A Song Called Youth (68 page)

The cop returned fire with a machine pistol spitting three-shot bursts; the gang punk went spinning and falling; another kid running, dropping the organ satchel, jars rolling, smashing, freeing a kidney, a bladder, a heart, all nice and fresh, the organs skidding nasty wet across the floor to slide into a heap of grimy paper and plastic cans, vital human body parts becoming just more trash; the SA cop swinging the RR club down on the boy’s head. Recoil Reversal stick splitting the kid’s head open like a burst organ jar; his brains splashing, Stoner gagging, kid crumpling, cop catching the others, firing at their backs, running after them into the next car as the train pulled up . . . second cop cornering two other boys, smashing their faces into their cranial cavities . . . bodies slumping, cop straightening over them . . . 

It was quiet for a moment as the train paused in the station . . . and as the cop turned with bloodied club toward Stoner and Brummel and Lopez.

A faceless cop, his head hidden in the helmet; a distorted reflection of the interior of the subway car in its visor . . . 

Stoner got to his feet, turned to follow Lopez and Brummel toward the door. Lopez made it through, but Brummel had to stop when the cop pointed a machine pistol at him and boomed, “HOLD IT, NIGGER, OR YOU’RE DEAD!
”

Brummel said mildly, “I look like I’m a teenage kid wearing gang colors, officer?”

“YOU LOOK LIKE A NIGGER AND MAYBE YOU WAS HERE TO SELL ’EM DRUGS. NOW TURN AROUND, PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE FUCKING WALL, OR YOU’RE DEAD!”

Stoner muttered, “So it’s gone that far now . . . ”

“Yeah,” Brummel said. “A long time ago.”

“SHUT UP, NIGGER. FACE THE WALL, HANDS BEHIND YOU.”

With a practiced motion the cop used his free hand to replace his stick on his belt and unhook handcuffs from the belt, almost in the same motion, opening them for Brummel.

Stoner’s heart was banging, his mouth papery, but he managed, “He’s—he had nothing to do with them. He’s a lawyer—”

The cop’s enigma-chilled visor turned toward Stoner, the muzzle of his gun coming Stoner’s way too. Stoner thought,
Oh, no, don’t do it, Brummel!
when he saw Brummel reach into his coat, draw the little gun It looked so small, like a cap gun, it couldn’t possibly penetrate that armor, he was a fool . . . 

But then Brummel’s gun hissed and a tiny hole appeared in the belly of the cop’s black-armored outfit and Stoner thought,
Explosive bullet with armor-piercing Teflon coat.

The cop screamed, the gun in his hand spitting fire but the shots going wild, smashing out windows. And then his armored uniform ballooned outward, swelling in a split second to an almost spherical shape, grown five times bigger with his blood and the force of the explosion that was going off in his gut . . . blood spurting in a thin stream from the hole in the suit . . . 

Stoner ran behind Brummel, out of the car and up the stairs, thinking, again,
So it’s gone that far . . . 

A Suburb of Chicago, Illinois.

“First of all,” the walleyed prizewinner said, “it’s a feeling of power like you never had. I figure that’s especially the case here, see, because it ain’t like you’re doing it in self-defense, or in a war where it’s in a hurry—you got time to, you know, think about it first . . . ”

Spector was watching the walleyed guy on Internet TV. The guy was tubby, was wearing a stenciled-on brown suit, one of the cheap Costco printouts where the tie blurs into the shirt collar. And green rubber boots. Spector puzzled over the green rubber boots till he realized they were intended to look military.

A ghost image of another man’s face, ragged-edged, began to slide over the AntiViolence Contest winner’s; the new face was bodiless, just a face zigzagging across the image with kitelike jerkiness. A punky face, a rocker; leering, laughing. His tag rippled by after his face like the tail after a comet:
JEROME-X.

It was video graffiti, probably transmitted from a shoplifted minitranser.

Annoyed, Senator Spector hit the switch on his armchair, turning off the console. The thin screen slotted back into the ceiling. In a way, the program was his responsibility. He’d felt bound to take stock of it. But watching it, the gnawing feeling had begun in his stomach again.

Spector stood up and went to the full-length videomirror in his bedroom. It was time to get ready for the interview. He gazed critically at his fox face, his brittle blue eyes. His black crew cut was shaped to hint at minimono styles—to let the youngsters know he was hip, even at fifty.

