An Interlude
x
They are not those who used to feed us, -
For would they not fair terms concede us?
- If hearts can house such treachery
They are not those who used to feed us
When we were young-they cannot be!
'The Puzzled Game-Birds', Thomas Hardy
x
President Margaret Lancaster, The Capitol
"Excuse me, President?" the masked peacekeeper asked, opening the door to her private office with a tentative knock. "It's Mr. Lorca here to see you."
Caught off-guard by the situation but not surprised, she found herself nodding absentmindedly, holding fast to the part of her job that consistently made sense. The most recent figures from District 11 on natural pollinator reintroduction efforts were actually quite compelling.
"He's not leaving," the young man added nervously.
She sighed, shoulders heavy with the weight of the last few days. Scanned to the end of the report. Not meteorically successful thus far. Some notes on crops that would be quick to suffer if a recent endemic that had swept through the kept honeybee population was not addressed quickly. Almonds! Half the Capitol would be in the streets with protest signs.
"Send him in."
"Yes, President Lancaster, right away."
As the door closed, she voiced aloud a command for her office's assistant-system to direct the pollinator-problem to the Gamemakers' muttation department and any other facility that dealt with gene editing, to solicit quotes on a response plan that would inform the case she made before Parliament. As though the threat to their precious almonds wouldn't be enough.
She checked herself, it was dangerous to assume these days.
That errand done, she leaned under her desk and produced two glasses and a bottle of wine – fine stuff, from District 11 vineyards before they were burned, the soil treated to better suit grapes fit for consumption as opposed to fermentation. A popular move within the district – much more use for food than for alcohol. In the Capitol, less so.
Their goddamned wine and their goddamned fucking almonds, she thought grimly.
Ruminating on the bottle for a second, she uncorked it carefully, then poured both glasses a little beyond a serving. Figuring she'd need a little more than a glass to deal with the coming conversation. With the man who was the worst of her opposition, surely.
Without a knock, the door swung open, revealing a tall and broad-shouldered man in a navy blue suit in the Capitol style, necktie a bold red but a simple knot. She wondered briefly if he'd tied it himself. Surely someone with pockets as deep as his, who'd so quickly fled the Capitol at the first sign of a rebel victory in Two, had managed to keep a few avoxes around for household tasks.
Not very talented avoxes, judging by the necktie.
"Margaret," he said, interrupting her contemplations with a halfway bow.
"It's President Lancaster," she said, a little coldly at the immediate disrespect. "Dick."
He laughed, a cold noise, though it came all the way from his chest. Sincere. "Never heard that before."
"Do you prefer Richard?"
"'Lorca' is good enough for my supporters."
She ground her teeth. "I could hardly accept that label for myself."
"I have to ask, Margaret, lately … what the fuck are you doing?"
"Running the country. You wouldn't understand how that works. Are you still selling off-brand suits with your name sewed on them to your sycophants?" she snapped, knowing this would rile him.
"No need to be mean," he responded, making a face that quite reasonably fit the parameters by which one might assess 'hurt feelings'.
"Why are you really here?"
"Your speech this evening, on the Games – that utter bullshit again. The same lines you feed to the tributes. I have to ask, if I'm to go forward with my campaign... what am I up against, here?"
"So I take it you're not a fan of the eligibility window reduction," she suggested drily. "Or were the long words too difficult to sort out? We'll be raising reaping age to fourteen, assuming parliament cooperates."
"Ah, they'll give you trouble whatever you do," he said, picking up one of the glasses of wine and examining it thoughtfully.
"A more realistic assessment than I expected," she admitted. "Why on earth are you running, then, if you have even an inkling of what a miserable job you stand to inherit?"
"Does it matter?" he replied, taking a long sip of his wine. "To put things back to normal, though, if you have to know."
"Normal?"
"The Games, the Presidency, the... everything."
He waved his glass about descriptively, letting the deep purple wine slosh out and stain the carpet.
"To restore us to our former glory?" the President suggested dismissively. "Enjoy the decade that lasts, then, before they're back to burn us to the ground for good. My system works, Lorca. You're a fool to claim otherwise."
