A Song Called Youth (116 page)

And then they came to the giant digital video screen.

“I don’t believe it,” Hand breathed. “What the hell is that thing doing here? The fucking thing is two stories high!”

It was. Torrence pulled his floppy hat lower over his eyes, trying to obscure his face, as they approached the clearing with the giant TV in it. It was big as two billboards stacked one atop another, a TV screen several stories high and broad as a barn: an absurd anomaly in a refugee camp. It was a glassy, chrome-edged section of the Grid, set onto a girderframe that was held in place by rock-hard insta, with orderly rows of folding metal chairs in front of it. The chairs were empty, but for an old woman who cursed incessantly to herself and a ragamuffin child toying with his genitals as he gaped at the screen. Four Second Alliance soldiers stood guard around the giant screen, two in back and two in front, the legs of their armored suits well apart and locked in place so they could lean on the suits inside; the suits were air-conditioned, quilted Kevlar-backed black fabric, mirror-reflective helmets locking their heads into insect anonymity.

On the video monolith rearing two stories over them, the talking head of the president of France yammered about the Unity Party. Every so often images of the French flag superimposed over his shoulder, alternating with shots of the small sections of Paris the Second Alliance and SPOES had cleaned up and rebuilt.

Then came shots of happy Parisian citizens at work on the “Volunteer Rebuilding Plan,” waving at the cameras and chatting companionably as they cleared rubble from shell-damaged buildings; as they replastered and repainted damaged walls, happily chatting, everyone cheerfully working without pay except for stamped coupons supposed to be good for food at a later date. Some unnamed later date . . . 

Then came a short commercial for SPOES, with the Unity Party’s endorsement of the alliance that would give France “a new national strength.” Followed by a public service announcement warning about “anti-Unity Criminals.” There were mug shots and digitized re-creations of some of the “criminal” faces; many of them Roseland recognized from the NR. Most of them were black or Arab or Sikh or Hindu. The last two were white—but one of them was Jewish.

They were Torrence and Roseland.

A jet of chill air played along Roseland’s spine as he stared up at the two-story image of himself on the screen, running away from the processing center. The video computer had blocked out the people running on either side of him—people who were being shot down. There was just a profile shot of Roseland, and then full-face as he looked over his shoulder (he didn’t remember doing that; maybe it was a computer modeling), and into the camera. The image froze, close up.

A criminal who staged a massive jailbreak, they said.
Watch for him. Report him. Or turn him over to a Citizen’s Justice committee.
Which meant, betray him to the Fascist vigilantes, the brownshirts who roamed the street looking for scapegoats to brutalize.

They’d passed such a group on their way to the refugee camp. The brownshirts had looked at Hand as if they were considering kicking his ass for being Asian. But they were intent on some other mission. If they’d recognized Roseland from this video mug shot, they’d have jumped him, beat him to death.

But either they hadn’t seen the video or he looked much different now. His face had filled out and he’d grown a beard and long hair. He was going to have to do more to disguise himself.

And now there were the computer-enhanced shots of Daniel “Hard-Eyes” Torrence. Who was staring up at the images of himself, the two-story high digital wanted poster; gazing up at it with something beyond paranoia; something more in the category of awe.

A “terrorist responsible for the deaths of many innocents, possibly including the murder of President Le Pen.” A lunatic killer, they said. If you see him, don’t try to take him prisoner: send someone for the Second Alliance police. He’s highly dangerous.

Roseland was a little jealous of their special regard for Torrence.

Roseland glanced at Torrence, who was watching the video with no change in the expression he’d worn all day. It was a look of resignation and depression. He’d been like that since the Second Alliance had begun carrying out reprisals “for the activities of the terrorist Hard-Eyes Torrence.” Reprisals that were the true “murder of many innocents.”

Twice Torrence had made plans to turn himself over to the Second Alliance; twice Smoke and Roseland and Bibisch and Lespere had talked him out of it.

If Torrence turned himself in—or, more precisely, blew himself up on their doorstep—someone else would have to take his place as Steinfeld’s field commander. Someone else would do the same job, and someone else would be picked as “the cause of reprisals.” That’s what they told Torrence, anyway.

