A Song Called Youth (87 page)

“You’ll kill them?”

“Don’t be absurd. This is going to be a bloodless coup. Or it will be if you let it be. We’ll cuff them, gag them, take them out into the maintenance corridor and into storage. One of our people will put on the armor. And one by one we’ll have them. They’ll be put in Detention Brig.”

“You’ll never take Ordnance. It’s well-guarded.”

“We already have. They trustingly let Faid and me in, and we threatened them with high explosives. They gave us their guns and we’ve let our friends in. Two hundred of them.”

“But I won’t play along, you know that. I’d rather you killed me.”

“Would you rather I killed Praeger?”

She became a thing of wax, still and pale. Then she laughed, almost explosively. “I know you. You have an overblown ego that supports an overblown sense of ethics. You’d never shoot a man down like that. Just execute him.”

Russ went to the door into Praeger’s chambers. “Faid! You’re going to hear a gunshot! Don’t do anything to Praeger even when you hear the shot, unless I tell you to!”

“I understand,” Faid called.

Russ turned to Tate. “This thing with Rimpler is as much your fault as anyone’s.” He pointed the gun at Tate’s chest. Van Kips backed away from Tate.

Much of the missing age returned to Tate’s unnaturally young features. He stood up and took a step backward. “I don’t think you’ll do that,” he said after a moment. “After all the hours I spent trying to help you.”

“And reporting on me to Praeger. Yeah, I know about that. But you’re right. I’m not a natural killer. I don’t know how to do this without getting sick.”

Russ squeezed the trigger; the gun leapt in his hand. Tate’s chest burst open, sprayed red onto the console. Tate spun and fell. Blood dripped down the computer’s monitor screen.

Sure enough, Russ was sick to his stomach. He took deep breaths and turned to Van Kips; he managed, just barely, to keep from vomiting.

“Judith!” Praeger called. Then, to Faid, “That redneck has shot her!”

“She’s all right, Praeger. I shot Tate.”

Van Kips moved to the seat and sat down. She stared at the wall, hugging herself. “You’ll be convicted of murder.”

“Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway, you can tell I’m committed now, I guess. Wipe the blood off the screen and call your people. Tell them what I told you to. And no one else will have to get hurt.”

She looked at the door to Praeger’s chambers. “I believe you’d do it.”

Russ nodded.

She took some tissues from a drawer and thoughtfully cleaned the blood off the screen.

And then she did as she was told.

The Island of Merino, the Caribbean.

On a hot afternoon, and on the island of Merino, in a small, air-conditioned bungalow with cool blue walls and wicker furniture, James Kessler, Julie Kessler, Stoner, and his wife, Janet, were sitting on a wide sofa and in wicker chairs, watching satellite television. Cindy and Alouette were on a field trip with the NR’s day-care unit, collecting seashells.

Attached to the media console was a Media Analysis microprocessor, booting up Kessler’s Media Alarm System. On the smaller monitor next to the big wall-screen, arrows, exclamation points, and capsule analyses flashed as the system interpreted Worldtalk’s propaganda.

“How many of these did you send out?” Stoner asked.

Kessler said, “Witcher sent out more than three million media-alarm software disks. Spent three or four fortunes doing it. But it’s having its impact. Congress has been inundated with letters and emails and tweets and even actual demonstrators, in person . . . .” Kessler said it with a quiet satisfaction. Julie reached over and squeezed his hand. Her other hand lay on her pregnancy-swollen belly.

On the big screen, the Worldtalk-produced drama
Ghetto Cop
paced itself through a series of archetypal confrontations. The blond, blue-eyed hero was confronted with a dull-witted spectacled higher-up who tried to mitigate the cop’s macho dynamism—in short, a Liberal—and the hero plowed right through his boss’s misgivings and went out to kick some ass; the hero was confronted with drug addicts and whores who were reluctant to give up information on the doings of a Zionist terrorist ring hiding in the ghetto, and the hero beat the truth out of his informants, plowed right through them to the next obstacle where the hero was confronted with the miscreants, who were reluctant to give up their sniping positions, and the hero kicked down their doors and . . . 

