A Song Called Youth (24 page)

A warning chill; and Kessler had turned, abruptly looked out the window. Three stories down she was a powder-blue keyhole-shape against the faint petroleum filminess of the street. She paused, looking at the numbers.

She might have guessed where he was, he told himself. She had met Charlie; heard him talk about Charlie. She might have looked Charlie’s address up. She went to the front door. The apartment’s bell chimed and he went to the screen. “It’s your wife.” he said. “You want me to tell her you went overseas? Japan?”

“Let her in.”

“Are you kidding, man? You
are,
right? She was the one who—”

“Just let her in.” There was a poisoned cocktail of emotions fizzing in him: a relief at seeing her, shaken in with something that buzzed like a smoke alarm, and it wasn’t till she was at the door that he realized the sensation was terror. And then she was standing in the doorway, against the light of the hallway. She looked beautiful. The light behind her abruptly cut—sensing that no one was now in the hall—and suddenly she stood framed in darkness. The buzzing fizzed up and overwhelmed the relief. His mouth was dry.

Looking disgustedly at Kessler, Charlie shut the door.

Kessler stared at her. Her eyes flickered, her mouth opened, and shut, and she shook her head. She looked drained.

And Kessler knew.

“They sent you. They told you where to find me,” he said.

“They—want the money back,” she said. “They want you to come with me.”

He shook his head. “I put the money where they can’t get it—only because it’s part of my proof. Don’t you get sick of being puppeted?”

She looked out the window. Her face was blank. “You don’t understand.”

“Do you know why they do it, why they train you with that Americanized Japanese job-conditioning? To save themselves money. For one thing, it eliminates unions. You don’t insist on much in the way of benefits. Stuff like that.”

“They have their reasons, sure. Mostly efficiency.”

“What’s the slogan?
Efficiency is friendship.”

She looked embarrassed. “That’s not—” She shrugged. “A corporate family is just as valid as any other. It’s something you couldn’t understand. I—I’ll lose my job, Jimmy. If you don’t come.” She said
lose my job
the way Kessler would have said
lose my life.

Kessler said, “I’ll think about going with you if you tell me what it was . . . what it was they took.”

“They—took it from me, too.”

“I don’t believe that. I never believed it. I think they left it intact in you, so you could watch to see if I stumbled on it again. I think you really loved them trusting you. Worldtalk is Mommy and Daddy, and Mommy and Daddy trusted you . . . ”

Her mouth twisted with resentment. “You prick.” She shook her head. “I can’t tell you . . . ”

“Yeah, you
can.
You
have to.
Otherwise Charlie and me are going out the back way and we’re going to cause endless trouble for Worldtalk. And I know you, Julie. I’d know if you were making it up. So tell me what it was—what it really was.”

She sighed. “I only know what you told me. You pointed out that PR companies manipulate the media for their clients without the public knowing it most of the time. They use their connections and channels to plant information or disinformation in news-sheet articles, on newsvid, in movies, in political speeches. So . . . ” She paused and took a shaky breath, then went on wearily. “So they’re manipulating people, and the public gets a distorted view of what’s going on because of the special interests. You worked up a computer video-editing system that sensed probable examples of, uh, I think the phrases you used were, like, ‘implanted information’ or ‘special-interest distortions.’ So they could be weeded out. You called it the Media Alarm System.” She let out a long breath. “I didn’t know they’d go so far—I thought they’d buy out your system. In a way they did. I
had
to mention it at Worldtalk. If I didn’t I would’ve been . . . disloyal.” She said
disloyal
wincing, knowing what he would think.

But it was Charlie who said it: “What about loyalty to Jim Kessler?”

Her hand fluttered a dismissal. “It doesn’t matter at this point whether it was wrong or right. It’s too late. They
know
 . . . Jimmy, are you coming with me?”

Kessler was thinking about the Media Alarm System. It didn’t sound familiar—but it sounded
right.
He said, slowly, “No. You can help me. If you testify, we can beat them.”

“Jimmy, if I thought they—No, no. I—” She broke off, staring at his waist. “Don’t be stupid. That’s not—” She took a step back and put her hand in her purse.

Kessler and Charlie looked at each other, traded puzzlement. When Kessler looked back at Julie, she had a gun in her hand. It was a small blue-metal pistol, its barrel tiny as a pencil, and that tiny barrel meant it fired explosive bullets.
They
had given it to her.

