John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“You believe in life after death, Hard-Eyes?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t believe in it at all, but he didn’t want to say that to Rickenharp just now.

“I do.” Sniff.

“What a surprise.”

“I mean, something’s up with this life. It’s weird we’re alive. So it’d be weird if we’re…” Sniff. “…just alive for this little blip of time, man.” Sniff.

“Will you stop sniffing that crap? Dammit, you’re gonna make some mistake… Seriously, you oughta give that mesc crap up.”

“Tell it, Hard-Eyes: it’s brain rot. Stay real, stay real, neggo! Brain dam -aaaage!” He grinned. His features were lean and smudged and hollowed and wiry, and when he grinned, it pulled his face into something that would have given chills to a horror-flick makeup artist.

But when Hard-Eyes didn’t respond to the grin, it faded, and Rickenharp shrugged and said, “Yeah, well—I gave up the stuff twice before; last time it was for a long time. But here I figure it doesn’t matter if I fuck up my health, because how long am I gonna have my health here? We’re likely to get popped before we get outta here, I don’t know if anybody clued you in on that classified secret.”

“Hey, you know something? Steinfeld says we don’t talk unless necessary when we’re out, because the fashes got listening posts everywhere, and not just radio, they use boom mikes, too. Okay? If you think you can shut up on that crap you’re packing in your sinuses.”

“You pissed off at me?”

“No.”

“I mean, we never follow that rule—”

“Rickenharp—”

“I know. Shut the fuck up. Right?”

Hard-Eyes smiled. They pushed on, passing through a region of flattened buildings, seeing the cat-sized gray rats ooze through the broken ends and endless jumble, and Hard-Eyes couldn’t keep from thinking that Besson’s death was a bad omen. That the ax was falling, and he’d just heard the whistle of its coming.

They turned a corner, and there was the blackened wasteland of the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. “There’s the park,” he whispered. He pressed himself to the corner of a building and peered across the Avenue Simon Bolivar at the park. A layer of black smoke hung over the pitted earth. The street was cluttered with cars, some burnt-out, some overturned, all covered with a layer of ash. Nothing moved. As they looked, the darkness seemed to settle in, running the shadows together.

“Okay,” Rickenharp said. They moved across the sidewalk, picking their way through rubble from a looted storefront, brick chips and glass crunching under their feet (too loud, dammit!). They felt vulnerable out in the avenue as they hurried on, crouching between the cars, jogging for the park.

Hard-Eyes thinking, We’re moving like the fucking rats. Becoming like them.

Then they were in the park, trudging between the craters, through the rubble, smelling the char. Seeing a group of disjointed skeletons, gray-white in a blackened, wheel-less US Army jeep.

“Shit,” Rickenharp said, “there’s no goddamn landing pod.”

But there was. They found it at the far end of the park, beyond a copse of trees burnt like used wooden matches, shriveled and black; beyond hummocks thrown up by shell blasts; beyond hulks of exploded armor and a bone-dry pit once a duck pond. In the one relatively level field remaining in the park, a squat, six-legged landing pod, like some myth-sized mechanical spider, sat steaming in a crater rim kicked up by its own retros. A little ways away, deflated, was an anomalous swatch of woven silvery fabric; the shriveled bag of the parachute-balloon that had slowed the pod’s descent. The pod was just a silhouette against the skull-colored ruins at the edge of the park; its slatted ports giving out downslanting beams of red light near the thick, charred heat shield.

They could smell its fuel, its hot metal—and they saw shadowy figures moving near its jointed legs.

The shadow-people moved out from under the pod. Three people, walking toward them on what was left of the asphalt path.

Hard-Eyes moved off the path; Rickenharp moved where Hard-Eyes moved, following his lead. It had been that way as long as they’d known one another.

They squatted behind a hump of crater edge, watching the strangers and looking around. Why hadn’t the SA Fashes come to check out the pod? Maybe they were busy. The Parisian NR’s ranks had grown; about half of every group of prisoners they liberated joined them. The city looked dead, but a great deal went on in it. Steinfeld gave the Fashes a lot to do.

The three strangers walked nearer. The one in the lead carried a flashlight, its beam of blue-white swiveling over the scarred earth like a blind man’s cane. Hard-Eyes checked his rifle, switched it to auto, raised it, at the same time squinting through the dark, trying to see what uniforms the strangers wore.

Rickenharp whispered, “Yo, Hard-Eyes, what if there’s Jægernauts out at the edge of the city like Steinfeld said? If they’re active, they’ll pick up the heat register from the landing pod. They’ll come.”

“Ease your ass, hodey. You’re all paranoid. It’s the blue… Shh. ”

The strangers on the path had come parallel, were walking past.

Hard-Eyes stood, raised the assault rifle, and barked, “Freeze! Drop your weapons!”

The strangers froze. Two sidearms fell to the gravel.

Hard-Eyes moved in closer and around in front of them, keeping the rifle leveled at a woman and two men. He saw in the glow of the flashlight the young woman had short-clipped, soft-looking auburn hair; a pixyish face; strangely doll-like lips; and big, intelligent-looking, dark eyes. She was short and slender, wearing a gray Colony staff one-piece jumpsuit. She looked familiar, too.

“We’re neutral,” said the thick man beside her. He had a thick nose, small eyes, and an ash-colored crew cut. He wore a pilot’s jumpsuit, and a heavy pack on his back. “Refugees from FirStep. The Colony.”

“Who, uh, are you with?” the second man asked. Thin guy, brown-haired, sad eyes.

Rickenharp for once was struck dumb. He was staring at the girl.

“Train that light at the ground,” Hard-Eyes said.

She tilted the light downward. He moved in to retrieve their guns. Two small pistols. One of them for explosive pellets.

“Let’s have the pellets, too,” Hard-Eyes said.

The skinny one glanced at the others, then handed over a canvas packet the size of a deck of cards. Hard-Eyes stowed the weapons in his belt. The skinny guy took a step toward him—

Rickenharp popped the CAWS butt into the hollow of his shoulder, took a bead on the lanky one’s chest, and rasped, “Don’t you move that neutral ass again, friend.”

The man became a statue. But a talking statue. “Ah, right. I’m Frank Bonham. This is Brett Kurland—our pilot. And this is Claire Rimpler. She’s the daughter of Dr. Benjamin Rimpler.”

Hard-Eyes clicked. “I thought I’d… Yeah, okay.” He lowered his rifle. “’S’okay, Harpie,” he told Rickenharp.

Rickenharp kept his gun level. “Say what?”

“Said put away your piece. I recognize her.” He was embarrassed to say it. “I did a paper on the Colony-administration system for a sociology class. I watched an interview with Rimpler and his daughter. That’s her. She was a kid then. They’re Colony. Neutral.”

“Neutral is bullshit.” But Rickenharp lowered the shotgun. He went on, “Neutrality doesn’t mean shit if they meet the SA. The fashes don’t care if you’re Russian or American or Australian or a dog. In Paris, anyway, if you’re not fash, you’re the fashes’ enemy.”

“Fashes?” the girl asked.

“Tell you all about it on the way,” Hard-Eyes said, looking at the sky. He’d heard something…