"So I'm a fool, am I," he said slowly, back to contemplating his glass.
"I might use stronger language in different company."
"My supporters don't think I'm a fool," he replied.
"They're fools themselves. If I hadn't been around before the Rebellion, I'd say the rebels had gone through the streets shooting anyone who displayed basic reading comprehension or capacity for critical thought, but no, it's always been like this. We act as though it's the districts who need our guiding hand or they'll bring us to ruin, but it's always been that Capitol, hasn't it?"
"Were you around before the Rebellion, Margaret?" he parried. "I've heard some interesting theories about where you come from, and your district-sympathizing nonsense lends credence to a few seemingly more out-there theories."
"Oh, not this again," she sighed.
Lorca's favorite line was the 'who does Margaret Lancaster really serve?' tangent, bolstered by everything from baseless accusations that she was a rebel war criminal who'd adopted the identity of a murdered Capitolite to suggestions that she was some sort of district (District 2 being the speculated place of her origin, more often than not) refugee who'd just as much lied about her identity to gain power.
This was a difficult balancing act, as, of course, she was, somewhat, lying. She had not always been Margaret Lancaster. She had been Margaret Templesmith nearly long enough to forget herself in that role, but that was in the past, an identity she did not especially wish anyone to know about.
So, as she usually did, she made a face suggesting mild annoyance and said, "really, Lorca, that's the best you can do? Run my papers through a lab again, you'll find them quite genuine."
"Margaret Lancaster didn't exist for a few decades, did she?"
"If you wish to expose the indignities of my youth, it would be quite easy to arrange a similar slip exposing your own. How many wives are we on, now? How many secretaries silenced?" she snapped. "Come, let's not lie to each other. The Games have become a useful tool under my stewardship. Panem has become a place of stability and bounty. You wish to abandon all of that progress for... let me guess, an eighteenth golden toilet?"
"You know as well as I do why we still run the Games, Margaret," he sighed, looking down at his wine with feigned disaffection. "Why they should be run - why my way resonates so broadly as an improvement."
"Well, you've certainly heard my speech enough to –"
"Because we like them."
Lancaster narrowed her eyes at the suggestion. Lorca, smiling now, maintained eye contact while finally taking a sip of his wine.
"Excellent," he commented, canting his glass politely towards his host in appreciation. "Is this a pre-Rebellion vintage?"
"Yes."
"Explains why it's so nice. You and your administration sure took care of those simple pleasures in life, didn't you? Boldly protecting us all from decent liquor."
"From starvation," she suggested. "Remember those years? No, you wouldn't, you disappeared to god-knows-where in a hovercraft branded with your family name. Classy, that."
"We've always loved their blood."
"It doesn't have to be that way. It hasn't, not for years. We love their stories, too - they can enjoy that part of it, too. Have you missed, somehow, the figures on elective viewership in the districts? The Games can work for everyone."
"The people can see through you, Margaret. The people who matter, at least. You placate and you serve and you scrape at the whims of the districts as though they were human to you – but they're just votes. You gave them the right to vote and convinced yourself it meant you respected them. But you don't any more than I do. And you're spoiling all the fun parts of sharing a country with those heathens. Your Games are comparatively dull psychodramas. We have to be nice to them. You won't even let us fuck them, for heaven's sake."
"There's no other way," Lancaster insisted, exasperation evident in her voice. "You saw your way play out – you saw what happened when we were honest with them. Would you really put your lot in with Coriolanus Snow? After what they did to him?"
"President Lorca does have a nice ring to it," he replied, smiling without teeth.
"Is that what you'll say on your way to the guillotine?"
"After you, honey."
"I'm your President, Lorca, perhaps feign some kind of respect."
"You're my President for now."
"The districts won't have you – my numbers aren't wonderful amongst the painted fools who make up my constituency in the Capitol, but they're outnumbered. Did you know they sell my portrait, in District Eleven? I take the train out to speak there and they've laid roses on the tracks. I brought them back to life."