“Do you know what that gun will do, girl?” Charlie was saying. “Those little explosive bullets will splash him all over the wall.” His voice shook. He took a step toward her.

She pressed back against the door and said, “Charlie, if you come any closer to me, I’ll shoot him.” Charlie stopped. The room seemed to keen ultrasonically with imminence. She went on, the words coming out in a rush: “Why don’t you ask him what that thing in his hand would do to me, Charlie. Shall we? Ask him that. Jimmy has the same kind of gun. With the same goddamn bullets.” Her voice was too high; she was breathing fast, her knuckles white on the gun.

Kessler looked down at himself. His arms were hanging at his sides, his hands empty.

“Lower the gun, Julie, and we can talk.” Charlie said gently.

“I’ll lower mine when he lowers his,” she said hoarsely.

“He isn’t holding a gun.” Charlie said, blinking.

She was staring at a space about three feet in front of Kessler’s chest. She was seeing the gun there. He wanted to say,
Julie, they tampered with you.
He could only croak, “Julie . . . ”

She shouted, “Don’t!” and raised the gun. And then everything was moving: Kessler threw himself down. Charlie jumped at her, and the wall behind Kessler jumped outward toward the street.

Two hot metal hands clapped Kessler’s head between them, and he shouted with pain and thought he was dead. But it was only a noise, the noise of the wall exploding outward. Chips of wall pattered down; smoke sucked out through the four-foot hole in the wall into the winter night.

Kessler got up, shaky, his ears ringing. He looked around and saw Charlie straddling Julie. He had the gun in his hand and she was face-down, sobbing.

“
Gogido,
” Charlie said, lapsing into technicki, his face white.

“Get off her.” Kessler said. Charlie moved off her, stood up beside her. “Julie, look at me.” Kessler said softly. She tilted her head back, an expression of dignified defiance trembling precariously on her face. Then her eyes widened, and she looked at his hips. She was seeing him holding a gun there. “I don’t have a gun, Julie. They put that into you. Now I’m going to
get
a gun . . . Give me the gun, Charlie;” Without taking his eyes off her, he put his hand out. Charlie hesitated, then laid the gun in Kessler’s open palm. She blinked, then narrowed her eyes.

“So now you’ve got two guns.” She shrugged.

He shook his head. “Get up.” Mechanically, she stood up. “Now go over there to Charlie’s bed. He’s got black bed sheets. You see them? Take one off. Just pull it off and bring it over here.” She started to say something, anger lines punctuating her mouth, and he said quickly, “Don’t talk yet. Do it!” She went to the bed, pulled the black satin sheet off, jerking it petulantly, and dragged it over to him. Charlie gaped and muttered about cops, but Kessler had a kind of furious calm on him then, and he knew what he was going to do; and if it didn’t work, then he’d let the acid rain bleach his bones white as a warning to other travelers come to this poisoned well—this woman. He said, “Now tear up the bedsheet—sorry, man, I’ll replace it—and make a blindfold. Good. Right. Now tie it over my eyes. Use the tape on the table to make the blindfold light-proof.”

Moving in slow motion, she blindfolded him. Darkness whispered down around him: She taped it thoroughly in place. “Now am I still pointing two guns at you?”

“Yes.” But there was uncertainty in her voice.

“Now take a step to one side. No, take several steps, very softly, move around a lot.” The soft sounds of her movement. Her gasp. “Is the gun following you around the room?”

“Yes. Yes. One of them.”

“But how is that possible?
I can’t see you!
And why is only the one gun moving—the one you saw first? And why did I let you blindfold me if I’m ready and willing to shoot you?”

“You look weird like that,” Charlie said. “Ridiculous and scary.”

“Shut up, Charlie, will you? Answer me, Julie! I can’t see you! How can I follow you with two guns?”

“I don’t know!”

“Take the guns from my hands! Shoot me! Do it!” She made a short hissing sound and took the gun from his hand, and he braced to die. But she pulled the blindfold from him and looked at him.

Looked into his eyes.

She let the gun drop to the floor. Kessler said, softly, “You see now?
They
did it to you. You, one of the ‘family.’ The corporate ‘family’ means just exactly nothing to them.”

