A Song Called Youth (35 page)

Swenson looked appropriately gratified.

And now, lying beside Ellen Mae, he thought,
They don’t know who I am. They think I’m Swenson. I’m Stisky. And yet they know who I am better than Steinfield does. They know me.

God help me.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

James and Julie Kessler sat on the sofa together, watching television. This hotel room had a holocube above the screen, for the holo channels, but Kessler had turned the holo function off. He didn’t like seeing miniature 3D people caper through deodorant commercials on the other side of the coffee table. With the ordinary TV, you could maintain your distance more easily; when they were three dimensional, they were more intimidating, and you almost felt compelled to buy whatever it was they were selling—or to shout at them to leave you alone. And of course they couldn’t hear you.

So they were watching the low-income transmissions. “What time is it?” Julie asked.

Kessler felt a twinge of irritation. “What difference does it make? We’re here at least till tomorrow night. Nothing changes. We aren’t expecting anyone and we can’t go out.”

“I just like to know,” she said gently, touching his arm.

He put his hand over hers and sighed. “Sitting around and relaxing is making me tense.”

“At the risk of annoying you again—
exactly
what did Purchase say last night?”

He shrugged. “Basically, we wait. They’ll protect us in the meantime. They’ll contact us.”

“I don’t mean basically.”

“Well—he said the hotel is owned by his people. He said Worldtalk’s people are looking for us. Worldtalk has been taken over by the SAISC. The SA has its own intelligence service. The New Resistance people are setting up a kind of ‘underground railway’—only it’ll be by Lear jet—to some island in the Caribbean.”

“I understand that much but—
what
island? And what’ll it be like there? I mean—it could be a prison for all we know.”

“I don’t think so. Steinfeld was . . . I just believe him. We’ll have a cottage and be protected. I’ll work with his people to develop my screening program. Purchase has gotten his hands on some of the program through Worldtalk. They can use it to counteract the SA’s propaganda—that’s something valuable to him. They wouldn’t brutalize us when they need my cooperation. That wouldn’t make sense . . . But they won’t tell us where the place is precisely, because if the SA finds us before we’re moved, then, uh . . . ” He shrugged.

She squirmed against the cushions, her hand tightening on his arm. “Maybe we should . . . I don’t know . . . go off on our own somewhere. Like Canada. Maybe we’re taking risks with these people that—well, what do we know about them?”

“I was impressed with Steinfeld. The feelings we have about people
have
to matter. Anyway, I’ve known Charlie for years—he’s part of it, and he’s going with us.”

“It couldn’t be,” Julie said, “that you like the fact Steinfeld is taken with your program? An ego decision?”

He opened his mouth to deny it, and then thought better of it and said, “Maybe that too. So what? What difference does it make where we go? Running is running, hiding is hiding.”

She didn’t say anything for a while.

He tried to take an interest in television.

Channel 90 was occupied with the televising of a National Spirit Rally. Five hundred grade-school children in red, white, and blue marched across a football field in formation, creating an eagleshape with the flags they carried. A hundred more in the stands above lifted composite cards to make up a picture of the maternally beneficent—kind but firm—face of Mrs. Anna Bester, president of the United States of America. The children sang the hit pop tune “We’re Gonna Kick That Russian Butt!” until a large holo of Mrs. Bester appeared on the stage, smiling and waving—

Kessler changed the channel.

Channel 95 showed the young country-pop singer, Billy Twilly, winding up a song with a grave endorsement of “Anna’s new program.” As his band played softly behind him, he strolled across the stage with his head down, one hand in his pocket, like a humble man a little embarrassed by the great responsibility that has been thrust upon him. He stopped, looked up into the lights and said, “Anna’s new program is more than just a new ID system. It’s safety—safety from the threat of terrorism for every American. Last year a thousand people were killed by terrorist bombs around the country. The only way we can be sure that the bombing is stopped is by identifying everyone, clearly and without any mistake. Some call it submitting to authority—I call it friendship—and faith. Faith in Anna Bester, and in the United States. Now, I’d like to sing—”

Kessler-changed the channel, muttering, “I’m not sure anyone
needs
my program—some of this stuff is so . . . ”

“It’s not always so obvious,” Julie said.

Channel 98 was a technicki channel . . . 

