Dovek was reading a book when Miroslav stepped into his cell. "Ah, do come in, Doctor!" he said, making it sound as if he was in control of the situation. "Would you like to sit?"
Miroslav sat down on the chair, notepad in hand. "Thank you very much. And how are you doing this fine day?"
Dovek chuckled and used a scrap piece of paper as a bookmark. "I am still of the opinion that the trial is meant to bore us to death," he said, setting the book on the table. "Where did you even dig up Fisher? He's got the most monotone voice I've heard in my life. Whoever assigned him to Blues did her a bear's service."
"Dr. Fisher is perfectly competent," Miroslav said, a little bit sharper than he had intended. Also being a professional, Fisher was much closer to him than someone like Dovek, who had graduated university on connections and spent the rest of his life scheming. "He had an excellent career as a public defender, especially in sensitive cases few other lawyers were willing to take."
"Oh, really? Dovek's eyes widened. "I didn't know that."
"Rumour mill let you down?" Miroslav joked.
"That it did," Dovek said. "I'd offer Blues my condolences, but those public defenders don't care who they defend, they just like the challenge." In the Capitol, unlike the Districts, impecunious defendants had been (usually) given free lawyers, but those tended to be extremely underpaid and got better jobs as soon as they could. "I change my mind, we all need a Dr. Fisher in our lives."
What an odd change in perspective. "Now you think he did well today?"
Dovek shrugged. "I'm far from an expert when it comes to defense lawyers. I spent my entire life making sure I'd never need one. To me, Fisher sounded like the universe's most boring professor lecturing. But if I know he knows what he's doing, clearly that's not an actual shortcoming." He paused. "With how long this is dragging on for, by the time the judges meet to decide, they'll be rereading the transcript because they forgot the entire thing. It's not delivery that matters, it's words spoken. Or perhaps they'll rubber-stamp our death warrants instead!" He seemed amused at the thought.
"You think that'll happen?"
"No," Dovek said, shaking his head. "Nobody would set all this money on fire just to off us all at the end. I know it - they won't hang me." If he said that again, Vance would discover a new dimension of paranoia and ascend to it. Through a combination of guilting, threats, and pleading, he had actually managed to drastically curtail the amount of guards willing to share food and coffee with the prisoners, but he was still terrified that someone would slip someone poison or a blade.
"How do you know that?"
Dovek smiled mysteriously. Miroslav made a note to tell Vance. Perhaps Dovek was just messing with them on purpose, but the thought of him actually managing to kill himself didn't bear thinking about. "I just do. I don't think they'll hang Blues, either."
"Why?"
"Oh, come on, Doctor, you can see it as well as I do. First they had the evil industrialist Chaterhan, followed by the innocent middle-class Blues who accidentally got tangled up in something she did not understand. It's the perfect narrative. Judges are human, too. And in terms of background, they're her superiors, they don't think she is capable of rational thought. Krechet's out of luck that he admitted to those murders - they'll off him like a rabid dog."
"You think the judges are so blinded by class prejudice?"
"Of course I do," Dovek said seriously. "I got Low to research all of them - besides Meadowcreek, of course. All of them show the typical prejudices in their sentencing patterns. Of course, there are aberrations - these judges were handpicked to be as fair as possible, after all. Mendez was very harsh on Peacekeepers who were supposed to have been given slaps on the wrist. Smith was just too soft on victimless crimes. As far as I can tell, Rescu made a point of ignoring the telephone - had she not been such a merciless stickler for the letter of the law, I'm sure she'd have been fired sometime in her first month on the bench." He laced his hands together and folded them under his chin. "But no matter how out of place they were in our judiciary, it was better to be a rich defendant than a poor one."
"That can also be because rich people don't commit certain crimes and can bribe police to overlook other types of offenses."
Dovek nodded thoughtfully. "I suppose that's true. I've never heard of even a middle-class person standing trial for drug possession alone. Is it true they've decriminalized it?"
"No, they simply stopped arresting for it to save on resources." The minister of justice and several District chiefs of police had all spoken out in favour of decriminalizing possession in small amounts - the joke went that they were lazy and wanted less work, or wanted to possess without worry, or both at once - but whether it would become law remained to be seen.
"Smart. If a person's only crime is using drugs, all they do is poison themselves. It's only if they become violent or sell it that they hurt others."
"I'm glad the policy has your approval," Miroslav said, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of his voice - planting drugs had been a popular way of dealing with activists. "How about we continue talking about why you think the judges are biased?"
"I hardly think it needs to be talked about," Dovek said with a dismissive flap of the hand. "The judges grew up as the creme de la creme of society. Blues' family incurred massive debts just getting her into state school, to say nothing of university, Krechet was a worker, and so were our brave Peacekeepers, except Best and Lux. Who else? Ah, yes, Slice is working-class. Better-off than Krechet - her father was an elementary-school teacher - but her mother was a construction worker."
"Indeed."
"Now, Doctor, I'm not sure how much you've picked up on by now, but we're not in Thirteen here. It is generally accepted that one's social inferior is inferior in every way. In this courtroom, Capitol or District won't matter - the judges were shielded from everything bar waving goodbye to their children as they went to the Reaping fields. That's why the Games were absolute idiocy - a member of the elite loses a child, and we lose them and all of their associates." Ironically, Dovek vastly underestimated the power of the propaganda. Everyone Miroslav had talked to, except Gale Hawthorne, either could not remember what they had thought about the Games or admitted to approval. Had one of the judges lost a child, they'd have appeared on television to talk about how proud they were to have a child who died for the nation. Miroslav found it hard to wrap his mind around his colleagues, as children, having sincerely hoped to die in the Games one day. "In any case, it's class that will matter. And nobody will be able to believe that a middle-class engineer could orchestrate anything more complicated than a shopping trip."
Miroslav still couldn't grasp how the extreme social stratification worked. It made no sense to him that people did what their parents had done, with a few rare exceptions like Slice. "Why don't we talk about you instead of the others?"
"What is there to talk about with me?" Dovek asked. "With me, what you see is what you get."
Miroslav did not think it was nearly so simple.
"Any news, Doctor?" Oldsmith asked. He took off the blanket that had been draped around his shoulders and folded it carefully into a cushion he could lean against.
"What kind of news?" Oldsmith was always asking for news.
"The agricultural reform."
Oldsmith's wife was from a family of landowners - or rather, former landowners. The land had been split up into independent farms owned by the former tenants. If the manager was still alive, they had probably moved away. "It's going well. No particular bits of news I can think of."
"Huh." Oldsmith actually gnashed his teeth a few times. "I read that the south is being flooded with seasonals."
Now that the borders were open, farmhands from more northern parts of the country could go down south during the winter, where the harvesting happened year-round. "They are," Miroslav said, unsure of what Oldsmith was getting at. It was a little bit amusing how the defendants talked to him as if he was an expert in everything.
"Do you really think we'll become a food exporter?"
"Forgive me, but I have no idea. Do you think so?"
Oldsmith nodded. "They're trying to modernize agriculture. If the harvests increase, we'll have to offload it to somewhere." He then went on a rant about how the Great Powers were trying to put a leash on Panem and make it dance to their tune. There wasn't much Miroslav could note down other than the fact that Oldsmith was still taking the end of isolationism very poorly. "I'm sure that once we automate, our workers will go abroad, and that'll be the end of Panem. Compared to the rest of the world, we're nothing. I don't understand why Paylor's so eager to have us be a third-rate power."
Miroslav was not so sure about workers going abroad (if the country modernized, surely they'd just go work in the factories?), but he was not here to argue politics. And in any case, it wasn't Paylor who made these decisions but Bensoussan - the defendants couldn't grasp that even now. "Why do you think she's willing to accept a subordinate position?"
"I suppose she's got no choice," Oldsmith said, deflating. "If not for the humanitarian aid, we'd have starved the other winter." He then went back to ranting about the Great Powers and how they were trying to split up the world. His mention of starvation made Miroslav think of the posters being put up all over the place. Rough black-and white drawings depicted parents holding their starving children ('There is only one way to save these children - proper nourishment! Profiteering and black-marketing takes from the most vulnerable to give to those who already have everything! File a complaint when you see something, do not let our children starve!') and, even more heartbreakingly, trying to get help from a doctor who could not provide what they needed - food.
Winter was close, and already, there were complaints about people not receiving what they were entitled to. The posters weren't wrong when they blamed profiteers. People with access to food stole it to sell at high prices, leaving nothing for people who had only their ration cards. Miroslav was horrified by that, not only because he was from Thirteen and used to equitable food distribution, but because he could easily imagine someone coming in to complain of feeling lethargic and depressed and Miroslav only being able to tell them that it was due to their undernourishment. The twenty-fourth century, and all doctors could do was state what the problem was and spread their arms helplessly.
Oldsmith finally stopped giving Miroslav his analysis of the geopolitical situation. He looked more alive now, eyes alert and back straight. "Interesting," Miroslav said. "I see you're very well-informed."
