A Song Called Youth (10 page)

“You haven’t got your mind on your work, you little SHIT!” she hissed, raising welts between his shoulder blades.

Rimpler muttered apologies. Hermione was right. His mind wasn’t on the game.

His mind was free-associating wildly, and parts of it seemed to break off from the main mass of his thinking and form venomous TV-eyed organs of pure self-consciousness; treacherous mental excrescencies that watched him, reported on him to some other sneering, sardonic part of his mind.

And the flashes of pain, instead of blinding his mind as they should have, instead of taking him out of himself, this time acted as eidetic drive-in movie screens, looming swatches of luminous white on which the derisive part of his mind projected images . . . 

And he saw the thing he had built. He saw it on the screen of flash-pain. He saw the Colony. FirStep, ponderously rotating, a sort of technological totem-pole shape; in silhouette from just the right angle it was an Easter Island figure against the backdrop of space—space, the black and infinitely empty. Space, the brilliantly lit and overflowing with energy. Space, where the spectrum is unleashed.

And he seemed to see the thousands of tons of FirStep in blueprint, its world-class road map of wiring, its clusters of millions of computer chips, a thousand brains for its thousand segments, the people aswarm in it like
E. coli
in the belly of some enormous organism, independent of the organism but interrelated. And he saw its life-support systems, air and water filtration, the dozens of failsafes for airtight integrity against the ever-present gnawing of the vacuum of space, the reaches of insulation and the envelope of the atmospheric filter against the solar wind.

He visualized it in an infrared scan, with its areas of red and yellow for heat energy, its bluer areas where it radiated less heat, its solar-power panels shining with absorbed energy . . . 

And he saw the thing in its skeletal stage, slowly coming together, something that had taken twenty years, now forming before his eyes in fast action, growing module by module like a coral reef, the construction pods darting fishlike around it. Growing from section A, a lonely outcropping in an endless sea, to an atoll to an island . . . A, B, C, D, and now E. Years of work materializing in technological crystallization.

And he had designed it, had overseen its construction, had made it grow around him.

Around him! He knew in that terribly clear, terribly ugly instant that it was only a hermit crab’s shell. Something he had pulled over himself, taken refuge in to hide his nakedness. The Colony was simply armor for Benjamin Brian Rimpler.

Oh yes: he’d been fascinated with satellites as a boy; with the sky’s ponderous celestial majesty; had nurtured a megalomaniacal adolescent fantasy of hoisting his own personal star into the sky. And later, horrified by the planet’s swarming malaise, its feverish self-gouging environmental suicide, he’d wanted to create an alternative world, a self-contained, intelligently controlled ecosystem where man—and nature—would be given a second chance. An answer to the population explosion, because it would be the first of many such alternative worlds . . . 

Anyway, that’s what he told himself. And that’s what he told the media. The Colony would employ and house the poor. And in fact the bulk of its settlers were low-income technicki workers. So it looked good. It looked unselfish.

But he saw it, now. The Colony was a monumental act of selfishness. And his obsessive drive to get it built had killed his son.

Here, in the 2/3-grav section, in the exclusive optimum-lifestyle quarters, he had wrapped its vast tonnage about himself in layers of elaboration that seemed, now, only the intricacy of neurosis. Each life-support system, each failsafe and airlock seemed a form of his pathetic anality.

He sat back on his haunches, looked at Hermione, and perceived that he’d allowed a sort of parasite to crawl into his shell with him.

“Get out,” he said.

“What? Why, you little worm—”

“No, I mean it. I’m not trying to intensify the game. Get out.”

“Hey, don’t blame me because you can’t get it up. A man gets old and not even the best pro can help. If you’d take some—”

“Get out.”

She stepped back, lowering her whip, yawing between two poles, the overawed employee and the professional dominatrix.

“What? The price is still—”

“I paid you in advance. Get out.”

Hermione perceived that her license was revoked. She backed away, then turned, without so much as muttering, went to the bed to get her jumpsuit. She’d picked up on his urgency. There wasn’t even time to change out of the rubber. The little prick! (And she did mean little!) But he was the most powerful-man on the Colony, except for maybe Praeger. Rimpler could have her jettisoned if he wanted. She went quietly, thinking, I’m in Admin section; I could stop at a credfone and call Praeger. He’s into submissives; but what the hell, I can switch . . . 

