A Song Called Youth (91 page)

Dizzy, wobbly on their feet from oxygen deficiency, Torrence yelling into his headset, “Steinfeld—not enough air, we can’t—there’s no one alive here anyway. Do you copy?”

He pressed the little instrument to his ears; it was hard to hear over the blustering of flames and the rolling booms of explosions, but he made out, “Keep going . . . clear up soon, we couldn’t reach . . . ”

Static.

They came to a place where the road was nearly blocked by flaming timbers and burning sections of ragged wall. There was a narrow path between the fallen building on the right and the burning structure on the left. Torrence turned, mimed
Hold your breath!
and led them onto the path, flame on either side sucking the air away, roaring . . . 

Torrence glanced back, saw Claire staggering, her knees buckling, her head down, hands over her mouth. She was a red silhouette against a backdrop of yellow flame. He ran back to her, took her by the arm, and they stumbled on, lungs bursting. He thought they’d fall but they emerged into the open road, ran through a wall of smoke, into a wash of cool air.

Gratefully drawing lungfuls of cleaner, cooler air, they threw themselves flat, slapping rifles into firing position. Bullets sang overhead.

They were forty yards from the central building—where the gunfire was coming from. It was a rectangular five-story concrete building, utilitarian-brutish, unpainted, its windows shuttered with metal slitted for gun muzzles. Muzzle flashes strobed at those windows. Other NR teams were emerging from the other Entries, coming at the building from the four points of the compass. The frayed ends of smoke and the distortion of heat waves refracting massive firelight gave them partial cover. Up ahead, parked at an angle, was a small armored car, its front doors showing the SA cross, a Christian cross with the iron cross at its center; it was abandoned but it looked intact.

Torrence squeezed Claire’s arm, yelled over the roar of flames and the crack of gunfire, “You okay?” She was still coughing but she nodded. He shouted hoarsely, “Get behind me when I start moving, and stay low!” He signaled to the others to stay directly behind Claire. He laid his rifle down beside her. “Hold on to that for me.”

And he ran in a crouch—keeping the armored car between him and the HQ Central—up to the side of the car, looked in. Empty. He opened the driver’s side door, got in, keeping below the dashboard. Someone had seen him: machine gun rounds struck sparks from the hood of the car, gouged the asphalt beside him. Squatting behind the car, the others in his team returned fire.

Using a knife, Torrence set to work on the car’s ignition: His hands shook, but at last the car started. He put it in gear, got it moving forward, wedged the knife against the accelerator at an angle that would keep it moving about ten MPH. He peered over the dashboard, angled the car for the machine gun emplacement, behind sandbags, where the front door had been . . . Torrence shouting into his headset, asking for suppressive fire from the Mossad chopper moving in overhead . . . the chopper opening up at the windows with its miniguns . . . 

Torrence opened the door, slid out, running alongside—feeling a giant’s hail of machine gun rounds hammering the door. Closer—now just thirty feet to the doorway. Twenty-five. Torrence let the car slide on ahead, took a grenade from his bandolier. He pulled the pin with his teeth while opening the gas tank’s cap with his free hand—working clumsily with the three remaining fingers. MG rounds whistled around him as he dropped the grenade into the tank and ran behind the armored vehicle, shouting out a warning. His team flattened, everyone throwing themselves face down. Torrence threw himself down, flattening with his face buried in his arms, as the car plowed into the sandbags . . . 

The explosion slapped the sky with a wave of heat; the hair on the back of Torrence’s neck incinerated and he winced with the pain of the shock wave. But less than a second later he was up, catching the rifle Claire threw him, turning to fire past the yellow flames, the burning hulk of the car, into the building—

“Shit!” Carmen’s voice. Torrence saw her dragging Willow into the cover of the building, under the windows. But it was useless. The side of Willow’s head was missing. He was dead.

A rocket from the helicopter blew in one of the ground-floor windows, near the corner, forty feet down from where Carmen was hugging Willow’s body. Torrence ran past her, shouting, “Come
on!”
and she followed, they all followed, they climbed into the smoking socket of the window, burning their hands on the edges, coughing, firing bursts at anything that moved. Two men went down.

Carmen shot a woman in a dress—she was probably only a secretary. Then a man in armor stood in the doorway, firing.

