A Song Called Youth (111 page)

It was a magnificent conception, Steinfeld thought. And he was a little shaken to be sitting beside the man—indeed, to be soliciting help from the man—who had built it all. This vista had begun as an idea and a commitment in this man’s head; a vision had somehow superimposed itself over a hundred seventy-five square miles of Earth, had crystallized the local world into conformity with itself. There was no squalor here; no extreme poverty. There was no pollution—that would have been lethal—and there were up-to-date hospitals and vaccination programs.

But the Complex had its problems: the power drain from the constant necessity of recirculating air was enormous. The Arcology was growing faster than its housing, and was becoming crowded, in some sectors, so constant expansion was necessary—and expansion was costly. Immigration restrictions had become fanatically stern, for anyone not bloated with money. Despite its success at exporting pesticide-free produce, water, and highly refined metals, and despite Badoit’s oil-founded personal fortune, the Badoit Complex wavered back and forth between solvency and insolvency. And perhaps the arcology’s relative cultural insularity—its limits of freedom of expression, its absence of freedom of religion—were regrettable.

But still, Steinfeld reflected, in its realization of artifice and organization, of order from chaos, its economic fairness at all levels—this place was civilization distilled.

“That will do,” Badoit said suddenly.

Steinfeld came to himself with a start, and hit the stop button on the digi-viddy. He looked at Badoit, who seemed thoughtful but wholly unsurprised. “If you have any doubts about the authenticity of this video,” Steinfeld said, “you can run a check for computer animation. I can assure you that this information is accurate. If you wish to send some of your people back to look over the situation personally, I will be glad to provide them the coordinates—they will see that it’s all quite true: Muslims are being persecuted systematically throughout France, Italy, Germany—”

“No, no,” Badoit said, waving a hand impatiently. “I’m quite sure it is authentic. Don’t you suppose my people
have
‘looked over the situation personally’? Naturally. We have wide-ranging intelligence sources. We have become aware that these Second Alliance devils are persecuting the European Islamic community—”

“Persecuting is too weak a word.”

“Quite. We were not aware that it had gone this far—your material brings a certain immediacy to the issue. The problem is not that something needs to be done—it is to determine, precisely,
what
should be done.” He paused and smiled distantly. “You do not care for tea, I notice. Will you take some coffee? It is always ready.”

“Yes, thanks. Coffee.”

“Splendid. Sixteen years in England; I picked up the habit of tea in the afternoon. But if tea is my habit, coffee is my vice.” Badoit turned to an intercom, spoke a short sentence in Arabic.

Steinfeld wondered what was going on in Badoit’s head. There was no hint in the man’s neutral expression. Perhaps he would be dangerous to deal with. Could such a man ever be knowable, even to his intimates? He was a nation builder, a city builder, the president of a microcosmic nation he had created himself: a man who never questioned his course once he set it. A visionary, but a ruthless one. He would take an alliance very, very seriously.

Steinfeld was lucky to have got into this office at all. Steinfeld was a Jew—there had been relative peace between Jews and Muslims, since the Israelis had—at long last—accepted a Palestinian state. Badoit was relatively moderate, an advocate of rapprochement, even alliance with the Jews. Still it was difficult for a non-Muslim who was not a head of state to meet with Badoit in person. Badoit maintained contacts with the Israeli Mossad, as there were some Islamic extremist factions who opposed him. Those strict-Fundamentalist factions were security threats to Badoit, Badoit the city and Badoit the man, and the Mossad—the Israeli intelligence service—helped him keep tabs on them. In exchange, he had agreed to see Steinfeld, who was something of a Mossad ward, if not truly an agent.

“You come here asking me for military aid, for weapons and soldiers. It seems to me that you have undervalued and underused the political channels,” Badoit said. “You have jumped the gun, quite literally, and gone right to a military solution.”

“Most political channels are closed to us,” Steinfeld said. “The UN will not hear us. We’ve tried. The media is restricted in Europe. Most American media regards us as cranks. Armed resistance, so far as I can see, is the only practical course. Naturally, we’re trying to alert people politically, to raise consciousness, as they say, in America. To use political channels. To interest the media—with only indifferent success. In the meantime, the murder goes on.”

