John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Thud. A disappointed whine as the engine cut. He opened his eyes—and drew back, startled by a man with eyes like a falcon, a beak of a nose, and a slash for a mouth, looking right at him, staring. Swenson almost said, My real name is John Stisky and—

And then falcon-face said, “You all right, sir?”

Swenson looked at the man’s flat-black Security uniform, and panic passed. Just an SA Security guard. “I’m fine. I’m not so good at flying. A little dizzy for a moment—problem with the balance in the inner ear. Only happens when the altitude drops too quickly. No problem.”

He brushed the man’s hands away from his safety belt, unbuckled it himself, and stood. His knees wobbled and then found their strength. He took a deep breath and stepped out and down, needlessly ducking his head under the slowly spinning blades. He stood in wet ankle-deep grass and felt the relief rush over him, and once more he was John Swenson, deep in character, when Ellen Mae put her hand on his arm and led him to the house. “Are you all right, John?”

“Sure.” He smiled sheepishly. “I’m not much for chopper flights.”

“Maybe a glass of wine and some dinner. We can work after dinner.”

“Now you’re talking.”

She squeezed his arm, pleased at his familiarity, and he thought, I’m doing it right.

Memo from Frank Purchase to Quincy Witcher—High Encryption Protocol.

Subject: John Stisky

…was a priest of the Holy Roman Church assigned to the Diocese of Managua, Nicaragua. Within three weeks of arriving in Managua he came into conflict with his immediate superior, Father Gostello (see attached transcript of recorded fone interviews), when he requested leave to participate in a demonstration at the American Embassy protesting the occupying American army’s refusal to consider a timetable for electing a new Nicaraguan governing body; Stisky defied Gostello and attended the demonstration. He was arrested in the course of a riot, and in jail met Father Encendez. Fr. Encendez had been four times censured by the Church for unauthorized political activity in the wake of Pope Peter’s encyclicals denouncing Church involvement in progressive political causes. Encendez was later dismissed from the priesthood (as a move of conciliation to the occupying American Forces), when he published an article in an American news printout alleging that General Lonington, Director of the Nicaraguan Occupation, was “connected with anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic organizations and had in his boyhood several times attended meetings of the Ku Klux Klan-related Council of Conservative Citizens… may have been instrumental, as a young lieutenant, in helping Nazi war criminals escape an Interpol investigating team.” Encendez continued his organizing after leaving the priesthood and in April was found shot to death in a muddy ditch ten miles south of Managua. Stisky pressed for an investigation and charged that Lonington had business connections with the Second Alliance Corporation. Crandall’s church had already begun recruiting in Managua, and was the only American church organization allowed free rein there; Stisky pointed out that Lonington was a member of that church, and he demanded Lonington’s removal. Stisky was subsequently defrocked… No conclusive evidence indicating a homosexual relationship between Stisky and Encendez, but Stisky’s college records show that for several months he was a member of the New York University League of Bisexuals… He left the university to enter the seminary in 1994… Stisky’s father was Jewish, his mother half-Jewish, but both his parents were atheists, and conceptual artists. His swing toward the Church might be considered an intellectual rebellion against both his parents’ philosophy and their chaotic lifestyle… His relationships with women typically are abbreviated and stormy… He received psychiatric treatment for a nervous breakdown in July, spending two months in Fairweather Rehabilitation Center… his instability is a double-edge sword. It is connected with his extreme motivation—his hostile feelings for the SA are as heartfelt as any I’ve encountered—and his tendency to slip into quasi-pathological sub-characters. The latter tendency, when trained, is clearly useful in an undercover operative but adds to his unpredictability. Stisky is essentially a gifted amateur. Nevertheless, in the course of his chance meeting with Ellen Mae Crandall, last August sixth, she showed a marked interest in him…

“I think we could break it down in three steps.” Claire told her father. They were sitting in the living room of Professor Rimpler’s apartment. Rimpler sat across from her, slumped over the dialed-up hump of the floor he used as a coffee table. There was a tray of liquors in crystal decanters on the table hump; the walls were dialed to light green, the light was adjusted to resemble the indirect shafting of sun through forest boughs. Claire sat on a confoam chair, her hands clasping her knees, watching her father with growing distress, thinking, He’s coming apart. “The first step,” she went on, trying desperately to engage his attention, “is to talk to this man Molt. He was one of their chief organizers. We can convince him that we’re on his side. Second, we release him and he goes to the technickis and speaks for us. Third, to show our good will, we make some concessions. We release the looters from detention, we do double-checks on the field strength around technicki quarters to make sure they aren’t getting extra radiation—I mean, why not? The whole thing’ll defuse.”

“What makes you think we’re on their side?” her father asked, casually.

She looked at him in shock. “What?”

“You heard me. Yes, the technickis are in fact being discriminated against, to some degree. I’ll tell you something else, Claire my dear—Praeger and his people have seen to it that blacks, Jews, and Muslims are no longer being advanced in Admin! Oh, yes! I know for a fact that he plans to weed them out under one pretense or another, when the blockade is lifted. There’s discrimination for you. But we don’t dare point it out—if Praeger falls, we fall. Things are at that kind of boiling point.” His voice dropped from brisk to weary, cynical, marking his shift in mood. He poured himself a tequila, mixed in lime juice and grenadine, then drank off half of it and stared dully into space. “The Ozymandias principle,” he said, mostly to himself. “The bigger the enterprise, the more ridiculous you look when you see it was all for nothing, when entropy makes a joke of it.”

Claire stood, and moved to sit beside her father; but he only hunched even more. He wore white shorts beginning to yellow; a button-up shirt opened to show the steel-wool hair of his chest; on his feet were decaying thongs. He smelled sour. His eyes focused only on his drink. He held the glass up to the light; the beaded crystal was transfixed by a beam of emerald.

She put an arm over his shoulders; they felt thin and bony. He shrank from her touch, and she dropped her arm. She spoke in a parody of a teacher’s recitation: “Dad—if a small meteor impacts the Colony’s outer skin, the break is sealed up with the Rimpler alloy. All through the hull is a layer of Rimper Alloy. If the alloy is kept at ninety-two degrees, it’s liquid; if the cold of space breaks in, it freezes instantly, fills the hole, restores airtight integrity… I make that little speech to the kids when I take them out to the hull observation station. Professor Rimpler made that alloy, I tell them, and he designed this home in space, and he’s always trying to make it better for them. There’s no alloy that reseals things if we break up in a civil war, Dad. We have to seal the civil breach. And it’s you people expect to do it. You have to go on viddy and talk to them. You have to patch up the holes for them.”