"I don't think it's right to decrease the punishment just because the person expressed remorse," Dora said. "Anyone can pretend to feel anything, if they think it'll give them an advantage."
"I partially agree," Juan said, idly flipping through channels. They had just gone through the day's transcript - Lux had finished his cross-examination and the day had been cut an hour short. "If I was the judge in the Peacekeepers' trial, I'd have voted for lesser penalties for those who expressed remorse, especially if they were of lower rank." So far, there were a handful of those. There had also been a scandal when a drunk prosecutor in a bar had referred to Holder's infamous shooting of a boy with a cognitive disability as 'one retard shooting another', resulting in not only complaints about the prosecutor's lack of basic human decency, but the twentieth, or maybe hundredth, rehashing of the debate over Holder's ability to stand trial.
"That's an entirely different story," Dora pointed out. "There, the 'orders are orders' excuse is partially valid, unlike at our trial. You can't compare Bright to a junior officer."
Juan tapped his fingers on his closed laptop. "I think Bright was being sincere."
"I think so, too, but she deserves to hang for her crimes. What she thinks of them now is irrelevant."
"I can't believe you said you won't vote to hang Oldsmith."
Dora picked up the remote control and changed the channel to the news. "There is not enough conclusive evidence that Oldsmith had power to change anything. He, of all people, can say with sincerity that if he wanted things to happen differently, he could do nothing about it. He still deserves a stiff penalty for willingly placing his signature on those decrees instead of quitting, but to hang someone who did not have the power to alter anything? No. By comparison, Bright often made her own decisions. She disobeyed if the orders were tactically or strategically wrong in some way. She did have the power to alter the situation. But she did not."
"Your opinions are valid," Juan said, "but I can't vote for the death of someone who expressed remorse. I just can't. I'm sure I've been tricked many a time, but it's not like I acquitted them."
"And then you say you were a hanging judge."
"Compared to Daniel-"
"Daniel is too good for this world. By the way, I talked to him about Chaterhan."
"And?" They were worried he might have another flashback.
"He's not sure yet. He might stay away and claim a flare-up." Of course, it was always possible that the stress would give him an actual flare-up.
"A pity he has to worry about that at all," Juan said, shaking his head. "He's so much better than both of us put together, it's slightly horrifying. Moira, too, and Raymond. Even Cora."
"I wonder what Grass will pull off," Dora said. "The admirals are going to use the 'you did it, too' excuse - I think it'll make sense for her to try something similar."
"It's not really the tu quoque, though - Wreath is gonna argue that everyone did it because it's just how you do things, not that Thirteen was wrong to do it."
In Dora's opinion, Wreath could summon the ghost of Chester Nimitz and it still wouldn't be enough to convince her. "So instead, he'll want us to proclaim that the laws of the sea have not been valid for the past century. He's certainly skilled, I'll give him that."
Juan nodded. "Has Beeker even opened her mouth this entire trial? Or Andric? I wonder how they'll do." Their clients were the next up.
"Beeker did," Dora recalled. "The witnesses against Cotillion. Competent, but not very creative. Andric is much of the same, I think."
"Somehow, I don't think that will be enough."
Dora agreed there.
The witnesses Cotillion called were meant to reinforce one basic fact - that there was nothing illegal about human experimentation, that it had all been for the good of the country. Researchers did their best to convince that the experiments had been very useful. Rye, not being an expert, could not tell if they were right or wrong.
The problem was the depth of technical knowledge needed to understand what was being said. Cotillion was handling her own direct examination because Beeker was quite upfront about her own lack of understanding, which meant that the examinations morphed into a discussion on something Rye worried the judges did not understand.
Jeremy Akufo, the prosecutor from Ten handling Cotillion and her witnesses, was no scientist, but the prosecution had brought in consultants, and he had been preparing for months. In Rye's opinion, he did very well. The witnesses reconsidered what they had been saying and began to blame Cotillion for everything.
Cotillion was terrified. There was no other way to put it. She insisted in a voice bordering on panic that she had been unaware of any rules making the experiments illegal, but when prodded on their usefulness, she had nothing to say.
"What sort of information was learned from the blood-loss experiments?" Akufo challenged her.
"How long it takes a person to bleed out," Cotillion said, hands clutching the sides of the witness stand.
"Did you learn anything new?"
"No," she had to concede, "but it is always nice to have confirmation."
"Did you think at the time that it is acceptable to kill a hundred people just to get confirmation?"
Cotillion glanced at Beeker. "I-We had to go all the way, to learn as much as possible."
"Tell me, defendant, did you believe everything your researchers reported?"