“You are working on many levels,” Badoit said, “but your efforts on some of those levels are rather trivial.” There was a touch of smugness in his tone as he revealed the extent of his knowledge of New Resistance activities. “You promote notions of divisiveness in the ‘Self-Policing Organization of European States.’ ” Saying the catch-all name of the new Fascist state with heavy irony. “You spread discontent with stories that the umbrella organization is bleeding the member nations for cash and resources. You promote the idea in France that the German leaders of the Second Alliance corporation are more influential than the French in SPOES, and so will reroute resources to the German advantage. You use television graffiti, Internet, pirate radio, leafleting, postering—you even spread seditious jokes. ‘How many Frenchmen does it take to make up the French government? A thousand Frenchmen: five Frenchmen with French accents and nine hundred and ninety-five Frenchmen with American and German accents . . . ’ ” He smiled, though clearly not amused. “You have contacted the American media and international Grid sources, including young Norman Hand.” He shrugged disdainfully. “You have done
nothing
politically. These efforts are . . . minuscule.”

Steinfeld nodded. “We only do what we can. I’m in favor of political effort wherever possible. But there simply is not time to wait for political action on a larger scale—the oppressed are being
killed,
even as we speak. Your people and mine.”

The doors swung open and a coffee cart hummed into the room on its own, a steward walking behind it. The cart paused by the conference table and the steward poured thick, sweet coffee for them into small china cups. There was also a silver tray of sweetmeats.

The steward discreetly withdrew as they sipped their coffee in silence. The stuff made Steinfeld’s cheeks flush and his head hum.

Leaning back in his chair, Badoit said at last, “I agree that military intervention is necessary. But you propose that I do it under the auspices of the NR. And indeed, I would feel the need to work within the framework of some such organization—I do not want to send my people in cold. Just getting them into Paris would be difficult without you. But . . . it would be a political time bomb for me. Dealing with you; with, if you will forgive the expression, infidels. There are people who would use this connection to denounce me. I have much support, but . . . not from everyone.”

“You can trust me not to—”

“Can we?” Badoit interrupted. “Can I trust you with my fighting men? You know, you would have some authority over my soldiers—it would be a very delicate situation. I would have to trust you. I cannot take the chance without investigating you somewhat more thoroughly.”

“What does that mean, precisely?” Steinfeld asked.

Badoit spoke a brisk phrase in Arabic into the intercom.

Almost instantly, four heavily armed men came into the room. Abu Badoit turned to Steinfeld, rose, made an ironic variation of the gracious gesture offering accommodation, and said, “It means you’re my guest, for a while. It is only a matter of attitude, really, the distinction between
guest
and
prisoner
—don’t you agree?”

Cooper Research Labs, London.

She said her name was Jo Ann Teyk. And, she said, that morning she’d found something in her brain that scared her.

She was here at the lab complaining that Cooper Research Labs had used her brain for some kind of “calculations,” if he understood her rightly, and the stuff scared her. She wanted it erased. And Barrabas knew, almost instantly, that he fancied her. He wasn’t sure why. She was at least ten years older than him, her curly blond hair in no particular style, just flouncing to her shoulders any way it chose; her eyes were pale blue and her features were, somehow, reminiscent of the Dutch. But her accent was American.

They were standing awkwardly in the waiting room of Lab Six, Cooper Research Labs, a waiting room that hadn’t been used, till now, in all the weeks Barrabas had worked here. A lab technician had fetched Barrabas, because this Jo Ann Teyk woman was asking for Cooper, and Barrabas was the only assistant to Cooper currently in the building.

“Dr. Cooper isn’t here,” Barrabas said. “He’s in Paris. He’s coming back tomorrow, I think. I could try to get him on the fone—”

“Would you? This thing is really bothering me. The Brain Bank won’t be held responsible, they say. They won’t pay for the erasing time, and I can’t afford to pay for it. I’m trying to save up to get back to the States. Flights to New York are just outrageously overpriced now because they haven’t got the war damage at the airports fully repaired and . . . ”

She was rattling on rather nervously, and he nodded in the appropriate places, but he was only half listening. He was staring at her, wondering why she was so attractive to him. She wasn’t beautiful. He pictured her in one of those old-fashioned white cloth hats, almost like nurse hats, the Dutch women had worn. Nothing sexy about that. She was moderately pretty. Her breasts were small and her hips a shade too wide. But she gave off something indefinable. Energy. Need. Maybe something seen in the warm ghostliness of her glance, a subtle female vitality and . . . 

