John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“And let them know only what we want them to know,” Rimpler said suddenly, startling them with his humorous tone. “And if they find out about the rest—tell them it’s a communications problem.” The “communications problem” was a reference to Praeger’s failing to inform Rimpler of the emergency while he was on vacation. Praeger had claimed he’d given the order to a subordinate, who’d failed to implement it by simple oversight. In due course Praeger had produced a subordinate who claimed to be responsible for the error. The man had been put on pay suspension, and probably been well paid off. “Just a little commun-i-ca-shuns prob-lemmmm,” Rimpler said, dreamily singsong. Making Claire think of the dormouse at the mad tea party. And making her think, What’s happening to him?

Van Kips sighed. “I really think there’s no point in dragging that one over the coals again, Doctor.” Pursing her lips—the severest expression she allowed herself. Or, perhaps, that Praeger allowed her. Supposedly, she worshiped Praeger. She was an implausibly beautiful woman. Shaped to some artist’s conception. Metal-flake blue eyes; a model’s narrow, doe-elegant face. Her long, perfectly straight flaxen hair was parted in the middle, to fall over her shoulders with impossible artfulness. She wore a dove-gray suit and white silk blouse; the suit clung to her tall, willowy body when she moved. But now she sat rigidly upright, her hands folded in her lap. Moving only her eyes when she looked at someone.

“At this point,” Praeger said, “it’s meaningless to try to pin down the cause of the riots. First, we must quell the riots, the vandalism, the strikes. If we come out now and say, Yes, you’re right, we’ve been remiss—well, that would encourage them in the idea that violence is the way to get through to us. The violence must cease before we concede anything.”

“I sure have to agree with that, Bill,” Scanlon said, in his faint Southern accent. He was a big, boyish-looking man, with tired eyes and a lot of seams in his wide, friendly face. Friendly face, and he’ll have a jolly twinkle in his eye, Claire thought, when he gets around to ordering my arrest. “If we give in now we’ll have to give in every time they threaten us. Things’ll just get worse—for them and for us, too.” He shifted in his seat and waited for a response, smiling like an angel. Claire remembered having heard he was some kind of born-again Christian.

“For them and for us, too?” Claire said. “That ‘them and us’ mentality is one of our problems. I move we release the prisoners Security took during the riots, on their own recognizance. Just to ease the tension a bit. Then we try to set up another meeting with the Radics—and we allow them to send a technicki representative to the meetings. Those aren’t such great concessions.”

“Jack here,” Praeger said, nodding toward Messer-Krellman, “represents them. He’s the union rep, is he not?” Messer Krellman was a ferret-faced man with a bored expression and a habit of sighing after each statement.

“Yes, I seem to recall that’s my function,” he said sarcastically and sighed, looking with mild reproach at Claire.

Claire shook her head. “It should be a technicki rep! Born and bred a technicki! Someone who speaks technicki because he was raised in it. Jack has simply lost their confidence. It wouldn’t be a concession to—”

“It would,” Praeger said. “Because it’s on their list of demands. Along with the release of so-called political prisoners. His demands.” Nodding now at the screen. At Molt.

“Look at him,” Judith Van Kips muttered, shaking her head. “This is one of the technicki leaders. You’d want someone like this at our meetings? Here? ”

“He’s not a technicki, actually,” Claire said. “Not precisely… We’d pick someone more, um—”

“Look at him,” Van Kips repeated, hissing it.

On the screen, Molt was pivoting in a circle, wagging his dick at each point of the compass.

Judith Van Kips made a noise of revulsion. “The man is evidently on drugs.”

Rimpler shook his head. “I think not.” He chuckled. “Molt knows we’re watching, but he doesn’t know where we are, so he’s saying fuck you in every direction, just to make sure we get the message.”

“You seem to approve, Doctor,” Ganzio, commented. He was a slim, dark man with a mustache so neat-edged it looked stenciled, and small, forever-shifting black eyes. He wore a gold-colored suit, which everyone privately thought vulgar.

“Oh, no, no,” Rimpler said airily. “But one has to admire his nerve.”

Molt was making an even ruder gesture now, and Praeger stabbed a finger at the tabletop’s terminal. The image on the screen reticulated, folded into itself, was replaced with a view of the Strip. There was a crowd around the café, listening to someone standing on a table speak. Praeger punched for a close-up on the speaker. The image zoomed in. It was Bonham. They didn’t have the audio on, but the crowd looked mesmerized by the speech. “Now, there’s a fellow with talent,” Praeger said. “Suppose he was speaking for our benefit. And suppose we controlled the technicki TV channel. If we provided the right stimuli, the technickis would drop their inane, self-indulgent rebellion of their own initiative. Willingly.”

Claire felt a chill. She looked to her father, wishing he’d take some active part in supporting their side of things. He was looking wistfully at the refreshment panels in the wall across from him, probably wanting to dial up a cocktail.

Maybe it had been a mistake to insist he come to the meeting at all, Claire thought. He had changed, in the last few years. In the beginning, her father had considered the Colony an extension of himself, and, if anything, he’d been a micromanager, too fervently responsible for its development and maintenance. And then Mother had left him, refusing to make the move to the Colony. He’d considered it a personal betrayal. Claire had been almost relieved by the divorce, really—she’d never felt close to her mother. The woman was cold, self-involved… As if to compensate for his wife’s betrayal of his dream—she had called the Colony “a vanity unprecedented in the history of mankind” and “a monument to the misbegotten”—Rimpler was more control-compulsive than ever.

But with Terry’s death, he began to change. At first he became, by turns, defensive, sullen, inward. That stage had also been marked by feverish overwork.

And then he’d collapsed, in Admin Central Command, after spending twenty straight hours overseeing the installation of the new computer system—and dealing with all the problems that arose while the old system was down. Then came another stage, a sort of manic-depressive period. Claire suspected he was using his pass to the pharmaceuticals storerooms too liberally. He’d begun using intermediaries to hire girls out of Bitchie’s and the other technicki Afters. And he became increasingly abstracted at work—as if he was thinking only of getting home, to another sexual psychodrama…

Still—he’d done what was expected of him, as an administrator—until the riots, and the news that he’d debauched right through a Colony life-support emergency. He reacted as if the Colony itself had rejected him. And he buckled under the psychological disorientation brought on by the sudden loss of control. Became childlike, prone to tantrums. Now, too often, she found herself forced into the role of chiding mother. He seemed to enjoy seeing her in that role—and at the same time he was afraid of her. More than once she’d found herself sick inside with self-disgust when she’d realized he’d drawn her into some almost incestuous dominatrix-style role-playing. She’d refused to play along—and he withdrew even more into drugs, drink, the search for oblivion—and when the real world intruded on his quest for oblivion, he responded by jeering at the thing he’d devoted most of his life to building…