Chapter 9: Visit to Six
[Summer in the year after the 75th Hunger Games]
A few days after the opening event Primrose and I boarded a maglev train which waited for us at the station in Twelve. Mabel and Dad were there to see us off, and we were both excited. The trip was going to last a few hours; we left in the morning and were supposed to arrive in early afternoon.
Traveling on the train for such a distance was something we really enjoyed. We left Twelve through a short tunnel and found ourselves in unknown terrain; there were no settlements, but only plants and animals, but the tracks were on their poles high enough so that the animals were well below us.
The train was not a dedicated passenger train, as there were not so many people traveling. Instead, a passenger car was simply added to a cargo train, and it was less than half full. The car's interior was very similar to the one we had been on when getting to the new city site a week or so earlier. Some groups of seats with four alternated with just two side by side, on both side of the central aisle, and each seat had a small tray which could be either raised from the side of the seat or from the back part of the seat in front. The back rests could be tilted a little, and the cars had nice big windows. Of course Primrose claimed the window seat, but due to her petite physique she had trouble looking out; she could nicely look up and to the side, but as the maglev track was on high poles, she could not look down well. Of course there was an easy solution for that; she got up, I got on the window seat, and she got on my lap. For me, that implied that I was looking at her more than outside, but I could not help it; I was so much in love that having my very own princess so close to me and smelling her hair made me oblivious to almost anything else. Primrose, though, did not hesitate to call out everything interesting she saw, and every once in a while she turned her head to make sure I was paying attention.
At one time she caught me watching her more than looking out, and when she asked me about it I replied truthfully:
"The view inside just happens to be so much more pretty that the view outside."
That statement of mine got rewarded with a wide smile which could have rivaled any light bulb, and a hot kiss: as she was already on my lap, a make out session followed, but this was cut short after ten minutes or so; Prim claimed:
"I promise to cuddle up to you more tonight, but I really want to see what's out there."
That was understandable, but with her right on me and my arms tightly wrapped around her body, I could not really complain.
About an hour out we met a smaller river, and the tracks followed it. Yet another hour later the small river emptied itself into a larger one, and the train rode onto a large bridge, which must have stretched for a few kilometers. We had never seen such a big river in our lives, although we had heard Haymitch and also Peeta mentioning it from their own maglev rides to other destinations, and we pressed our noses against the window to see everything we could.
After the river crossing lunch was served on the train; they did not have hot meals on the relatively short trip, but somebody pushed a cart through the aisle and sold cold drinks and sandwiches, fruits, and similar. Another hour or so later the train slowed down, preparing to arrive at the main station in District Six, as a loudspeaker announcement said.
"Wow, did they just say 'main station'?" Prim asked. "Like in, there are others?"
"Yes, they sure did" I confirmed. "Remember, this is the transportation district, and as far as I know, they manufacture maglevs and hovercraft here, among other vehicles. But look at that station!"
What must have been the main station came up, and there was absolutely no comparison to our own station. The station in our home district had two tracks and one platform between them, and our train now seemed to arrive on one track out of ten or twelve or even more. There was a higher level section for the maglev tracks and a lower level section for conventional rail based trains, and it was all covered by a huge canopy, which was transparent in most areas.
My pretty fiancée was speechless for now, and when the train had stopped, I grabbed our bags and lead Prim out of the car. At first we did not know where to go, but fortunately somebody waved at us, and when we approached he welcomed us to the district:
"You must be Mr. Mellark and Mrs. Everdeen, right?
When we nodded, he added: "The mayor ordered me to pick you up, and I recognized you easily from the photos your mayor had sent."
Wow, that was certainly good planning. Our guide lead us to a car, and we were driven away from the main station. Fortunately, our destination seemed to be located in a less busy section of the city, and we soon arrived at a large house, which our guide mentioned to be the mayor's guest house. Another guide took over, lead us upstairs to the third floor or so and opened the door to a small suite, which had a bedroom with attached bathroom and another room. It was not quite Victor Village quality, but close, and the guide explained that the many rooms in this house had been used for visiting Capitol officials before. Nobody even bothered to ask if Primrose and I wanted to share a room and a bed, and I suspected that Mayor Undersee had also called ahead about that, which was quite perfect. When the guide had left, Prim looked at the bed, and before doing anything else she dropped herself right onto it, obviously enjoying the softness. She removed her shoes, stood up on the mattress, jumped up and down a few times and shouted "Catch me!", just before launching her body in my direction and jumping right into my open arms.