Rimpler watched her go, and one of the fragment outriders of his personality, the autoerotic, infantile part, looked after her with regret and whined to the rest of him. Mentally he slapped it and told it to shut up.

There was to be no more oblivion for him from that direction. It wasn’t working anymore. Maybe drugs. Booze. Maybe—

He saw himself in an evac chute.
The gates open, the air sucks out, he’s ejected naked into void—

He recoiled, actually curled up and clutched at himself at the thought.

Terry was—

Recoiled again from that one, too, and tried to think instead about a stiff drink, something to eat . . . 

He sat on his haunches, naked, parts of him smeared with Vaseline, his face still damp with her pheromone perfume, his back throbbing with welts, and fought an urge to run to the nearest airlock and jet himself naked into space—

That’d be real freedom, for a moment.

“Dad?”

His gut constricted. A muscle in his back jumped. Fear washed through him, acrid and cold.
Claire.
Claire’s voice. He was more afraid of Claire, at this moment, than he’d been of his own ice-queen mother. He was afraid of his own daughter.

If she should see Hermione . . . 

But her voice came from the grid in the front door. Hermione was going out by the service corridor. Claire wouldn’t see her.

He shouted, “Claire—I’ll be right out! I’m in the shower.” Then he pressed the door button and said, “seven-three,” into the grid. The door analyzed his voiceprint, confirmed it, and opened the front door for her. But left the door to his bedroom locked.

“I’ll be right out,” he shouted through the door to the living room. He went to the bathroom, let the ultrasound shower cleanse him, shivered with the tingling of it, felt a vague pleasure knowing that a composition by Stravinsky was worked into the sound waves; he couldn’t hear the composition at that frequency, but he could feel it.

Still, he wished he could have water. The technickis would get word of it, though, if he had a water system installed. One of them would have to install it, after all. Their commentators would editorialize about wasteful luxuries among Admin elitists.
Admin washunmunener filzerbush,
they’d say. Admin washes in money and our air filter’s broken.

Praeger, damn him, had had a water shower installed. The technickis had heard about it, every last one of them, an hour later.

Praeger. president of UNIC’s on-Colony board. The sick feeling in Rimpler’s gut returned when he thought of Praeger.

He stepped out of the shower, and it sank back into the tiled wall. He went to the mirror, punched
8
on the numbered row of buttons beneath the glass; the mirror reversed itself, showing him its shelved backside. He found the anesthetic spray and coated the welts on his back with it. Again with some regret. Then he dressed in Japanese house pajamas, airy blue silk, and found Claire in the living room. His stomach tightened as she said, “Hi, Dad,” with a friendly enough smile, nothing censorious in her eyes.

“How you doing, babe?” he said, bending to kiss her on the forehead. He hadn’t seen her for almost two weeks.

“Dad—I’m okay, but—”

He sat down across from her, thinking,
She seems coiled up.

She wore a light, soft gray suit with a triple-flap skirt; her lips were pursed, her cheeks hollowed.

“You’re going to give me more details about the wonderful viddy interview you did—” He laughed breezily. “Forget it! It was a put-up job and by now everyone’s realized it.”

“Dad . . . ”

And then he saw the tension in her posture and the knuckles white on her knees. He thought, Shit, it’s Praeger again.

“Dad, when you asked for a four-day in-house vacation—”

“You think it was bad timing? Right after your screw-up with the little technicki kid? I told you—”

“Dad! . . . No. But—I only just found out that you had a no-calls up. I mean, no one could figure out why you weren’t making a statement . . . ”

“Well—sure. How could I have a vacation, a retreat, if everyone’s calling me with the Colony’s problems? There’s a dozen people happy to—”

“Dad . . . ”

This time her voice actually broke. He stared. He hadn’t seen her show her humanity like that in years; not since Terry died.

“For God’s sake, Claire, out with it.”

“Dad, when you sealed the place off, you left it open for LSSE. Right?” There was accusation wrapped in the sarcastic twist she gave to “Right?”

He laughed nervously. “Well, of course!”

LSSE: Life-Support Emergency. There
hadn’t
been an LSSE. Impossible.

