John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Clack. And it was stopped.

It was two a.m.; Torrence and Bibisch, leaning on one another in a front seat of the first car, woke and jumped up at almost precisely the same instant. Bibisch hissing, “ Merde, quoi —?”

Both of them reaching for their weapons.

Torrence snatching up his beautiful, his pristine, his compact and cunning, his oiled and shined-up AMD-65. A Hungarian assault rifle, developed in the late 1980s, widely purchased by the Arab nations in the 1990s. Old ordnance, like most of the NR gear and yet almost unused. It had been in protective storage for a generation, in Egypt. Part of a shipment of weapons Badoit had gotten to them just two days before. Torrence had only had one opportunity to learn its intricacies and test it out—in Lespere’s underground range. But he’d fallen in love with it immediately. It was a grenade-launching rifle, equipped with a shock absorber in the folding stock, forestock that reciprocated as the 7.62 x 39mm-caliber rifle was fired, and an optical sight. Torrence slung his knapsack on his right shoulder; it carried two antipersonnel PGR grenades and two antiarmor PGK grenades. Bibisch carried a Hungarian Spigon submachine gun—more importantly, she had charge of a US-made Stinger ground-to-air missile launcher.

All this probably wouldn’t do them a bit of good, Torrence thought, because they’d been taken by surprise.

Four hours earlier, Steinfeld had come into the attic of the old police station with Bones. Found Bibisch and Torrence there, naked, asleep in each others’ arms. He sighed, annoyed, and shook them awake. “It’s your watch, Torrence. Bibisch, go downstairs and clean up.”

They dressed silently—Bibisch trying valiantly not to giggle—and went downstairs.

Then Steinfeld sat in the attic of the old police station with Bones. Who put on a headset that double-jacked him into the hidden transmitter on the roof.

Steinfeld and Bones sat in the dark room on two crates near the window, limned in diluted moonlight coming through the frosted glass. Bones was rocking slightly as he communed with the SA’s Paris database: with a mind that was beyond morality, indifferent to the suffering imprinted in its bubbles of magnetism, its crystals of silicon; he was a wolf of the plateau. They sat there for twenty minutes, Steinfeld’s lower back hurting with the tension. He wondered, for perhaps a second of that twenty minutes, if it would have been better if Jerome and Bones and Bettina hadn’t broken into the SA’s London database. If they hadn’t got the code for the Paris database; for decryption and full access. They could have gone on in blissful ignorance, thinking they were making a difference. But some of the things they’d found out made them feel puny…

And then Bones sat up straight. “They’ve got a couple of our auxiliary people.”

Steinfeld’s mouth went dry. “Who? How?”

“The reprisals. This guy Giessen’s behind it. Some of our boosters had some relatives shot in the reprisals. Others in processing centers. One of them came forward, just walked into Second Alliance HQ asking for Giessen… the other they caught in the tunnels. Giessen put out some kind of a night-seeing bird’s eye that followed one of our people after an action at Montmartre… followed him home. Watched the place. Scooped up one of our cells an hour ago, there.”

“ Who, I said, damn you.”

“Guy named DeBlanc.”

“DeBlanc. I think he used to be with the Point Cadre—which means he knows—”

“Wait. Wait. It’s coming up. He was Point Cadre—but he was one of those people with extractor-resistant brain chemistry. They couldn’t extract him, so they tortured his kids in front of him… Oh, shit. It says… it says, Confessed during interrogation of offspring. Fuck. He just broke. I guess… The first one, French guy named La Soleil.”

“ Not Point Cadre.”

“No. But he helped us get Barrabas and the woman into the city. He saw Hand there. Told them all that shit. Then the other guy DeBlanc cracked maybe… less than half an hour ago. Told them—” Bones seemed to listen for a moment. Stiffened. “Oh, motherfucker. Steinfeld, they know where we are.”

Steinfeld had no time at all—but he had to make a critical decision. He found Hand sitting in a corner of the drunk tank that was now a think tank; Hand was cross-legged on the floor, taking notes on paper with a pen. He couldn’t get batteries for his voice recorder and he’d lost his palmer as they’d fled the refugee center.

Nearby, Pasolini and Bibisch and four others standing in a group, arguing politics.

Steinfeld snapped to them, “We’re getting out. Move everyone out through Exit Three, and—” He spoke directly to Pasolini. “After everyone’s gone, see to it there’s nothing much left for them to search through.”

“But what—”

“Just do it! They’re on their way!”

The group burst apart like pool balls at the break, as they raced to follow orders.

Hand stood up, licking his lips. “The SA? They’re coming?”

“Yes. We’re leaving here—some of us will be staying in Paris, some of us…” He stared at Hand. He had about one minute in which to decide. “Let me see your notes.”

Hand hesitated, then passed them over. Steinfeld skimmed through them. Nothing damaging, no specifics, as arranged—Hand’s general take on things. He frowned, reading snippets here and there:

SPOES continues to gain momentum. Distributes food, shelter, jobs to war refugees & homeless who have learned that the more nationalistic they are, the more supportive of SPOES racist policies, the better their treatment by authorities… The Refugees find ways to justify fascism to themselves. Not difficult, it can be very appealing in all this chaos. Unity Party offers order and jobs and a satisfying return to national IDENTITY. The war was humiliating, making them feel they were unimportant pawns of US and NSR… Crowds respond emotionally at Unity Party rallies; racists and jingoists in full throttle… continued reports of isolation and deportation to PCs of troublesome ethnic groups… U.P.’s Soldats Superieurs said to be brainwashed into ruthlessness in expediting orders… some key officials rumored to have been brainwashed w/extractors… NR’s greatest enemy apparently global apathy, the “it can’t happen again” mindset… I am unable to find non-native colleagues in Paris, offices of UPI and ITV et al. closed down… NATO & SA discourage close reporting here… NATO officials stonewalled me… American journalists evidently concerned with NATO’s liberation of Eastern Bloc countries & terms of New-Soviet surrender… Smoke’s reports mostly carried only in underGrid… big Grid, Internet, social media mostly indifferent or closed by (?) SA connections… Holocaust Virus story could blow Grid open for NR… Critical…

Steinfeld nodded briskly and handed him back the notes. Hand was okay. “We need you and Barrabas and his American friend to do some witnessing for us on the outside. We’re going to get you out of Paris.” Steinfeld smiled grimly. “Don’t look so relieved. They’ve sealed off the city. It won’t be easy.”

They’d gotten out of the safe house with four minutes to spare. The fascist troops arrived and found the place empty—and on fire. Four minutes earlier, the last of the NR contingent got out through the abandoned building next door, down through a camouflaged tunnel, into the old Metro. They headed for the one functioning train station. Some of their people were already there, taking over a surface-track magnetic-cushion train.

Bones had tinkered with the enemy’s database, used some of the computer-bug input Jerome-X and Bettina had planted through the Plateau. They had the train cleared as a special transport, supposedly for Colonel Watson. The city was sealed off—but they let the train through.