John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“Is that right.”

Aria stood up, took the cigarette from Marion’s hand, flicked it through the bathroom door into the toilet bowl.

Witcher felt some relief. Aria was still with him, then.

But she kissed Marion on the cheek and said, “It’s just too close to smoke in here, pretty doll. Take a pill and you can have a smoke when we get into the Open.” She sounded too conciliatory…

Aria turned to Witcher. “Answer her question. Is it true or not? About the virus?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“I take that to mean it is true.”

Stall them, Witcher thought, glancing at his watch. In a few minutes, Pasolini would be in the Paris sat-receiving station he’d set up. And he could signal her. He wished he’d set up some sort of repeating loop signal.

“The world stinks with suffering,” Witcher said. “I want to free it from suffering, lead the survivors into Utopia. Into the first real possibility of freedom. But freedom needs room. ”

Not turning around, Jeanne said, “I don’t think freedom needs mass murder… Merde. No. I just didn’t know you’d go that far…”

There was a red light blinking on his transmitter console. He was grateful for the interruption. He swung his feet off the bed, moved to the console. Stared. “There’s someone tampering with the antenna.” He hit the transmit button. Another red light. The antenna was too damaged to transmit.

“They’ll go to hell,” he said, “if there is one.”

He tapped the keyboard for antenna adjustment…

It was standing up on not much more than a finger’s width of metal now, holding upright in a way that would have been defiance of gravity—if there had been much gravity…

The torches were whittling at that metal finger from either side.

And then a vibration tickled up through his boots, and the antenna torqued suddenly.

Clop. Crunch. Pain in Russ’s chest. His feet kicking nothingness.

Seeing the impossibly right-angled tree receding from him; the stark shadows sucking into it. Lester suddenly looked like a midget—and then a doll. Receding.

“Russ!” Crackle. “Russ! Fuck! Don’t thrash around like that, you’ll use up oxygen! We’ll come and—” Crackle.

The fucker had detected them; had swung the antenna with its angle-adjuster, knocked Russ off his feet. Into space. With enough force to best the small gravitational pull of the Colony… (Please, God. I know I’ve fucked up in my life.)

Lester was getting smaller and smaller. The sun was rising like the blazing furnace of Death as he angled out into space. Into the restless nothing.

His heart was like an amateur drummer playing an inconsistent drumroll. (Look, God, I’ll try to be a better person. I’ll marry Claire. I’ll get closer to Jesus. Please.)

Seeing the edges of the Colony, the whole place shrinking to fit into his field of vision.

He said it aloud, a hoarse whisper. “Please…”

Claire’s office. Claire and Stoner. The smell of fear.

Claire said, “Witcher didn’t transmit. The antenna has to be down by now. I’m gonna call Russ.”

“Maybe you should wait,” Stoner said. “We can’t be sure—”

“I can’t wait.” She patched into the EV radio. “Russ? I mean, uh, Admin One to EVA Two and Three.”

Static like spittle spraying. “ Claire? ” Lester’s voice.

“Is the antenna down?”

“Yeah, but—Claire, get an RM out now, track Russ. Witcher knocked him into freefall. He’s floating free…”

Claire’s eyes blurred. She hit a switch, a siren hooted throughout the Colony. She hit a button and spoke to Airlock Supervisor Six: “EVA 2 is adrift, repeat, adrift, you should be able to get a fix from his transmitter…”

“We’re not getting anything. Where is he?”

“Russ?” She waited. “Russ? Are you reading me. Russ, it’s Claire…” She changed bands. “Oh, shit. Lester? They’re not picking up a signal from him, and he isn’t answering me.”

“The damn antenna hit him in the control box. Busted it—” Crackle. “I can’t even see him anymore. Man, I feel helpless. Get somebody out here!”

She spoke to Airlock Six. “Fix on EVA One, spiral outward from there and do a search. Get everything you’ve got out there. Is there a shuttle in the vicinity?”

“No.”

“Do your best.”

A buzz from another fone. “Claire? We’re through the lock in the door…”

What did she do now? If she didn’t supervise the taking of Witcher’s quarters, people would probably get killed in the confusion. If she didn’t supervise the search for Russ, they might lose him. Someone had to be there to push them into doing everything fast.

“Stoner—can you handle the Witcher thing?”

“I can try. It’s not my expertise. You’re the one with the combat experience.”

“Shit!” They’d do all right on their own, looking for Russ.

She yelled at the fone. “Leave Witcher alone till I get there!”

She ducked through the door, ran down the corridor.

She wanted to be outside, herself, in an RM, looking for Russ. She wanted to scream.

Now she knew why her father had gone off the deep end.

One minute of air left. Spinning around some axis he’d never known he had before. There was the Colony. A bar of light. Now it was gone. There it was. Now it was gone.

Thirty seconds of air left.

No one coming. His transmitter was broken.

You want to choke to death in the suit, Russ?

He said, “Okay, Lord Jesus, if that’s the way you want it. Take me, please, warts and all. I’m sorry for anything I did that I shouldn’t have done. I love you. I love Claire.”

He opened his visor.

“They’re gonna rush the door,” Marion said. A little sweat ran from her palm, running down the gun-grip.

She stood rigidly in front of the door. Aria and Jeanne beside her. Three guns, three women, focused on the door.

“Maybe we block it off some way,” Jeanne said.

“Nothing here to move big enough for that,” Marion said. “Bed’s built into the floor.”

“When they come through,” Witcher said, deciding it right then, “shoot to wound one, kill the others. Then we’ll pull the wounded one in for a hostage. They’ll have to make arrangements with me.”

Marion said, in a voice that, somehow, he knew was meant for the other women, “Don’t do anything. ”

The door was kicked, clang, and swung inward.

Marion moved at the same time in a blur, to one side of the door, using the gun like an aikido staff, the speed of a scorpion’s stinger, hitting the Colony Security heavy in the side of the head. The guy went right down, out cold. She kicked the next one in the gut. He folded up, fell back.

She pushed the unconscious one out. A hostage set free after only one second of captivity.

She kicked the door shut.

Witcher was standing ramrod straight, back against the wall. Staring at Marion in hurt disbelief. “I told you to shoot!”

“Not taking your orders anymore, Dad.”

“You low-class little bitch. You whining little punk cunt.” He turned, reached under his pillow, drew out his little explosive-bullet pistol.

Regrettable, the mess it was going to make.

“Don’t even think it, Dad. We’re gonna give ourselves up to ’em, all of us. This shit is all over. So put that down.”

He swung the weapon toward her.

Her Spigon submachine gun spat like an angry cat.

Witcher was slammed back against the wall, his face bleary with amazement.

He slid down the floor, the gun dropping from twitching fingers. He stared a question at her.

“What’d you think?” Marion said. “We’re stupid little chicks that shit when you say shit? We’re people, man, and we’re not stupid and we’re not robots and we didn’t take this job to murder a bunch of children we never even heard the names of. You know?”