She looked at his hands. “No gun.” Dreamily. “Gun’s gone. Everything’s different.”

Siren warblings. Coming closer.

She sank to her knees. “Just exactly nothing to them,” she said. “Just exactly nothing.” Her face crumpled. She looked as if she’d fallen into herself; as if some inner scaffolding had been kicked out of place.

Sirens and lights whirled together outside. A chrome fluttering in the smoky gap where the wall had been blown outward: a police surveillance bird. It looked like a bird, hovering in place with its oversized aluminum hummingbird’s wings; but instead of a head it had a small camera lens. A transmitted voice droned from the grid on its silvery belly:
“This is the police. You are now being observed and recorded. Do not attempt to leave. The front door has been breached. Police officers will arrive in seconds to take your statements. Repeat—”

“Oh, I heard you,” Julie said in a hollow voice. “I’ll make a statement all right. I’ve got a lot to tell you. Oh, yeah.” She laughed sadly. “I’ll make a statement.”

Kessler bent down and touched her arm. “Hey . . . I . . . ”

She drew back from him. “Don’t touch me. Just don’t! You love to be right! I’m going to tell them what you want me to. Just don’t touch me.”

But he stayed with her. He and Charlie stood looking at the blue smoke drifting out of the ragged hole in the wall, at the mechanical, camera-eyed bird looking back at them.

He stayed with her, as he always would, and they listened for the footsteps outside the door.

“Why should we leave when we don’t know who it was who bailed us out?” Julie asked.

She sat hunched over, hollow-eyed. She seemed to be holding on, in some way.

Kessler nodded. “It could be Worldtalk’s people, Charlie.”

Charlie shook his head. “I saw the guy in the outer office. He’s one of ours.”

“Yours, Charlie,” Kessler said. “Not mine.”

They were in Detective Bixby’s office, sitting wearily in the plastic chairs across from Bixby’s gray metal desk. The overhead light buzzed, maybe holding a conversation with the console screen on the right of the desk, which hummed faintly to itself. The screen was turned to face away from them. On the walls, shelves were piled high with software, cassettes, sheaves of printouts, photos. The walls were the grimed, dull green such places usually are. Bixby had left them to confer with the detectives in the new Cerebro-kidnapping Department—the department that handled illegal extractions. The door was locked, and they were alone.

“At least here we’re protected,” Julie said, digging her nails into her palms.

Charlie shook his head again. “I called Seventeen, he said Worldtalk could still get at us in here.”

“Who the hell is Seventeen?” Kessler snapped. He was tired and irritable.

“My NR contact—”

He broke off, staring at the desk. The console was rotating on a turntable built into the desk top, its screen turning to face them. Bixby’s round, florid face nearly filled the screen.

“ ’S’okay,” Bixby said. “CK’s taking your case. Your video statements are filed, and your bail is paid. That’ll be refunded soon as we get the owner of the building to drop the charges on the blown-out wall. Should be no problem. If you want protective custody—maybe not a bad idea—talk to the desk sergeant. Door’s unlocked.” As he said it they heard a click, and the door swung inward a few inches. They were free to go. “Good luck,” Bixby said. His face vanished from the screen.

“Come on.” Charlie said. “Let’s do this fast before the fucking
door
changes its mind.”

The basement room was dim and damp, and old, cracking apart. A man was waiting for them there. The man was sitting on a cracked, three-legged wooden chair, just under the single light bulb; he sat with the chair reversed, resting his arms on the back, one leg extended to compensate for the missing chair leg. He smiled and nodded at them.

Kessler looked at Charlie, and Charlie shook his head.

“Is he from Worldtalk?” Kessler asked.

Julie’s voice was hollow. “I don’t know him. I don’t know. Maybe they hired him.”

The man said, “I work with Worldtalk. I work with the SA. And I work with Steinfeld,” he said. “Not in that order.” He was a big, soft bodied man, and he was too smug. He had an executive’s neutral blue-gray hair tint, with just a streak of white, indicating he’d “risen in the ranks.” Maybe he’d started as an accountant, or a typing-pool supervisor; he was entitled to wash the tint out, but some executives kept their early rank marks as a kind of warning:
I fought my way up, and I’m still willing to fight, so don’t fuck with me .
 . . He wore a dove gray suit, a real one, and the choker that had replaced ties in the upper classes.