"The Capitol is getting bored with your charade," Lorca replied. "The older voters remember how it was before – before you started funneling money out of their coffers and into those outer-district hellholes. And the younger ones, well, they don't even remember the Rebellion. All they have are their parents' stories of the glory we used to enjoy. How will you bring the glory back to the Capitol, Margaret? Will your adorable reforms make us great?"
"Perhaps if the Capitol put a fraction of the energy that it does into whining about marginally higher food prices into teaching any standard of moral character to the younger generation, we wouldn't have these problems. Increased age of eligibility may well make the Games more mutually watchable and pleasant, if one has any visceral discomfort at watching twelve year olds suffer."
"If you're going to declaw the Games, why not do away with them completely? You do everything by halves and you please no one."
"The districts respect them as a necessity," she said, through grinding teeth. "I don't have to offer grandeur to the Capitol, I offer them stability, safety, what they never had before with rebels from Thirteen and insurrection throughout the districts – consistency. You're nothing more than a flashy trinket full of fake promises that'll either go unfulfilled or see us all killed at the end of a rebel's barrel."
"Pick a fucking side, Margaret. You can't truly be on the districts' team if you kill twenty-one of them in a year. You know that. You can say they respect it as much as you want, but if you really cared…"
"Get out of my office."
"I haven't finished measuring it yet."
"I said get out."
"You going to call the peacekeepers on me? My supporters would love that – a picture of me being forcefully escorted from your office, like some kind of common criminal."
"I've worked too damn hard to see you tear it all apart, Lorca. It would take the most supreme level of stupidity to provoke the districts into organized rebellion now – you see what I've done with the Games? What I've really done? I've made them hate each other, I've made them enjoy the very means of their oppression as it allows them to compete with others they hate more than they hate us. They love their own districts – many enough to die for them. That's what got us last time… they had nothing to be proud of. They started to work together. People without pride are dangerous."
"Hm."
"You want proof of it - you call them 'psychodramas', as though that's a bad thing. But the Gamemakers have stopped killing them. We let them kill each other, now, and they do it. Not just the early districts. When's the last time you saw an uncredited kill on the roster? It's them. They've taken to my Games like rats to Tessera grain."
"Look at you, finally being honest… a change of pace, Mrs. Lying Lancaster."
She huffed in displeasure. That loathsome nickname.
"And as for your pet Head Gamemaker – which of you should I have executed first?"
"Don't threaten her. You wouldn't dare. We have enough support – there would be riots in the districts."
"Ah, not quite. You have enough support. Having pushed your scandals onto her shoulders, knowing she's loyal as a lapdog. They'd cheer for her head," Lorca mused, swirling his wine carelessly, letting a few drops fall to the carpet.
"I won't let you take your vendetta against me out on her."
"She makes you weak. One woman in power is bad enough, but the two of you together really have gotten yourself into a mess. So many pointless lies. You'd get much more traction in the Capitol, at least, if you had an honest bone in your body."
"And you'd do so much better?"
"I'll admit, you really have done a good job with that … competition, pitting them against each other. That's a talent of yours. I'd be taking better advantage of that. Bleed them back to how they should be. Expand the purses of my supporters. Let them continue to hate each other, but by convincing them that each still has it better. As you've done with Eight and Three, but on a larger scale. Eleven and Nine need to remember what it is to starve. Two's gone soft, and that's on you - if I'm to bring things back to normal, we'll have to end this bullshit about Peacekeepers not having the right to rough 'em up a little. Get that Claudia out of power. I'm not denying you've made progress, your way, but my way makes the kind of progress that people actually... enjoy."
"You'd lose the districts in a month, and once District Two has turned on you, you're toast. They'd rightfully blame you."
"Let them," he replied, shrugging. "I lose the districts, they lose their right to vote. Seems fair to me."
"You'd just create a fresh tinderbox for rebellion," she insisted, voice picking up half an octave. "Will you sincerely ignore the consequence - the loss of our lives? Our country, our heritage? Who will wear your gaudy, branded suits, when all that's left are smoldering corpses?"