"No," Cotillion said after a pause. "Everyone knew that data was cooked to win favour."
"When you were still a researcher with the IGR, did you engage in such behaviour yourself?"
Accusations of crimes against humanity were one thing, but accusations of academic dishonesty were an entirely different matter. Cotillion was absolutely infuriated by that suggestion. She stubbornly denied it, even as Akufo showed proof to her. Eventually, he decided that beating his head against the wall was pointless and went back to the IGR's atrocities. In light of the recent news, it was no surprise that he wrung from her an admission that the IGR had engineered the epidemic that had sterilized much of Thirteen.
Cotillion was probably the worst performance on the witness stand of the defendants so far. She simply wasn't very good with words. She could not be considered bad, however - after the argument over plagiarism, she did not lose control again and could not be baited, instead carefully repeating phrases Akufo had misunderstood.
Akufo tried to crowd her with rapid-fire questions, but Cotillion stayed calm, taking a few seconds to gather herself. The prosecutor conceded his defeat and switched to a new tactic - documents with signatures.
"Please explain to me," Akufo said, "what purpose it had to infect people with cholera and let them die."
"To learn how to cure the disease," Cotillion replied.
"Then why let them die? Forgive me for my lack of expertise, but it seems to me that we do have a cure - clean water with added electrolyte salts." In the parts of the country where cholera was endemic, getting clean water was extremely difficult.
"We needed to know at which point it is too late."
Akufo nodded. "Don't we already know that from studies done during epidemics in hospitals?"
"We needed to do it under controlled conditions."
"So you believe that letting two hundred people die when they could have lived was justified?"
Cotillion nodded. "With this research, we will have saved many more."
"How?"
Cotillion shrugged. "It's always good to have more information."
"When you received the report, did you wonder if the evidence was perhaps falsified?"
"No."
"No, you did." Akufo read into evidence a complaint from her to a subordinate about how the data was obviously fake.
Cotillion shrugged. "I thought that was just how research went. I didn't realize it wasn't supposed to happen like that."
"Defendant, surely you did not need to be told to think that killing people ostensibly for research and then falsifying the data means killing people for no reason at all. Didn't you ever stop to think that these were real people dying?"
"I thought they had given consent."
"I thought you had no idea what that was." He read an excerpt from an interrogation of Cotillion where she said she had never known about the importance of consent in research.
"That's not accurate," Cotillion said. "I knew you needed consent in research, I just didn't realize just how important it was."
Akufo nodded. "You know what consent is in general, of course."
"Of all the experiments done in the IGR proper, how many were done with the informed consent of the subjects?"
"Well, some."
"Then where are the consent forms? Where is the slightest evidence that the subjects were volunteers?" Beeker sat quietly at the defense table - she had not been able to find any. Akufo held up document after document containing requests to 'acquire' more of a certain category of people. Not a single one said anything about asking for volunteers - if anything, it was the other way around. There were detailed instructions on how to deceive people into thinking they would be unharmed so that they'd go quietly.
Next, Akufo switched to the human mutts. That would be the stickiest situation. In the rest of the world, willful modification of the human genome was strictly banned, and even alterations to prevent diseases like cystic fibrosis were highly controversial and restricted. Cotillion's abominations, as the press had taken to calling them, were living proof of why that area of research was such a touchy subject.
"Now, defendant," Akufo said. "What did humanity gain from forcing fifty prisoners condemned to death to instead give birth to twins with severe sirenomelia, who all died within days?"
"Sometimes, experiments don't have an obvious application," Cotillion said, sounding slightly frantic.
"May I ask you a personal question?"
"Of course," she said before Beeker could object.
"How did you yourself feel when you found out your child had a condition incompatible with life?"
Beeker leapt to her feet. "That is completely irrelevant and inappropriate and I ask that this question be struck from the record."
"Objection sustained," Sanchez said. "Counsel, do not bring the defendant's personal life into the cross-examination."
That was interesting. Rye herself had gone through that. When she had gotten pregnant for a second time, she had soon noticed that there was something wrong with how the fetus was moving. Fortunately, she and Barrow were able to pay for a full scan that revealed that the fetus had a chromosomal aberration that would result in it being unable to live outside of her womb. Rye got an abortion. Those poor Avoxes had not had the ability to do so. They had suffered only to birth corpses.
"Let me backtrack," Akufo said. "You signed off on every single experiment done."
"Yes." There was no way to deny that.
"What did you think of the proposal for the sirenomelia experiment?"
"I didn't have time to read them all."
"So you signed without looking?"
Cotillion realized she had walked into a trap. She tried to backtrack, but the damage was done. There was precious little the researcher could say in her own defense.
