John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“Oh, God, air conditioning,” Julie said gratefully. They rode along a white crushed-shell road, between rows of palm trees, parallel to a glittering white-sand beach. The sea was a vast blue gem.

They drove through two checkpoints, past electric fences crested with barbed wire; under the unwavering gaze of CCTV cameras that rotated smoothly to watch them. Past guards with rifles.

Julie looked at him, and he squeezed her hand. He knew what she was thinking. That this might turn out to be a kind of prison for them.

Kessler said, “Charlie—they let us come and go from the compound as we please?”

“Absolutely. But they give you a list of things you can talk to the locals about. They speak a dialect sort of half Spanish, half English. They understand you, though.”

They were driving through landscaped estate grounds now, cacti and exotic plants he’d never seen, flowering on both sides. A fountain. A tennis court. But at intervals: concrete bunkers, showing the snouts of heavy machine guns and small cannon.

They passed through a gate, and into a kind of small village. Cottages, two cafés, two bars. They pulled up in front of a whitewashed cottage with red shutters and solar panels on the roof.

“This is your place,” Charlie said proudly. “Bigger’n your apartment in New York. Witcher really set it up nice for us here.”

They went into the cottage. Inside it was shady, cool, comfortable. Wicker furniture, an old-fashioned wooden four-poster bed. Julie lay back on the bed, took off her sunglasses, and threw an arm over her eyes. But Kessler knew she was listening as he and Charlie talked.

“Witcher’s okay,” Charlie was saying. “A little straight. A capitalist—but then so are you. He’s… You know—gets his money from a private cop company, in competition with the SA, and from patents on surveillance devices. His people developed camera birds. So sure, he’s straight. But he’s a good guy.”

“Why’s he do it? Why’s he fund the NR?”

“Not even Steinfeld’s sure. Witcher says he hates racists and anyway the SA’s his biggest business competition. But I don’t know. Thing is, you can trust him. You can feel it.”

“Steinfeld here?”

“No. He’s stuck in Europe. Maybe in deep shit… You’ll get the whole briefing later. There’s a guy coming, Jack Brendan Smoke.”

“Yeah. I read him. He was way ahead of everyone else—”

“He’s going to be working with you, to counter Worldtalk’s subliminals and the PR for… You’ll get it all after dinner.”

“Okay. But—” Kessler hesitated, not sure what it was he wanted to say. What was bothering him was, he supposed, simple disorientation. And worry. Could he really trust these people?

“Hey, Jim—” Charlie put his hands on Kessler’s shoulders. “You won’t have to stay in this place forever, but you got to understand: this is home! These people have been through it all—with Worldtalk or the SA or the fucking CIA. There’s a woman here who was extracted by Worldtalk—you can talk to her. I’m tellin’ you. The fences are to keep the enemy out, not to keep us in. You’re home, man. You’re home…”

Purchase was sitting in one of Worldtalk’s video conference rooms, thinking he needed to go to the enzymologist and have his stomach acid turned down again, when Fremont on Screen One said, “Look, let’s boil the problem down to its basics. We have journalists, congressmen, you-name-it—not too many, but then, any amount is too many—accusing the SAISC of anti-Semitism, of creating racial pogroms in the war zone, of misusing NATO funding, of—hell, everything.”

Chancelrik, on Screen Three, said, “Basically they’re hinting the SA chiefs are actual fascists, for Christ’s sake. Well in fact—I don’t know if you fellas saw this report—that there’s a group that calls itself the New Resistance responsible for—” He paused to read off a printout. “—thirty-five military attacks on SAISC stations and personnel in six European capitals, and according to this source they’re spreading propaganda calling the SA ‘Nazis’ outright.”

“Okay,” Fremont said, “that’s the upshot. But you note that ninety percent of the accusations have to do with things happening in the war zone. We can point up that things in the war zone come to us garbled because of the difficulty of getting clear information through the Russian blockade, all the antisat scrambling, you-name-it. Any thoughts on that, Purchase, my boy? Heard scarcely a peep from you.”

“Uh-huh. What I think is…” Purchase contemplated the faces on the screen—Fremont transmitted from LA, Chancelrik from Chicago, Barley from Miami. “…I think you’re on the right track, Sammy, and uh—” He thought desperately, managed, “I think we should suggest through our news-sheet editorializing channels that there’s a kind of prejudicial attitude here, behind these accusations, because, uh, our lady prez has come out as a supporter of the warzone policing program so, uh, basically what we have is the Democrats seizing on an issue, spouting a lot of hearsay and, uh…”

Something about the way Barley was clearing his throat a little too loudly into his headset made Purchase realize he was blowing it. Barley said, “I think—correct me if I’m wrong—I already brought up that point, remarkably close wording—”

In his humorous drawl, kidding him about it.

Purchase said, “Of course, sorry—I’m out of it today, little personal problem. Uh, in fact I’ve got to make a call about that, do you guys think—”

“Hey, you take as long as you want, Purchase, my boy!” Fremont said.

“Sure! Go ahead!” the other two chimed in.

“Thanks.” But he knew as soon as he was out of the room they’d say: Isn’t it a shame about Purchase, guy isn’t keeping it together anymore.

He stood up and put his screen on hold, then went down the hall to his office, thinking that maybe it was stupid to wait it out.

He’d been waiting for word from Swenson—or about Stisky. Confirmation that Stisky’s cover was blown. But maybe it was a mistake to wait. Maybe he should run— now.

He’d told himself he had work to do here. It was a crucial time. If he could find a way to sabotage the SA’s Worldtalk propaganda campaign…

No. He made up his mind. The risk was too great. He’d leave here, join the others in Merino. He was holding back out of sheer inertia, really. Habit. He’d come to the office every weekday barring holidays for eight years, and old habits—

The thought broke apart and spiraled into irony: Die hard.

Because when he stepped into the office he saw the two SA bulls in full armor standing to either side of the door. He saw them reflected in the window beyond his desk.

“Mr. Purchase,” one of them said. Wearing the helmet they wear when they come to take people away.

“Okay,” Purchase said. “I understand.”

Thinking, Try to call the cops? These guys had no real legal authority to do more than detain him, as long as he didn’t resist. But they’d never let him call the cops. They planned to take him somewhere quiet, and interrogate him, and eventually kill him.

He turned to face them, smiled, and said, “Let’s go.” He started to go out the door between them—then stopped and snapped his fingers as if just remembering something. “Uh—you mind if I get my wife’s picture from my desk?”

One of the guards turned his opaque faceplate toward the desk. “There’s no picture on the desk, sir.”

“It’s in the drawer,” he said, turning to the desk casually as he could manage, his heart pounding, sweat starting out on his forehead. “I don’t like to have her on the desk there staring at me accusingly all day, so I keep her in the drawer—” Little chummy laugh there. “But I’d like to have the picture”—opening the desk drawer—“to look at now and then.” Reaching in.