A Song Called Youth: Eclipse by John Shirley

Author:John Shirley [Shirley,John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60701-347-1
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2012-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

• 12 •

In Manhattan, and in the “A” building of the Second Alliance International Security Corporation, across the street from the Worldtalk Building, John Swenson typed up a coded communication to a man named Purchase. He told his terminal to send the communication to Purchase’s terminal, across the street and up forty floors. The communication was a message within a message within a message. To a man who was an agent within an agent, within an agency. Message one told Worldtalk that SAISC’s security preplanning for the Eighth International Congress of Orbital Manufacturers was complete. Message two, hidden within the signals for the first, was from the SA’s Second Circle, the ruling committee, to Purchase the SA agent. So far as the SAISC knew, Purchase was one of eighteen Worldtalk executives with greater and lesser degrees of loyalty to the Second Alliance. Message three, secreted within the second, was from Swenson the NR agent to Purchase the NR agent. Warning him that SAISC was making plans to implement a full corporate takeover of Worldtalk—the world’s biggest public relations firm and potentially the most powerful tool for propaganda known to modern man . . .

Swenson sighed and wondered if he had done well to send it through an SAISC terminal. How closely was Sackville-West monitoring everything that went out? There was no such thing as an unbreakable code. He looked at his watch. Ellen Mae ought to be alone in her office about now. He picked up a sheet of computer printouts and walked down the hall. Her door was open. He knocked on the frame and went in.

“What have we got here?” Ellen Mae Crandall asked, in her most musical voice, as Swenson laid the printout on her desk. “You could have sent it,” she added, nodding toward her desk terminal. She smiled. She’d said it to give him his opening.

Swenson said smiling softly, “Maybe it’s because any excuse to see you personally . . . ” He shrugged. Ellen Mae blushed, really blushed, by God, and he wondered if he’d gone too far.

She looked hastily at the report. “Oh, the FirStep Colony. Is this from Praeger?” She frowned. “Why didn’t he send it to me directly?”

“He sent it to Colony Intelligence Director—which as of this morning is yours truly.”

“Oh, I forgot! There’s so much, without Rick, to keep track of . . . ” She sighed. Playing helpless female now.

He put his hand on her arm, telling himself to ignore the arm’s slight excess of black hairs, and said, “He’s going to be back with us soon.”

She swallowed, flustered, but gave no sign she wanted him to take his hand away.

Purchase was right about her, Swenson thought.

She glanced over the report. “What’s, um, the gist of this?”

He straightened, and put his hands in his jacket pocket. “There isn’t a lot to it. They can’t get anything but short transmissions out, and fewer of those lately, with the Russians sending out their scrambling signal. Rimpler is possibly cracking under pressure. He’s unstable anyway.

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