John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Torrence nodded, very slightly. But he thought: Steinfeld could have stopped it. He let hate for the SA get in the way of saving two hundred thousand lives.

Steinfeld knew that, of course. Which is why the charge on the rooftop.

He had joined those he had failed. The guilty dead had joined the innocent dead.

“What are we going to do today?” Alouette said, kicking spray into the air with her bare feet. She ran from the lapping fringe of ocean, chased it back to the surf, ran from it again.

“Anything you want,” Smoke said.

“How about tomorrow?”

“Anything you want.”

“You’re going to stay in Merino?”

“This is my home now. That’s why we came back here. It’s my home, with you. I have a grant, and I’m going to stay here and write a book just to have something to do, but mostly I’m going to go swimming with you, and tell you to do your homework, and tell you: no, you can’t watch satellite TV.”

“Can too watch TV.”

“Cannot either.”

“Can too. Sometimes a little.”

“Maybe sometimes a little.”

She danced happily around him. He smiled sadly, looked at the sunwashed beach, the palms along the beachside road, the high shaggy trees nodding in the easy breeze. Here and there were stumps of palms left by the shelling—but most of the trees had made it. And so had most of the islanders.

“Alouette,” he said, “did the crow really die at that moment?”

“When we sent out the message into that entelechy thing? That Leng field thing?”

“Yes. Did you make that up?”

“No. That’s when he died. He flew down onto my shoulder and then fell in my lap. I didn’t really notice it much, I was in chip communion, see, but afterward it made me cry when I found him. But part of me notices things around me, those times. That’s when he died. When we sent that message.”

“Huh. Be damned.”

“Daddy Jack?”

“What?”

“Mr. Kessler says that entelechy thing is ‘hooey.’ He says it does not work. Do you think it worked? It seemed like it worked. Everybody saw what was happening and they did something.”

“But maybe that was just the media, the timing. I don’t know if it worked. With those things, it’s hard to tell if they’re real or not. And if they are real—whoever made them, whoever put the world together, must want it this way. I mean, they must want it, so we can’t be sure if it’s real or not: The things people call spiritual…”

“Can we get some ice cream?”

“You’re too fat for ice cream.”

She wasn’t even remotely fat, but she pretended outrage. “I am not! My metabolism rate likes ice cream!”

“Your metabolism rate. Oh. Well, in that case. Yes. Let’s get some ice cream.”

“And can we get another bird?”

“Another crow?”

“No. A cockatoo. A yellow cockatoo. I know a man who is selling one.”

“Yeah. Ice cream and a cockatoo. Why not.”

He took her hand, and they walked back to the hotel.

Claire was pruning roses.

She was working on a patch of red roses at the new technicki housing project. It was her way of taking a day off. The sunlight was coming strongly despite the filters, and the air was sweet with rose scent, and the protestation of her muscles felt good. Maybe afterward she’d go for a swim.

“Can I help?”

She looked up at the stranger and smiled politely. An Oriental, maybe Japanese. But tall for a Japanese. He was probably half American, judging by his size and accent. Rather thin and tired. Vaguely familiar. She’d probably seen him around the Colony somewhere.

“You can help if you like,” she said. “I don’t have any extra clippers, though. Do you know about gardening?”

“Not a damn thing.”

His voice…

He smiled. And that smile was familiar. She found herself staring at one of his ears. It was slightly off-color. There was a faint scar around the base of it.

“My sister,” he was saying, “used to try to get me to help her in Mom’s garden when we were kids. I’d tell her, ‘Kitty—I’ll garden when I haven’t got anything else to do. Which’ll probably be never.’” He shrugged. “I guess it’s never now.”

“Your sister’s name is Kitty?”

“Yes.”

“Danny?”

“Yes.”

“ Danny? ”

“Uh-huh. I—”

He didn’t get the rest out. She nearly knocked him over when she threw her arms around him. “Danny…”

A while later, maybe an hour and maybe three—neither of them could have told you how long they had been talking—they were strolling through the little woods, next to the old monument to space techs who’d died building the Colony. She looked up at it, and real pain flared in her eyes. “Dan—when I was… while we were separated, I had a relationship with someone.”

“Did you? So did I.” He touched his new ear.

“He died, though. In space.”

“Yours died? So did mine.”

They were quiet for a while, just walking, strolling slowly through an artificial twilight, till Torrence said, “Listen—I didn’t come alone. There’s a friend of mine, guy named Roseland. Abe Roseland. He… he’s kind of suicidal. He was one of the best NR men. After it was over he was going to join the Israeli army—and there’s a good chance Israel’s going to have a war with this new fundamentalist loon that’s running Libya, if Badoit can’t make the peace. Abe’s just looking for a way to get killed. He’s just like Steinfeld, except he’s got a different kind of guilt. Or maybe not so different. I practically had to shanghai him, but I talked him into coming up here. He needs… sanctuary. A place to start over. So do I. Abe, though, won’t come out of his room. I thought maybe if you offered him a job here in Security, he’d—”

“Consider it done. I’ll send our new chief of Security over to talk to him. She’ll recruit him. In fact, he sounds like her type. She might recruit him for more than a job.”

“She who?”

“Her name’s Marion. Listen—you recovered from those wounds?”

“Mostly. I’m working on it. I’m supposed to do aerobics to build up my lungs.”

“I know just the thing. You ever been in freefall?”

“Freefall? Weightless?” He grimaced. “On the ship over here, briefly. Made me sick.”

“That’s because you weren’t adapting right. Got to get the blood moving, see. Get a feel for it.”

He looked at her. There was something mischievous… “Yeah?”

“Yeah. There’re parts of the Colony that are low-grav, so low they’re almost freefall. Some real nice rooms there. Private rooms.” She stopped and looked into his eyes.

He was still Hard-Eyes. He was Daniel Torrence behind the Oriental mask. Her lover was in there still.

“Okay,” he said. “Where’s the freefall room?”

She took his hand. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

John Shirley is the author of more than thirty novels. He is considered seminal to the cyberpunk movement in science fiction and has been called the “postmodern Poe” of horror. His numerous short stories have been compiled into eight collections including Black Butterflies: A Flock on the Darkside, winner of the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and named as one of the best one hundred books of the year by Publishers Weekly. He has written scripts for television and film, and is best known as co-writer of The Crow. As a musician, Shirley has fronted several bands over the years and written lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult and others.