And then of course there was the extractor to think of. But Torrence insisted that he could be prophylactically extracted in advance, if they could get him to the Mossad—they could take out his knowledge of Lespere, and the NR’s safehouses.

Still Smoke said no.

Torrence muttered that the reprisals were something personal; Watson and The Thirst, the bureaucratic sociopathic Giessen, had it in for him in particular.

Hearing that, Father Lespere had called him a solipsist and a
mégalomane.

They talked him out of turning himself in.

But looking at Torrence now, Roseland thought that perhaps the Second Alliance had already won. Torrence was going through the motions. But in some sense, he was beaten.

“Jesus and Buddha in bed,” Hand swore under his breath, staring at the video mug shots. “That’s—”

“Shut up,” Bibisch hissed.

“They’re going to see those two,” Hand whispered. Visibly shaking.

“We’re too far away,” Roseland said softly. “The guards won’t recognize us from here. They probably wouldn’t, even up close. I’ve changed. Our boy Danny has his face pretty well covered.”

Hand took a deep breath. Roseland could see him suppress the panic. “I can’t believe this TV screen in the midst of all this . . . What the hell!”

The TV was showing an old movie. A French film about a heroic police commissioner’s fight against Arab terrorism. A few people from the huts trickled out to watch the movie, shading their eyes against the sun.

“A movie!” Hand said. “I don’t believe it! These people are half starved and living in huts that, as far as I can tell, are made out of
shit,
and they put
this
thing up! I mean, an installation like this is expensive.”

“And there’s a dozen of them in the city, and in the camps,” Roseland said.

“Mind control’s more important than housing and feeding people,” Torrence murmured in a rather distant tone.

Bibisch told Hand, “
Mais,
they have given some housing to some people. They push Arabs and Jews and blacks out of houses, and give places to white people. Very simple housing plan. And on the other side of the camp it is different. They have metal houses—” She turned to Torrence. “What do you call it?”

“Quonset huts. With running water, chemical toilets, showers. Rations. Compared to tents or trash huts, they’re pretty decent short-term shelter.” He nodded toward the south; they could see the sun glancing off rows of gray metal humps on the far side of the camp.

“Well, that’s not so bad, then,” Hand said. “They’re working on it.”

“It’s only for the white refugees, Hand,” Torrence said wearily. “And only the loyal white people. The whites in the camp who aren’t loyal to the SA and the Party at the start soon learn to be.”

“Can we confirm that?” Hand asked.

Torrence nodded. “We’ll take you to see it. Talk to a few of them.”

“I’d like to get some video here . . . ”

“We’ll smuggle your procam stuff in after things cool down.”

Hand looked nervously at him. “What do you mean, after things cool down?”

“I thought you wanted to see an NR action.”

“
Today?
I mean, I thought we—Well anyway, I, yeah, I want to see one, but, you know, not from right in the middle of it. I was planning on shooting—camera shooting, I mean—from somewhere nearby. Somewhere safe. I’m a journalist, not a soldier. And I don’t have my proper equipment, just my fone-cam.”

Torrence looked at Bibisch, “I thought you said he wanted to come for this? Didn’t you tell him . . . ?”

“Oh!” She pretended surprised remorse. “I have forgot.
Merde!
”

Torrence almost smiled. Roseland chuckled. Hand looked at Bibisch accusingly. “You set me up to get caught in this! This your idea of funny?”

She looked at him wide-eyed. She didn’t like Hand. “I don’t know what you mean!”

Torrence sighed and shook his head at her. “You shouldn’t have done it. He’s important to us. He can get the truth out.”

She pouted a little. “It’s okay—he’s going to come out of it alive.”

“Or if he doesn’t,” Roseland joked cheerfully, “we can prop him up in front of the camera, use ventriloquism, maybe work a few jokes into the act.”

“That’s not very funny,” Hand said icily.

“Okay, I’ll leave that joke out.”

Hand turned with exasperation to Torrence. “What exactly have you got in mind? Am I going to get shot at?”

