A Song Called Youth (60 page)

Maybe he was crippled and didn’t want them to know because it would reduce his power over them. He was supposed to be a man Protected by God himself. He was almost the Messiah—he allowed some to suggest that he
was
the Messiah. Would God allow his Christ to be a cripple? (What was that old American expression, “Christ on a crutch”?)

“Well, Colonel,” the figure in the holotank said in his soft accent, “I’ve heard some mighty disturbin’ reports. I know that you would be unable to sleep well till you cleared up the matter with me. How about you do a little quick explainin’.”

Watson shook his head. “Rick, I—”

“Now, I see that I’m-sorry-Rick-I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about look on your face, so I’ll pretend you’re not joshin’ me, and I’ll tell you here ’n’ now: You’ve been telling our enemies all about our most classified project.”

Watson did indeed know just what Crandall was talking about. And knowing made him feel like he was coming down with the flu. Weak, feverish, and green around the brisket.

“I deny telling an enemy about anything classified,” he said, gazing serenely up at Crandall, hoping his face was as proud and unafraid as he was trying to make it look. The holocameras in a semicircle just above the holotank showed his image to Crandall, transmitted by satellite across the ocean. To Cloudy Peak Farm, where Crandall had remained, with tripled security, since the Stisky affair. Watson had heard Crandall was living behind bulletproof glass now, with only his doctor having physical access to him. And Crandall wasn’t even sure he trusted his doctor.

Crandall asked, with soft incredulity, “You deny it? Do you think you’re in some headmaster’s office, Colonel? Are you a boy denying having stolen the sweet biscuits?”

“I deny that Karakos is an enemy, Rick. At the
time
he was, technically, but . . . ah . . . ”

“I’m familiar with your plans for him.” The Southern drawl had left his voice, bit by bit, replaced by the bitter cold of crystallized steel. “Suppose something had gone wrong. Suppose he’d escaped. Suppose he’d won his way to the NR. They have media contacts in the States. How long before the headlines read, second alliance plans world genocide?”

“Rick—”

“What is it you’re about to say, Colonel? That no one would believe we’d attempt something so impractical? Ah, but everyone is familiar with the ‘wonders of neurotech,’ Colonel Watson. Don’t you think American journalists are capable of putting two and two together?”

The inside of Watson’s mouth had turned to cardboard. “Ah, well, Rick—”

“You have lost the privilege of using my first name, Colonel.”

Watson felt a deep, deep chill run through him.

“The truth is,” Crandall went on, “you’re a windbag. You’ve always been a windbag. You’re also a talented man, but that’s not enough. We need reliability. And you simply like to talk. To boast, to pontificate. It’s in your character. It’s a weakness, Colonel.”

Crandall was talking quickly. Was himself strangely loquacious today. With that and the gauntness, Watson began to believe the rumors he’d heard were true: Crandall was taking some kind of amphetamine.

Crandall leaned back in his chair, and the chair creaked. Equipment at Cloudy Peak Farm picked up its creaking, transmitted the creak of the wood to a satellite somewhere over the Atlantic, which sent the creak down to the receiver on the roof of the Comm Center: the sound of wood creaking. “We’re taking under consideration the possibility that you might be better off if part of your, well, now, your background on all this were extracted . . . ”

“No!” Watson burst out. If they extracted his knowledge of Project Total Eclipse, his whole relationship with the SA would be surgically altered. He might be used as a soldier, a strategist, but he’d no longer be an insider. His power would be irreparably undercut.

“You might not like the alternatives, Colonel,” Crandall said softly.

Watson swallowed; his tongue sandpapered the roof of his mouth. “See here, Reverend Crandall—I admit I’ve been a trifle, ah, insubordinate. Truth is, I find it hard to continue working with the albino. He’s obviously a genetic inferior. His hubris is insufferable. I suppose what happened was a product of my distaste for him. I realize that’s no excuse. I can assure you that from here on in, I’ll keep a tight rein, ah, on my tendency to, ah . . . ”

“Very well.”

Those two words opened a floodgate of relief in Watson. Those two words meant he was not to be killed. He was aware that it might’ve gone either way. There was a reason that Klaus was standing behind him.

“But you do know, I’m sure, that your restraint will be closely monitored.”