“ . . . 
Soisezim, whudduhfiugyuhmina
 . . . ” the comedian said, running a hand nervously along his quadruple-Mohawk. “
Neesud, hey
—”

Kessler changed the channel.

It was a CGI cartoon. Grommet the Gremlin, grinning toothily, his sine-wave eyes sparking, flew in loop-the-loops around a tight formation of Russian skatebombers, nipping in to effortlessly pluck rivets from their wings.

The wings fell off, and the planes hung for a moment in the air, as if unable to decide to crash. The Russian pilots looked in consternation at one another, and one of them said, “I told you, comrades, we should’ve got planes built in America!” And then the cartoon plane spiraled down and exploded into flames, the pilot’s head and arms flying bloodily off to bounce into the air, Grommet the Gremlin using a pilot’s severed bloody-stumped arm like a baseball bat to whack a severed head into—

Julie changed the channel.

On Channel 100 a man wearing a headset whispered confidentially, “I never miss
anything
on the Grid! A Gridfriend brand portable satlink puts me in touch with—”

Kessler changed the channel. Commercial. A young woman in a bikini strolled across her sundeck. The man beside her looked nervously around and said, “You sure it’s safe to sunbathe? I mean—”

“Sure, silly! We’ve got Second Alliance Security here! It covers the whole development! There hasn’t been a sniper here since the SAISC came around!”

A trustworthy male voice intoned, voiceover, “Second Alliance International Security Corporation—The Only Real Security is Full Security!”

Kessler turned the TV off.

They sat for a moment staring at the blank screen.

“You’re depressed,” she said.

He shrugged. He squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I have to tell you something. The reason I’m worried about where we’re going . . . .”

He looked at her. He knew. He felt a wave of joy, a wave of sheer dread, a wave of anxiety, a wave of joy . . . 

As she said, “I think I’m going to have a baby.”

Hard-Eyes and Jenkins were awash in fog. They were walking across a bridge over the Seine; the morning fog was thickest here, rising from the river to hide most of the city from them. The sun was a hot pearl in the east.

“Trouble with these black-market assholes,” Jenkins said, “is you can’t find the bastards in the same place twice in a row. Where he is yesterday, he isn’t today. But with any luck . . . ”

“Can he get coffee?”

“Claims he can,” Jenkins said, shrugging. “Claims he can get genetic pharms, too. Morph-trance, epinephrine, norepinephrine, neurotransmitters . . . ”

“How’s he get this stuff?” Hard-Eyes asked, looking around—not seeing much but billowing fog.

“Certain brigades, American army spikes the food with combos of that stuff to make the men more combat-ready. Lots of adrenocorticotrophic hormone . . . Some of the experimental troops are outfitted with injectors. Little box strapped on near the kidney, shoots ’em up with what they call chemcourage. Some real berserker shit. They’re experimenting, trying to get a combination that makes them careful but not paranoid, aggressive but not likely to attack their COs—”

“Sick shit to do to a soldier.”

“Yeah. Anyway, this guy works in the Yanks’ camp.”

“You calling them Yanks, too? You’re a fucking Yank yourself, Jenkins, me neggo.”

“Yeah. But—you see enough of this shit, you don’t wanna be a Yank. I mean—Yank or Russian either. They can
all
kiss my ass.” They paused, listening. Distant, hollow thuds. A long shivery metallic shriek. A quick succession of booms. Silence.

“How close does that sound to you?” Jenkins asked nervously.

“A few miles away. Hard to tell in the fog, but it sounded like it was coming from north of the city.”

“Fuck. Fighting moving back to the city. Just fucking great.”

“Hell with this coffee dealer. Let’s see if Steinfeld’s back. They said last night he’d be back.”

“They said he’d be back every night for a week.”

“Let’s look in . . . Shit, here comes a patrol truck.” They saw the black silhouette of an SA patrol truck, just a squarish bulk in the fog, coming onto the bridge.

Jenkins was over the bridge rail first, Hard-Eyes a half-second later. They hung from the rail, heads below the stone edge, the column of a bridge lamp hiding them, the toes of their boots on a two-inch ledge taking some of their weight.