For the rest of the day we could relax and do nothing except for looking around, eating, and going to bed, and we were looking forward to the next days here and whatever tasks awaited us.
After breakfast the guide from yesterday showed up again, and there was also a young lady with him. The lady addressed my girlfriend:
"So, you are the herb specialist from Twelve?"
"I guess I am, yes."
"Aren't you a little young for that?"
"Yes, sure, but my mother couldn't make it. Look, why don't we get to work and see about that?"
The lady seemed to be a little arrogant, but Primrose obviously tried to stay polite. I kissed her good bye, and the two of them left. Meanwhile, my guide took me to a larger building not far from the guest house, and there was a group of people inside already. Introductions were made by the district's mayor a few minutes later:
"Good morning everybody. I am Mayor Jefferson, and I invited representatives from other districts over here to discuss means and issues of transportation both between the districts and inside the districts. We also have Dr. Braun with us; she is a transportation expert from Central Europe, and together with her assistant, Mr. Laube, she will provide insight from their point of view, too. For the next few days, just feel free to exchange information and ideas, hopefully for the benefit of us all."
The mayor left again, and we started further introductions. Most districts had sent one or two people, at least those districts which were already fully liberated; One, Two, and Five were absent, but Three had managed to send somebody, although there was still some fighting going on there.
The days was quite interesting. A team of transport experts from Six explained a lot about the technical specifications and capabilities of our maglev trains, and we learned about the effort to build more cross connection lines between the districts, supplementing the existing older tracks just going to and from the Capitol. I learned that a maglev train could go up to about 550 kilometers per hour and that the system was, with proper maintenance, very reliable. Maintenance had been neglected for years during Snow's regime, though, at least related to the lines to the poor districts and that's why there had been many delays and repair efforts.
The hovercrafts were a different issue, and they were horrendously expensive to build and to maintain, using huge amounts of natural resources for construction and operation. Dr. Braun from Europe explained that they knew the concept, too, but had decided to not build them on a larger scale, except for a few demonstration vehicles and some in emergency services, in order to not abuse the environment again. She offered options, too:
"For smaller vehicles, like for medical and police emergencies, we have electrically driven helicrafts; they have a limited range, but good enough. For larger operations, like transport of heavy merchandise, we use zeppelins. At least they do not require constant energy to stay airborne."
Somebody asked about power supply for the helicraft, and Mr. Laube took that one:
"Yes, that is a good question. We use electrical motors for almost all of our vehicles; they have huge benefits over combustion engines in efficiency, noise, and local exhaust. For smaller and short range aerial vehicles we use batteries as power source. For larger vehicles and those needed for longer ranges, batteries get too heavy, despite all progress in battery technology, and we use fuel cells driven by hydrogen to generate electricity, supported by small buffer batteries, like for take off power. Hydrogen storage needs more space, but is much more light weight. In addition, we can generate green hydrogen using excess energy from wind turbines, solar plants, and other suitable sources."
"What is 'green' hydrogen? Are there other colors, too?"
Some chuckled, and Dr. Braun explained:
"We cell hydrogen 'green' when it is produced in an environment friendly way. If we generate it using combustion engines or energy from coal power plants, for instance, we'd call it 'red' hydrogen. This is something we avoid to do everywhere we can, of course."
"So, what about transport on land over shorted distances? Do you use maglevs for that, too?"
"Depends on the distance" Dr. Braun replied. "In general, maglevs are best for longer distances, and we try to keep the distance between stops more than 100 kilometers or even more, if possible, so that the trains can get close to their most efficient speed at least for some time. Naturally, this is not the best to connect cities which are close by or even do the transport inside the cities. There is a lot of research going on to find a perfect means of transportation for short distances, ideally combining smaller individual vehicles on wheels with larger groups of vehicles on rails or so, but we are not yet there. For the time being, we use rail bound transportation for shorter distances. The rail-wheel combination does require significantly less energy than the road-wheel system, and it is also much easier to operate them automatically, without a driver."