He wore a zebra-striped printout jumpsuit. It’ll have to go, he decided. Too frivolous. He tapped the keyboard inset beside the mirror and changed his image. The videomirror used computer-generated imagery. He decided he needed a friendlier look. Add a little flesh to the cheeks; the hair a shade lighter. Earring? No. The jumpsuit, he told the mirror, would have to be changed to a leisure suit, but make its jacket stenciled for more identification with the average American. He’d never wear a stenciled suit out to dinner, but just now he needed to project a man-of-the-people image. Especially as the interviewer was from the underGrid. Both Spector’s Security adviser and his media secretary had advised him against giving an interview to an underground media rep. But the underGrid was growing, in size and influence, and it was wise to learn to manipulate it—use it, before it used you.

He tapped out the code for the suit, watching it appear in the mirror, superimposed over his jumpsuit. A cream-colored leisure suit. He pursed his lips, decided a two-tone combination would be friendlier. He tapped the notched turtleneck to a soft umber.

Satisfied with the adjusted image, Spector hit the print button. He shed the jumpsuit and waited, wondering if Wendy had contacted his attorney, Heimlitz. He hoped she’d hold off on the divorce till after the election. The console hummed, and a slot opened beside the glass. The suit rolled out first—flat, folded, still pleasantly warm, smelling of chemicals from its fabrication. He pulled it on; it was high-quality fabricant, only slightly papery against his skin. He used PressFlesh for his cheeks, tamping and shaping till his face conformed with the image of a friendlier Senator Spector, the ’Flesh appearing to blend seamlessly with his skin. Cosmetics lightened his hair, widened his eyes a fraction. Then he went to look over the living room. Shook his head. The room was done in matte black and chrome. Too somber. He had to take great pains to avoid anything remotely morbid or sinister, because of the AntiViolence Laws issue. He dialed the curtains to light blue, the rug to match.

The console chimed. Spector went to it and flicked for visual. The screen lit up with the expressionless face of the housing area’s checkpoint guard. “What is it?” Spector asked.

“People here to see you in a van fulla video stuff. Two of them, name of Lerman and Baxter, from a channel called UNO. Citident numbers . . . ”

“Never mind. I’m expecting them. Send ’em up.”

“You don’t want a visual check?”

“No! That would offend. And for God’s sake, be friendly to them, if you know how . . . ”

He cut the screen, wondering if he was being cavalier about security. Maybe—but he kept a .44 in the cabinet beside the console, as a security backup. And there was always Kojo.

Spector rang for Kojo. The Japanese looked small, neat, harmless as Spector issued his instructions. Kojo’s official title was secretary. He was actually a bodyguard.

Flawlessly gracious, Kojo ushered the two underGrid reps into the living room, then went to sit on a straight-backed chair to the left of the sofa. Kojo wore a blue printout typical of clerks and sat smilingly with his hands folded in his lap; no tension, no warning in his posture, no hint of danger. Kojo had worked for Spector only two weeks, but Spector had seen the Security Agency’s dossier on him. And Spector knew that Kojo could move from the bland aspect of a seated secretary to lethal attack posture in under a quarter of a second.

The “alternative programming” reporter wore “rags”—actual cloth clothing, jeans, T-shirt, scuffed black boots. Silly affectations, Spector thought. The interviewer introduced herself as Sonia Lerman. The big black guy, Baxter, was her techi. A silver earring dangling in his left ear; his head was shaved. Spector smiled and shook their hands, making eye contact. Feeling a chill when he met the girl’s eyes. She was almost gaunt; her dark eyes were sunken, red-rimmed. Not a happy woman. Thin brown hair cut painfully short. But she and Baxter seemed neutral; not hostile, not friendly.

Spector glanced at Kojo. The bodyguard was relaxed but alert.

Take it easy, Spector told himself, sitting on the sofa beside Sonia Lerman. His body language, carefully arranged, read friendly but earnest; he smiled, just enough. Baxter set up cameras, mikes, fed them into the house comm system for transmission to the station.

The girl looked at Spector. Just looked at him.

It felt wrong. TV interviewers, even if they intended to feed your image to the piranhas during the interview itself, invariably maintained a front of friendliness before and after.

The silence pressed on him. Silence, the politician’s enemy. Silence gave people time to think.