"Doctor, you know very well they give us newspapers. Did you see that article about sanitation yesterday?"
"The one in The New Gazette?"
"That one. Absolutely horrible. I had no idea how bad it was."
There, Miroslav was willing to believe him - it would not have been spread around too much that 95% of the rural population had no running water, as well as 60% of the inhabitants of towns and smaller cities and 15% of those in big cities. Even the Capitol proper had tens of thousands of people who had to draw water from a pump and use an outhouse, to say nothing of the outlying towns. Countless rivers and lakes were polluted with sewage. The things that had been covered up with propaganda! "Me neither," Miroslav said. "I was outraged."
"Same. This explains many suicides I was previously baffled about. They didn't want to be called to account for this."
"You think it would have been right to try them?"
"For this humanitarian catastrophe? Absolutely."
Miroslav jotted that down, not showing his satisfaction. Oldsmith had stopped seeing the entire process as illegitimate and had now shifted to considering himself as simply an innocent person indicted by mistake. A massive transformation, for which Miroslav could take no credit - it was all the impact of the trial itself and the various newspapers Oldsmith was smuggled.
"May I see what you're writing?" Miroslav asked Bright, who had a cardboard folder propped up on her knees.
"Oh, of course, Doctor." She passed it to him. "I'm keeping track of the Peacekeeper trials."
Bright was remarkably well-informed. She was aware of trials from all across the country and had a complicated table drawn up to keep track of who was being tried where and for what and which punishment they received. So far, Bright had precious little to give her hope - the higher the rank, the severer the punishment. "What are you doing this for?"
"To pass the time, I suppose," Bright said. She sat military-straight, even if the undershirt and uniform trousers she was currently wearing made her look like she was lounging around in a barracks. "I need to do something to fill my mind."
"Have you found any interesting patterns yet?"
"I did. The more senior the officer, the more severe the punishment. When it comes to the enlisted ranks, it all hinges on who has the more convincing story - the defendant or the witness." She took the paper back and put it on the table. "I am not surprised. The officers are usually sentenced on the weight of the orders, while for the enlisted soldiers, it's on the basis of individual acts. Of course, there's exceptions - Thread's being called to account for what he did personally. That business with the cat? Horrific. He doesn't seem like a sadist, but only a sadist could do such a thing."
Thread claimed that the witness had been mistaken and he had never forced children to kill their own pets. "You yourself were involved with rather cruel and unusual punishments before," Miroslav reminded her.
Bright shook her head. "I was a junior officer in a small-town garrison, I had to lead by example. Thread personally punished people when he was Head Peacekeeper. His job was to push around papers and enrich himself, not whip people."
"You had to lead by example?"
"Doctor, you have corporal punishment in Thirteen, too."
"We did. I was active in the movement to ban it, so forgive me if I need more explanation of why you thought it was effective."
Bright seemed perplexed by the fact that it was possible to be openly opposed to the government. "And they still gave you this job?"
"Of course."
"I can't believe it."
Miroslav smiled. "You don't need to believe in a simple fact. Ever since university, I was opposed to corporal punishment. It is not effective. I did a study in grad school - people beaten for stealing food and people who got away with stealing food had the same recidivism rate."
"You did a study in grad school?" Bright asked, envy lacing her voice. "Perhaps I would have acted differently had I seen the study. Nobody ever showed me studies. They just ordered me around."
"But you were not ordered to do anything as Head."
"By that point, doing anything differently than before couldn't cross my mind. It simply couldn't."
Miroslav nodded. "Did you ever do something of your own volition that was not in line with the general line from above?"
Bright shook her head. "Never. If I had the choice, I always picked the severest option. That was why I earned my promotion in the first place."
"Never? Not even a single time?"
It said a lot about Bright that she couldn't recall having ever done a good thing. "I suppose there might have been one time," she eventually said slowly. "It was way back when I was the commander of a factory town's garrison. I saw a child stealing handfuls of flour from the factory. I could have had them shot, but I let them go, because I was too tired from my shift to chase them down."
Good thing she hadn't tried to say that on the witness stand. "And that was the only time?"
"Maybe there were more and I forgot about them."
The worst thing was, Bright had started out perfectly normal. She had been a factory worker herself. Had she been passed over for that fateful promotion, someone else would have been sitting in front of Miroslav, and Bright would have been a nameless ex-officer filling in a questionnaire. Because once you got to a certain level, you knew what you were doing and what was expected of you, and were willing to do it. It was just a matter of how visible you ended up.
"I know you wish you had done certain things differently," Miroslav began, only to be cut off by Bright.
"I wish I hadn't said that."
"Why?"
"I don't want to sound like I'm begging for mercy. I did my duty best as I could. It wasn't my fault if I didn't have the information needed to make good choices."
What Miroslav wished he could do was force her to watch footage of troops under her command, obeying her orders, annihilating villages. How in the world could a baby be a threat? What made people willing to obey or give such orders? "May I ask you a more broad question?"
"Of course." Bright tensed somewhat, hands in her lap.
"Were you prepared somehow for the killing of small children?"
Bright shook her head, relaxing. This was an easy question for her. "It was beaten into our heads - tear out rebellion by the roots. You couldn't have children growing up to avenge their parents."
"In military college, you often helped with the training of young cadets," Miroslav said, flipping through his notes, "and you often felt attached to them. As if they were your siblings."
"Correct," Bright said, slightly perplexed by the non sequitur.
"The first-years - they must have seemed so small to you."
Bright smiled sadly. "Even then, they seemed so tiny. I can't believe Lux ordered us to send them into the fighting."
"But you were still able to kill other twelve-year-olds."
Bright jerked back as if slapped. "You think I enjoyed it? I didn't. But orders are orders."
Mallow had come up with a game - take a shot of alcohol for every time one of the Peacekeepers said that particular phrase. To Miroslav, that seemed like an excellent way to end up in hospital. "You were not ordered-"
"You still don't understand, Doctor! This was just how things went. I saw anti-terrorist operations, learned how they went, and applied them myself in my territory. Had I not done it, I would have been considered soft, and I'd have struggled to get promoted."
Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die. Or bayonet babies, in this case. And all for a promotion.
"So it's not a question of orders," Miroslav said. "It's a question of fitting in."
"Exactly," Bright said.
A question of fitting in. One of the other psychologists was working on a study on rank-and-file Peacekeepers, and she had reached the same conclusion. Prejudice and training alone wasn't enough to explain their actions. They were never told that they would machine-gun civilians. But they did. And Miroslav was beginning to suspect that the reason for that was horribly prosaic - the desire to look tough in front of comrades, fit in, and increase one's chances at a promotion.
"Good news, Doctor!" Lux said before the door even shut behind Miroslav. "My brother writes that my grand-nieces are alive!"
Since Lux didn't want him to take notes, Miroslav had to remember who that was. Lux's brother had a massive family, and all of the able ones had gone to fight. Several had not come back. Lux was remarkably frank about his grief. "How old are they?" he asked, sitting down.
"Twenty-two." Lux preferred to pace around his cell. He walked up and down in the confined space. He had lost quite a bit of weight, and the loose skin on his face and neck looked somewhat like a deflated balloon.
"Are they siblings?"
Lux nodded. "Twins, fraternal." He smiled, thinking of them. "Finally, some happy news."
"I'm very glad."
"Of course you are - you're paid to be!" Lux was very happy today, that did not take a psychologist to see. "Now, what are you going to pick my brain about today? Dr. Mallow did a fun game with me the other day. I had to look at pictures of people doing things and make up stories about what's happening there."
"Did she say anything?"
"Of course. Apparently, I am not very creative, but I have lots of detail in my stories. Makes sense to me. I was taught a very different kind of creativity. How's demobilization going?"
"As well as such a complicated process can."
"You say that every time, Doctor," Lux said without a shred of irritation. He paused by the window and looked out, hands on his hips. Miroslav realized that he would never see the sky without bars in his way ever again. "What a mess. My sister tells me more trials are being planned?"
"They don't share that kind of information with me. I only hear the same rumours as you."
Lux nodded. "My sister, she writes to me every week. I heard that the families of the Peacekeepers' trial defendants are turning away from them. What a crying shame. At least I know how my family is doing."
"And how are they doing?" Miroslav asked, taking the bait.
Lux gave Miroslav a lengthy description of everything his family members had gotten up to in the past week. "-and they're not looking forward to winter, that's for sure. They might have to move in with my brother, his building has working heating." The priority had been to fix fixable housing and move everyone in there, leaving the ruins to stand like propped-up skeletons. Lodgepole would be a pile of rubble for years to come. "I heard this winter shouldn't be too bad."
"I hope so," Miroslav said fervently.
"Is there going to be heating here? They still haven't turned it on."
"I hope so," Miroslav said again, more fervently this time. He already had to sleep under a pile of blankets.
Lux now launched into a rant about how the cold was making his joint problems worse. Miroslav could only nod along. He had already told Vance that everyone suffered from the cold, now it was up to up there to give them more funding.
