal chairs, on the floor, or leaning against the wall. The door was open, but the air was sticky. Steinfeld and Smoke sat at a small table with hard-copy printouts on it, at one end of the room; the others sat facing them, in ragged rows. Hand was there, taking notes at the back on a palm device.

“How close are they to using this stuff?” Torrence asked.

Smoke sighed. He glanced at the new people, the English guy Patrick Barrabas and the young woman Jo Ann Teyk. An American. “From what the extractor gleaned from Jo Ann the virus is deployable anytime they want to mass-produce them. They have the facilities. Once the thing is released, it’ll thrive on its own for a while—not infinitely. It’s designed to die out after a certain amount of time. But not before hundreds of millions of people die. They’re still checking its efficiency—but that probably won’t take long.”

Roseland thought: I should be shocked, or bowled over, or shouting in outrage. Or something.

But he wasn’t, because he wasn’t surprised. A new Final Solution had to be part of the equation. Part of their mindset. He’d been expecting something like this. It made sense. A racially selective virus kills only according to your DNA codification—an efficiency the Nazis would have envied.

Father Lespere said, “I believe they have been testing some early variations of it in the detention centers in the last month. People are dying more rapidly than usual. Unusual symptoms…”

“Oh, merde, ” Bibisch said. Her eyes filled with tears. Torrence put an arm around her. All of them sat there for a few moments in silence, imagining the suffering.

“You have any trouble getting them out of the country?” Roseland asked, pointing with his chin at Barrabas and Jo Ann. He was mentioning it to change the subject. Right then he couldn’t bear thinking about children dying of the virus…

“Some,” Smoke said. “At the docks. There were SA thugs there. Out of uniform, but armed. They hadn’t told the police anything about it.” He gave a sickly smile. “The British kids have a big skateboard-revival thing going. Dahlia made a few calls, had a gang of ’em show up when we were about to board. The SA started to move in, and the kids came out of nowhere on their skateboards—”

Roseland blinked. “Skateboards? Are you kidding or what?” But he wasn’t amused. Nothing was funny just now.

Smoke added with grim satisfaction, “SA tough guys cried like a lot of spoiled children.”

The whole anecdote was told absentmindedly. They were all thinking of that looming Something Else.

Steinfeld said, “Jerome-X and Bettina and Bones…” He nodded at the cadaverous black man leaning, arms crossed, in a corner. “…broke into the SA computer, confirmed they’ve ordered the genetic raw materials to begin manufacturing the viruses. “

“I don’t believe this,” Hand said with a sort of desperation. He was sitting with his back to the wall, to Roseland’s right, tapping at his palmer.

Steinfeld wouldn’t let him record the meetings except for notes. And Steinfeld checked the notes. Just having Hand here was dangerous enough. Roseland hoped Smoke knew what he was doing…

“It’s just… it’s just too much to believe,” Hand said. “They wouldn’t go that far. That kind of genocide. Whole nations wiped out.”

“You don’t believe it,” Torrence said, his voice lifeless. Face blank. Most of the time, he’d been that way since the massacre at Place Clichy. “You don’t fucking believe it. You believed the processing centers. You saw the Jægernaut chew people up and spit them out. What difference do the numbers mean?”

Hand shook his head. He looked nothing like the slick, poised TV reporter he’d been when he came to Paris. He looked haggard, and ill, and haunted. “Probably they intend to… to hold us all hostage, threaten us with the virus…”

“You ever read about the Wansee Conference?” Roseland asked him. “Where the Nazis, in the 1940s, planned the extermination of millions? You have any idea how clinical they were, how calmly they went about it? A psychopathic ideology makes psychopaths of its believers, Norman. They’d use it.”

“But the economic fallout—a collapse—it’s just not practical even for…” Hand’s voice trailed off, trembling.

“As to that,” Smoke said wearily, “our new friend Patrick Barrabas has a tale to tell. They’re developing a sort of home-grown labor force. Genetically engineering a labor pool of stupid, obedient lumpen. People Puppies, I think they call them, with a sick try at a sense of humor. Semi-human things. Subhuman. Their own caricature of an ‘inferior race’…” He grimaced. “Probably not going to work out the way they think it will. Anyway, Barrabas copied one of their video files, brought it along. We’re giving it to you, Hand.”