A Song Called Youth (77 page)

“Certainly, sir. This way.”

They went down the hall to a padlocked double door. Chilroy opened the lock, removed the chains, and drew his side-arm. “The man is dangerous. He’s under sedation, and he’s handcuffed to a pipe, but . . . ”

Watson nodded. Inside, they found an emaciated American soldier named Hayes sitting on the floor, cuffed to an iron pipe that ran floor-to-ceiling, staring at the barred window of the old storeroom. His left hand was bandaged; he’d lost several fingers. His eyes were red-rimmed, his hair thatchy. He twitched.

“His name is Hayes, sir.”

“And the Army doesn’t know where he is?”

“Not so far as we know. He’s AWOL.”

Watson said sharply, “Hayes!”

Hayes looked at him. Then at his cuffs, then back at Watson.

Watson could guess what Hayes was thinking.

“I see why you drew your gun,” Watson muttered.

“Yes, sir. He’s a killer. He’s from one of those drug-enhanced units. He’s quieter now that we took him off the amphetamines and hormones the American military had him on. But . . . ”

Hayes murmured something—not to Watson or Chilroy or to himself, but, it seemed, to the shaft of light angling down from the window.

“He talks to a bird, Colonel. An imaginary bird. A parakeet. One of our patrols found him wandering the streets, talking to this imaginary bird, in English. We ID’d him with the DNA tag.”

“I see.”

He might be too far gone to use. But it would take a while for the drugs to really wear off completely. A better diet, a detoxification program, and probably something could be done with him.

Looking at Hayes, Watson felt that, indeed, something could be done. They’d have to rebuild much of his personality, in any case. And, of course, he’d need a new face.

Colonel Watson felt a queasy
déjà
vu,
a sense of destiny unfolding. This man was to be his weapon.

Hayes growled deep in his throat like a whipped cur that had never been broken.

“I think he’ll do nicely,” Watson said.

Karakos walked moodily into the barn, past the men rolling the small, bullet-scarred copter back into place. He climbed the rickety wooden stairs to the radio room, hoping to find Claire.

But it was this man Bonham who was on his mind.

“I talked to Pierce before he died,” Bonham had said that morning in the hold. “I was helping out in the infirmary and . . . I was the last one to talk to him. You look surprised. You thought he was dead, right? You were in a hurry to get to that radio, seems like, so you were sloppy. He told me: You shot him. There could only be one reason for that.” He lowered his voice. “You’re Second Alliance, my friend.”

“I ought to kill you for that insult.”

“Don’t play the game with me, Karakos. Pierce wasn’t delirious. He was sure. So am I. But it’s okay. You think I like this cornball operation of Steinfeld’s? I don’t care about politics, man. I’m sick of this scene.”

Karakos waited, listening. Wondering if he could kill this man here, make it look like an accident. No one would mourn him much. Bonham was a skinny, flabby, rat-faced man—what he had become had made him more rat-faced, somehow, than he would have to be—and he was easy to dislike.

“I’m sick of being held prisoner,” Bonham said. “I want to go back to the States. I figure you can help me. Get me a pass from the SA, a guarantee of safe passage. In exchange I can give you some information they’d love to have: I know who the top New Resistance people are on the Colony. Only Steinfeld and Witcher and Smoke know that, besides me. You help me and I’ll help you, tit for tat, and I’ll keep my mouth . . . ”

“Shut it now,” Karakos had whispered, looking up at the square entrance to the hold in the metal ceiling. Torrence had appeared up there.

There was still time to decide about Bonham. The man was dangerous, untrustworthy. But the information about the Colony could be very useful indeed.

And SA headquarters, speaking to Karakos aboard the
Hermes’ Grandson,
had said, in essence: “Take your time, observe, learn what you can about this upcoming assault of theirs; learn about the NR’s infrastructure, especially about their undercover operations in Europe, the States, anywhere. Gather more information about the Maltese base. We will destroy it when the time is right—you’ll have plenty of warning.”

And perhaps now Claire could be induced to give him something about the assault Steinfeld was planning.

She was there, in the radio room. With Lila.

The two women looked up from the decoder as Karakos came in. Lila put the decoder on hold and blanked the screen.
Does she suspect me?

“Hello,” Karakos said. He looked at Claire. There were rings under her eyes, and she was pale. She hadn’t slept yet, either.