As Leon had predicted, Marcellus refused to go to the trial and his parents kept a staid neutrality, which meant that he was able to invite his friends to the Death Squad trial. They were given the morning off willingly enough.
"I've never been here before," Sebastian said, craning his head to look around the entrance-hall of the Justice Building. All four of them were wearing their tickets on lanyards around their necks. "Looks pretty normal."
Nilofar lightly kicked at a floor tile. "I saw photographs of the neighbourhood. It's a miracle the heights survived."
"To be fair," Inge said, "Most of Lodgepole is still a pile of rubble."
Leon laid eyes on a coffee shop. There it was! "We have to go there," he said.
"Go where?"
"Does everyone have money?"
Sebastian gasped, hands over his mouth. "I thought you were kidding about the licenced coffee shop!" He dug in his pocket for a wallet. "Typical - out there, you can't buy coffee unless your cousin's the seller, and here, they've got an entire kiosk!" There was no malice in his voice, only amusement.
"We have to go there," Inge said, leading the way to the queue, which was quite long but moving with an astonishing rapidity thanks to the fact that it was actually fully staffed. "I don't remember the last time I had donut holes!"
"I bought donut holes here a time or two," Leon said. "Way back at the beginning, they had me here a few times to sort documents, and I just popped over to the kiosk."
"I can't believe I'm actually in here," Sebastian said as they joined the queue. He gestured at the small group of tattered people standing at the window, which took up that entire wall. "What a weird society we live in.."
The queue was mostly trial staff. Tickets were free and employers had to give time off for the trial, which meant that most visitors didn't have any money to buy anything, especially luxuries. The people behind them, though, were speaking in a heavy rural Ten accent.
"What even are half these things?" one asked another. "This isn't like the cafe in the town."
"No idea," another one replied. "You want to get some of each kind of donut hole? These flavours look crazy."
"Excuse me?" a third person said to Nilofar. "Are you locals?"
"I've been here for a while," Nilofar said, deliberately playing up her One accent. "Do you need help with something?"
"Forgive me, where are you from?" the first person Leon had overheard asked.
A fourth person snorted. "Small-town One, you idiot. The others?"
"Oh, I'm a local, and so's he," Inge said. Leon felt strange being introduced as a local in Lodgepole, but to someone from Ten, even a town outside the Capitol proper still counted as the Capitol.
"One was always friendlier with the Capitol than the others," the first person said disapprovingly. "You living together or what?"
"We met at work," Nilofar said. "We work for the trials, sorting documents."
The group's demeanor changed. "You work for the trials?"
"We do." Nilofar checked how long the queue in front of them was. It was quite long, but they had plenty of time. "Are you here with a group or on your own?"
A person who had been quiet that entire time chuckled. As far as Leon could tell, there were about ten or so people in the group. "It's all official. Mailperson turned up to my door waving tickets. I've seldom even gone into town before, and that's eight hundred people. Should have seen my face when the train pulled up to Centre. And this place is even bigger!"
"Awfully kind of them to let us go to the trial," another person said. "Even we in the villages know that the railway tracks were shot to shit." She held up an order form. "Do we just hand this to the cashier?"
"Yes."
In front of them, two lawyers were discussing today's proceedings at the judges' trial. It felt strange to be in a coffee-shop queue with them. Even District people were somehow closer than lawyers in a well-publicized court case.
A register opened up. Leon realized he was the closest to it. "Medium double-double, one cheese bagel, one vegetable salad, one jam donut, and fifty assorted donut holes." They had agreed that the first person up would get the donut holes and the rest would compensate for it.
The cashier, a woman a bit younger than him with crooked fingers on one hand, nodded as she typed in the order. "You want the bagel heated?"
"No, thank you." He didn't want to cause her hassle when there were so many people waiting in the queue. Inge and Sebastian were ordering now, too.
She jotted something down on a small board and handed it to the person making sandwiches. Then, she busied herself making the coffee and gathering the donut holes. Leon paid and went slightly to the side to wait for his salad and bagel. He wasn't sure where the salad was coming from, but he took the large paper bag gratefully. "Thank you."
"Have a good day."
Leon waited for a minute or two for his friends to catch up. They sat down at a free table. "How much do we owe you?" Inge asked.
Leon did the mental math and told them the sum, which was duly produced.
"Well, then," Nilofar said, looking at her stash. She had a wrap, a donut, and a small black tea. "So this is authentic Capitol cuisine."
The two Capitolians winced in unison. This coffee shop belonged to a chain renowned for its omnipresence and cheapness, not for its quality. "What do you think?" Inge asked as Nilofar took a bite of her wrap.
"I can't believe lawyers ate this.."