The truck moaned slowly nearer . . . and nearer. The river susurrated below them. Hard-Eyes could feel its cold breath on his back. The river’s splashing seemed amplified by the overarching bridge. A spotlight came on, atop the truck’s cab, as it drew close; the truck slowed, and the small spotlight beam slashed like a saber through the fog and flashed over them, and Hard-Eyes thought,
They’re going to see us.
There was a second of uncertainty. In that second, he realized two things: first, that he and Jenkins must not be taken. The SA was dragnetting anyone who couldn’t be definitely identified as French, US Army, or a soldier of the NATO forces. And even the French were suspect if they were not registered with the Front National, or if they were Jewish, Muslim, or Communist. Those taken vanished into the SA’s Center of Preventive Detention. The SA was said to be using an extractor for some, torture for others. There were rumors of exterminations, but there was no proof. And there were no investigative journalists looking into it. Invoking their NATO-granted power of martial law, the SA had simply closed down the local Internet news sites, and the few remaining print publications. The TV transmitters had been destroyed by the Russians. If Hard-Eyes and Jenkins were taken, the SA would soon know whatever they knew about the New Resistance. There was no way of keeping anything back from an extractor.

So, in that second, Hard-Eyes knew that if they were seen, he and Jenkins would have to jump into the river.

His second realization was, they would probably not survive the river. At this time of year it was high and cold. Exposure would kill them or would drag them down till they drowned.

And that’s why he was NR.

Because this . . . 

. . . the truck passing, slowing, searching for them with its spotlight, the confrontation with the predator, the imminence of a mortal choice . . . 

. . . this was real.

The truck came to a stop. The spotlight beam kept moving.

The light passed over the stone railings, swept past Hard-Eyes and Jenkins, lifted to hold for a moment on the black metal statuary, sweating with fog, mounted on columns along the rail. As if these figures from mythology were objects of suspicion.

And then the truck rolled on.

They waited, fingers freezing to the stone balustrade, till the truck’s red taillights were completely swallowed by the mist. Then they climbed stiffly over the rail and, thrusting numb fingers into coat pockets, they walked on, side by side, saying nothing.

But inside himself, under the layer of silence, Hard-Eyes had a buzz on.

By the time Jenkins and Hard-Eyes reached the safe-house, they were both hoping Levassier had gotten some food in. Their meals had been cut to once a day, and the once had not come for the past two days. They found Levassier on the third floor of the safe house, which had become an infirmary.

The old pile had been built in the mid-nineteenth century and hadn’t been renovated since the mid-twentieth. You passed through two old cast-iron doors, brass knobs in the center of each, and into a courtyard, conscious you were being watched as you approached, and watched as you entered, though you saw no one watching at all; no cameras, no one at windows. The white-painted wooden shutters on the windows were kept open. The curtains were not drawn. Lights showed, even on the dormer windows of the red tile roofs. Every care was taken to make the house look as if it kept no secrets. The SA used roving cameras, the bird-drones; if a camera should flutter up to the window, hover like an oversized aluminum hummingbird to peer electronically through, it would see kerosene lamps, or the few electric lights if it was during an accredited electricity ration period for the area. The remote-control operator looking through the bird’s camera-eye, gazing in rapt boredom into a TV screen back at the SA center, would see a banal, shabby room, containing, perhaps, a wan child listening to the propaganda broadcast on the radio, or two old women commiserating. Levassier, Steinfeld’s adjutant, fretted that some alert inspector might notice that the rooms seemed too small for the volume and style of the house. He might realize there were other rooms he wasn’t seeing.

Having passed inspection twice, Hard-Eyes and Jenkins stepped through a closet, through a hidden door, and into the infirmary, where Levassier was said to be with his patients.

Levassier was a doctor, and an old-fashioned radical—yes, a
Marxist
—but Steinfeld had said, “I forgive his politics in gratitude for his morality.”

The strange truth was, politics were irrelevant in this particular political battle. And this was another reason Hard-Eyes remained in Paris.

The infirmary was a long, windowless room, fuggy with continuous human occupation and bad ventilation. Three walls wore faded lily-patterned wallpaper, water-stained at the upper corners; the fourth wall, built by NR personnel to cut the original room in half, was an ugly thing of cinder blocks and drippy mortar. There was barely room to pass between the end of the second-hand hospital beds and the papered wall. The room was lit by two dim bulbs in the cobwebbed ceiling, at either end of the room. As Hard-Eyes and Jenkins entered Levassier was cursing the lack of adequate light. He was bending over a man wearing a chest cast in the middle of the three occupied beds.