The media-alarm system went ping, and the propaganda analysis appeared on the little monitor screen:

THE FOLLOWING IDEAS ARE PROPAGATED BY THE STORY IN THIS EPISODE OF
Ghetto Cop.

• Liberals are dupes.
  
• Terrorists, no matter what their color, typically hide in ghettos, implying collusion with ghetto residents.
  
• Ghetto residents are mostly whores and junkies.
  
• Ghetto residents know where terrorists are hiding and what they are up to, implying that the nonterrorist residents are somehow part of the conspiracy.
  
• Terrorists plan to blow up a white grade school, therefore terrorists hate white children and wish them harm.
  
• Terrorist sees news report of new New-Soviet invasion, remarks, “Time we did our part,” implying that all terrorists are in league with the New-Soviet.
  
• Terrorists are Jews (or Arabs or blacks).
  
• Violence with no holds barred efficiently eliminates terrorism.
  

THE FOLLOWING BACKGROUND DETAILS FOUND IN THIS EPISODE OF
Ghetto Cop
COMPRISE SUBLIMINAL SUGGESTIONS APPEARING WITH A FREQUENCY THAT ADDS UP TO NINETY-SIX PERCENT PROBABILITY OF DELIBERATE INSERTION BY THE PRODUCERS.

• During scene in which terrorists make plans to blow up white middle-class grade school, there are seven objects arranged in the background of their hideout to form subliminal shape of the Star of David.
  
• During the scene in which the hero confronts the liberal demagogue the tides of books on his office shelf all have one word which is larger than the others; the large words taken from each title and reading left to right are:
  

DEATH

FOR

YOUR FAMILY

BLACK

SUPREMACY

and

JEW

SUPREMACY

LEADS

TO

YOUR POVERTY

The titles are too small to be picked up by the conscious mind.

• In the scene in which the hero breaks into a whorehouse, a TV screen in the back of the whorehouse’s living room, behind the main action, shows the following images, almost too small to see:
  

A BLACK MAN RAPING A WHITE WOMAN.

AN ARAB KIDNAPPING WHITE CHILDREN.

A HASSIDIC JEW

“You get the idea,” Witcher said, as he came into the room. He turned off the air-conditioning and stood in the back of the room, rocking nervously on the balls of his feet. “What you say we switch channels. Smoke should be coming out of the hearings about now. Yeah, there it is.”

Kessler’d switched to a news channel. Smoke was standing on the steps of the Senate building with several congressmen. Stoner recognized Senator Harold Chung and Senator Judy Sanchez, who were there with Smoke for a quick news conference after the Senate hearings. Smoke had given testimony on the SA.

Senator Sanchez was reading from her notes. “We feel there is strong evidence that the Second Alliance has been involved in an active conspiracy essentially to do away with the Bill of Rights; to eliminate SAISC enemies through the courts and the AVL laws by means of an illegal video evidence tampering which fabricates false evidence for use in court; there is, further, substantial evidence that Worldtalk Public Relations Inc., which is owned by the Second Alliance International Security Corporation, deliberately and willfully inserted illegal subliminal ideation into television programs of their production; that the SAISC repeatedly violated conflict-of-interest laws by using their influence to place their operatives and cronies within the ranks of the CIA, CIA Domestic, the FBI, and the police departments of every major city in the United States. We further feel there is indeed strong evidence that the Second Alliance conspired with Anna Bester, the president of the United States, to devise a plan eliminating congressional decision-making power and freedom of the press, under the cloak of declaring a State of Emergency . . . ”

Cameras flashing, as if the flashes were the light given off by the awe and amazement of the reporters; gasps from Mr. and Mrs. Kessler and Stoner, who were astonished the investigation had gone that far.

“It’s Smoke,” Witcher said. “People took him seriously because he won the United Nations Literary Committee prize, used to be a major figure in the academic world. He’s been pushing things in the underGrid, sending vids and interviews and programs to the underground stations till he could get it on the networks. I guess it just built up in a sort of groundswell . . . ”

Smoke stepped to the microphones to make a statement. “There can be no mistake. If we don’t act quickly, we’re going to lose the United States of America—and not to the New-Soviets. The New-Soviets are a danger, but there’s a more immediate internal danger.”