"The chains they had in working-class neighbourhoods were even worse," Inge explained. Leon nodded - he knew that very well.
Nilofar usually said she lived in a middle-class neighbourhood, but in reality, the building in which she rented a room was some hundred metres into the wrong side of the intersection. Leon had been a little bit surprised to discover that class was as important in the Districts as the Capitol.
Leon ate his salad. The vegetables were much fresher than what they got with their rations.
"These apples are great," Inge said, munching on a slice. "Wait, Leon, doesn't your father work in the restaurant?"
There was only one restaurant that could refer to. "Yeah." Leon took a bite of his bagel. It was great.
"Does he-"
"Only once in a while. They're pretty strict about it. I think I supply more food than him."
"I love these donut holes," Sebastian said, nibbling on one. "I think I've forgotten what sweet things taste like."
The delegation from Ten was meanwhile receiving their order and going to share it with the rest. Looking at them from a distance, it was painfully obvious that they were not from these parts. Leon hoped they would enjoy their breakfast, at least.
The cross-examination of Cotillion ended before mid-morning break. Antonius watched her sit down, still looking quite nervous. He himself was feeling very anxious. One more person, and then would come the turn of his bench.
"That wasn't too bad," Talvian said to Krechet. "She made it clear she was just doing her job. How can you blame someone for not following rules nobody knew existed?"
Krechet said nothing. He felt deeply out of place in the dock and hated being surrounded by his social betters.
"I'm not as optimistic," Grass whispered to Talvian. "The academic dishonesty alone - I don't understand how you can let people die knowing that the experiments are so flawed, you may as well make up the data from nothing."
The same could have been said of Grass. It had been alleged by the prosecution that she had been aware of the widespread falsification of evidence, and Antonius found those allegations hard to brush aside.
The first of Blatt's witnesses was called. Everyone knew that Blatt would have one single thing to say - the IGR may have officially been in her purview, but she had had no control over it and had not known about the atrocities. The first witness, Blatt's secretary, did his best to paint her as a shopkeeper of sorts.
"The defendant Blatt's position was Minister of Armaments. Does this mean all weaponry?" Andric asked.
"Absolutely not," the secretary said. "The IGR was a law unto itself. Blatt was a puppet, the respectable face of the state's monopoly on violence. All she did was report to Snow about gun production and the like. The nuclear weapons, biological warfare - she wasn't allowed to even know about any of that."
Blatt sat stony-faced, willing to tolerate insults if it made for a good story.
"Oh, that is such nonsense," Talvian told Antonius in a whisper so low, none but him could hear. Since he could not pitch his voice that well, he replied with a shrug.
Antonius was not sure if Andric was more skilled than the ones who had gone before him or if Blatt's case was simply easier, but Vargas' cross-examinations were not so damaging. Of course, there were plenty of things the witnesses did not bring up - Antonius had personally seen Blatt at Games planning conferences.
At lunch, Blatt and Cotillion made sure to sit very far from each other. Antonius nearly threw up at the sight of okra, but this time, it was cooked to perfection - had Grandma been served this soup, she would have sent along her compliments to the chef. Cotillion quietly muttered something about how she had just done her job. Blatt quietly bragged about how good Andric was. One of the guards used the opportunity granted by Warden Vance's absence to ask Antonius' table for parenting advice. That got Blatt to change gears.
"I'm sorry," Lee said, stirring his soup, "but how did that even happen?"
"The marriage date is set and we're demobbing, so we thought it didn't matter," the nineteen-year-old guard said. At least she was of age.
"You skipped the shots just because you're demobbing next month?" Lee asked incredulously. For his part, Antonius was in no mood to discuss families, not when his request to see Octavia and Achilleus had been turned down again. He focused on eating his soup. His thoughts soon drifted to Blatt, which made him think about the preparation he was doing for his own direct examination, and-
No. Stop. Antonius swallowed a spoonful of soup and tried to focus on something else. Unfortunately, his neighbours were by now busy discussing the guard and her early family increase.
"I remember when I was having my first," Blues said nostalgically. "I was so paranoid about everything. We had a list of food I could and could not eat taped to the fridge."
Antonius wondered what it was like to cook one's own food. It must have taken so much time, preparing everything and then washing the dishes.
"How far along are you?" Blatt, like any other childless person her age, knew a surprising amount about something she had no experience with.
"I don't know." The guard adjusted her helmet, fingers fidgeting with the brim. "I just tried the test on a whim. Then I took it a whole bunch of other times. I haven't had any symptoms or anything yet."