Sexuality, yes, somehow, though she wasn’t dressed for it. She was wearing a rather weathered charcoal-blue printout women’s suit and blue transparent-plastic sandals. He was glad she wasn’t wearing heels; she was already at least three inches taller than he was. He was glad, too, he hadn’t had to wear his SAISC uniform to work in the lab. People sometimes reacted nastily to it. People on the street who saw you in an SA uniform seemed to either wink at you, give you a sort of illicit approval, or else they’d glare and you had a sense they’d like to tell you off but didn’t dare.

“ . . . I mean,” Jo was saying, “you do see the problem, don’t you?”

“Hmm? Oh, oh yeah—” He broke off and grinned. “Actually, no. I’m a bit muddled on this Brain Bank business. Had the impression they hired people to do calculations or something. You’re a mathematician, or—?”

“No. No, I’m an artist, or was. I’m an American.”

No kidding,
he thought. Her American accent was like a trumpet declaring her nationality.

She went on, “I had a show over here when the war started, and I’ve basically been stuck in London ever since. My patrons all sort of . . . some of them are dead now. The others I can’t find. The gallery was burnt in the food riots, all my work gone. Digital paintings.”

“Really? I do some, uh, digi-vid work myself. Just a little editing, nothing artistic. We have a Sony Ampex system. Doing a sort of documentary.”

Clam up,
he thought. He turned to the video painting on the wall: a rectangle of wafer-thin glass playing a loop of collaged digital imagery, soothing pastoral scenes, pictures of rustic North Country villagers and the like, all bathed in a kind of halcyon ambience. He nodded at it. “What do you think of that one?”

She seemed annoyed at being distracted to make art criticism, glanced irritably at the videol painting. “I think it’s a decoration meant to go with the furniture, not a painting. Not a real one. Facile interior design background stuff.”

“Yeah, I see what you mean,” he said, looking at it more critically. Although he didn’t see what she meant particularly.

“Well, back on the subject: if you don’t know what Brain Banks are . . . ” She made a fluttery gesture of frustration, and then said, “It’s a . . . essentially, they rent a portion of your brain, see. Companies who can’t afford high-speed mainframe time. Or just trying to save money, cut some corners. So they hire a ‘passive’—that’s what I was, at this Brain Bank—and they attach a dermal contact socket and access your brain for computer time. And you just lie there and let them use it, let them do all the thinking with a part of your brain you don’t normally use. You can be thinking of something else entirely, and all this stuff is buzzing around in the . . . in the
very
back of the mind. Sort of.”

He blinked at her in confusion. “They . . . hook into your brain somehow?”

“Yeah. The human brain can do some things better than computers: holo-imaging, certain kinds of computer-model elaboration, and the kind of stuff they were trying to develop artificial intelligence for. Certain kinds of complex thinking, see. And if you interface with a biochip, the brain is capable of all these, like, remarkably complex calculations and storage in parts of the brain we don’t usually use much. A ‘passive’, you know, rents those out to people. Sort of like transients selling blood to a blood bank. The pay is better, but not all that much.”

“And you just sit there wired in, and the data . . . ”

“It just flashes by in your brain. Too quick to comprehend, usually. You don’t usually remember anything afterward, see. All you got left is this weird taste in your mouth and a headache. Normally. But I guess sometimes the operator is sloppy with the erase function—sometimes the stuff remains in your brain. And it can flash onto your conscious mind, see, and bug you. I mean, I’m walking down the street, and then all of a sudden I see about a trillion numbers flashing by instead of the cars, and I see these, uh, molecular models instead of buildings. It was so fucking weird. It was like the numbers were the cars and the molecules were the buildings. And I walk into a wall or something. It
blinds
me. And it wakes me up at night. It’s like someone’s talking statistics in your ear all the time. You can’t sleep with all that—”