Cotillion set aside the book she had been reading. "Is there anything specific you want to talk to me about today?"
"No. I'm just here to check in on you."
"It's cold," Cotillion said. "I have to sleep with socks on my hands." Putting hands under the blanket was a security risk, according to the warden. "My heart has been acting up lately."
"That is a matter for Dr. Shentop," Miroslav said, "not me."
"We have to talk about something," Cotillion replied with a shrug. "That's the first thing that came to mind. Dr. Shentop's going to take a look at me tomorrow." She scratched her head. "I heard Reznik's been arrested."
Reznik had been Cotillion's deputy for the human department, where genetically modified humans had been created with reckless disregard for the scientific method. "What do you think about that?"
"I've been wondering how the department's faring. Where did all the mutts go?"
"Some had to be sent to specialized orphanages, others are probably on the streets right now."
"That's a shame," Cotillion said. "Couldn't they stay in the IGR?"
"No. There's nobody to look after them there."
Cotillion looked confused. "What about the interns?"
"All left."
"We always had a problem with those," she said, shaking her head. "I remember I had so many complaints against me. Security risk, things like that."
"But you managed to sort those out."
Cotillion ran a hand over her head. "I don't understand what the interns were so disturbed about. All they had to do was babysit - it's not like they were working on a body farm."
"People who work on the body farm knew what they were getting into," Miroslav reminded her. Not to mention that the subjects there were not only already dead, but had volunteered for their body to be used in such a way. "How much did interns know about the human mutts before arriving?"
"We couldn't let them know too much. It was a state secret."
"Why do you think they were so disturbed?"
Cotillion shrugged. "Absolutely no idea. I came in as an intern myself and never had any problems. Though the very first thing I did there was a human vivisection, so I suppose after that, nothing could shock me."
She had mentioned that before. "A person can get used to anything."
"To a point." Cotillion tapped her fingers on her knees. "We had some interns who seemed to be doing well, but then they'd be pushed one step too far, and they'd kill themselves or quit. I never felt the desire. It was important work."
"And yet you falsified data," Miroslav reminded her.
Cotillion made a vague gesture of assent. "You're a researcher, you understand."
Since Cotillion didn't let him take notes, Miroslav could only suspect they had been over this before. "No," he said. "I never falsified data and neither did anyone I know personally. When I was in university, there was a massive scandal with a chemist who cooked data."
"What happened to them?"
"Fired and barred from academia. I think he's still working in an armaments factory."
"Well, it wasn't like that here," Cotillion said in a pleading voice - accusations of academic dishonesty were a far more serious matter to her than accusations of crimes against humanity. "A little change to make the p value below .05 - that's harmless, really."
Miroslav was infuriated by that. Strange, that he wasn't infuriated by vivisections. But then again, that was something he had no experience with. He needed to apply textbook knowledge never used in practice before to work with the defendants. Nobody had ever needed to tell him that vivisection was bad. Cooking data, though? It had been impressed on him, over and over in university, that academic dishonesty would be the end to any career, no matter how illustrious. The incident with the chemist had been the main topic of discussion for weeks, and the mendacious researcher had spent a year hospitalized for suicidal ideation, so great had been his shame. "No, it is most definitely not harmless," he said firmly. "If there is no significant difference, then there is no significant difference, and lying about it can send the entire discipline in the wrong direction for decades to come."
"You don't understand," Cotillion said. "We needed the grant money."
"As if we didn't suffer from limited resources!"
Cotillion looked at him. "Doctor, did you seriously never falsify data?"
"Not since first-year physics labs," Miroslav admitted. He had always struggled to set up the experiments and had been too lazy to do it again, preferring to alter the neighbour's results slightly and go home early.
"And that was normal?"
"I can't speak for all my colleagues, but if someone lied, they kept very quiet about it. At worst, lying was commonplace but highly taboo."
"So what did you do if your experiment yielded no useful results?"
"Wrote up a report where I said that much."
"And you weren't worried you'd be defunded?"
Miroslav laughed. "Everyone was always worried they'd be defunded. Not money-wise, of course, but time, equipment - that was at a premium. Of course, every time I submitted a paper about how something had no significant effect, I was worried the ones up there would give up on the entire thing. But how would lying have solved the problem? Methods that don't work would have been used, causing untold damage."
Cotillion shuffled forward, sitting cross-legged on the mattress. "You've given me a lot to think about, Doctor," she said.
So vivisection was fine and no cause for concern, but falsifying data was something she needed to think about. Miroslav could only hope the researchers she had commanded were not like her.
"How are you doing today?" Miroslav asked Blatt, who did not seem to be doing very well in the past weeks. She looked wan and grey, with bags under her eyes.
"Damn guard woke me up for turning away from her," she said angrily. "Over and over! I'd like to see them try to sleep with this lightbulb shining in their faces!"
Most guards weren't sticklers for the rules like that. "Is it just that one?" Thanks to Vance, the guards rotated very frequently in this wing, so that they couldn't get to know the prisoners.
"No. The warden was here last night, so they were all torturing us."
"Nobody else complained today," Miroslav said gently. "Perhaps you were just unlucky enough to get such a zealous guard."
Blatt shrugged. "Maybe. Doctor, could you please get the warden to stop? I swear I'm having nightmares about him half the time."
"I'll do what I can," Miroslav promised for what felt like the hundredth time. It was like beating his head against the wall. Vance's anti-suicide precautions were enough to drive anyone to suicidal despair, but since they were so airtight, the prisoners could do nothing but slowly slide further and further towards total mental collapse, as Blatt was doing. "Out of curiosity, what are the nightmares like?"
"I keep on dreaming that I'm doing ordinary things, but he's there, watching me. Sometimes the deputy warden is there, but that's rare. I always wake up feeling so disgusting inside."
It was so frustrating to have the solution to the problem within reach but have it be unavailable because Vance had read a book and now thought that the prisoners would kill themselves just to spite him if given the slightest opportunity. "Do you want to talk about that?"
"I don't want to talk about anything! I just want to get out of here!"
"Do you think you will?"
Blatt shrugged. "I think I did pretty well on the witness stand, but I'm worried they'll trust the prosecution over me. Anyways, they'll have one or two of us left alive, tops. As a symbolic gesture of sorts. If it's two or three of us, I'm sure I'll be one of them, but they did include Slice just for this purpose."
"A symbolic gesture of what?"
"Of their reasonableness." Blatt chuckled humourlessly. "They don't want to be seen as rubber-stamping death sentences." She rubbed her hands together. "I'm sure they think it'll be ironic - twenty-four come in, one comes out - but I don't think the judges are the sort to play by the rules. I'm willing to bet anything on there being less than twenty death sentences."
That was quite a transformation of opinion over the course of half a minute. Blatt seemed to be trying to convince herself that everything would be alright. "And what do you think you'll get?"
"Personally, I'm hoping for an acquittal. They have to recognize I was just the store-front mannequin. I had nothing to do with whatever Cotillion cooked up in her labs, my job consisted of pushing papers from office to office." She sat back against the wall, a little bit more relaxed now, but still very tired and drawn. "I can see why the judges might believe the prosecution over me. It's hard to believe that the minister of armaments had nothing to do with those nasty pods. But it was all done over my head! I just needed to rubber-stamp decisions that had already been reached and put into practice. Had it been in my power, I wouldn't have had those pods created. What a stupid name for a weapon. Designers wanted to act as if they had come up with an entirely new innovative technique, as if they weren't just laying the exact same mines and booby-traps people have been using for hundreds of years."
"Some of them were certainly innovative."
Blatt shrugged. "And so what? Waste of time and resources. A simple antipersonnel mine would have been more effective than the bizarre contraptions the world press seems to be so fascinated by. The failure rate was astronomical. I swear the designers didn't realize we were at war, not trying to impress the higher-ups." She paused. "I suppose that's what went wrong for us. We were so used to needing to impress the higher-ups in everything, we refused to do something quick and dirty but effective when it was actually urgent."
Miroslav jotted that down. That was one of the more insightful things Blatt had said. "When did you realize it was war, not just yet another local uprising?"
"On one level - when we heard of Twelve's annihilation," Blatt said without pausing to think. "I hadn't been at that conference, of course, but that was something new." She looked around the cell as she thought about what to say next. "Beyond that, there wasn't a single moment. Things kept on escalating and escalating, especially once Thirteen came into the open and supplied the rebels with weapons. Though they'd have won even without Thirteen. You can't shoot dead millions of unarmed people running around town squares. I read about this in a newspaper. Once a certain critical mass is reached, the law enforcement switches sides, and that's the end."
"Interesting."
"I kept on thinking this had to end soon. And it did - just not in the way I expected." She yawned and rubbed at her eyes. "Idiotic. All so idiotic."
"I apologize for not sitting up," Verdant said. "My leg's been playing up." He was lying on his cot on top of the blankets, left leg in a large brace.
"Of course. It's no problem."
Verdant sighed, staring up at the ceiling. "After a momentary fit of despair - months and months of agony. Ironic, that this isn't making me want to end it all. I'm in pain, Doctor."
