John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

The plane tilted a little, and Smoke’s glass of club soda slid away from him. He let it go. The bartender caught the glass before it fell.

Witcher glanced at the bartender, then said, “Go ahead on up to the bed compartment and have a rest, Jerry, if you would.” When he was gone, Witcher said, “The hell of it is, Jerry’s been with me twenty-two years. Loyal as they come. We should be able to say anything in front of him—but with extractors…” He made a dismissive gesture. “Loyalty means nothing.”

Reading the printout, Smoke took a deep breath and let it slowly out. Then he smiled. “Steinfeld, Hard-Eyes, Carmen, Willow, Levassier, Hernandez… Who are these others?”

“Refugees from FirStep, apparently. The girl claims to be Professor Rimpler’s daughter, Claire Rimpler. She’s joined the NR. She says her father was murdered on the Colony. We’ve had no confirmation of that from Colony Admin. The other guy—this Bonham—has some kind of deal he’s trying to make with us. I’m not sure what it is, yet… There’s a story behind this Colony refugee thing. We can use it at the news conference.”

Smoke turned to the crow in its cage on the floor. “You hear that? Steinfeld, Hard-Eyes, some of the others—they got through!” The crow tilted its head and seemed to shrug as it ruffled its feathers.

Smoke turned to Witcher. “How’d they do it?”

“What Steinfeld calls “pincer Coordination.” The units trapped behind the lines hit the SA roadblocks at the same time Steinfeld’s people hit them from the outside. Two-thirds of the NR trapped in Paris got through and got away. They’re camped somewhere in the French Alps now. There’s a list of the confirmed casualties here.”

Smoke nodded, but he didn’t look at the list.

“How long will we be in New York?” Smoke asked.

“Four days. We can’t stay long—the public exposure is a risk for you. You’ll be heavily guarded, of course, but…”

Smoke nodded. “I know. Where do we go after New York?”

“The Antilles. A little island where… you’ll see.”

“This man Kessler is there?”

“He is, yes, with his wife. You and he’ll be working closely together—at least, that’s what Steinfeld’s hoping.”

“In some ways Steinfeld’s very… practical. But he’s also a wild-eyed idealist like a college kid of twenty. With his fantasy of restructuring the Grid itself. Giving the media back to the people. Raising consciousness in one global flash…” Smoke shook his head.

“You think it can’t be done?”

“I think any real social restructuring is unlikely short of nuclear holocaust. But…” He smiled wanly. “But of course we’ll try.” He looked out the window, at New York City. “Why do you do it, Witcher? You can’t be making a profit on this. You don’t strike me as an, um…”

“As the humanitarian type? I’m not. I admire brave men, but… But mostly, it’s business. Three times the SAISC has tried to take over Witcher Airlines, Witcher Computers—three times each. The SAISC is a corporate predator. They started it—I’m just fighting back.”

Smoke shook his head. “That’s not the reason.” Was Witcher the twenty-first century’s Oskar Schindler? Or was there something else, something hidden several layers down?

He tried to see what was at the very tip of the Worldtalk Building. The plane was tilted, circling the south end of the island, swinging in toward Queens, and he felt as if there were an invisible string connecting the tip of the building and the plane, the plane spinning on the string like a child’s toy.

“Well, now,” Witcher said, “you’re a sharp man. Steinfeld said you were. You’re right: it’s not the real reason. Someday I’ll tell you the reason, maybe. When it’s safe.”

A blank TV screen behind the bar flickered and then lit up with a fish-eye image of the cockpit. The copilot turned to look at them. “We have clearance, sir. We’re making our final approach.”

Witcher nodded at the screen. “It’s about time. Double-check to see that our security meets us.”

“Yes, sir.” The screen went blank again.

Smoke said, “Of course, the good news from Paris is also bad news. Because it means the Second Alliance have Paris to themselves. Just so much more captured territory.”

“They had it already—too many of the French were with them…” Witcher shrugged. “And the rest of Europe is falling in step.”

“There are plenty of French who are not collaborating. And Steinfeld’s still in France.” Smoke murmured, “And Hard-Eyes. And the others. And they haven’t given up.”

The plane passed over the city, and Smoke had a glimpse of the traffic sweating through the avenues… The urban organism humming with life…

“This city is very much alive,” Smoke said softly, to the crow. “But then, so was Amsterdam, not so long ago.”

A man and a little girl were strolling down a white beach, in hazy sunshine, in the heart of the twenty-first century. The Caribbean surged lazily beside them, white capping crystalline blue. The man was tall and dark and gaunt. A crow perched on his left shoulder, a blot of blackness on the beach, its head ducked against the sun. The girl, who walked between the man and the lapping lacework fringe of the surf, was about nine or ten—no one was quite sure of her precise age. She was dark brown, her wavy black hair caught up in the bright yellow scarf common to the women of the island of Merino. She had hold of the belt loop on the man’s left hip, holding it as if she were holding his hand. It was too warm to hold hands.

The man and the little girl wore sandals made from tire rubber and hemp; he wore khaki shorts and a blue silk shortsleeved shirt; it was an expensive shirt but he’d lost three buttons from it and hadn’t bothered to replace them. The girl was wearing a yellow cotton shift.

The man was Jack Brendan Smoke. The little girl was named Alouette.

Smoke had adopted her a few weeks earlier. She was a child of this island. Her parents had died a year before, in a hurricane.

“Do you think I’m a clever girl?” she asked him. Her island accent was strong, but her English was good.

“Yes. You are the cleverest girl your teachers know. But you mustn’t hold yourself above the other students.”

“I won’t. But if you think I’m clever, why don’t you tell me things?”

“What things?”

“What your work is. Why you came here. What your people are doing. I know they’re doing something special.”

He hesitated. Then he decided. “All right. You know about the New-Soviets?”

“Yes. Well… I’ve heard of Soviets, in Russia. I didn’t know they were new…”

“The New -Soviets came into power after Yeltsin and his successors failed to keep Russia thriving—Russia was weak from corruption, in the years after Putin. They couldn’t pay the people who kept the country together. They had to find a way to strengthen the country again. Sometimes war stimulates economies. The NATO nations were aggressive, they argued about the oil near the North Pole and… all that gave them a good excuse. So, you know what they did?”

“They invaded Eastern Europe because they were afraid of the aggressiveness of the Yankees. The Yankees were very aggressive. The Yankees were stealing their oil.”

“That was their excuse. There was arguing about NATO presence in Eastern Europe and the oil in the Arctic Circle—the Russians said it was theirs. Moscow believed—or pretended to believe—that the allies were building up a force to use against them, to seize the oil. The New-Soviets said ‘a good offense is the best defense.’ Do you know why there wasn’t a nuclear war?”