“I . . . I would have it no other way, Reverend Crandall.”

“All righty, let’s get on up the hill a ways. What else’ve you got to tell me, Colonel?” Crandall’s false Southern affability had returned. He leaned his chin on his fist and yawned.

“Very good, sir,” Watson said. “We’re triangulating in on the People’s United Front . . . and ah . . . ”

“I don’t want to hear about every diddly-squat little Commie outfit. The New Resistance is our priority, Colonel.”

“The NR. Yes. We, ah, believe Steinfeld and his planning council to be somewhere in the Mediterranean, possibly on the coast of North Africa. We have, of course, our man in the field, who has every likelihood of linking up with them, and we expect a message from him shortly. In the meantime . . . ”

“You
had
them, Colonel. Your people had the resistance cadre trapped. And now you don’t even know where they are.”

“Reverend Crandall . . . ” Watson paused to contain his anger. He took a deep breath. “Reverend Crandall, I was not in charge of that operation; they didn’t have time to consult me. I was here, shoring up security around the project installation.”

“You want to pass the buck? Fine. But from here on in, Colonel, I want you to leave
basic
security to Sackville-West. You are to go to our installation in Sicily, immediately, and you are to work from there to find Steinfeld and his people. I want them found, and I want them completely
gone
from our hair. They’re small, but they’re more dangerous than they look. Steinfeld has a knack for uniting factions. I know the knack when I see it: I have it myself. Take him seriously, Colonel.”

“Reverend . . . ”

But Crandall had cut the transmission. His smiling face rippled as the image faded, the ripple distorting the smile, warping it—or perhaps revealing it for what it was.

And then the holotank was dark.

Watson turned away, stifling a curse. Crandall could still be listening.

A giant’s silhouette hulked in the doorway, across the room. Klaus. When had he moved over there?

Watson frowned in irritation. The man had a way of staring at you . . . 

Watson shrugged. He crossed the room, muttering, “Let’s go.”

A minute later, as their feet crunched the pockets of ice in the compound’s frozen earth, Klaus said, “Colonel . . . ?”

Watson glanced at him. “Yes?”

Klaus stopped in the middle of the compound and looked up at the stars. The stars were reflected, cold and brightly impassive, in the arc of Klaus’s visor.

“Well, what is it, Klaus? It’s cold out here.”

Klaus looked toward him again. At least, his helmet was tilted down. “I could not help but overhear your exchange with the Reverend Crandall. He’s right about security matters, of course . . . ”

“Just who do you think you . . . ”

“But on the whole I question his competence to continue as our leader.”

Watson stared at him, astounded that Klaus would speak treason so bluntly.

Klaus reached up and twisted a series of studs at his neck. The helmet’s visor slid upward. Watson could see his craggy Eastern European face, with its hawkish black eyes and short-clipped black beard, the broad, red-lipped mouth. And he saw conspiracy in that face.

“He’s going to be looking for mistakes, Colonel. And everyone makes mistakes sometime. You make fewer than most, of course. But eventually . . . and when you slip up, he’s going to over-react, as they say in America. Perhaps the time has come to look for a way to . . . well, to remove him from real power. He is a necessary figurehead. But there is no reason he should have to be a
living
one . . . ”

Watson glanced around. There was a guard at the fence, but he was well out of earshot. “You’re suggesting we . . . but the man’s so heavily guarded.”
This is insane. Am I actually considering this proposal?

“Opportunity, Colonel. The opportunity will come. My brother, Rolf, is one of his private guards. The time is not yet here. But it will come.”

“And what do you expect to gain?” Watson’s teeth were chattering from the cold now, but he stood fascinated, staring up into Klaus’s monumental confidence.

“A promotion. Sackville-West’s job. At twice his salary.”

Watson said, “This is a loyalty test of some kind. You’re working for Crandall.”

“You control a staff who can operate an extractor. I will submit myself to it, if you wish. Look into my mind. See the truth.”

After a moment Watson nodded. “Very well. But we will not move against him until I decide the time is right.”

“Of course, sir.” Klaus reached up and snapped his visor shut.

They started back to the officer’s quarters. Watson thinking,
Have I made the wrong decision? Have I let my anger with Crandall push me into making a fatal mistake?