"I'm not that kind of doctor," Miroslav joked.
Verdant laughed; it sounded a bit forced, as if he had to struggle to get the sounds out. "I already talked to Dr. Shentop. She says that it may stay this way for the rest of my life and the only thing we haven't tried yet is opiates. Honestly, if I could be sure that they would hang me, I'd take the opiates. My testimony's over, so I don't need to be clear-headed, and I wouldn't have much time to develop a tolerance. But can you imagine me needed more and more painkillers just to be able to get out of bed as the years go on?"
"Forgive me for pointing it out, but being in pain is hardly conducive to clear-headedness."
"It's not that bad," Verdant lied, moving his palms around the blanket. "My cluster headaches will be back soon enough - now that will be pain." He had been suffering from annual attacks of cluster headaches for decades now. Connections and pull had let him avoid an honourable discharge. "It's more like discomfort. Endless, ceaseless, eternal discomfort."
"Do you want to talk about that?"
Verdant shook his head. "Nothing to talk about there. Anything on the family-visits front?"
"No."
"Pity." Verdant moved his right leg slightly and winced in pain. Both of his legs had been broken, and the right one could only be considered healed by the standards of the left. "I can't believe I jumped out of that window without even looking. That damn tree ruined all my plans." He tilted his head towards Miroslav and smiled.
Ironic, that the one who had actually attempted to kill himself and thus merited a suicide watch was one of the ones least likely to actually do it. In Miroslav's opinion, Verdant was telling the truth when he called it a fit of momentary despair. He hadn't thought life would be possible without the regime, and knew better now.
"Frankly, Doctor, I don't understand what the prosecution is getting at with those horrid accents," Best said, sitting primly at the edge of his cot. The long-retired former admiral only wore civilian clothes, which made him look like any other grandfather. "Surely they haven't stopped teaching proper elocution in university? It's like a circus out there."
"You don't like the accents?" Miroslav asked.
Best huffed. "It's not a question of District, or class, or whatever else it may be. I myself served with plenty of officers from Two from not the best backgrounds - just look at Verdant, or Thread! - but they always spoke properly. It's simply a matter of correctness. A lawyer must speak without grammatical errors, and they must pronounce sounds correctly. These ones are making themselves into laughingstocks."
High-ranking Peacekeepers from Two did tend to speak just like their counterparts from the Capitol, as it was very difficult to get promoted with a noticeable Two accent, no matter what class. The Peacekeepers were infamous for their own accent, but it was less of an accent and more - a style of speaking, with harsh, barked commands and clipped sentences. Best had dropped it for the trial in favour of his native accent, an older variant of the upper-class accent spoken in his native neighbourhood. Verdant and Thread spoke the newscaster standard, as did Bright and Slice.
Miroslav idly jotted down the thought that perhaps he should send Miryam Zafar to interview the defendants and make a study of their accents. It would make for a fascinating profile of how joining the elite had worked in Panem. Back in Thirteen, there wasn't much in the way of accents, so Miroslav was quite new to this idea that it was possible to tell what block someone lived on and how much money their parents made just by how they said 'hello'.
"Some people simply can't learn to speak a different way as adults," Miroslav said. "This entire circus, as you put it, started when a lawyer failed to code-switch and got insulted by Dovek."
"You can rely on Dovek to turn everything into a circus," Best muttered. "On the other hand, didn't that lawyer's parents teach them how to speak properly?"
"How to speak properly by their District's standards," Miroslav corrected him. He really didn't like the idea of having propriety be tied to accent and then being used to insult the lower classes for not speaking correctly. It was completely absurd. "A more Capitol accent was something one only learned in university, and for some, that was too late."
"Maybe they shouldn't have taken a job requiring them to speak if they couldn't speak," Best said dismissively. "Be as that may, that is no excuse for the others. Would you trust a fellow psychologist who sounds like they just crawled out of the gutter?"
"A good deal more than a scammer with a fine accent who actually just crawled out of the gutter," Miroslav said dryly.
"You can always tell," Best said with a small shake of his head. "Maybe not someone from Thirteen like you, but a person with a good ear can always tell if the accent is real or fake."
That was why the scammers were so successful. "Could you tell with the prosecutors?"
"Of course - they're from the better elements of society, that shows, no matter the clownery they get up to in the courtroom. Krechet could never do such a thing, so I forgive him for not even trying. Blues does a good job, but she is obviously middle-class."
A thought entered Miroslav's head. "Did you know that he isn't the only lower-class person in the dock?"
"Impossible," Best said instantly. "Do you perhaps mean Lark? He is solidly upper-middle-class."
"No, I mean Slice."
Best stared at him wide-eyed. "I cannot believe it."
"Mother was a construction worker, father - an elementary-school substitute teacher."
Best wagged his finger at him. "Not lower-class with a teacher for a parent, is she? I'm not surprised she rose so high. When people are from mixed backgrounds, they don't know their place and feel like they can climb higher."
To Miroslav, that sounded absolutely outrageous, used as he was to a society that put a lot of effort into being as meritocratic as possible. "My parents are simple workers," he said.
"That's Thirteen," Best said with a flap of his hand. "We do things differently here."
"Are we not the same country?"
That gave Best pause, as it did to the vast majority of people.
Krechet's face was puffy from crying when Miroslav walked in. "Is there anything you want to talk about?" Miroslav asked gently.
Krechet shook his head. "No."
They sat silently for a few seconds, Krechet staring at the ground and wringing his hands. "What did you think of today?" Miroslav asked eventually.
"Doctor, are they going to hang me?" Krechet asked plaintively.
"I don't know."
Krechet ran a hand over his head. "I want to see my family," he said in a thick voice. "Is it really so hard to let my wife and kids visit?"
"I promise you'll get to see them eventually."
Tears welling up in his eyes, Krechet nodded. "I just miss them so much. I've never been apart from them for so long."
"Never?"
Krechet said nothing. He sat on his cot, wiping away tears.
"The deputy warden is going to get married soon," Talvian prophesied, "as is the warden."
Taken aback, Miroslav had to digest that for a few seconds. Tiller, sure, he was expecting the invitation any day now. But Vance? "Since when is the warden in a relationship?"
"Since halfway through the prosecution case."
"Why do you think so?"
Talvian chuckled. "I'd have made for a pretty poor operative if I couldn't cold-read someone for such elementary things."
"I also have to cold-read for my job and I confess I never even thought the warden could be in a relationship."
"It's obvious," Talvian said with a shrug. "Suddenly starts taking time off instead of working sixteen hours a day and sleeping the other eight? What else could he be doing outside the Justice Building?"
"Selling army property?" That was the first thing that came to Miroslav's still-shocked mind.
Talvian nearly fell off her cot laughing. "That would be a lovely example of blackmail-worthy hypocrisy, but I don't think so. He comes back happy after his free evenings, and not in the I-just-sold-a-truck-of-stolen-rations way."
That did seem plausible. Miroslav had never thought Vance could be in a relationship, but that was because he never mentioned relationships other than to complain about the guards being more interested in them than their jobs. Given how open Tiller was about the progress of her own relationship with that TA, small wonder the possibility hadn't crossed Miroslav's mind. "You don't think this is blackmail-worthy?"
"Not at all," she said, slightly disappointed. "His problem isn't with relationships, it's lack of discipline. Vance doesn't steal things for money for his squeeze, doesn't miss shifts, doesn't drive drunk."
Of course he didn't drive drunk - the lieutenant exploded whenever someone else did. Just days ago, there had been a nasty crash not too far from the Justice Building. A jeep full of drunk soldiers and their companions had collided head-on with a streetcar. The streetcar was unharmed, but everyone in the jeep died. Vance had ordered the smashed jeep to be mounted on a pedestal in the nearby square as a warning to all.
"You don't think that his secrecy means there is something to hide?" Miroslav was slowly coming around to the idea of a secret relationship.
"No. I think he just likes his privacy. I know very little about his family or background for the same reason."
Miroslav nodded. "Is there perhaps anything else you'd like to talk about?"
"No thank you, Doctor. I know there's no point."
"So you would prefer to discuss gossip?" Talvian nodded. "Out of curiosity, how much do you know about me?"
Talvian thought for a few seconds, hands steepled under her chin. "You're in your early forties, born and raised in Thirteen, married to a woman, one teenage child, adopted. You do not cheat on your wife. You have an eating disorder that is currently under control. You find working with us to be an interesting professional challenge. This is the first time you have ever worked with people facing execution. You are very proud of your trip to Iqaluit and the papers you've published abroad, and your dream is to join the world of international scholarship. You have a good relationship with your in-laws."
"I told you I have a child?" Miroslav asked, surprised. He had thought he was better at keeping his personal life out of his work.
A part of his brain insisted that Talvian was delusional to think he had his bulimia under control. Miroslav tried to ignore it.
"You mentioned it to someone else, who mentioned it in a conversation with me."