“Dad—there
was
an LSSE. I mean—this is the sort of thing that keeps happening with you.” She was in her bitchily maternal mode now. “Things are flying to hell around you and—Dad, there was a Bright Red. Full alert.
And Praeger gave orders that you were not to be told.
I mean, I don’t
know
that for sure but . . . he must have.”

He felt himself sinking. “What was it?” His voice a crust.

“Dad—”

“Will you stop saying that and just
tell me
!” His fear of her vanished. He was standing now, arms straight at his sides.

“The Russians have blockaded us.
We’re in the war.
The last supply ship was boarded. Captured! There hasn’t been another. No ships outgoing. They’re even jamming communications. We get through now and then—”

“Why didn’t you come to me before? I mean—how long has it been?”

“Three days. Dad, I couldn’t get through to see you till today. And you had your screen down. The riots—we couldn’t get through because of the riots.”

“Riots.”

“A man named Bonham has been asking for a general strike. There are four of these organizers really pushing it—a man named Joseph Bonham, a man named Samson Molt—”

“Oh, don’t tell me their names, tell Security, I’m not the local thought police. Shit.” He found he was staring at his decanters on the table. Wanting a drink and not having the courage even to reach across the table. Afraid the Colony was so fragile it would shiver apart if he moved. His shell, his armor. His insulation from Earth.

“These people are saying that now we’re cut off from Earth the techni-class has got to demand rights or they’ll be completely powerless when it comes to martial law.”

“There’s something to that.” He laughed bitterly. Now his hands moved of their own violation—squirting gin into a glass. He swallowed it and shuddered. “Praeger’ll want—martial law, want to completely subjugate the technickis because of the state of emergency.””

“You
agree
with these people?” More reproach than surprise.

He shrugged, took another drink. Laughed. “Riots!” Shaking his head in wonder. “I designed this thing . . . ” He gestured vaguely at the walls, meaning the Colony itself. “And still it’s three days before I know we’re blockaded. And having riots.”

“Dad—Praeger didn’t want you to know.”

They looked at one another, and the implication hung in the air between them. She gave it verbal shape. “I think there’s going to be a coup. I think UNIC wants to take the colony over completely.”

• 06 •

FirStep floated in the sea of space, a city afloat in the void.

And Freezone floated in the Atlantic Ocean, a city afloat in the wash of international cultural confluence.

Freezone was anchored about a hundred miles north of Sidi Ifni, a drowsy city on the coast of Morocco in a warm, gentle current, and in a sector of the sea only rarely troubled by large storms. What storms arose here spent their fury on the maze of concrete wave-baffles Freezone Admin had spent years building up around the artificial island.

Originally, Freezone had been just another offshore drilling project. The massive oil deposit a quarter-mile below the artificial island was still less than a quarter tapped out. The drilling platform was owned in common by the Moroccan government and a Texas-based petroleum and electronics products company. TexMo. The company that bought Disneyland and Disneyworld and Disneyworld II—all three of which had closed in the wake of the CSD: the Computer Storage Depression. Also called the Dissolve Depression.

A group of Arab terrorists—at least, the US State Department claimed that’s who did it—had arranged a well-placed electromagnetic pulse from a hydrogen bomb hidden aboard a routine orbital shuttle. The shuttle was vaporized in the blast, as well as two satellites, one of them manned; but when the CSD hit, no one took time to mourn the dead.

The orbital bomb had almost triggered Armageddon: three Cruise missiles had to be aborted, and fortunately two more were shot down by the Russians before the terrorist cell took credit for the upper atmospheric blast. Most of the bomb’s blast had been directed upward; what came downward, though, was the side effect of its blast: the EMP. An electromagnetic pulse that—just as had been predicted since the 1970s—traveled through thousands of miles of wires and circuitry on the continent below the H-blast. The Defense Department was shielded; the banking system, for the most part, was not. The pulse wiped out ninety-three percent of the newly formed American Banking Credit Adjustment Bureau. ABCAB had handled seventy-six percent of the nation’s buying and credit transferal. Most of what was bought, was bought through ABCAB or ABCAB related companies . . . until the EMP wiped out ABCAB’s memory storage, the pulse overburdening the circuits, melting them, and literally frying the data storage chips. And thereby kicking the crutches out from under the American economy. Millions of bank accounts were “suspended” until records could be restored—causing a run on remaining banks. The insurance companies and the Federal guarantee programs were overwhelmed. They just couldn’t cover the loss.