Torrence and Carmen and Claire ducked behind a desk. Rounds from the gunman in the door chewed the fiberglass desk apart. Danco whooped as he came through the window only to be knocked back out as he was hit. Torrence jumped up, firing at the figure seen dimly in the smoke. The guy staggered but his armor held against the assault rifle’s rounds.

Carmen shrieking, “FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!” Running at the door while the armored SA paused to reload; Carmen with a hand grenade in her teeth, jerking the ring, tackling him, the grenade between her and the SA bull (Torrence thinking: FUCK NO!), the grenade booming, shaking the floor, ripping them both apart and killing another SA around the edge of the doorway . . . 

Torrence and Claire stood up, slapping fresh clips into their rifles, ran to the smoky doorway, coughing, firing, trying not to look at what remained of Carmen, firing at men who came around the corner in the hall, coughing again, rifles jumping in their hands. Gutman, behind them with a grenade launcher, took out another guy in armor at the end of the hall, Torrence and Claire reeling back from the shock wave, coughing, getting their footing, firing again and again toward the muzzle flashes, the blurred shapes of running men; trying not to see Carmen’s bloody grin, her severed head . . . 

Torrence holding back hysterical laughter, coughing, sprinting down the hall, jumping over bodies, firing, firing . . . 

After a while, no one fired back.

FirStep, the Space Colony.

“You don’t want to go back,” Kitty said. “Be honest.”

“I promised you we would,” Lester said, shrugging. “We will. But you’re just not in shape to take a shuttle trip till after the baby’s born.”

They sat in the grass, basking in reflected sunlight beside the Open’s playing field; they were watching a touch football game, listening to the music from the Colony’s folk quartet over the PA that Lester and Russ Parker had set up. Russ himself was quarterback on the Admin team, which was taking the worst of it, losing 44 to 12.

The Open was thronged, the crowd around the playing field dancing, drinking wine from Admin’s formerly private stock, laughing. Admin with Technicki; a multicolored crowd shifting with restless energy, making Kitty think of a World’s Fair she’d been to as a girl, with her brother Danny. Where was Danny Torrence now?

Lester laughed. “What’s so funny?” she asked.

“The looks on the face of the storage officers when we came in and Russ told them he was turning Admin stores over to the technicki—for a party! ‘A party, sir?’ ”

They both laughed. And she felt better than she had in months. “Oh, hell, Lester. The blockade’s down. Russ’s offering you an important job. A job like that on Earth . . . ” She shook her head. “Lester, let’s stay.”

He slipped an arm around her. “I knew you’d come around if I kept my mouth shut.”

Haifa, Israel.

The brassy light of Israel.

Gold domes, great swathes of white walls, a maze of narrow streets, ambience of the ancient . . . beyond the domes and tile rooftops, the heartbreaking blue of the Mediterranean. A furious sun was baking it all, trying to cook it back into the sand.

Torrence turned away from the window, disoriented by the shadowy, air-conditioned room, the row of consoles and print-out gear and screens against the right-hand wall. Three men and a woman sat on the dark wooden chairs, watched over by the portraits of generations of Israeli politicians on the walls, a gallery of bitter smiles and restrained optimism. And there was an old-fashioned pendulum clock, the sort with springs and hands pointing to the hour, that said
tick tick tick tick
 . . . 

Bensimon, the Mossad’s military attaché, sat behind the brown metal desk. He was a bearded man with deepset black eyes. He wore an Israeli military uniform and gold and red embroidered yarmulke. There were pipes in a rack on the desk but he made no move to smoke. He seemed a little in awe of Steinfeld.

Steinfeld and Witcher sat across from him, Claire sat between them.

“Will Captain Danco not be coming?” Bensimon asked.

“No,” Steinfeld said, shifting in his chair. “He was wounded. Rather badly. But he’s expected to live. With luck he’ll be at the next meeting.”

“Good.” Bensimon looked at Torrence, gestured toward a chair that stood empty to Steinfeld’s left. “You do not wish to sit, Captain Torrence?”

Captain
Torrence? “No, thanks,” Torrence said. Amenities. Weird. “I was sitting for hours on the helicopter and the ship. Let’s get started.”