"How do you know I hadn't worked with people facing execution before? Did I say that somewhere as well?" It was good to know just how powerful the rumour mill was. A single off-handed statement, and everyone knew it by tomorrow.
Talvian shook her head. "It's obvious - Thirteen doesn't have the death penalty." Right. Miroslav nodded, feeling foolish. "I'm sure you worked with terminally ill people before, but this is different, and you struggle to readjust."
So even the prisoners knew, though it was doubtful they had half the eye for detail of Talvian. "And my faithfulness?"
"In this environment, I daresay that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. You regularly talk to your wife and there is not even a hint of you disappearing suspiciously - it's possible, of course, but unlikely."
Interesting. "What about Dr. Mallow?"
"Early forties, born and raised in a rich family in Eleven, married to a man, four biological children. Had a penchant for working with the worst criminals already early on in her career, but struggles to stay professional - she thinks of us like an interesting puzzle while being disgusted by our actions." Talvian didn't mind that most people were disgusted by her actions. "She knew of Thread very well and once spun in the same circles as him, though her attitudes towards him were patronizing, she thought he was a social climber." What? How in the world had Talvian come up with that? There was no way Mallow would have ever admitted that, and Thread was hardly perceptive enough to remember her out of every single person of good family he had ever attended a party with. "She does not cheat on her husband, but she's worried her husband may be cheating. I personally think he's being honest when he says he's swamped with work due to lack of cadres." Talvian looked disappointed by that. "Honestly, Doctor, there isn't much blackmail material swirling around the jail. Everyone who does things they would normally be ashamed about does them unashamedly. I think I counted six broken marriages among the prosecution already."
Mallow was worried her husband was cheating? Miroslav worked with her every day and he had no idea about that. "This is a reverse session," he joked. "Instead of me analyzing you, you're analyzing me."
"More analyzing the entire situation," Talvian said, adjusting her shirt collar. The clothes did not suit someone in her fifties very well, but nobody made adult-proportioned clothes in that size. "It's very interesting. People keep on repeating gossip with no regard for whether it's truth or not, though I suppose that's a constant of human nature. No matter where you are, if two people look at each other for a second too long, the rumour mill would have you believe they've been sleeping together for months."
"Very much so."
"People still keep on repeating that nonsense about Irons and her secretary - I understand that the secretary is the go-to, but some people simply don't cheat. I know it can be hard to believe that people can stay true to their spouses, especially if you spend so much time discussing cases when they aren't, but people aren't always lying. Sometimes they're exactly who they claim to be."
How ironic - the head of the NCIA, on whose command people had been tortured until they denounced their spouses, thought that people were capable of honesty. "I suppose you're an expert in telling the difference."
"I had to be. Honestly, it's not even that hard. Fortune-tellers do it all the time."
Miroslav thought of a joke. "So when Snow banned fortune-telling, everyone should have gone to you to find out when the war would end?" Despite the propaganda about how assured everyone was of victory, people had in reality flocked to anyone who claimed to know when there would be peace.
Talvian laughed. "Can you imagine me telling people they are going to meet an intriguing stranger soon? At least I wouldn't have ended up here in that case."
"Good news today," Chaterhan said. He looked drawn and wan. His weight loss had aged him and given him an almost skeletal appearance. "My son got an A+ on a Science test."
Chaterhan seldom smiled, so Miroslav was surprised to see the happiness radiating off him. Just yesterday, he had cried when a sad song (in another language to boot, a sign of his precarious emotional state) had played on the radio - and exploded in fury when told that it contained the lines 'Swinging off branches, playing in valleys/I should be coddled in mother's lap every day'. How he had understood the deeper meaning of the song was a mystery. The guards had reported Chaterhan muttering that even movies made by people unaware of his existence were out to get him.
"I'm very happy for you," Miroslav said. "What was the test about?" Elementary-school science would be easier to discuss than annoyingly relevant musicals or the rant about why unions were evil that Chaterhan had gone on for the entirety of their last session.
"Energy production. Ironic, of course, given how the entirety of northern Panem is freezing."
"Even here, it's not very warm," Miroslav said mournfully. Biljana didn't let him complain because it was worse up in Thirteen.
"I know. My son says kids get frostbite coming to school without shoes. I do not understand why they do it."
"Because they can't afford shoes, I presume."
Chaterhan chuckled. "That is not what I meant. If someone cannot afford shoes, why do they bother sending their children to school? They will not amount to anything in any case."
It would have been interesting to show a recording of this conversation to the stubborn loyalists and note their reaction to finding out just what the elites actually thought of them. "You think that some children shouldn't go to school?"
"Of course. Why waste money on teaching someone who will spend their life on the assembly line to read? They will not need it. Not to mention that time in school is time they could have spent earning money for their family."
Miroslav nodded, as if contemplating that. "I read somewhere that educated workers are better, because they're adaptable and learn new tasks quicker."
"Nonsense," Chaterhan said dismissively. "Anything they need to know, they will learn on the job. School teaches all sorts of things the average person will not need to know. Why would a janitor need to know how to write? It simply invites them to think highly of themselves and forget their place. That is why we got this rebellion on our hands in the first place - instead of treating the Districts with nuance and giving to each their own, we indiscriminately killed two children from each District on national television every year, lumping the entire country into one monolith that had something it could rally around."
"You really think that was the biggest problem people faced?" Miroslav asked, unable to keep the emotion out of his voice.
"What else could bind the country together in such a way?"
Miroslav sighed. "You do know that countless people in rural regions were never registered?"
Chaterhan's eyes widened. "But that was a capital offense!"
"You should know very well how the laws were followed - or rather, not followed." He was being harsher than perhaps desirable, but his job was to help people, and feeding delusions was not help.
"Oh. Well, that just makes it worse, then. The most unreliable sorts were not in danger in any case."
"So you think the Games were wrong?"
Chaterhan looked at Miroslav like he doubted his intelligence. "Of course. What good is terror when it does not affect half the country in any case? Besides, the way it was presented made no sense. Propaganda swung back and forth between the Games as honour and the Games as punishment like a pendulum. What were people supposed to believe?"
They believed what they were told. Either it was a great honour to die for the glory of the nation, or (the religious metaphor was obvious) it was to expiate the nation's sins through the sacrifice of the innocent. Or both at once. People in the big country were masters of doublethink.
"So the issue is the pragmatic side of things," Miroslav summed up the brief rant.
"Of course," Chaterhan said coolly. "There can be no considerations of morality when dealing with terrorists."
"How are you doing today?" Miroslav asked Blues, who was sitting slumped on her cot.
Blues shrugged. "Glad it's over."
"Are you satisfied with how you did?"
"I guess. Though Jurchenko asked some pretty tough questions."
In some sections of the press, he was being criticized for being too soft. "Do you think you answered them well?"
"I hope so." Blues fidgeted with the hem of her sweater. "I can't deny it anymore," she said quietly. "I'm just sitting here waiting to be hanged."
"You said something like that before," Miroslav said, flipping through his notes. "You wanted to speak the truth and let whatever happen."
Blues nodded, hands on her head. "I did. But now I know-" She cut off, looking around the room.
"Know what?"
"That there is nothing more I can do but wait."
Lark was cleaning up after a search when Miroslav walked in. "Sorry for the mess, Doctor."
"It's no issue." Miroslav moved the stool to the middle of the cell to give Lark more room, though there wasn't much of that to go around in the confined space.
"That's the guards for you," Lark muttered under his breath as he spread a blanket over his cot. Miroslav's own bed was about that neat, but it fell far short of Vance's exacting standards. For some reason, Miroslav remembered Talvian's words about how Vance was sneaking out to visit someone. Did this mysterious admirer make their bed military-neat, as Vance liked it? Or was the bed never neat for other reasons?
Hurriedly, Miroslav put that train of thought out of his head - that was a highly unprofessional thing to think about a colleague.
"How are they treating you otherwise?" Miroslav asked.
Lark huffed. "Polite enough, for a bunch of District people. There's one guarding me right now - he has a Thirteen patch, but I can tell he's from Three." He glanced suspiciously at the door.
"How can you tell?"
"Oh, I can always tell. I spent decades covering the Districts. I know how everyone speaks. Your Irons - she's from Five."
That was certainly one of Lark's odder pronouncements. "She was born and raised in Thirteen," Miroslav corrected him.
"Nonsense. She's from Five. And Tiller's from Eleven."
"She never tried to hide it."
"And a good thing, too, because she'd never be able to hide it. She can prance around in a uniform and helmet, but she can't hide her essence. She belongs out on some field in a wide-brimmed straw hat just like you, Doctor, belong in your office."
Miroslav got an idea. "How do you know I'm not pretending to be a psychologist from Thirteen?"
Lark shook his head. "I can just tell. You and Dr. Mallow are born-and-raised Thirteen."
Given that Mallow was actually from Eleven, that was certainly something.
"I am not looking forward to taking the stand, Doctor," Thread said, sitting on his cot with back straight and feet flat on the floor. Only the little muscles around his eyes betrayed the tension within him. "My lawyer considered not having me take the stand, but I refuse to go placidly to the noose."