“Ready at your signal,” Baxter said. He looked
big,
hulking over hand-sized cameras on delicate aluminum tripods.

“Now, what shall we talk about?” Spector asked before the cameras were turned on. “I thought perhaps—”

“Let’s just launch into it,” she broke in.

He blinked. “No prep?”

She smiled thinly. Baxter pointed at her. She looked at the camera. Serious. “I’m Sonia Lerman, for the People’s Satellite, interviewing Senator Henry Spector, one of the key architects of the AntiViolence Laws and an advocate of the AVL television programming . . . ”

For a while the interview was standard. She asked him how he justified the AntiViolence Laws. Looking at her solemnly, speaking in an exaggeration of his Midwestern accent (the public found it reassuring), he gave his usual spiel: Violent crime began its alarming statistical growth trend in the 1960s, continued to mount in the 1970s, leveled out in the 1980s, dropped in the 90s for a few years, and then feverishly resurged in early twenty-first century. Columbine. No respect for law. Countries that had serious deterrents had less crime. Long-term incarceration and lots of appeals wasn’t serious. And . . . so on.

“The AntiViolence Laws are a heck of a deterrent,” Spector said. “Violent crime is down sixty percent from five years ago. It continues to drop. In a few years the Security checkpoints and the other precautions that make modern life tedious—these may vanish entirely. Oh, yes, because of our sped-up judicial pace, a few people a year are perhaps unjustly convicted. I’ve insisted on full funding for DNA testing—in the cases where a DNA test is possible. But there will be a few unjust executions—that’s the price we pay. The majority of the people are better off, and it’s the majority we must administrate for.”

“Even accepting that people are better off,” Sonia Lerman said, “which I don’t, how does that justify the barbarity of the executioner’s lottery, the AVL TV?”

“First, it’s more deterrent. If it’s barbarity, well, that’s why it works. The humiliation and the awfulness of being executed on TV—well, if criminals see it every day, it scares them. Also, the program gets the public involved with the criminal justice system so that they identify with society and no longer feel at odds with policemen. And it acts as a healthy catharsis for the average person’s hostility, which otherwise . . . ”

“Which otherwise might be directed at the State in a revolution?” she cut in, her neutrality gone.

“No.” He cleared his throat, controlling his irritation. “No, that’s not what I meant, as you know.”

He was even more annoyed by her interruption, and her tone, when she broke in. “The phrase ‘healthy catharsis’ puzzles me. Lottery winners are winning the right to beat or execute a convict on public television. Ever actually
watch
the program ‘
What It’s Like
’, Senator?”

“Well, yes, I watched it today . . . ”

“Then you saw the way people behave. They giggle when they’re getting ready to hang the convict. Or shoot them. They’ll give out with a happy whoop. A man or a woman, gagged in stocks; the winner blows their brains out . . . and they cackle over it. And the more demented they are, the more the studio audience cheers them on. Now you call that
healthy?”

Stung, he said, “It’s temporary! The release of tension . . . ”

“Two of the lottery winners were arrested, tried, and executed for
illegal
murders, after their participation in ‘AntiViolence’ programming. It seems fairly obvious that they develop a permanent taste for, killing, reinforced by public approval . . . ”

“Those were flukes! I hardly think . . . ”

“You hardly think about anything except what’s convenient,” she snapped, “because if you did, you’d have to see that you, Senator, are no better than a murderer yourself.”

Her veneer of objectivity had cracked, fallen away. Her voice shook with emotion. Her hands clenched her knees, knuckles white. He began to be afraid of her.

“I really think you’ve lost all . . . I don’t think you’re thinking about this calmly. You’re hysterical.” He said it as coolly as he could manage. But he felt fear turning to anger.

(Feeling, in fact, he was near losing his own veneer, his cool self-righteousness, feeling he was near snapping. And wondering why. Why had all the skills he’d developed in years of facing hostile interviewers suddenly evaporated? It was this fucking AVL issue. It haunted him. Nagged him. At night it ate away at his sleep like an acid . . . and the damned woman went on and on!)

“Everyone who has been killed, Senator—their blood is on your hands. You . . . ”

Some inner membrane of restraint in Spector’s consciousness flew into tatters, and anger uncoiled in him like a snapped mainspring, anger wound up by guilt. (Fuck the camera!) He stood, arms straight at his sides, trembling. Shouting. “Get out! Get
out!”