“Hi,” she said, and pretended to look over something in a notebook.

There was a moment of silence; the only voice heard was the wind’s, singing mournfully in the eaves.

Then Karakos asked, “Can I speak to you, Claire?”

She hesitated, then shook her head. “No, I—I’ve got some new stuff in. I’ve got to get it ready for Steinfeld.”

Just an excuse. She didn’t want to talk to him alone. So that was the way of it. She was having an attack of guilt over sleeping with him. Or perhaps this Lila, who was looking holes through him, had turned her against him.

He could wait. Claire was useful to him; she misdirected the others so that they couldn’t take this Torrence seriously.

He would have her again in time. She was the hard type who wanted very much to let go and be soft, and that sort of woman was easy for him. She put herself in his hands like a gun, and it was a gun he would use.

The Island of Malta.

A windy morning on Malta. The three men stood on a tarmac dock in a Maltese shipyard: Steinfeld, Torrence and Danco. The cliffs of metal hulls rose on both sides; loading cranes, like the skeletons of abstract dinosaurs, reared over them.

They stood in the center of the dock, in a narrow patch of sunshine between shadows from the ships. They were warm from the sun and cold from the wind, by turns.

On Torrence’s right the
Hermes’ Grandson
was half-concealed by derricks and tarps and other dry-dock devices Steinfeld had used to camouflage the craft from spy satellites.

A number of still-mysterious crates and the prisoners had been removed from the ship, taken to storage and incarceration.

Torrence was exhausted. He hadn’t slept in—how long? Thirty-six hours? Forty-eight? He wasn’t sure. The sunshine hurt his eyes, but it felt good on his neck. He looked down the dock, hoping Claire would show up and ask for him. Maybe she was already with Karakos.

“You look like you need some rest, Dan,” Steinfeld told him.

“What was Karakos’s assignment during the assault?” Torrence asked, massaging the bridge of his nose.

“Radio room,” Steinfeld said wearily. “Why?”

“Did he ask for it?”

“Yes, he said he thought he knew where it was.”

“Did he go alone?”

“No, of course not.” But Steinfeld looked uncomfortable.

“Who was it?”

After a moment’s hesitation Steinfeld said, “Pierce and Griem.”

Torrence said, “And both men were killed.”

“Killed by the SA.”

“How do you know?”

Danco snorted. “Torrence, Karakos is a freedom fighter, the real thing, a man fighting from patriotism—something you would not understand.”

Torrence glared at Danco. Danco only grinned back him.

He wanted to hit Danco right in his grinning mouth. But Torrence held back. He had become increasingly alienated from the other NR lately—alienated both ways.
Don’t make it worse.

Torrence turned to Steinfeld. “This morning I was working on the deck, near the hatch where Karakos was. He was down in the hold . . . ”

“I wondered why you insisted on working there. So you could keep an eye on him, eh?” Steinfeld shook his head in exasperation, his beard whipping in the wind.

“Anyway, this time I heard him talking to Bonham.”

“What was Bonham doing there?” Danco broke in with maddening irrelevance.

“Steinfeld sent him over to help unload,” Torrence said impatiently. “I couldn’t hear most of what they said. But Bonham was offering some kind of deal to Karakos. And Karakos said he’d consider it. What I want to know is, what has Bonham got that Karakos would be interested in? What has Karakos got that Bonham could use?”

Steinfeld took a deep breath, expelled it in a long, sighing expression of irritation. “And you said yourself you couldn’t hear them clearly. You could’ve heard what you wanted to hear.”

“Steinfeld, Karakos is your old friend. You don’t want to believe something’s not right with him.”

Steinfeld said, “Torrence, your judgment on the matter is even less objective than mine.”

Torrence remembered that candlelit room, Karakos holding Claire naked in his arms.

Torrence said, “Maybe. But maybe not, too.”

He turned and walked away from them. Wondering tiredly:
Are they right? Am I seeing things out of jealousy?

He made up his mind to forget his suspicions. If he could.

• 10 •

The Space Colony. Security.

Russ Parker was staring at the blank videoscreens, wanting to call the security checkpoints but afraid to use the fone. Afraid of what he’d see on its screen.