Madaichik had to choose between two bad options. Her chosen strategy of 'my client did everything as he had been taught' had already proven to be an indictment of the armed forces and law enforcement the same way Shaw had ended up accidentally denouncing capitalism in general with her defense of Chaterhan. Using that defense with Thread as the defendant was pulling an owl onto a globe, and it was hard to tell if letting him testify would make the situation better or worse. "I suppose it can't hurt to let them know how you think," Miroslav said.
Thread nodded. Out of all the defendants, he was the palest, and a year indoors had made him look ghost-like. Even Tiller with her light-brown hair and blue eyes had more colour to her. "Especially since I'm going after Lark," he said wryly. "I can tell it'll be a special edition of 'Panem in the Evening' when he takes the stand. Or perhaps 'Panem in the Morning', since that's when the session begins."
"You think that will give you an advantage?"
"I certainly hope so!" A small smile flickered over Thread's face. "I know full well I'm being accused of anti-District bias, foolish as that may sound." Thread, just like Verdant and countless others, had no idea what the words 'collaborator' and 'assimilation' meant. "After listening to Lark loudmouth, they'll realize I'm perfectly reasonable. Especially Smith. I can't believe someone from Two is participating in this circus show."
Miroslav raised his eyebrows. "Two sent an entire delegation."
"Them, too. I don't understand what they had to rise up about. We had it good. We were loyal."
"Did your home village have a school? A hospital? How many people owned tractors? Were the roads paved? How much did the mayor and local Peacekeeper commander make in bribes annually?"
"It was like that all over the country." He paused. "My lawyer says Nine's going to be cross-examining me."
"Oh, really?"
"Do I look like I'm in a position to joke?" Thread snarked. "Yes, really. I thought they'd have Two go up against me, make a point of it. My own kin." He shook his head. "I can't believe Two had so little loyalty. What did I fight for all this time?"
"Money?"
Thread opened his mouth, but before he could say something sarcastically biting, his face crumpled and he hunched over. "That's why I left the village," he said quietly. "Us kids - we didn't really care about honour and loyalty. They were just phrases we parroted. All we wanted was money and respect, and lots of it. We all wanted to come back in a uniform and go work on the railroad or in the postal service." He paused. "At least they're not having Eleven cross me. Ironically, I think the judge might be on my side."
"You told me before - you met him a few times."
"Indeed. He understood how hard it was to keep the streets safe."
Most likely, that was the case. Drexel Kitteridge, a rich person from a big city, had only learned of rural atrocities during the trial and had never been noted for his sympathy for the poor, especially the urban poor, the source of the 'horrors seeping in from the outskirts into our beautiful city'. In bigger cities, factories were on the outskirts, resulting in a simple gradient - the further from the centre, the poorer.
"Are you worried about what the prosecutor might say?"
Thread shook his head. "What, that cat incident again? Filthy lie. I was Head by then, why would I have been prancing around hovels? Some sergeant tried to scare the kid, that's what I bet happened."
"The prosecution showed footage of you personally implementing corporal punishments."
"Are we rehearsing for cross, Doctor?" Thread said with a slight smile. "Well, why not? Yes, I personally participated in executions and whippings. I had to show a good example to my troops, demonstrate that the ones up there aren't just useless paper-pushers more interested in selling drugs and prostitutes than keeping the peace."
"So you did interact with locals?"
Thread chuckled. "I carried out legal punishments, not random tortures of random children."
"What about-"
"Fine," Thread snapped. "You saw Madaichik's cross-examination of the child. Tell me who is more convincing, me or him."
There, Thread was right. His claim that a Peacekeeper had simply threatened the child with his imminent arrival was very likely. Thread's shoulderboards had been very distinct and well-known in the District's capital, and the fact that the child had no recollection of it made him a very unreliable witness. "You know that's far from the only incident they'll bring up."
"I know. I just did my job, you know." He sighed. "I was trained that way. Everything else, I picked up on the job," he added before Miroslav could remind him that randomly killing people in the middle of the street was not taught at military college. "I don't understand. How could anyone expect anything else of me?"
"Interesting book?" Miroslav asked Ledge, who was reluctantly marking his spot with a piece of paper and setting it aside.
"Very much so, though it's not as exciting as reality," Ledge said mournfully. "Any new gossip? I heard one of the judges at the judges' trial is hooking up with a journalist from Senegal."
"Oh, really?" That was news to Miroslav.
"Very much so. Also, the guard currently watching over Kirji has three boyfriends, and they all know about each other."
"A tetrad?" Miroslav suggested.
"Something of the sort."
With Ledge, he could always expect a rundown on the freshest gossip. The slight man still had an air of alertness to him, even after so long behind bars, but he was becoming stooped and skinny. "I never cease to be amazed by your ability to find out everything about everyone's personal life."
Ledge chuckled. "I never cease to be amazed by what people get up to in their personal lives. One significant other is expensive enough. But three?"
"Let's talk about you," Miroslav said, "not the guards' love lives."
"I don't want to talk about that," Ledge said, hunching forward even more. "There's only two people going up before me. To be honest, Doctor, I'm terrified out of my wits."
"That is understandable."
"I wish Dijksterhuis wasn't going after me. She's going to blame everything on me, I can feel it. The judges have to see that I wasn't just some appendage to her," he said desperately. "I had my own thing going on. I wasn't involved with any of the horrors. Alright, I admit it - I was nothing to be proud of. But I really never did anything to deserve the noose."
"Nothing to be proud of?"
Ledge swallowed and nodded. "Honestly, I can see why people think I might have been involved in all that. The judges have to be better than that, though. They have to!"
Miroslav flipped through his notes. "Out there, rumour has it you bought underage Victors."
Ledge jerked as if hit by a live wire. "I'm not even going to bother refuting that, because you'll assume I'm lying-"
"I do not assume anything," Miroslav said.
"Because that's what you're paid for. In any case, kindly look at the testimonies of the Victors. Neither side has proof. I can't provide an alibi for every second of my life and they can't give as much as the date of the alleged assault. I think this is the kind of situation where the judge has no choice but to throw the case out."
Privately, Miroslav thought he was lying, but what he privately thought about a patient was irrelevant. "That's not what you're on trial for, though."
Ledge shook his head. "The court of public opinion is just as important. I need to make a good impression on the judges, which is not going to happen if they think I'm a pedophile."
"Do you think you can do that?"
Ledge sat motionless for a few seconds before hesitantly nodding.
"I think the media has forgotten I exist," Brack said, sitting cross-legged on her cot.
She wasn't wrong - the entire back right bench tended to escape the attention of the public eye. "How do you feel about that?"
"Obscurity is certainly better than infamy," she replied. "But that's not what the judges are going to be looking for."
What they would be looking for would be Brack's influence on the propaganda machine. "Do you think you have what they want?"
"They don't want anything." She paused, collecting her thoughts. "I thought this was going to be a straightforward political trial. Get in, get sentenced, get executed. Like after the Dark Days. I thought, for sure they want to get revenge. It would certainly be poetic irony for the shoe to be on the other foot. But what do they do? Set a giant pile of money on fire by holding this entire thing. I can't believe people aren't complaining more."
People in the Capitol were complaining a lot, their previous relief at the lack of summary executions for everyone replaced with an irritation that they were not being allowed to move on and pretend that nothing happened. The mess that was Depuration didn't help, and many were opposed to the entire idea of trying soldiers because of their own personal connections to the armed forces. "They know that nobody's coming for them," Miroslav explained. "They're angry about the questionnaires, but they agree that there needs to be a reckoning with the elites."
"So it's just populist nonsense, then."
"Depends on how you define populism."
Brack said nothing, staring at the wall silently for a few seconds. "I'd strangle Derren Smith with my own bare hands if I could," she said eventually, not looking away from the wall. "He should have been here. Instead, he left me holding the bag."
"He should have been here?"
"Absolutely," Brack said, as if that wasn't the first time Miroslav had ever heard her say such a thing. "Given what I learned here? He deserved the noose more than almost everyone here."
That was certainly a step in the right direction. "He was your boss, though. How could you not know what he did?"
Brack shook her head. "I knew, and thought it was just how things went. It's only here that I learned that some people saw it was wrong."
"Are you going to say as much?"
"Of course. I had no idea it was wrong, therefore it couldn't have entered my mind to change the policies or ask Smith to do it."
"Ignorance of the law-"
"-is no excuse, yes. But I don't see 'crimes against humanity' in the Criminal Code. So I suppose some of the usual rules don't apply, don't you think?"
The prosecutors would have exploded had they heard that, even if Brack was right - she wasn't being tried for incitement or something else from the usual law books. "What do you think?"
Brack looked slightly more hopeful as she shrugged and didn't say anything.
"This is an outrage," Dijksterhuis said, holding up a newspaper. One of the articles was an impassioned plea against the death penalty. "Also, could you please take the newspaper with you? The warden's going to be coming around soon."