“With luck, no. Which is probably why Bibisch thought it was okay to drag you along. Come on, it’s all set up and we can’t waste it. They do a check of this place every so often and they might find it . . . ”

Torrence set off into the maze of trash huts ringing the TV clearing, and led them to a sort of sod hut made of sections of sod covered with tarpaper and bits of plastic held in place with bricks and spikes of torn metal. It was bigger than most of the others. Two thin, shoeless men Roseland didn’t know, men in rags who looked Pakistani or Indian, were hunkered in the doorway, loosely gripping homemade spears made of broom handles tipped with sharpened nine-inch nails. They nodded at Torrence and moved away from the door.

“Go ahead and take off,” Torrence told them. They didn’t understand his English, but they knew the gesture he made with it. They seemed poised to go, but didn’t quite. Torrence reached into his coat, pulled out two US Army ration tins. “Almost forgot.” The men took the rations and disappeared into the piebald complexity of the camp.

The entrance hole to the large sod hut was facing the back of the other huts. No one was watching as Torrence pushed the burlap flap aside, and they went in.

Inside, it was dim but for a slat of sunlight coming through a narrow airhole in the dirt ceiling. There was a portable video transer and some other equipment on the hard-packed earthen floor; Roseland didn’t recognize most of it. It looked like a shortwave radio crossed with an old laptop. The Dell logo on the back of the display was smeared with dirt, or maybe dung.

The room was hot, and it reeked. Hand held a perfumed kerchief over his nose; Roseland wished he’d thought to bring one. You could get a bottle of expensive perfume fairly easily in Paris lately. It was much less expensive than a can of beans.

“Dammit,” Torrence muttered, “this stuff ought to be camouflaged somehow. Covered up, at least.”

“Should’ve been wrapped in plastic to protect it, too,” Hand said, trying to be one of the guys.

“Easy to say,” Roseland said, “but it was hard enough to smuggle this stuff in here. They probably didn’t feel like sweating the details.”

Bibisch squatted beside the equipment and switched it on. Its batteries were intact, it seemed. It hummed, and bits and pieces of it lit up with green light, including the small display screen. From his coat, Torrence took a datastick and handed it to Bibisch, who slotted it into the transer. She watched the readouts, made adjustments, tilted the antenna—which projected through a wall to look like a spike holding a bit of roofing in place—and said, “
C’est marche.
”

“What exactly,” Hand asked, “are we doing here? If it’s not too intrusive of me to ask.”

“Going to do some pirate transmissions,” Torrence said.

“Won’t they trace whatever it is you’re going to transmit? You know—trace it back to us?”

“There’s an interference-signal generator that should confuse their ability to triangulate us without losing our signal.” Torrence was talking distractedly as he watched Bibisch, trying to understand, Roseland supposed, the mystical rite of this technology. High-tech hands-on stuff was not Torrence’s strong suit.

Suddenly Hand jumped up, hitting his head on the low ceiling, capering about, scrabbling at the back of his neck. Yelling, “Shit! Get it out!”

Bibisch laughed. Torrence impatiently plunged his hand down the back of Hand’s sweater, plucked out a squirming cockroach big as his thumb, and tossed it out the doorway. Hand shivered, tugging his collar snug, and examined the ceiling. “This place is infested!”

“Most of them are in the little holes,” Torrence said, squatting again beside Bibisch. “Just stay away from the little holes.”

“What was that little dance you did, Hand?” Roseland asked. “La Cucaracha?”

Hand glared at him. Torrence said, “Stop being a pain in the ass, Roseland, and watch the back door. That’s what you’re here for.”

Roseland was happy to follow the order. He could breathe cleaner air at the door. He hunkered in the open door, peering past the doorflap. No one around except a couple of little kids staring listlessly over the top of the huts at the giant digital video screen twenty yards away.

One of the kids gasped and pointed at the screen. Roseland stood up and peered around a corner at the screen that rose like a drive-in movie screen in the distance. The guerrillas’ transer was working. They’d interrupted the signal with their own. It flickered from time to time, but held: images of Second Alliance thugs beating children; images of a Jægernaut crushing a building. People trying to get away from it, dying like bugs under a boot heel. While a recorded voice warned in French that the New Nazis were taking over Europe and must be resisted. The blue New Resistance flag waving. Another shot of a fascist atrocity . . . 

That’s when Roseland heard the autotank coming. He knew the sound, the high-pitched whine of it. He’d seen them in another action. There was no one in an autotank, and somehow that scared him more than facing an IS vehicle. The thing knew only how to hunt and kill.