Despite himself, Antonius spoke up. "If it is still so early, keep it to yourself. If you have a miscarriage, you do not want to have to explain to every single cousin and nibling that you lost the baby." Octavia had had to go through that once. After that, they kept silent until she began to show, which only happened one time.
Antonius wondered what Achilleus was doing now. He was at school, certainly, and eating lunch. What kind of lunch was being served at schools? Antonius had no illusions about the quality. Achilleus said it was fine, but he also said that living as a tenant in his own house was fine. The municipal government was planning to permanently convert it into a shelter of some sort - given the distance from it to the nearest major town, it would doubtlessly be some kind of rehabilitation centre. Antonius imagined hundreds of strangers being placed into his home to recover from alcoholism and drug addiction and enjoy the beautiful landscape.
The soup ended. Antonius licked his spoon clean and moved on to the other dish - fruit sauce. There was no sugar added, of course, but at least fruits were sweet on their own. What fruits were in season in October?
Warden Vance walked into the room. Antonius clutched his spoon tighter and focused on his tray, as if he had been doing something wrong. Conversations ceased; the guard at their table stood up straight.
"Dr. Mallow? You're needed in Wing 2."
Antonius knew that even without the psychiatrist, they were still being recorded. He finished his fruits and looked around the room, waiting for someone else to start speaking. Warden Vance was staring out the window. Antonius felt an acute burst of envy - he wished he could be on the other side of the window, but that was impossible. Warden Vance could come and go as he wished, though it was rare that he took even the smallest break, and Antonius was stuck here. The prisoners and the guards were together in the same room, but there was an insurmountable difference between them.
The Death Squad trial was basically what Leon had expected from a trial. A defense lawyer had droned on and on about putative duress until Leon had wanted to take a nap. He was glad to leave when lunch break was called.
"I swear half the defendants were sleeping," Inge said as they boarded the streetcar and took their seats. There was a slight chill in the air, making Leon glad for his sweater.
"I swear half the judges were sleeping." Nilofar picked up an abandoned newspaper and flicked through it.
Leon had seen photographs of the defendants, of course, but in real life, they were a good deal less imposing. The Death Squad had handled kidnappings and killing people in ostensible robberies gone wrong, so the actual operatives were in decent shape even after months of incarceration, but the consultants looked like anyone else.
Now that he had seen them with his own eyes, Leon couldn't help but feel a little bit strange at the thought that they were all going to be dead soon. There was documentary proof of their direct and personal involvement with murders, and despite constant propositions of a moratorium, murder was still a capital crime. Only one of the defendants had no such incriminating evidence, though there was proof of his taking part in 'operations'. Leon was willing to bet that Gnaeus Li would be left alive, if only so that the tribunal didn't look like it stamped death sentences.
"I feel sorry for the defense lawyers," Leon said. "Did you see that article in 'The World'?"
"You can't deny that some are in it for the idea," Nilofar said.
Leon exhaled sharply. "That doesn't mean that someone can accuse that one from the main trial of skipping the queue for prosthetics." He clutched at a pole as the streetcar braked abruptly.
"That was so over the line," Sebastian said. "She actually thinks her client is innocent - write about that. But you can't just accuse someone of jumping the queue!"
"She doesn't think he's innocent, she thinks the court has no right to try him," Leon corrected him. "That's another way to say that he's guilty and there's no exculpatory evidence whatsoever."
"Did you know that she participated in a beauty contest the other day?" Inge asked.
"Yeah," Leon said. "My mother's coworker won the mens' 50+." At fifty-four, Jiro looked better than Leon. According to Mom, he was now being bombarded with requests for dates from lonely people his age. Jiro, who was an asexual aromantic and on the autism spectrum on top of that, didn't understand why everyone wanted to be his friend all of a sudden. He was also very perplexed by the more suggestive messages he received and kept on showing them to all of his colleagues.
"I don't presume to judge her, of course," Nilofar said, "but isn't it unprofessional to spend your time on random things in a death penalty case?"
Inge shrugged. "The prosecution's even worse. My cousin works as a cleaner down there, and they're always doing something or other."
"Each other?" Leon had read something to that effect in a newspaper.
Laughing, Inge adjusted her glasses, which had begun to slip off. "Don't you remember that incident with Irons' tapped phone?"
"I actually read a transcript on some Web page," Sebastian said with a shudder. "No idea what possessed me into doing it. Irons is as old as my parents - I don't need that mental image."
"But is anyone participating in beauty contests?" Nilofar asked with a tinge of sarcasm.
"I don't think so, but a couple of them have gotten into sports. I know Jinwe's a star. Never knew you could adjust to losing your sight so quickly."