Miroslav took the newspaper and read the offending article. There wasn't anything bad in it, in his opinion. He had always disliked the death penalty because of its irreversibility, and over the past year, a reluctance to give a government the ability to kill its citizens legally had become the main reason for his opposition to the supreme form of punishment. "What's the outrage here?"
"They'll hang us and immediately get rid of the death penalty," Dijksterhuis said confidently. "I promise you that."
"And the other trials?"
Dijksterhuis paused. "I actually don't know. They'll have to draw the line somewhere."
"You think this is what will motivate them?"
"Well, not fully, but they won't be able to get away from it. Who's ever heard of letting your defeated enemies live? Either let them off the hook completely or hang the lot. No wonder it's all such a mess. They're trying to find a third way."
Miroslav checked his watch. It was already quite late in the evening, and he was mentally exhausted. Outside the window, the small patch of the sky Dijksterhuis could see was dark. "Uh-huh," he said, stifling a yawn. "Sorry. It's quite late."
"It is," Dijksterhuis said. "These long days are impossible."
"I try not to complain too loudly," Miroslav said in a light tone. "Plenty of people work longer shifts, and they don't get to sit around all day like I do."
"I'd like to see them try to use their brain for eight hours a day," Dijksterhuis said. "I think I'll start taking naps in the courtroom if this keeps up."
"Exhausting, isn't it?" Miroslav asked. "I hope they don't turn up the heat too much in the courtroom, or we'll all fall asleep."
Dijksterhuis shook her head. "I'm more worried about the cold. It's already freezing in here."
That was a problem. Miroslav's office didn't have heating, but at least he could burrow under his blankets. The defendants had to sleep with face and hands visible. "They'll turn on the heating," he said optimistically. The number-one priority was the courtrooms, because the IDC didn't want the world to see everyone sitting in hats and overcoats. The municipal government had announced that there would be special shelters opened where people could go to warm up, which said everything one needed to know about how housing the population and fixing the electricity supply was going.
"If they couldn't give us air-conditioning, they won't give us heating," Dijksterhuis predicted glumly. "They'll just give us warm clothes."
"At least we'll be in the same boat," Miroslav said, noting down her lack of understanding of the situation - people were willing to literally kill for a warm coat or a pair of boots and here she was being dismissive about being handed free clothing.
"I guess it could be worse," Dijksterhuis conceded. "There's probably people out there with no shoes at all."
So she did understand that. "There's a lot of those, sadly."
"How did they lose their shoes? I can't imagine a homeless person without shoes in our climate."
"It's mostly children who hopelessly outgrew their old shoes and can't get any new ones," Miroslav explained. "And some adults who couldn't replace shoes that fell apart, or were stolen, or were lost when they ran out of their building barefoot and then a shell hit it."
Dijksterhuis glanced over at her own shoes, standing neatly by the door. "Horrible."
"Horrible's the word."
"I suppose I'm lucky I'm having all my needs taken care of by the government," Dijksterhuis joked weakly. "I thought that'd only happen when I was old and decrepit. But I don't think I'll live that long."
"Any news?" Miroslav asked, noticing how intensely Pollman was reading a letter.
"Nothing of particular import." His relatives who had fought were either at home or confirmed dead by now. "It's just nice to be reminded that there's something outside of this, you know?"
Miroslav definitely knew. His world had shrunk to the size of the Lodgepole Justice Building, and it was a shock when he videocalled his family and remembered that something existed beyond its walls. "It is."
"Feels like we've been here forever, doesn't it?" Pollman asked in an upbeat voice. "I don't even know how long it'll be until it's my turn to go up. Perhaps the judges will simply forget I exist!"
He was still optimistic, even at this point in the trial. "You think that'll help you?"
"Of course," Pollman replied in a calmer tone. "What was I? Just a paper-pusher who occasionally had to sit in at important conferences when the boss thought she had something more important to attend. I never got any attention, and it'd be strange if I were to get any now."
"You're far from the only one plucked from relative obscurity," Miroslav prompted.
Pollman nodded. "Never met Slice before the trial, only heard of her once. Or Toplak and Kirji - but then again, they were involved in that Games business. They, of all people, deserve to be here." He paused. "You know, Doctor, I never did approve of the Games. Taking hostages is one thing, but this? And making it a public spectacle on top of that?"
"You said way back at the beginning that you took the Games as a matter of course," Miroslav reminded him, checking his notes.
Pollman didn't miss a beat. "I didn't think you'd believe me if I told the truth," he said. "I trust you now, Doctor. I know you won't laugh at me or call me a liar."
With a performance like that, Pollman had good reasons to be optimistic, Netts protocol or no. Miroslav noted down that he was unable to detect any sign that Pollman was lying - but then again, a politician was a very different matter from an abusive spouse. Even Vance said he had no idea when over half the defendants lied, and the warden was a master interrogator.
"I'm glad you trust me."
Pollman smiled. "I thought your job was to report everything I said to the prosecution. Turns out that sometimes, cynicism is misplaced. You've been a massive help so far, Doctor."
"I'm glad," Miroslav said sincerely. "Is there anything you would like to talk about today?"
"How about Chaterhan?" Pollman suggested. "What a hypocrite. Did you talk to him about that song from two days ago?"
"You know I can't talk about that with you."
Pollman flapped his hand. "No issue. I just want to tell you something he certainly would have never told you. Do you know where that song is from in the movie?"
"I do. It's from a scene where a girl ends up basically enslaved by a local authority figure because she is such a good artist." Miroslav was not ashamed to admit he had spent half the movie in tears. He could not imagine someone treating Biljana like that.
Pollman nodded. "Exactly. Chaterhan did the same thing once."
"What?"
"He did." Pollman smiled at Miroslav's indignation. "One of his cousins told me. Once, when visiting a nearby village, he heard a child, a boy of five or six, singing prettily in English and Spanish and took him to his estate to work there as a servant and sing for guests at parties. Didn't even tell the family, just had Peacekeepers grab him and throw him into a car. When one of his cousins - the one who told me about it - pointed out how wrong that was, Chaterhan said the boy was being paid much better than he ever would have been in his village, so he had done a good thing. There was an incident when the boy sang an insulting song about them in Spanish, but old Chaterhan knew Spanish, and had him whipped."
What the actual fuck. Every time Miroslav thought nothing more could shock him-
"So he's guilty of kidnapping, too?" he asked weakly.
"Among everything else." Pollman preferred to discuss other people's crimes and forget his own.
Toplak looked up from her writing when she heard the door open. "Good day, Doctor," she said, standing up and relocating to her cot. Miroslav sat down. "How are you doing?"
"Well enough, but tired. You?"
Toplak looked better now than months ago, but still wan and exhausted, to say nothing of her rather serious weight loss. "I think the new antidepressants work better than the old ones," she said. "I don't have to force myself to get out of bed anymore. Though if I announce that my guardian angel told me my defense strategy, you'll know that they interfere with my schizophrenia meds."
"A friend of mine back in Thirteen is actually working on a study on why it is that some people hallucinate cruel voices, and others - nice ones. Though there's the issue that thinking you're having conversations with a higher power isn't that rare, and those who actually hear voices for medical reasons often fall under the radar."
"Sounds like an interesting study," Toplak said. "I'm sure cultural factors play a role, too. I grew up in circumstances where quite a few of my relatives had regular conversations with God, so that had to have affected me. Likewise, if the only schizophrenic you know is your neighbour who tried to disembowel themselves once, you're almost going to expect something like that."
"The social construction of disease," Miroslav said with a nod. "If we lived in a very religious society, would anyone have ever suspected you had a disease?"
Toplak chuckled. "Given that I was too afraid to tell my great-uncle that the voices went away after I started medication, certainly not. It's a fascinating topic, isn't it? I've been thinking that maybe I should have studied that. With my connections, I'd have ended up directing a lab somewhere."
There was nothing Miroslav could say to that, not when Toplak had played such a key role in the regime's most infamous atrocity. This was the organizer of the Hunger Games as an event, and she had told him before that she expected to be executed. "You wish you had done things differently?"
"I just wish I could have done something that wouldn't have gotten me hanged," she said in a quavering voice, staring at her hands.
"You know, Doctor," Kirji said, "I never thought that being on trial for one's life can be so boring." There was a half-finished game of solitaire on the table, crammed in between books and paper folders.
"Oh, I agree with you there," Miroslav said, flipping through his notes. Kirji had abruptly allowed him to take notes a few months back. "I don't think I've asked you yet for your impressions about your co-defendants," he thought to himself out loud.
"You want my impressions?"
Miroslav glanced at his watch - there wasn't that much time left in the session. "Do you think any of the first twelve are getting acquitted?"
Kirji shrugged. "Not sure what the judges will think, but half of them deserve to be acquitted. Blatt - I knew her well, she had a fancy title and no real power. The military people just did as they had been taught. Chaterhan ran a corporation, Blues was an engineer - you can't hang someone for doing their job."
"If you had to bet on just one acquittal for the twelve, who would it be?"