Bensimon shrugged. He put his hands together, cracked his knuckles, and said, “We did quite well in Sicily. It is a great victory for you, Steinfeld. Their records, perhaps half of their European leadership—all wiped out. Colonel Watson, however, apparently survives. He is believed to have recently arrived in Rome. Crandall is somewhere extant. Now as to the next step: I have been in touch with a friend at the American embassy. The new president makes great noises about the SA in Europe, but will not consider moving against them militarily, for a variety of political reasons which come down to this: the American public is sick of war, and it is hard to disentangle the targets from the people they are hiding behind. To attack the Second Alliance the US would have to attack Italy, France, Britain, all the countries where . . . ” He made a dismissive gesture. “You see the problem. But our intelligence tells us that the pogroms are ongoing. The European apartheid proceeds. Israel also cannot yet declare war. But we have committed everything short of war to helping you. Especially intelligence, logistics, and recruitment. Some air support. But we are already weathering accusations from Italy about the attack on Sicily . . . ”

There was more talk, much talk of specifics and talk of money. And then Bensimon invited them all to lunch at “a very nice place not far from here.”

How strange, Torrence thought, considering what they were used to, to be invited to lunch. At a “nice place.”

Witcher said, “I’m sure we’d all be delighted—I wonder if we could have just five minutes alone here. And we’ll join you downstairs. There’s something we need to discuss . . . ”

Bensimon nodded, and stood, smiling. “Of course. I have something to do anyway. Downstairs in five minutes.” He smiled and went to the door, paused, and turned to them, a little embarrassed. “Ah, please permit me to . . . to express my admiration.” Steinfeld nodded. Bensimon left the room.

Witcher turned to Claire, and said, “I have some news for you, young lady.”

Torrence thought: And how weird to hear her called “young lady.” Everything seemed strange today.

“The Colony?” Claire’s voice was small, tentative. Which was also weird.

Witcher nodded. “I understand there was some doubt about your father’s . . . about what happened to him. There isn’t now. I’m sorry to tell you he’s dead.”

Claire swallowed, and after a moment said, “Go on.”

“The Colony has been taken—you’ve heard that. The technicki control it and a few rebel Administration personnel, specifically a man named Russ Parker.”

“He’s with Praeger.”

“Not anymore. In fact, he’s arrested Praeger. It’s very probable that, by now, Praeger has been executed. Evidently he had a number of people murdered.”

“Do you know who?”

“I don’t have a list. You can find out for yourself.”

“What?”

“Our people are now on the, uh, ruling council, whatever you call it, of the Colony. The Colony is effectively an NR enclave. In fact, we believe the SA may know about our retreat in the Caribbean. Everyone in our Caribbean headquarters—everyone who wants to—will be removed to the Colony. Once things are stable there.”

“But if the SA find out—”

“We’re not going to advertise it. And if you do your part, the new board of UNIC, NASA, and the US Orbital Army will be working to protect the Colony. It’ll be one of the safest places in existence.”

“What do you mean—my part?”

“They want you to take over as Chairperson. As the new Colony Chief. You’re the daughter of the man who designed the place. You have experience in Admin Council. You’re someone UNIC and the NASA people can relate to. They’ll accept the new order there with you in charge.”

“Me in charge . . . ?”

“Yes. And we want you there.” He smiled. “Because you’re NR.” After a moment he said. “Well? What do you say?”

She turned and looked at Torrence. Then she looked at Witcher. Then she looked at the floor and frowned.

No one said anything. Except the clock on the wall that said
tick tick tick tick
 . . . 

“I feel different about a lot of things,” Torrence said.

He was sitting up, holding Claire in his arms, in the hotel room’s double bed. The bedclothes had been thrashed onto the floor; the sheets were rumpled like a great carnation around them. Moonlight from the double glass doors onto the balcony silvered them.

“I was childish about Lila and Karakos,” Torrence said. “I wasn’t thinking of what you went through. I wasn’t really
seeing
you, then . . . Claire, don’t go back.”

“I decided.”

“Claire . . . ”

“I have a responsibility to it. To my dad, too. Steinfeld and Witcher both said it’s the best work I can do for the NR. I’m going.”

She reached up and touched his face and her fingers were shocked by the tears on his cheek. But she didn’t change her mind.