A confusion of sudden movement on the steps behind the people at the portable podium, a
bang,
a rush of men in uniforms . . . 

Smoke was no longer at the podium.

The image wobbled as the camera turned around, the commentator yammering confusedly. A crowd of people bent over someone on the steps. The crowd parted just enough to give Stoner a glimpse, as someone ran to call an ambulance . . . 

Smoke was lying there, his chest bloody.

“Oh, Jesus,” Julie said. “God, I’m glad Alouette isn’t here.”

“Oh, no,” Kessler said.

Witcher said, “Stupid.” He snorted with contempt. There was no grief in his voice, but it creaked with anger. “Stupid bastards. They shot him, and that makes it worse for them.”

Stoner said, “You see the guy who shot him? I couldn’t see him. Oh, fuck. I need a drink. You see him? Was he black? I figure they’d set up a black guy or an Arab, maybe, to do it.”

Kessler said, “The public won’t fall for that. The SA’s stupid to do it now, in public.”

Hands shaking, Stoner went to the bar to pour himself a drink. “Chances are the order went out to kill him before the investigation went public. They failed to contact their man to pull him back in time. Stupid is the word, all ri . . . ”

“Shush!” Julie said. “They’re going to say something.”

A flushed, wide-eyed woman reporter came onto the screen. “Uh, I can definitely confirm that Jack Brendan Smoke has been shot while speaking at a news conference—we are told that he is alive but ‘critically wounded,’ but we have no definite word on his . . . his status . . . as yet . . . Stay with us as we report on this tragedy . . . ”

The Island of Malta.

Torrence shook his head in disbelief. “Satellite reconnaissance. That’s how you explain the ambush—satellites? You must be kidding.”

Steinfeld said, “I don’t see what’s so unlikely about it. They could have spotted us coming, set up the ambush.”

“What horseshit. You’re suffering a massive case of denial, man!”

Torrence was surprised he’d shouted at Steinfeld. It didn’t seem possible. They didn’t speak for a moment.

They were in the little back bedroom that Steinfeld slept in. The room was monkish, dusty, almost bare. The morning light was diffused to a blush by the window shade. Steinfeld sat on his cot. His face sagged; his eyes were ringed with sleeplessness. Torrence was pacing around the room. He paused to look sullenly at his maimed hand. With only three fingers, it looked like the paw of an animal.

Staring at the stumps of his fingers, Torrence said, “They knew we were coming. We lost a fourth of our people and we achieved nothing.” He turned to Steinfeld. “For the sake of the people that we lost—the people who are dying now . . . for Lila . . . Lila’s dying. Steinfeld, we’ve . . . we’ve got to . . . 
to assume .
 . . ”

Steinfeld said, “But to start a witch-hunt now when morale is so low . . . ”

A soft knock on the door.

Levassier came in, carrying something in his remaining hand. He handed it to Steinfeld, all the time looking at Torrence’s own disfigured hand. Then he smiled at Torrence and shrugged as if to say, “Not so bad, really.”

Steinfeld read the printout twice, and then looked at Hard-Eyes. “I don’t want you to take this as a confirmation of what you’ve been saying—it isn’t necessarily Karakos. But apparently we’ve had a defector from the CIA. A man named Stoner. He says we definitely have an SA mole. Right here on Malta . . . ”

Torrence slumped against a wall in relief. “We’ll move out of here?”

“Yes.” Steinfeld turned to Levassier and made it an order. “Now. Contact the Mossad, ask them about Haifa. Just get us off the island . . . ”

“I have to bring more news,” Levassier said, looking at the shaded window. “Our Lila is dead. She died . . . ” he shrugged “ . . . a few minutes ago, in the Valletta hospital.”

Torrence felt the rage turn in him; it turned inward. He was angry at himself for feeling just the faintest streak of relief that Lila was dead.

Steinfeld put his head in his hands. “She was, perhaps, our best.”

Torrence nodded. Then he said, “What about the mole—what about Karakos? You do understand that it must be Karakos . . . ”

Steinfeld looked up, hesitated. Then, slowly, he said, “I don’t know. I don’t know who to believe. Anybody could be a traitor, Torrence. With the extractor. Even you. For all I know, all this harping on Karakos—is your way of hiding.”