"She came to prosecute Dovek, she stayed to be a blind icon," Nilofar joked. "Back where I'm from, if you become disabled like that, you're politely fired. My uncle spent the past ten years sitting on the couch and listening to the radio. And here she is, being a star prosecutor and a star athlete. Not to mention she's a war hero."
Sebastian chuckled. "Imagine being her husband. You thought you were married to some random prosecutor notable only for possessing a conscience, and all of a sudden you're the husband of a war hero who cross-examined Dovek."
"Or that- whatsherface." Inge scratched her head. "The younger one from Nine who uses a motorized wheelchair. I've heard she plays bowls."
Leon knew of her - he had wondered how in the world someone from small-town Nine could have afforded a motorized wheelchair, and that had made the young prosecutor stick in his memory. Well, she wasn't exactly young, she had to be a little older than Marcellus, but she was definitely young for a prosecutor. "Quadriplegics can play bowls?"
"Isn't that when you can't use all four limbs?"
"No, it's when your spinal cord is damaged high enough for all limbs to be affected," Inge said. "The damage can be mild or severe. Like, you can be quadriplegic and be capable of walking and picking things up, it's just that more finicky motions are too hard." She flapped her hand. "In any case, I was reading an article the other day about how bowls can be adapted for people of all levels of ability, and it mentioned that one of the prosecutors plays it."
"Good for her," Sebastian said. "Must be nice, to be able to do normal things. Did you notice how the judge from Three struggled to write?" From their vantage point, it had been possible to see that he was missing one hand at the wrist and three fingers on his other hand. "I can't imagine having to re-learn how to do these sorts of things."
A controller got onto the streetcar. The four of them reached for their composted tickets, but another person was not so lucky. She opened the top window, which was quite small, and climbed out. There wasn't much the controller could do, not with his one arm and severe limp. By the time he reached the window, the woman was running away. The controller could only hurl insults at her.
He was still fuming when he checked Leon's ticket. Leon felt a little bit sorry for him - generally, his sympathies were on the side of fare-dodgers, but the controller just looked so broken. Maybe it was the conversation they had just been having. Did the controller still see himself as someone who could chase down fare-dodgers? Was he upset to now be limited in ways he still didn't know how to get around?
"Well, that was weird," Nilofar said when the controller sat down at the front of the streetcar. "I think she would have saved quite a bit of time by just buying the damn ticket."
"Maybe she couldn't afford one," Inge suggested.
"Maybe."
For some reason, Leon tried to imagine the Death Squad defendants climbing through the window. They probably wouldn't have even had to climb out - they'd have just jumped out headfirst, done a flip, and landed on their feet. At least that was what it seemed like to Leon. "I just realized," he said. "The defendants looked like a college soccer team that had teamed up with the Young Researchers' Association to break into somewhere they shouldn't have to party and now they're regretting it."
Nilofar laughed out loud. "The one in the middle front row did look really young. 'Oh, what am I doing here? How did I get here?'"
"But why would the soccer teams join up with the studious sorts?" Inge asked.
"Maybe as thanks for writing their papers for them?"
Leon checked his phone for the time. So far, they'd be back by the time they had given their boss. All in all, the trial had been even more boring than sorting documents, but at least Leon could brag about having been to one - that is, if he found someone who was impressed by that.
The financial situation was galling. Stephen finished going through the papers, wondering if the IDC knew just how much they were playing with fire here. He would need to go and beg for more support once again, or else risk having the heating be turned off for failing to pay.
Stephen still wasn't used to the concept of utility bills. How could water or heat be something you needed to pay for? Might as well tax air. But here he was, seriously wondering what to do if they couldn't pay for electricity. Light was needed as a security precaution, but heat could be turned off - or would the cold October nights be too much for the elderly?
"Second Lieutenant, could you kindly toss me the blue manual?" It was the one that had information like how many cubic metres of air a person needed and what was a tolerable temperature range.
"Of course." It landed right in front of him seconds later - perfect aim.
"Thank you." He flipped to the right page. Going off this information, it would be possible to heat the cells only during the evening and night for a few weeks. But what about when winter came? Have a wing for those who could absolutely not stand the cold and heat it, and give the others extra blankets? The IDC would complain - it was impossible to focus while cold, that much, Stephen knew from his outdoor exercises way back in basic.
"Something crazy happened to me while I was supervising the yard," Tiller said. "Did you know that Li is a great high-jumper?"
Li could turn out to be capable of flight and Stephen would not be amazed - such was his physical prowess. "Did he jump over you?"
"Yeah!" Tiller looked slightly befuddled. "And then he landed in a roll, got up, and kept running."
"And you let him?"
Tiller shrugged. "It's good for people to have an outlet."