Had he even seen the corpses? The streets that ran red with blood, stank with rot the first summer...
Of course not. He'd turned tail and ran at the first sign of trouble, like the coward he was.
He shrugged again, smiling that infuriating smile.
"You're sounding hysterical, Margaret. I think you overstate the potential problem. The Games will be as great as they used to be, and the Capitol will rise to its former glory, and the districts will resume their rightful place under our heel. All will be as it should be. What you robbed from it under the guise of reform will be returned to us. You're not of the Capitol, you're not better than us... truly, I'm inclined to believe you're district-born, no matter what your papers say."
She pressed her lips together, struggling to find the words – to calm her frustration, remembering what Annia always said, to aim high, not to stoop to his level.
"This office is under surveillance," she said curtly. "Everything you've said is at my disposal for propaganda."
"Let them hear it, then – let the Capitol know I'll protect their interests, while you bend yourself over backwards trying to serve two masters and satisfying neither. That's the difference between us. I won't lie to them. And after years of your condescending bullshit… that's what the people want."
"You'll get them killed. You'll get us all killed."
"Maybe I will, Lying Lancaster. But who will believe you? You think they'll trust you over me, because you wear that unflattering skirt suit and scold us for having fun, like a mother scolds a child? It's too late. You've made your bed. Now you have to lay in it."
"I'm telling you again to get out of my office," she seethed, boiling over at last.
"Just let me finish my wine first," he replied, grinning and taking a long, slow sip. "Ah. Nice to see you do appreciate the finer things in life – not that you'd ever guess, with those repulsive blazers. I'd say it wouldn't kill you to show a little skin, but it might kill me … maybe thirty years ago. Or forty."
"Out."
"Alright, no need to get touchy," he laughed. "I have a rally I need to get to. Whatever shall I talk about?"
With a mocking half-salute, he made his way out the door.
Her jaw hurt from grinding her teeth. In a moment of pure frustration, she picked up Lorca's glass and hurled it against the wall, where it shattered with a satisfying noise. That bastard, that utter bastard… he was ruining everything.
Annia would be busy with the Games, especially tonight – they always brought out the first of the muttations on the first night, she would have to be there for that. So she couldn't – well, could, but wouldn't call her.
But increasingly, she had no idea who else she could speak to – who she could trust. Her personal guard of peacekeepers? Her fellow politicians, measuring her office just as surely as Lorca?
With a sigh, she snapped her fingers – a holo screen appeared before her.
"Show me the Games," she said, disliking the edge of distemper to her voice, taking another deep breath.
She'd already sent Annia the time for Lorca's rally – there would be blood, a lot of it, something appropriately dramatic, coinciding directly with his ascent to the stage. See him try to give a speech and win the hearts of a bunch of brightly-colored barely-more-than-teenagers glued to their damn holo-pads.
He would not get the best of her. She would go down swinging for her vision of Panem. He was all bluster, could no one see that? Could no one see the danger in his ignorance, his willingness to provoke the districts, to foment rebellion, to challenge the legitimacy of a standing President?
Onscreen, Bridget and Dion were making their way carefully around the fringes of the swamp forest. She smiled. Bridget would make a good victor, perhaps. Annia would have a clearer idea of who would be suitable, of course, but she was the picture of grim determination, holding a four-inch long pocketknife, leading her ally through the trees with a tiny flashlight.
Annia had done well, thus far – she really would have to do something about the mentor situation. Perhaps she could announce a contest within the districts that had thus far failed to produce victors – framed differently, of course. More honor to it. That would be more effective than the suggestions she had vetoed. Placing Capitol citizens in charge of training the districts? Terrible. The frustration they developed at being disadvantaged intensified their dislike of other districts, which was more desirable than some bland and uninspired trainer becoming their role model.
Lancaster jotted down a few notes on a pad that rested on her desk, then resumed her attention to the Games.
Hopefully, the rest of Panem was watching the same scene.
x
Getting ready for a conference so it's been a hell week at work - we'll be back to the Games very shortly for a check-in with Bridget and Dion and then our friends Angel and Renata. Vamos!