"Conventional trains have been around since the early 19th century," Mr. Laube told us, "and they can be quite versatile. If anybody is interested, the first successful train started to operate in England in 1825, and the first line in Central Europe was ready in 1835. That's a long time ago, but the concept is sane and good and still valid, except for many changes in detail, like replacing the original steam power with electricity. All major lines in Europe have overhead power supply lines, and we have also made quite some progress on noise reduction. We have taken advantage of the dense network of existing rails in former Germany and Austria and adjacent areas and rebuilt that, and this still works quite well."
"What about inside cities?" somebody asked.
"Basically the same idea" Dr. Braun responded. "We call it 'Strassenbahn', or 'tram'. It is basically a train, with many doors, running at lower speeds only; in some of our major cities they also run underground."
A train running underground? But of course, we now had this maglev tunnel from our core district to the new city, but still I had a question:
"If the trains run underground, how do people get on and off?"
"Not a problem. The stations are underground, too, and there are stairs, elevators and escalators going up and down. Going underground requires more effort and is more expensive, but used to be a viable option for really large cities in the pre-war times. Some big underground networks had been built, for instance, in München and Wien, mostly already in the twentieth century."
"So," somebody added a question, "when we plan a new settlement, does it make sense to add rail lines or even underground lines right away?"
"Excellent question" Mr. Laube smiled. "In general, you should at least make some plans for them. Underground lines are expensive, and they are usually worthwhile only for big cities, as a rule of thumb half a million inhabitants upwards. Nowadays, we don't have many of those at all any longer, and even in Munich we might not have spent the effort without being able to reuse the existing tunnels. For small to medium sized cities I recommend the normal tram lines. I know that settlements are planned all over the continent here in most districts now, and I assume that most of them won't be too large, mostly due to lack of people. When you plan such a settlement, it makes a lot of sense to just have the main streets wider, ideally with some green in the center and space for rails, so that you can start adding the tram network whenever you want. Let me show you some examples."
A few images were projected on a white wall, and the basic idea for the wide streets was to have pedestrian walkways at the borders, next to the houses, followed by a street for individual motorized traffic on on direction on each side, and a range of green with two rails in the center. At stations people could easily get on and off and get to the sides via traffic lights. I liked the idea a lot, and our visitors seemed to be very convincing in pointing out the advantages of early careful planing. In my mind, I was going over the early city plans for our new city, which was at this time only a small settlement, and I was very happy knowing that I was going to be of the planing team.
Dr. Laube added: "When you plan new cities here you can basically start from scratch and plan for that. Lots of European cities were rebuilt around existing settlements and did not have this luxury. However, due to the significant decrease in population, we had been able to demolish some city parts and rebuild them, too."
There was a lot of information right on the first day, and my head was kind of swimming in all of that. I was happy to get back to our room in the evening, and Primrose arrived a few minutes later. Her day had been also quite full, as she told me; there had also been people from most other districts, and they had talked about the medical situation in general and a little bit about the morphling addiction situation in particular.
"Do you recall" she said with some excitement in her voice "how Mayor Undersee mentioned that the morphling drug is actually a painkiller? Mayor Undersee՚s wife had been treated with it before she died, to alleviate her pain. Apparently, she was not the only one, and morphling has been used a lot for that purpose."
"Yes, I vaguely remember that, and it seems a good use, doesn't it?"
"Well, as long as one is not getting addicted, it might be. Doctors and healers seem to be a little more careful in prescribing it nowadays, though."
"Okay, but that's way outside of my area of knowledge. I can understand how that might be fascinating for you, though. But tell me, how did you get treated?"
Prim chuckled and giggled, and then she told me: "Of course there was the usual and expected bickering about me being too young and all that. However, when each of us got a chance to present native plants in their district, I showed the illustrated book on plants and flowers Peeta and you had so nicely prepared for my family and given us for Christmas in that winter after the 71st Hunger Games. I tell you, the others were really impressed, specifically when they learned that I not only had the book, but I also knew what I was talking about when explaining some specific plants and what you could do with them."
"I am glad that this book was useful. So, how could you impress them with your knowledge?"
