John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

He saw things, as he did things to her—to her and to the copper-skinned young priest he was unable to disentangle from Ellen Mae.

He saw—

She was a hard-bodied woman, tensile and angular, and Swenson saw himself rearing above her—and then he saw a hammer pounding a nail into a board.

And now a hammer pounding a nail through a man’s palm.

Pull back from that riven palm, to show the man’s arm on the raw wood of the cross, the sag of his body against the upright piece. Back up, flashback now: he saw the First Sorrowful Mystery. Swenson, as Father Stisky, had taught Nicaraguan children how to say the Rosary. He’d had to explain how the recitation of each “decade” was accompanied by meditation on the fifteen events of the Mysteries. The Joyful Mysteries, the Sorrowful Mysteries, the Glorious Mysteries. Sometimes the children were frightened when he taught the Sorrowful Mysteries. Perhaps frightened by something in the good father’s eyes. The Sorrowful Mysteries told of the agony of Jesus… The First Sorrowful Mystery was Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, a copper-skinned, Hispanic Jesus praying for the sins of the world. On to the Second Sorrowful Mystery, in which Jesus is scourged by the guards and the spiteful Jews who condemned him to Crucifixion. On to the Third Sorrowful Mystery, and Swenson saw Jesus carrying the cross up the hill to Calvary. On to the Sorrowful Mystery of the Crucifixion, Jesus nailed to the cross, the nails going into His palms, into the wood, the hammer driving the nails, driving His blood into the flesh of a tree, driving the nails into the wood, driving the nails, pounding in, in, until the blood—

He screamed as he came, a scream of anguish.

He saw the two Nazis, kneeling in the chapel, saw the bullet holes appear in their backs like stigmata. They’re dying for their cause, though they know it not, he thought.

And then it faded as Ellen Mae, beneath him, gasping, asked, “Are you all right?”

“Yes. It’s taken care of.”

“What? What’s taken care of?”

“I—I don’t know. I’m not thinking straight.” He smiled, tried to make out she was making him muddled with desire. “You devastate me.”

What had he meant by It’s taken care of? He’d been repeating something.

Something Watson had said. They’d been in the kitchen, coming in through the back door. Ellen Mae was up making bread from scratch. It was something she did in the mornings. She said it was her “meditation time.” She hadn’t looked at Swenson at all. She was kneading dough, and she glanced up at Watson and said, abstractedly, “Did you take care of those awful men?”

Watson nodded. “It’s taken care of.”

“Oh, good. I don’t like those sort of little backwoods Hitlers around, they upset Rick. Would you like some coffee?”

Listening, Swenson had been sure she hadn’t meant, Did you send them away? She had meant, Did you kill them? Casually as a farmer’s wife asking if he’d slaughtered a pig for supper’s pork chops.

Why was he bothered by the execution of the NeoNazis? Vile men, after all, by any measure. The world was better off without them…

That morning, he and Watson had sat in the kitchen breakfast nook, just the two of them, drinking coffee, eating sweet rolls.

Now, more and more, he felt as if he were watching himself on a screen. Stisky watching Swenson, and Swenson wasn’t Stisky anymore, and Stisky wasn’t sure he could control Swenson…

“I’ve had my eye on you for a while, John,” Watson had said, smiling his most avuncular smile.

Swenson searched Watson’s face for double-meaning, saw nothing but the smile.

“We monitored you at the Service. When Rick was preaching on the video, there and, ah… well, Old Sacks did it, really. Via wires in your robe. Test your response. Everyone to be admitted to the circle was monitored. Of everyone there—you showed the most positive response. Your pleasure centers were working overtime. Your pulse was up where it was supposed to be and… I won’t go into all the details. Suffice it to say, we feel you’re rated to be a deacon in the Second Circle.” He had the look of a father who’s just told his teenage son he’s getting a new Mercedes for his birthday.

Swenson looked appropriately gratified.

And now, lying beside Ellen Mae, he thought, They don’t know who I am. They think I’m Swenson. I’m Stisky. And yet they know who I am better than Steinfield does. They know me.

God help me.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

James and Julie Kessler sat on the sofa together, watching television. This hotel room had a holocube above the screen, for the holo channels, but Kessler had turned the holo function off. He didn’t like seeing miniature 3D people caper through deodorant commercials on the other side of the coffee table. With the ordinary TV, you could maintain your distance more easily; when they were three dimensional, they were more intimidating, and you almost felt compelled to buy whatever it was they were selling—or to shout at them to leave you alone. And of course they couldn’t hear you.

So they were watching the low-income transmissions. “What time is it?” Julie asked.

Kessler felt a twinge of irritation. “What difference does it make? We’re here at least till tomorrow night. Nothing changes. We aren’t expecting anyone and we can’t go out.”

“I just like to know,” she said gently, touching his arm.

He put his hand over hers and sighed. “Sitting around and relaxing is making me tense.”

“At the risk of annoying you again— exactly what did Purchase say last night?”

He shrugged. “Basically, we wait. They’ll protect us in the meantime. They’ll contact us.”

“I don’t mean basically.”

“Well—he said the hotel is owned by his people. He said Worldtalk’s people are looking for us. Worldtalk has been taken over by the SAISC. The SA has its own intelligence service. The New Resistance people are setting up a kind of ‘underground railway’—only it’ll be by Lear jet—to some island in the Caribbean.”

“I understand that much but— what island? And what’ll it be like there? I mean—it could be a prison for all we know.”

“I don’t think so. Steinfeld was… I just believe him. We’ll have a cottage and be protected. I’ll work with his people to develop my screening program. Purchase has gotten his hands on some of the program through Worldtalk. They can use it to counteract the SA’s propaganda—that’s something valuable to him. They wouldn’t brutalize us when they need my cooperation. That wouldn’t make sense… But they won’t tell us where the place is precisely, because if the SA finds us before we’re moved, then, uh…” He shrugged.

She squirmed against the cushions, her hand tightening on his arm. “Maybe we should… I don’t know… go off on our own somewhere. Like Canada. Maybe we’re taking risks with these people that—well, what do we know about them?”

“I was impressed with Steinfeld. The feelings we have about people have to matter. Anyway, I’ve known Charlie for years—he’s part of it, and he’s going with us.”

“It couldn’t be,” Julie said, “that you like the fact Steinfeld is taken with your program? An ego decision?”

He opened his mouth to deny it, and then thought better of it and said, “Maybe that too. So what? What difference does it make where we go? Running is running, hiding is hiding.”

She didn’t say anything for a while.

He tried to take an interest in television.

Channel 90 was occupied with the televising of a National Spirit Rally. Five hundred grade-school children in red, white, and blue marched across a football field in formation, creating an eagleshape with the flags they carried. A hundred more in the stands above lifted composite cards to make up a picture of the maternally beneficent—kind but firm—face of Mrs. Anna Bester, president of the United States of America. The children sang the hit pop tune “We’re Gonna Kick That Russian Butt!” until a large holo of Mrs. Bester appeared on the stage, smiling and waving—