"Blatt. The defense proved just how empty her title was."
Interesting.
"I legitimately do not understand what the prosecution has against me," Lee insisted, drawing something on the back of a document absent-mindedly. "If you don't like the healthcare system, change it - that's what the government is for. But why put me on trial?"
"Do you want me to quote the prosecution?"
Lee shook his head. "I know why. It's because they think the failure of the system to deliver what was promised is all on me. It's just so absurd. As if I wanted children to die of diabetes! I've got a nephew with type 1, every time I hear of insulin shortages, my heart stops. But there just wasn't the budget to buy life-sustaining medication for all of Panem. My predecessors have to answer for that, not me."
"If the budget wasn't enough for the Ministry of Health to perform its most basic function-"
"I understand why they're mad at me," Lee said, gesturing with a pencil at nothing in particular. "I just don't think I can be blamed for the fact that the optimization fifty years back meant people had to apply for passes to go to a hospital." Once there was no hospital in a town, its inhabitants had to go outside of it to go to one, which meant either applying for permission to leave to get there, or calling an ambulance, which wasn't free outside of the Capitol.
"What are you drawing?" Miroslav asked.
Lee showed him the paper. "Basic sketch of the judges' bench. One of the guards promised to get me a good piece of paper so I can do a full drawing."
"Are you going to do a portrait of Dr. Mallow and I?" Miroslav asked half-seriously.
Lee nodded. "If it's the last thing I'll ever do."
Coll looked tired and worn. He had lost some weight over the past few months, and his face had taken on a slightly adolescent look despite his unshaven condition.
"How are you this morning?" Miroslav asked, taking out his notepad and sitting down on the chair.
Coll sighed. "I miss my family." He said that every time they had a session.
"Did you have trouble sleeping?"
"Guard woke me up with that stick of his," Coll complained. "Because I put my hand under the blanket. It's so cold, how am I supposed to sleep with my hands above the blanket!" He shivered for emphasis. Miroslav's bare ankles did indeed feel unpleasantly cold, and he pulled up his socks higher. "Can't you tell them to leave me alone, or something?"
Yet another complaint about that. "I'll try," he said, not for the first time and not for the last.
Coll took his family photograph from the table and stared at it. "I wish I could see them," he whispered. "I never knew it was possible to miss someone so much."
"Have you written your letter yet?" Miroslav gently asked. They would be collected later that day.
"Yeah." Coll put the photo back and snatched a letter off the table. "But what am I supposed to write about? The kids are mostly too young to understand. Cassius and Marcus aren't even a year old yet!" He stared at the letter. "I thought about writing them letters they could read when they were old enough. But that made me feel like I was resigning myself to death." The former minister stared pleadingly at the psychologist. It was clear that he wanted to be reassured.
"Your death is by no means a guarantee," Miroslav pointed out.
Coll snorted. "I'm going to admit responsibility. I know it's bad for my defense, but I have to."
"You think it will result in your death?"
"It certainly appears likely."
That was a lie. Miroslav knew perfectly well that this confession would be a carefully calculated attempt to throw himself at the mercy of the tribunal. Far from sealing his fate, it would be a last-ditch attempt to save his neck.
"Is there anything you want to talk about?" he asked.
Coll ran a hand through his hair, shame-faced. "I don't know. I woke up, and I was so angry, and-" He sighed, dropping his hand into his lap. "I don't know. I miss them so much. I feel fine during the day, but when I wake up in the middle of the night, it's all I can think about."
Miroslav felt the same way. During the night, when there was nothing to distract him, was when he missed Rody and Biljana the most. "You want to talk about that some more?"
"Yes, please," Coll said, pathetically grateful expression on his face.
After finishing her customary rant about the perceived injustice she was being subjected to, Grass couldn't think of anything else to talk about. Topic after topic, the conversation petered out quickly, leaving Grass sighing and looking at the window.
"How's your family doing?"
"Alright, I suppose."
"Any news from them?"
"Nothing noteworthy." She sighed.
They sat in silence for a few seconds. "Do you not want to talk today?" Miroslav asked.
"I don't know what I want. Aside from freedom, of course."
"You want to be free," Miroslav echoed.
Grass chuckled bitterly. "Of course I do. Doesn't everyone? But I don't think they'll let me go free."
"Why not?" Miroslav asked, even as he had to admit to himself that she was probably right. Unless Jamieson managed to pull off something truly spectacular, he couldn't see a way for the judges to look at what the prosecution had shown and let Grass live - although it was always possible for them to be biased in favour of a fellow legal professional, even one who had left the courtroom behind after just a few years to climb her way up the ranks of the Ministry of Justice.
"After what's going on at the judges' trial? Everyone there's pinning everything on me. As if I was the one on the other side of the telephone, telling them what to do! My deputy especially. Had I been dead, he'd have been another Brack or Pollman. Since I'm alive, he's just an idiot."
That was unexpectedly coarse from Grass; Miroslav couldn't stop a chuckle from escaping his lips. "An idiot?"
"Doesn't he realize I can blame him just as easily as he can blame me?" She shook her head in disbelief. "Still not as bad as that Lophand. That one's got the most apt name I've ever seen a person have."
"Why?" Grass herself had never shied away from telephone justice.
"Because that's the most lophanded defense I've seen in my life. The judges they've got at that trial were even more politically reliable than ours - from your standpoint, of course. Mavericks, all of them. Two were defectors, one was a prosecutor who refused to seek the death penalty, and the alternate - I have no idea how the alternate never got fired."
It was ironic that four massive sticklers for law and order were now mavericks, just because of how in their pursuit of justice, they had ignored instructions from above. "And what does that mean?"
"These were people who refused to play by the rules." This, about people who had closely followed the actual rulebook. "You can't appeal to them as a fellow legal professional. They existed in a parallel universe of their own making and didn't understand the compromises most of us had to make."
Grass seemed more animated now, sitting up straight and speaking in a firm voice. "Had to make?"
"I had a family to feed," Grass said with a shrug.
"How are you doing, Doctor?" Slice asked, putting her book aside.
Miroslav still had no idea if her politeness was usual habit, a deliberate defense strategy, or something she had picked up as a lower-class person in a middle-class milieu. "Well, thank you. And how are you doing?"
"Worried, I suppose. And bored. I'm not sure if I look forward to or dread my time on the witness stand." She was fidgeting with the hem of her sweater, twisting it around her fingers and letting go. "I think Blues is lying."
From anyone else, that would have been a very unsurprising thing to say. Slice, however, had told Dr. Mallow that she struggled to understand facial expressions, let alone detect when someone was lying. But where Holder's implicit trust in everyone had resulted in atrocities, Slice simply came across as a naive person, which was very odd given that she had managed to claw her way to a regular television program. If not for the conversations he had with her, Miroslav would have thought Slice was faking her inability to understand people. Since he did have these conversations, he knew that she faked an ability to understand people, and did it better than most people not on the autism spectrum. "How do you know that?"
"She's not saying now what she used to say in interviews."
That was certainly one way to catch someone in a lie. "She's claiming she tried to make herself look more impressive than she actually was."
"I don't think so."
"You may be right."
Slice ran a hand over her head. Despite being in her mid-forties, she looked much younger than Blues and Coll, who were actually several years younger than her - there was the obvious joke that the one with no children looked younger than the parents of multiple children. As it was, Slice would have been asked to show ID at a bar; even Coll would not have been confronted with that particular irritant. "My aunt wrote to me for the first time," she said after a pause.
"And?"
"She's not sure whether to be impressed at the company I keep or to be horrified at the fact that I'm on trial for my life." She chuckled. "She's certainly right on the first count - I still can't believe I'm sitting next to such important people. Even if it's in the dock."
Struck by a sudden idea, Miroslav made a note to check what the working-class media said about Slice. He had seen analyses of the backgrounds of a couple of the defendants, surely someone had to have been intrigued by the former newscaster and talk-show host. "I think some people would say that this is the only time someone from the working class can be equal to an upper-class person - when it's punishment that's being handed out."
Slice shrugged. "I never really thought of myself as working-class. I mean, I'm sure I was treated a certain way in elementary school, but I never noticed it. I always felt like I belonged."
"You told me before you didn't consciously code-switch."
"Exactly," Slice said with a nod. "I just spoke. I still don't understand accents. I only realized here that when I spoke to my family, different sounds came out of my mouth." She pulled on her sleeves, hiding her hands inside them. "I don't understand what's happening, Doctor. I really don't. Why are they putting me on trial for reading from a script?"
Had Slice caught on to how he saw her and was now using that to come across as more innocent? She had managed to make her way up the greasy pole, which said everything one needed to know about her ability to scheme and manipulate. Miroslav noted that down, wondering when things would be uncomplicated for a change.
A/N: The song that caused Antonius so much hypocritical emotional distress is 'Komma Uyyala' from RRR. Not going to lie, the scenes with that song (there's a reprise partway through the movie) were an absolute tearjerker.
Raise your hand if you, too, live in a parallel universe of your own making.