They got it out, he told himself. They said it was some kind of sabotage program one of the radics had worked into the system somehow. Despite all the safeguards. The door that had tried to crush him, the breakdowns . . . yesterday the lights going off and coming on and going off . . . fire sprinkler systems shooting off at random around the Colony . . . laughter coming from the intercoms but traceable to nothing. The images of old Rimpler, cackling dementedly.

All part of the hypothetical sabotage program.

And they promised to reprogram the system by one. It was two in the afternoon. It should be done. So go ahead. Turn on the screens . . . 

He took a deep breath, reached out, flipped the switch. The screens lit up. “Type in access number,” said the luminous green words. Parker let out a long, relieved breath and tapped the number for Security Checkpoint One.

A thing with gills appeared on the screen.

It was a sort of head, made of shiny black stuff, like glossy rubber; there were gills or vents on its jowls, corrugated tubes running from its nose and curving into its cheeks; pus running from the bright red, piggish eyes; bald head studded with black knobs. Mouth made of flaps within flaps, each one leaking a separate bright color of viscous fluid.

It was hideous, alien. But it was, viewed as a whole ensemble, weirdly recognizable. Just squint a little and the parts resolved into a distortion of . . . Professor Rimpler.

The screen’s speaker gave out a sound that was pure mockery, a squawking like the noise made by one of those novelty-shop laughing boxes. Manic, mechanical laughter.

Revolted, Russ switched off the screen. The image faded.

Then, impossibly, the screen switched itself back on.

The rubber face, the squawking.

He reached behind and jerked out the power cord. The screen blanked. He sat back in his chair, trying not to hyperventilate. He stood up and went to the door. He didn’t want to be alone in there.

He went to get the repairmen, and then to the commissary.

While Russ was out, Kitty Torrence came to his office.

“He’s not in,” the secretary told her.

“I’ll wait.”

“I’m sorry, but you’ll need an appointment, and he’s just not seeing anyone right now.”

Kitty shrugged. “I’m not leaving.”

The secretary pushed the call button. Two guards came into the office almost immediately.

That’s when Russ returned, pausing in the outer offices to ask if the repairman had come for the viddycom.

He stopped when he saw Kitty Torrence. The guards were turning her away.

She was crying, shouting she wanted to see Russ Parker.

“Wait a minute,” Parker said. “I don’t recall having been asked if I’d see this woman. I told you I was coming back.”

His secretary reddened. “Well . . . we thought, you know, you being so busy . . . ”

It’s Praeger,
he thought.
He’s told them to insulate me from the technicki.

“Send her in,” he said firmly, glaring at the receptionist. He was glad of something to take his mind off the black rubber thing on the screen. And he was scared to be alone in there.

He went into his office. Kitty came in and sat down in the only other chair. The door closed.

Her cheeks were streaked, her eyes puffy, but she’d stopped crying. She hadn’t brushed her hair in a couple of days.

No preliminaries. “They beat him over the head just now,” she said, “for nothing.”

He knew who she meant, of course. “I’ll look into it.”

The words came out of her in a rush. “That’s not enough. Let him go. You have the power to let him go. All we want is to go home to Earth. We can’t cause trouble for you if we’re not here. Let us go.”

His mouth was dry. “I . . . it’s not in my power to let him out or to let you go back to Earth. The space on the few ships the New-Soviets will let through is for emergency purposes only—administrative purposes.” He realized he’d put that wrong.

“Administrative! Yeah, for Admin! You guys can leave whenever you want!”

“That isn’t true.” Oh, God, no, it so wasn’t true. “And as for letting him out of detention—it’s not in my hands. It’s in Chairman Praeger’s hands alone, and I don’t think you’d find him a sympathetic listener. At any rate, there’s strong evidence your husband was directly involved in sedition. It’s only at my insistence, frankly, that you’re not in jail, too.”

Kitty Torrence closed her eyes. Her fists balled. “All we want is to go. To leave you all alone to your little war.”

“Look, I doubt you’d get flight clearance for Earth even if I could arrange for you to go—you might lose the baby during G-stress on reentry. And, anyway, it’s a big risk for anyone. There’s a world war going on out there—not just on Earth but in orbit, too. If the military situation changes, the shuttle could be shot down. I’ll tell you something more: There’s a good chance the whole thing will blow up into nuclear war. In which case the safest place to be is right here.”