Overhead, the constellations turned, swinging slowly, slowly, through the night . . . and one star crossed the path of another.

Washington, D.C.

Janet Stoner was peering through the slot between two other condos, onto the next street. A boy wearing a transparent anti-acid-rain slicker bicycled by, his tires slicing puddles.

It was Saturday afternoon. The rain had stopped. Everything was soaked in a pearly gray light. Corte Stoner and his wife were on the back terrace of their Georgetown condo, sitting under the rain-scarred plastic bubble. Janet was sitting in the wicker rocking chair, looking pensively out through the plastic pane. She wore a white sweater and cream pants and ticked orange-painted, manicured nails against the wicker chair’s armrest.

Stoner was aware his wife had gained weight in the three and a half years since Cindy’s birth; there were lines at the corners of her eyes, and she was less energetic than she’d been when she and Stoner had married. Yet Stoner was still in love with her, and they both knew it; the knowledge was held in a quiet confidence between them.

Through the open sliding glass doors Stoner could see Cindy—her skin not the dark black of her Mama’s, but more cocoa—sitting raptly in front of the wall console watching a computer generated cartoon in which blond, blue-eyed Danny Angel and his sidekick, Bucky Blast, foiled another plot of the evil New-Soviet scientist, Dr. Darkinsky. Reflected cartoon colors crawled over Cindy’s face.

“You go over everything, Corte?” Janet asked dryly. “You check the Bible in my desk drawer? Might be a bug in there, baby.” She was sitting with her feet tucked under her for warmth. It was a little chilly on the porch. She was looking at the black satchel sitting beside Stoner’s easy chair. It contained detection equipment. Stoner had been at it all morning and into the afternoon. He was fairly sure they weren’t being bugged, at least out here. But he knew it couldn’t last.

“We’re clean so far,” he said.

“If you want to talk to me without worrying about surveillance, why don’t we go out somewhere noisy?”

“I wanted to know about the house. I just wanted to know.”

She said, “You’re taking this pretty seriously.”

“You afraid I’m going paranoid?”

She shrugged. She smiled. “I go with you, baby. Anywhere, even to paranoid.”

He glanced at Cindy. Danny Angel was over, some noon news show had come on. Cindy was spelling words on her I Teach Myself computer, sitting cross-legged and holding the little robin’s-egg-blue console in her lap. Smart kid.

Stoner took a deep breath and told Janet about the Hiring Assessment Program weeding the non-Caucasians and moderates out of the CIA’s power structure; told her about Howie; told her about the Kupperbind file. Told her, last, as unsensationally as possible, about Winston Post.

She was a strong woman. Just a little catch in her voice when she said, “You really think they . . . ” She glanced at Cindy, lowered her voice. “ . . . you think they murdered him?”

He nodded.

“And you think they’re watching you?”

He nodded again. “It’s only a matter of time before they start home surveillance. And they’re already reassigning my workload. I was keeping tabs on NR data. The Resistance people in Europe. They’ve taken me off that.”

“How, uh, how far do you think they’ll go?”

“I don’t know . . . but right now I think Unger figures to use you against me for leverage, keep me in line behind him, so I support him in everything.”

“What do you mean,
use me against you?”
She was outraged now. Violated.

“Their rationale is, blacks and other ‘coloreds’ are prone to sympathy with radical groups, because the radical groups are actively anti-racist. So blacks are Security Risks. So is anyone closely associated with blacks.” He shrugged. “They haven’t used the Assessment Program to reassign me, because I’ve got a lot of seniority. Which means clout. I think they’d be more likely to arrange another ‘accident.’ ”

She stared at him. “Jesus, Corte.”

“You think I’m . . . going off the deep end over this?”

She shook her head slowly. “You never talked much shop with me, all these years. You were real tight-lipped. It was part of your job to be, I guess. If you’re telling me things now, you got to be worried for real, for serious reasons.”

He nodded, smiling ruefully. She was too smart to simply assume that he was right. She’d had to reason it out. “I can’t play along with them, Janet, even if they weren’t going to go after me. I can’t handle it. It’s . . . I’d be a traitor to my country to play along with them. Because they’re traitors. This bullshit is un-American.”