John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Poor Ellen Mae.

Thinking of the boy dead in the ditch, Swenson took off his shirt and lay down on the bed. They opened their bags and black boxes, and they put a plastic breathing mask over his face, and he smelled what sleep smelled like.

…He couldn’t remember a transition. The mask had come down, and he’d gone out and they’d done the extraction. Now he felt as if his head were a balloon half filled with air, flaccid, beginning to fill up, and as it filled, a sensation grew taut in his head. Pain. Another sensation in his chest.

Iron filings. That was the taste in his mouth as he woke, looking at the room through a layer of gelatin. Hearing a technician say, “He’s coming out of it sooner than the others…” But they had it. He could see it in Ellen Mae’s face, looking at him in horror, shaking her head, telling Sackville-West it must be a mistake.

He heard himself talking. “I betrayed you as much as I betrayed Steinfeld when I let them do it, do the extraction… And I did let them. Understand that. Tell Rick. I could have found a way out. I could have run! But it was my confessional.” Aware of the guard standing close beside the bed, taking handcuffs from his belt. The man was left-handed. His gun was on his left hip.

“I cared about you, Ellen Mae,” he heard himself say. “Come and say good-bye to me. I only did what I was trained to do. So come and say good-bye.”

Sackville-West shrugged.

Ellen Mae moved around to the left side of the bed. The guard on Swenson’s right opening the handcuffs. The blurriness was going from his eyes.

My arms don’t work very well, he thought, as he lifted them to embrace Ellen Mae, felt her wet cheek against his. But they’d work well enough. They’d taught him about those guns. Purchase had sent him for weapons training. Poor Purchase, they’ll get him now.

Sackville-West coming around to the left side of the bed to tug at Ellen Mae.

The sensation in his chest was a keening, a violin playing high C. The violin player stopped playing but the string continued to resonate as the player tightened it with the peg, tightened the string, made it tighter, the string about to break, so tight it’s going to break, stretching… to…

He reached up and took the gun from the guard’s holster and heard someone shout a warning as he pressed the gun between himself and Ellen Mae and pulled the trigger twice.

…stretching up to break. Snap.

As the pellets exploded he thought, I should have shot Sackville —

Didn’t even have time to complete the thought before the thunder consumed him. The thunder of a single snowflake hitting the ground.

Had she slept? Claire wasn’t sure. Yes, she must have, because her father was gone from his sleeping bag, and if she’d been awake she’d have noticed his going.

Claire sat up and looked around at the stainless-steel and fiberplas panels of the cafeteria kitchen area. They’d policed the trash yesterday so the room was mostly clean, but the air was fuggier than ever. The lights were dialed low for sleeping. Angie and Judy were bedded down under the counter, sleeping in the same bag. So they were lovers now. So what.

Then she had a sinking sensation, followed by a rasp of annoyance, as she realized she had her period. She could feel it, sticky, a little wet. Great. There’d be blood spots in the sleeping bag, blood on her underwear, she didn’t have another pair. And, goddamn it, she didn’t have any tampons. There just weren’t any left. She reached down to the bottom of her sleeping bag, where she’d stashed a roll of toilet paper. She used a swatch of it to clean blood from the inside of her thighs, then rolled some of the soft synthetic paper around two fingers, making a makeshift sanitary napkin, and positioned it. She sighed, and unrolled her jumpsuit which she’d used as a pillow—and climbed into it, then went to see if they’d turned off the water, so she could rinse out her underwear.

“Oh, thank you, Gridfriend,” she muttered, when she saw the toilet was unstopped. Some technicki plumber had finally earned his rating. She used the toilet, then tried the suction flush. Working! The water in the tiny bathroom’s tiny sink’s tiny tap was running, too. But not much longer, she thought as she rinsed out her panties. The hot-air hand-dryer was running, so she used that to dry them. Mostly; they were still damp when she had to put them on because someone was banging on the door. She climbed into the jumpsuit, difficult in the constricted space, and went out. It was Angie. “Everything’s working today.”

“They turn off the water tomorrow, your father says.” Angie pushed hurriedly past her into the bathroom.

“Does he know that for sure?” Claire asked through the closed door.

“You tell me. We woke him up, asked him to come to tell us what he thinks Admin will do, or how we get to supplies. But he’s not much use. Talks crazy half the time. Everybody’s getting mad at him, they think he’s faking.”

“They’re stupid.” Claire said.

What now? Find her father? But he made her mad, too…

She started to walk away and heard Angie shout, “You bastards!”

And then the Pleasant Lady spoke from the wall speakers. “Corridor D, your water has just been shut off. Your electric power will follow and finally airflow. The air you have is bad, but it’s not as bad as having no air at all. It’s time to come home now. Those of you who are sports fans might be interested to know that tomorrow is the playoff for the opening of the technicki teams Jai Alai champ series. Those who come out today will receive a full pardon and free passes to the games. Those who do not come out will be arrested, tried, and sentenced.” Maternal regret in her voice; hurts me more than it hurts you. She repeated the message in technicki.

“Pricks,” Claire muttered.

There was a banging behind her, and Angie burst out of the bathroom, her face red, her eyes blinking too often, the way they did when she was trying to hold her anger in check. “Your father is lying to us on purpose!” she shouted. “He said we would have water today.”

“You said yourself he was only guessing.”

Angie shouldered Claire aside, and Claire stared after her in the shock of sudden realization: It won’t be safe for me among these people much longer.

When Claire returned to the place below the microwavers where her sleeping bags had been, she saw Bonham and her father coming down the aisle together. Were they drunk? The way they walked…

No, her father was hurt, and Bonham was helping him walk.

Not such a bad guy, Bonham, she thought. And then she wondered if she was only trying to prepare herself for having to be his whore.

Professor Rimpler was grinning at her, and that made his smashed lip, his swollen eye look worse. His feet were bare, and one of them looked swollen.

“Dad…” Feeling her voice cracking. “What did you do this time?”

She and Bonham helped the old man onto his sleeping bag. He immediately turned onto his side, away from her, sighing.

Bonham took her arm and led her a little ways away, looked around. They were alone. “I think he provoked them on purpose. They were already hostile but… he told them they were going to die, that the bulls hold all the cards…” He shrugged. “Then he started to babble. Something about a hermit crab, we’re all hermit crabs fighting for a shell, we should give up and crawl away… Molt hit him. I tried to stop them but it was all too fast: someone hit him in the foot with a gun butt. Then your father started laughing, hysterical laughter. They moved away from him. You know what I mean? I think your father is exaggerating his… his mental problem. Was maybe having a nervous breakdown, but now he’s playing it, real cagey about it. So they don’t expect much of him.”