John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

It was all in his voice. He felt her squirm a little with pleasure.

“Well, you know, I love Rick. I really believe in my heart he’s been chosen by God for a special mission. I’d never say this in front of him because he won’t have anyone putting on airs for him, but I truly believe he’s the most important man in the world today. Not because of what he is—but because of what he’ll be. But… I have to have some life of my own, outside of Rick. You know—a little more life than Our Work.” She made a soft sound of guilt and indecision. “I don’t know—maybe I’m wrong to want it—”

Again, he knew his cue. “Not at all.”

“But—Gramma always said, ‘Follow your heart.’”

He listened to her in wonder. She could talk blithely and with expertise—about demographic surveys, clandestine cellular organization, and security enforcement techniques. And out of the same mouth she spouted this incredible corn.

“Does—does Rick disapprove when you have a private life?”

“Well—he disapproves of, you know, anything intimate that happens outside of marriage. And I have to be very careful about getting married because it’s a media event.”

“Of course. But if you are discreet…”

He could almost feel her blush. “Yes, but… it’s a sin.”

Uh-huh, he thought.

He didn’t believe for a moment that she or Crandall gave a damn, as it were, about sin. Except for the cameras. Not in any real way.

“I understand,” he said gently, pressing her hand. “But—surely God understands your special predicament. And in any event, Jesus said even the worst sinners are forgiven if they genuinely ask. You’ll be forgiven.”

“Oh…” Just melting now. He’d said it right.

She bent and rested her head on his shoulder, tilted up just enough.

He let go of her hand, slid his right arm around her waist, and bent to press her wiry lips with a kiss.

He had been afraid he’d be unable to get it up for her. But his imagination performed the miracle for him. In fact, her angular body was not so different from that copper-skinned boy’s, the boy later found in a ditch with so many holes punched into him, like Saint Sebastian transfixed by arrows… It was the image of Saint Sebastian writhing in martyrdom, the arrows so stiff and masculine in his wounds, that made Swenson stiff and masculine, made it possible to transfix her, to pretend, to pretend within the pretense.

How our special pathologies do serve us, he thought, as he pressed her back onto the bed.

When Rickenharp came out of it he sat up—and almost fell over with the weakness.

“Too soon.” Carmen said, pressing him back. He lay back and felt better. He was still weak, but the gnawing soul-horror was gone. All he felt now, besides weak, was hungry.

The world shook around him, like it was laughing, a growling sort of laugh, and then he put it together. He was in the back of a truck. They were on the flatbed. The light came from the space between the tailgate and the canvas cover over the rusty slats.

It was bluish light, and he thought it might be dawn. The air on his face was cold, but warmth seeped up from the engine, and a faint scent of methane.

“I’m hungry as a bastard,” he said. His throat was dry, he realized as he tried to talk. It came out a rasp.

But she understood. “We haven’t got any food. Maybe next stop, if we’re lucky. Anyway, your fever seems to be gone.”

“Where are we?”

“Northern Italy. North of Naples. You’ve been out for days. Willow…” She paused and he saw the flash of her teeth. “Willow wanted to dump you, more than once. I was inclined to agree with him. Keeping you isn’t practical. But Yukio says you’re some kind of samurai. He wants you along.” She shrugged.

Italy? Fucking crazy. He closed his eyes and visualized sausage tied up in strings and platters of steaming pasta.

He could smell the sea in the breeze now, as they took a curve, and a fresh wind hit them.

What was it she’d said?

Willow wanted to dump you. I was inclined to agree with him.

They’d almost thrown him overboard into the Mediterranean. No doubt for the “greater good.”

“My fans,” he muttered.

“What?”

But be didn’t have anything to say to her.

To hell with her.

Ellen Mae was gone when Swenson woke. There was a silk rose lying on the pillow beside him. The brandy-eggnog glass was gone. He had, literally, a bad taste in his mouth.

Swenson sat up and his head throbbed. Wan sunlight filtered through the yellow-curtained windows to either side of the bed.

A discreet tap came from the other side of the door. He groaned inwardly, thinking, Not her again so soon!

But he put on his robe and said, “Come in.”

It was a uniformed houseboy, an old man with age-blurred eyes, silent except for his labored breathing as he wheeled in the breakfast tray and poured the coffee. Somehow, Swenson was surprised that the old man wasn’t black. But he thought, Of course not, they wouldn’t trust black servants, they could be infiltrators.

The old man shuffled out and Swenson lifted the old silver cover off the plate. Bacon and eggs and biscuits. None of it looked synthetic. It would be interesting to see what they tasted like.

But he almost gagged on the bacon. You could really taste the animal in it.

There was a note in an envelope on the tray.

He assumed it was from her, but it wasn’t.

Welcome, John! Meet me out at the front gate at 0900.

So Watson was here. Swenson glanced at his watch. Almost eight.

He got up and dressed, muttering, “Oh-eight-hundred. Shit.” But he almost ran to get there on time.

Outside, he found a sky the color of granite, the sun a blur of brass behind the overcast. And the massive posts of the original front gate were granite, old granite torn three centuries before from the ancient New England hills, much of it painted bright yellow and red by lichen. The old stone fence to either side of the gates had fallen down in places. But it didn’t matter; a few feet in from the stone fence the steel-mesh barricades loomed, two of them, crested with concertina wire.

A pair of German shepherds paced restlessly between the steel fences—seeing Swenson they threw themselves against the links, making the fence ring like chain mail as he approached the first checkpoint. He expected the dogs to bark, but they didn’t. They snarled, furrowing their muzzles, fixing their yellow glares on him. He remembered the strong taste of the bacon, and his stomach lurched.

His shoes crunched in the agate cinders of the drive. A helmetless SAISC guard looked at him with a dilution of the same look the dogs gave him. The guard stepped out of a small wooden shack on the other side of the hurricane-fence gate and said, “Name, please?”

Stisky.

He almost said it. And what frightened him was this: it hadn’t been an accident. He badly wanted to say it.

The guard was blond and blue-eyed. The blue eyes were narrowed now. Because Swenson had hesitated.

“John Swenson.”

The guard nodded, his eyes still narrowed. “The colonel’s gone on already. Said you could catch up with him at the chapel.”

The flat blue eyes regarded him steadily, the glare gone, only unflinching appraisal now. The eyes were lined with white-blond lashes, long and soft as a small boy’s.

“Where’s the chapel?”

The guard pointed. It was off to the northeast, half-hidden in the oak trees that fringed the grounds. Looking at it, Swenson felt a spike of ice through his belly.

The chapel was beautiful. And he was afraid of it. Moving like a wooden soldier, he began to walk toward it.