John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

There had been a Security station by the mall. The 9th Precinct, Belle called it. It was burned out and abandoned after the first riots, and a panicky Security bull had deserted his post without clearing out the station’s small armory. The rebels had found four 30.06 rifles—semiautomatic, gas operated with computerized sighting scopes—and a crate of shells; they’d found one .22 pistol with a magazine of thirty explosive bullets. They’d found a launcher for teargas canisters and four guns that fired only rubber bullets.

“Most of the Colony bulls don’t like to use their guns because of the danger of ricochet damage to the ship’s life support,” Bonham had said at the bonfire meeting at the edge of the Open. “But the walls are heavily reinforced. The bulls are too careful. We don’t have to be. Most areas there’s no real danger to life-support systems from bullets, or even explosives. The station was built to weather a variety of internal disruptions.”

Thinking about that statement now, Claire wondered if she should try to convince them that the Colony was more fragile than they knew. But she was Admin; she was barely tolerated. She and her father were constantly watched, and Claire didn’t feel safe unless Angie was with her. So Claire thought, I wish you luck. And she said nothing.

She buttoned up the collar of her coat and thrust her hands quickly back into its pockets.

The cold that seeped in from space, when colony maintenance decayed, had a whole different quality from cold on earth. It gave you a sensation in the bones that seemed to resonate with thoughts of death, absolute death, final death.

The fucking bulls, she thought, sitting down on the crate. The fucking SA bulls had shut down the general heat conduits. There were local heat generators drawing on sunlight collector stations. But it wasn’t enough. It was suppoed to be for emergencies.

Now and then a friendly lady-voice, an Admin Voice, asked them in technicki to remove the barricades and come back to work, so that Admin could turn full heat back on and begin work restoring air quality…

And what was her father doing? Chuckling. Rimpler strolled up to Claire, hands shoved in his coat pockets, collar turned up. Looking around and chuckling. “It’s all been an experiment,” he explained. He spoke mostly in non sequiturs now. “It’s a great experimental organism, the Colony. When it goes wrong you learn something from its death, and you say, ‘Aha. Why didn’t I see this before?’ This—” He pointed at the barricade. “This is arteriosclerosis. You want to know why I’m not angry about what they’re doing to the thing I made—because we did it, we grew it, we crossed the orange tree with the parasitic vine… I’ve been angry. Praeger used to make me angry. Remember?” Chuckling. “Sometimes I still feel it. But it’s not just anyone’s anger. If I’m anything, I’m a refined man.” She saw he’d put on his greasy bathrobe over the overalls they’d given him. His hair was matted, his chin a cactus, his teeth yellow and going green. “There is something exquisite in the delicious, intricate rage of a refined man. The rage that soars! The rage that writes Damn All Children on every balloon released from the Venusian Palace in Disney City! Maybe I should have made this place into a sort of big amusement park, my dear… Yes, the next one shall be a…” And he wandered off, as if his feet were following the train of his free association.

Claire stared after him. She wanted to find a place to cry, just to get it out. My father’s gone insane, and I don’t think he’s ever getting better.

Someone was striding over to her.

She looked up. It was Bonham.

She looked down.

“We’ve got the microwave working in the cafeteria,” Bonham said. “There’s hot food. You can go if you want. Your father’s there.”

“Thanks,” she said woodenly, then stood and turned to go.

He held her with his tone when he said, “You look pretty unhappy. Things could be worse. The technickis wanted to ransom you.”

“Admin wouldn’t give up a toothpick for us.”

“That’s what Molt told them.”

Claire glanced at Molt, who was sitting on a torn mattress near the fire, holding the pistol he’d used on the guards. He was looking at the wall graffiti like an archaeologist trying to puzzle out an obscure hieroglyph.

She snorted. “I’m surprised he spoke up.”

“We had to ask him what he thought. He’s changed. He used to be… boisterous. I heard him speak twice since coming here. Twice. Both times to answer questions.” Bonham shook his head. “It shows what torture does.”

She said nothing. She waited for him to let her go. He was in charge here.

“You want out,” he said suddenly. Sudden and soft, a whisper.

She looked at him.

He answered her unspoken question. “Yeah, out of the Colony. Off. Down. Earth. ”

She kept looking at him, waiting. He leaned toward her. He was too lean, too hungry, and his breath smelled of canned stew.

“Claire—I can get you out. I’m going myself.” He started to glance over his shoulder, then realized it looked craven, and stopped the motion.

“The blockade,” she said.

“There’s a way past. It’s arranged. If I take someone—it’d be dangerous, but I have a pass to get to the docking bays. There’s a way.”

“Why? Why risk it to take me?”

“I watched you for a long time.” He hesitated, looking for a way out of the awkwardness of his desire. There was no way out, so he said it bluntly, “I wanted you. I want you now.”

Her heart was thudding. Her stomach coiled and uncoiled and coiled.

Out. Off. Down!

That was the thudding.

But with him. That was the coiling sensation. Revulsion.

He’d sold them out. She knew that and had nearly told the others. Now she was glad she hadn’t. Because she wanted out.

Out.

“I can’t go the way they want me to.” Bonham was saying. “I had a warning from someone on their side—The SA’s going to take me if I go back their way, for brainwashing. Hardcore extraction and conditioning. If we go back my way, we can use the NR for an escape route.”

“What’s the NR?”

“New Resistance. Antifascists.”

She snorted. “Do they know who you sold out to?”

His face went blotchy red. “I—it was because the place is doomed. It’s going to die. You and I know it. So I do what I have to, to get off.”

Off.

“Is there… a bargain we have to make?”

“An understanding.”

“Okay,” she said, hating herself for the first time in her life. Down.

After a moment she added, softly, “I do want to go.”

To Earth.

The message was for Watson, but Ellen Mae was the only one in the room when it came in at Cloudy Peak Farm. The main console was in the living room, its screens looking alien in their glossiness against all that wood under the deer antlers and the badger pelt. She was walking through on her way to the kitchen to make the bread, her mind sorting details for the upcoming Service, and the console lit up just as if her passing by had wakened it.

She glanced over the message, saw it was coded. No one else here so she used the password. The console scanned her retina, then gave her the message. It was for Watson, and she almost lost interest and then her eye caught a name— Swenson.

She read it all carefully then.

It was from Purchase. Requesting the presence of John Swenson at the Worldtalk Building in New York. Some executive there had met Swenson, had taken a liking to him, wanted to make him permanent liaison between the SAISC and Worldtalk, this meeting very important to facilitate smooth acquisition of Worldtalk, urgent that Swenson come to New York immediately…