"If he wants an outlet, he can do a somersault over a bench. By involving you with his amusements, he takes away your authority. He's not here for a- dancing competition, or whatever else he thinks he is achieving by running across the yard on his hands."
"I guess," Tiller conceded. "By the way, during the key criminals' walk, I overheard Dovek bragging that he won't be hanged."
Stephen glanced over at the book he kept on his desk at all times. "If you have any suggestions on how we can make sure the guards don't sneak him poison or a blade, I am more than eager to hear them."
Tiller rested her chin on her hands. "I really hate them sometimes," she admitted. "All of them. The witnesses are so smug that they won't be transferred for trial until much later, it's sickening. And they're happy!" She pushed her helmet back on her head. "I was patrolling the bottom floor, and I saw the Death Squad consultants playing cards with not a care in the world."
"They're happy because they expected lamp-posts," Stephen reminded her. "I think any of them would choose hours-long queues and shanties over this."
"That's what I tell myself."
"Let me assure you," Stephen said, "I am not very impressed with them, either. Sometimes I think I hate them, or the Capitol as a whole. It is only my experience that keeps me professional."
Tiller raised her eyebrows. "But you're always feeding the rubble-children."
"They're just children," Stephen said sharply. "It's an outrage that the government can't do something as simple as feeding and housing children. Hunger-associated diseases are already common, it's going to be completely catastrophic this winter."
"Maybe you should open a Community Home."
"What, Angelo and I? That would have to wait for my demobilization."
Tiller's eyes went wide. "You mean you actually want to?" she whispered.
"I am planning on getting married," Stephen said, unsure why she was reacting so strongly. "That, for most people, means children. And with conditions being the way they are, it would be better for us to provide basic necessities to many children."
"So romantic," Tiller sighed. "You'll be a great Home parent, I know it."
Stephen closed the manual and placed it in a drawer of his desk. "I think most people would not agree with that."
"Bullshit. You adjust yourself for every situation. You'd be just as good at dealing with children squabbling over candy as with war criminals squabbling over coffee."
It felt nice to be reassured. "Thank you."
"Oh, and what did you need the manual for?"
"Temperature. I need to see how catastrophic it would be if we can't pay the utilities bills. So far, I was thinking water isn't a problem, because we can send people out to the pumps, and we might be able to skimp on heating, but only partially."
Tiller shook her head. "We'd go crazy trying to supply the place with water. It was hard enough for us. You sure the budget won't hold?"
"Depends on if the ones up there increase it. I wrote a memo - I'm preparing for the worst-case scenario, just in case."
"Let's hope they don't cut it again," Tiller said, stretching out in her seat. "I've already got so many complaints about it being cold at night."
The temperature was never good. Either it was too hot or too cold. "Has everyone been issued warmer clothing?"
"They have. I checked." The daytime temperature was currently in that odd range when some people needed jackets while others were comfortable in short sleeves. "Oh, and by the way, has that witness Dr. Madaichik requested been transferred yet? I've got a form I need to send back to Eleven, but no colonel to speak of."
It was very difficult to keep track of everyone. Many potential witnesses were in POW camps all over the country or roaming around trying to get home. "Only recent transfers from Eleven were NCOs."
"Guess we'll wait some more, then." She sighed. "Can't believe it's already October. It's going to be winter soon."
"That's why I'm worried about the budget."
Tiller looked like she wanted to say the arrival of winter meant something else to her, but she said nothing.
Eric F., 63 years old, reports that throughout his life, he had had a recurring nightmare about lying paralyzed on his bed and being watched by a figurine of Jesus looking down from a crucifix that had hung on his bedroom wall when he was a child. According to him, the figurine in reality had looked upwards, and he had always been terrified of it.
Shortly after the arrest of an acquaintance, Avalon X., then 15 years old, dreamt that the walls of her apartment disappeared as a loudspeaker announced a decree abolishing walls for reasons of national security, followed by the surveillance camera on the opposite building swallowing her up. From then on, she suffered from a phobia of cameras, and has panic attacks when she thinks someone might be filming her.
At the age of 23, Sam E. developed depression and used regular phone conversations with friends as one of their coping mechanisms. After complaining one day that they couldn't enjoy anything anymore, they dreamt that someone called them and introduced themselves as the 'NCIA Office for the Monitoring of Telephone Conversations' before sternly warning them that being depressed in Panem was illegal.
When Snow became president, Deepika K., then 21 and a dissident, dreamt that Snow had stolen her scholarship money and when she complained, she was told that nothing could be done because Snow was too important. She thought 'that damn Snow even stole my scholarship!' and woke up.
