John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

And then the truck rolled on.

They waited, fingers freezing to the stone balustrade, till the truck’s red taillights were completely swallowed by the mist. Then they climbed stiffly over the rail and, thrusting numb fingers into coat pockets, they walked on, side by side, saying nothing.

But inside himself, under the layer of silence, Hard-Eyes had a buzz on.

By the time Jenkins and Hard-Eyes reached the safe-house, they were both hoping Levassier had gotten some food in. Their meals had been cut to once a day, and the once had not come for the past two days. They found Levassier on the third floor of the safe house, which had become an infirmary.

The old pile had been built in the mid-nineteenth century and hadn’t been renovated since the mid-twentieth. You passed through two old cast-iron doors, brass knobs in the center of each, and into a courtyard, conscious you were being watched as you approached, and watched as you entered, though you saw no one watching at all; no cameras, no one at windows. The white-painted wooden shutters on the windows were kept open. The curtains were not drawn. Lights showed, even on the dormer windows of the red tile roofs. Every care was taken to make the house look as if it kept no secrets. The SA used roving cameras, the bird-drones; if a camera should flutter up to the window, hover like an oversized aluminum hummingbird to peer electronically through, it would see kerosene lamps, or the few electric lights if it was during an accredited electricity ration period for the area. The remote-control operator looking through the bird’s camera-eye, gazing in rapt boredom into a TV screen back at the SA center, would see a banal, shabby room, containing, perhaps, a wan child listening to the propaganda broadcast on the radio, or two old women commiserating. Levassier, Steinfeld’s adjutant, fretted that some alert inspector might notice that the rooms seemed too small for the volume and style of the house. He might realize there were other rooms he wasn’t seeing.

Having passed inspection twice, Hard-Eyes and Jenkins stepped through a closet, through a hidden door, and into the infirmary, where Levassier was said to be with his patients.

Levassier was a doctor, and an old-fashioned radical—yes, a Marxist —but Steinfeld had said, “I forgive his politics in gratitude for his morality.”

The strange truth was, politics were irrelevant in this particular political battle. And this was another reason Hard-Eyes remained in Paris.

The infirmary was a long, windowless room, fuggy with continuous human occupation and bad ventilation. Three walls wore faded lily-patterned wallpaper, water-stained at the upper corners; the fourth wall, built by NR personnel to cut the original room in half, was an ugly thing of cinder blocks and drippy mortar. There was barely room to pass between the end of the second-hand hospital beds and the papered wall. The room was lit by two dim bulbs in the cobwebbed ceiling, at either end of the room. As Hard-Eyes and Jenkins entered Levassier was cursing the lack of adequate light. He was bending over a man wearing a chest cast in the middle of the three occupied beds.

Levassier was an intense, birdlike man, big-nosed and pale, his eyes magnified in thick rimless glasses. He sniffed continuously from a cold he’d had all the time Hard-Eyes had known him. He had the pinched lips of a zealot, and little sense of humor. He wore a white doctor’s coat now, probably for its psychological value to the patients.

“ C’est la merde, ” he muttered, “ C’est la merde. ”

Hard-Eyes found a lighter in his pocket. It was nearly empty, there wouldn’t be another, so he hoped Levassier appreciated it: he crossed to the middle bed, bent over the patient, and flicked the flame alive, throwing a small pool of yellow light.

Levassier said, “Eh?” and looked up, annoyed at the distraction.

“Light for your work,” Hard-Eyes said.

“You will eat soon enough; do not cuzzle up to me.” Levassier said.

“That’s cuddle or cozen, ” Hard-Eyes said, grinning.

“ Arrete! You frighten zuh bird! It makes droppings when it is afraid! Disgusting to have it here, but he won’t let us take it away…”

Hard-Eyes saw the bird then, a big black crow perched on the gray tube-steel frame at the foot of the bed. It cocked its head and caught the reflection of his lighter flame in its eyes. It cawed, showing a snippet of pink tongue. Hard-Eyes switched off the small flame and put the lighter away. He looked at the man in the hospital bed more closely now.

“Smoke?”

Smoke nodded, smiling very faintly. “It’s good to see you’re still with us, Hard-Eyes. I’ve only been here three days from Brussels. Waiting for Steinfeld. No one’s told me a thing.”

“You don’t look the same,” Jenkins said. “I mean, you don’t look like you.”

“I’ve put on weight. They cleaned me up. Cut my hair.” Hard-Eyes stared at Smoke, thinking he had a striking face, now that the grime and beard was gone. A little pinched, the eyes deep-set, but aristocratic; something illuminated about it. The word saintly came into his mind, and in sheer embarrassment Hard-Eyes tried to banish it, but it wouldn’t go. Saintly.

Hard-Eyes looked away. “Who else have we got here?”

A girl, asleep or comatose, was lying on her back, her chest bandaged, her mouth open, looking parched. Her hair was spiky.

“That’s Carmen.” Smoke said. “Accidental gunshot.”

The third patient looked over, hearing that. He was gaunt, big-eyed, his face mobile, too elastic. On the verge of madness, Hard-Eyes thought. He was sitting on the edge of a bed. Perhaps he wasn’t a patient at all. He was wearing a leather jacket. His hair was short, streaked, but it had lost its shape, whatever it had been. He looked vaguely familiar. From the earring, jacket, the hunched attitude on the edge of a bed, Hard-Eyes judged him to be a retro-rocker of some kind. He had the habitual sullen posture of a rocker missing his stage, and missing the activity of his scene.

“That’s Rickenharp,” Smoke said. “He hasn’t said anything in three days. Since he came in with her. He shot her himself. Accidentally. Apparently he wasn’t sure who it was, but he hadn’t intended to shoot, and his finger twitched on the trigger.” Smoke shrugged with his eyebrows. “Amateur with a gun. He’s making a great thing of not forgiving himself. He’s tried to maintain a vigil. Tried not to sleep. Gave in last night, poor fellow. He’s very… dramatic. But then, Rickenharp’s a stage person.”

Smoke was speaking so that Rickenharp would hear him. Maybe trying to jolt him out of his funk.

“Rickenharp…” Hard-Eyes repeated. “The guitar player?”

Rickenharp looked up at him, unable to conceal his gratitude, and a friendship was born.

“What you have to understand, dear Claire,” Rimpler was saying, “is that we are all trapped into what we are by what we thought we were.”

“Dad…” But she didn’t know quite how to say what she needed to say.

They were in her father’s apartment, in the Admin quarters of FirStep, the Colony, and they had just finished watching InterColony evening news. A report on the shortage of air filters due to the blockade, causing worsening air quality. Small protest fires set here and there about the Colony were exacerbating the condition. (Claire thought, The air here is fine. Admin has a different ventilation system. The best filters go to Admin.) Reports of more rioting. Arrests. Three rioters hospitalized. The man Bonham was everywhere, throwing fuel on the fire, somehow the police never touching him, though they had arrested most of the other leaders.