Primrose smiled and responded: "I always enjoy to see surprised faces when I deliver one of my practiced statements with a neutral expression, like this one: 'Dandelion leaves have an extraordinary amount of beta carotene, which is critical for vitamin A generation in the human body. The root can be applied as an herbal remedy for a number of ailments, and the milky sap can soothe stings from bees and tracker jackers and blisters and such.' That always works, and it worked today, too, showing some practical applications as well as the theory behind it."
"How did you get that smart, my love?"
Primrose chuckled again and suggested: "By paying attention at school, I guess? But really, Mom got me a few books with advanced information; healers from other districts had shared with some of their copies."
I recalled when this book she had mentioned had been created. When Primrose had been very young, she and her mother had used an old reference books on plants, with many handwritten comments from Mr. Everdeen, Prim՚s deceased father. I had spent quite some effort and many months preparing a new book, manually copying content from the old one and with new illustrations and paintings done by my gifted brother Peeta. We had used the categorization system Mr. Everdeen had decided on. The new book had been in active use ever since by Prim and her mother, and a few times more information was even added to it, using some of the blank pages. I was happy to hear that it managed to even impress experts from other districts. But of course, such a book would be useless without somebody to use it properly, and despite her youth Prim had grown to be one of the best healing plant expert in our district, probably second only to her own mother.
On the next day we split up again, and for the rest of the week we continued to exchange information with our counterparts from other districts. On the transportation side, there was not much I could offer, except for asking question, but I learned from my fiancée that her advice was valued. During the weekend, we – that is the entire teams, both the one discussing transportation options and the one talking about the morphling drug – were given a small sightseeing tour of the district. We were shown inside one of the hovercraft factories and well as one manufacturing maglev trains, and the highlight was a trip to a mountain lake using an old fashioned steam engine.
"Why are you using a steam engine rather here than a maglev?" was of course a common question.
One of the local experts explained:
"The capitol always insisted that we look into alternate options, too. The maglevs are much superior for speed, but they also require lots of maintenance and electrical power. For some time Capitol government representatives thought about replacing the maglev lines to the outer districts with normal tracks and using steam engines, but at the end they decided against it for various reasons. In addition, they were concerned about a nuclear attack, which might have disabled all electronics for some time. Steam engines are entirely mechanical and thus not be affected by that. Thus, we were requested to keep a few tracks and trains just in case that technology was needed again."
Another local added:
"That's one of the reasons, and another is that this line has to navigate tight turns, which maglevs cannot do. This is what we called a 'narrow gauge' track, with the distance between the two rails being closer than normal, which allows those tighter turns we need."
I paid attention to some more explanations, and I found that quite interesting.
During the trip, we also made a few new friends, and there was specifically a couple from District Eight we liked to talk to, Selina and Marcus Plinth. Selina was interested in transportation, like I was, where Marcus had some medical and plant knowledge; he had joined the main expert as an assistant. The Plinths had, as they told us, a famous ancestor, Sejanus Plinth, who had done some mentoring during the early phase of the Hunger Games and been a friend to young Coriolanus Snow. The main branch of the Plinth family, originally from District Two, had been fully loyal to the Capitol and made lot of money during the first rebellion, but another part of the family separated themselves and got into different business, like healing. The wealth of the Plinth family was about to be investigated, and once we had a new government, some of it might be taken away due to activities supporting the Snow tyranny.
Both Selina and Marcus were older than we were, but Selina was fascinated by us:
"I still find it hard to believe that you, Primrose, already have such a vast knowledge of herbs and plants. School doesn't teach that, or does it in Twelve?"
"No, it does not" Primrose replied. "I learned it from my mother and from a few books. We do not have a single hospital in the district, and I grew up seeing my mother doing her best to help others. Somehow working with plants and mixing medicine came easy to me, and I know that I want to become a professional healer. Once the war is over, this might even be possible now."
"Oh, yes, for sure" Marcus cut in. "My boss is a professor at the central hospital in Two, and he has close ties to the Capitol university hospital. Well, he used to have ties, as there is no contact right now, of course. However, he has already been talking to key medical people in some other districts, and they do have plans to open the Capitol university, the only existing university in Panem, for qualified students from all districts at some time after the war is over. At this time, though, we cannot tell when this is going to happen."