Claudia A., 58 years old, regularly dreamt of walking down the street and shouting anti-Snow slogans as nobody paid attention to her and walked by in silence. She never considered herself to be opposed to the government in any way.
Jo Z., who defected from Panem ten years ago aged 13, began to have recurring nightmares about being deported back to Panem immediately after their arrival to Whitehorse. Once they gained citizen status, the dreams began to feature a revocation of the citizenship and being told that it had been a mistake and they were not supposed to have received it. They continue to regularly have this dream to this day.
A few years back, Augustus L., currently 71, had an extremely vivid nightmare where he was at a performance of 'The Magic Flute'. When the line 'That's surely the Devil' was sung, Peacekeepers marched into the theatre and arrested him for thinking about Snow when hearing the word 'devil', nobody noticing his screams for help.
"Listen to this," Miroslav said to Mallow. "Whether or not a teenager had nightmares about the Hunger Games was impacted not by the likelihood of them actually ending up there, but by how present they were in their day-to-day lives. A child in an orphanage with hundreds or thousands of tesserae slips, if they were unable to watch television, seldom even stopped to think about the Games."
Mallow nodded contemplatively. "How did the way the Games were presented to them affect it?"
"Wasn't it the same? Everyone who attended school and/or had a radio or television heard the same thing about noble combat and heroic sacrifice."
"I'll want to see more data on the difference between the Capitol and the Districts, but it sounds plausible," Mallow said. "I remember when I was growing up, we who went to school thought about the Games far more than the others even though our odds were much lower. The necessity of sacrifice was beaten into our heads by our teachers, and I felt horrible that I did not want to sacrifice myself and was scared."
Miroslav tried to imagine a young Mallow climbing onto a bus, not knowing if she would come back. The odds had been astronomical, but someone had had to be picked each year. "Terrible," he said.
"With us, there was another nuance - we actually had someone Reaped straight out of the manor once. One of the maids, Chaff Kielce. He survived but died in the Quell. When he was first Reaped, my parents gave a speech to all the workers telling them to be happy one of their number was going to sacrifice himself for the nation. Everyone applauded enthusiastically. To this day, I have no idea what they felt. I knew I felt nothing. I did believe all that stuff, I just didn't want to be the one in the Arena." She shook her head.
"I can't imagine watching something like that."
"I've actually started writing a book about my life. Not sure if anyone would want to read it-"
"I would," Miroslav said immediately.
"-though I'm sure the foreigners would be interested." She looked at him. "Maybe you should write something, too."
The book they were currently co-writing was enough for Miroslav. "Who'd want to read about me being safe and sound in Thirteen?"
"Still more interesting than listening to you recount your trip to Iqaluit for the millionth time."
"Oh, come on, I'm not that bad," Miroslav said weakly - he was that bad. "Oh, hey, another interesting thing - in the Capitol, well-publicized show trials resulted in an uptick of nightmares about show trials."
"Entire Capitol or Capitol proper?"
Miroslav turned the page. The article moved on to something else there. "No idea. It does say that political dreams were very infrequent for villagers, because of how little they were exposed to it."
Mallow gnashed her teeth. "They really need to interview more rural people. The Capitol's drowning in DPs - how hard can it be?"
"Yeah. I bet it's all just bias. Oh, and by the way, how did your chat with Blatt go?" When she had returned five minutes ago, Miroslav had been engrossed in the article.
"Admitted she knew about what went on in the IGR."
That was always a tricky situation. "I thought she was quite convincing on the stand."
Mallow took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled. "If the prosecution couldn't get her to admit the truth, that's their problem. We need to maintain at least some pretense of confidentiality, or else they'll stop trusting us."
Miroslav checked his watch. "I need to go talk to Cotillion now," he said. "Let's see what she has to say about Blatt's denials."
"Have fun!"
"I certainly won't."
A/N: The incident where Holder shot a boy with a cognitive impairment is directly taken from the first book, but the perpetrator is unnamed in canon. I thought it would be bitterly ironic if the killer had a disability themselves.
Chester Nimitz submitted an interrogatory to the IMT explaining that the USA had used unrestricted submarine warfare, which Otto Kranzbuehler used to argue that this meant it was allowed. However, the USA had not used slave labour in its docks or sent POWs to the FBI for summary execution (and Chester Nimitz had not been known for going on racist tirades in public, either), so Karl Doenitz got ten years. So the judges have a precedent, at least.
The nightmares in Miroslav's article are mostly taken from Richard Evans' 'The Third Reich in Power', including the one about 'The Magic Flute', as I am nowhere near creative enough to make something like that up. Frankly, I don't think anyone is creative enough for that.