That was good news for Primrose, for sure. Of course, she was probably still way too young to even think about attending university.
When we got back from our weekend trip and had spent another night in out room, we were up a little bit early and had an hour or so before our regular assignments were going to start. We used the time to stroll around in the city center and found a market area with food offered. Most of those was local food, of course, but there was a section with food from other districts. Maglev transports between the districts were now more common, and one could sometimes get nice food from other areas, supplementing the local one. One market stand had fish for sale, and I was getting curious about that. Of course I had learned that fish also grew in creeks and rivers, but I stepped closer and asked the lady attending the stand about it, and she told us:
"Yes, indeed, most of my fish is from rivers and mostly special ponds in the area. However, since a couple of weeks ago I also have a small selection of ocean fish available."
"Where is this from? This district does not have a coast, or does it?"
"No, it does not. You are not from here, right? No, sometimes I get some from District Four, but this here is actually from District Twelve. Since they opened their maglev line to the coast, they have been sending some of the fish they catch there to other districts, including ours."
"But that's our home district!" Prim shouted.
"Is that true?" the lady replied.
We chatted some more, and we were happy to see that inter-district food trading was picking off.
On the next evening there was an announcement for an important broadcast, and both Prim and I watched from our room. The usual announcer from District Thirteen was shown, but she looked quite sad today:
"Ladies and gentlemen, people in the various districts, today we have learned about something very disturbing, something we had not expected and not planned for. The attacks on some districts a few weeks ago had not just been a last minute attempt to get our attention, they had partially been just a distraction. President Snow has somehow managed to kidnap several children from the districts, and he has sent us a message we cannot simply ignore; please see for yourselves."
With those words the screen changed and we saw what looked like a large room in the President's mansion in the Capitol. Snow looked tired, but also smug, and he spoke:
"For almost one year, districts have violated the contract of Panem, and they have not been willing any longer to follow the rules and guidelines which were set up to ensure a peaceful and just living in our country. Rather, some have shown acts of unprovoked aggression, and the contractual reaping ceremonies have not happened in most places. Compensating for that, I cut orders to get children from the districts, and the orders were executed on Reaping Day. Tributes have arrived in the Capitol, though not by the normal means; they will be entering not the Hunger Games, but the War Games. We are reusing an existing arena, and the tributes will not only complete against each other, but they will also be hunted by mutts and soldiers. Those soldiers who feel inclined to do so are allowed to have their way with the children before they kill them. Whoever survives that will be fed to mutts."
He paused for a moment, and Prim and I looked at each other, horror being reflected in our eyes. This couldn't be real, or could it?
Snow continued:
"I may be willing to ease the conditions and provide a quick kill for the children, if the districts stop the unjust war right away and swear loyalty to the rightful government of Panem once again. Naturally, I will need to get some guarantees for that, and I will elaborate on those tomorrow. Meanwhile, please watch the following scenes from our prison, so that you can see that we actually have your children in our custody."
We easily recognized Vick, and he was next to a slightly older girl from our district who I did not know, but Prim did. Overall, Snow had been able to grab about thirty children and young adults aged between ten and twenty, and there were more girls than boys, potentially on purpose.
Prim sighed: "Poor Hazelle Hawthorne; I wonder who is going to give comfort to her tonight? She must be so worried about her son."
This night, we had big trouble getting to sleep. Snow's plan was sick, but would some districts give in to save their children or rather to avoid having them tortured?
After the nice weekend and the disturbing broadcast we spent a few more days working on our assigned tasks, but focusing on work was difficult. Snow had sent another message with guarantees he expected, but I had not really paid attention. The new 'War Games' would start anyway in a week, as we were informed, and there was no further comment from Thirteen. Eventually, ten days after we had arrived we boarded a maglev to travel home again. Primrose had a big box with morphling samples and small plants from Six and some other districts with her, which was transported in the train's luggage section.
[Author's Notes: About the illustrated book on plants and flowers: See chapters 15 and 16 in the prequel story. I hope that the background on green energy and transportation is not too boring; I guess it shows that I am an engineer.]