From her perch on top of the freight containers, Thumeka could just barely make out the shore. She stared ahead, freezing wind whipping at her face, and tried to make out the details. At last, she was in Panem! She had begged and pleaded for weeks, and finally, the boss had decided that the agency needed to be represented. And Thumeka had gotten the nod.
Thumeka pulled up her scarf, trying to cover more of her face. This was even worse than England, and she hadn't thought anything could be worse than that. The seasons here were not only flipped, but strange. She'd need to survive the frozen winter now, and the cold mud of spring, and the burning summers.
Thumeka had no illusions about why she had been picked. Very few correspondents spoke English, and when fluency had been made a criterion, the competition had disappeared. Thumeka liked to tell herself that she had been the most qualified, but by correspondent standards, she really wasn't. At thirty-five, she was known only for the six years she had spent in England, covering first the civil war, and then three years of its equally brutal and bloody aftermath. Maybe that was why she had been picked. After England, the boss knew she wouldn't get bored by watching a country pick up the pieces.
Panem, the concentration-camp nation. Thumeka had fallen in love with the country long before she had even voiced her desire to study it, one way or another. The defector memoirs she had read as a thirteen-year-old had provided the spark. Thumeka remembered that moment well - after reading a newspaper article about a defector, she had gone to the library to look for books on Panem, and never looked back. In grade twelve, for her final essay in civics class, she had put together a serious paper on how the Hunger Games impacted Panem culture and society. She had even scrounged up her courage and contacted a defector for an interview. Her teacher had been astonished by her observation that in Panem, reality TV shows about competitions did not involve elimination, instead having points awarded each round, and how she Thumeka chalked that up to the government not wanting to dilute the Hunger Games, a pageant of ostensible noble death for the nation, with harmless things people could potentially draw comparisons to.
In hindsight, that was quite an observation for a seventeen-year-old, and precious few seventeen-year-olds learned obscure languages for the primary sources. It felt almost unreal that so much of her life had been spent with one eye looking westward, and now, she was here.
The motion of the ship was surprisingly enjoyable, now that she was used to it. Thumeka had declined the offer of a hovercraft flight straight to the Capitol, choosing instead to hop on a freight ship and document the journey of the humanitarian aid. Right now, she was sitting on top of a container full of dried beans.
The shore got closer and closer. Thumeka made her way to the ladder down, ready to descend at a moment's notice, and watched the port come into view. This was District Eight. Before, the people had been unable to access the coast, but in just weeks, a rather respectable little port had been set up. Thumeka smiled even though her toes were completely numb. She was here! In Panem. At last.
The ship stopped. Thumeka climbed down carefully, mindful of the fact that she was wearing gloves, and went to the cabin where she had slept next to the sailors. Her luggage - a large backpack and a duffel - was under the cot. Thumeka dragged them out and put them on. First, the backpack. She had been told to pack for six months, which meant preparing for a truly massive temperature range, which meant a lot of clothing. After England, she knew everything there was to know about layering, but there was still plenty that needed to be brought.
Besides the clothing for what seemed like every single temperature that existed on planet Earth, there wasn't much. Laptop and charger, a few things for relaxation, and that was pretty much it. Thumeka's phone was in her pocket, as was a notebook and pencil just in case. In her first years, it had all been notebooks and pencils, and she still couldn't imagine going without them.
Thumeka disembarked from the ship and showed a bored border guard her passport and visa. It felt strange to be back on firm ground, which seemed to still be moving under her feet. Now, she had to make her way to the freight train.
The port was strangely normal. Thumeka paused, looking around. The people also looked rather normal, even if they looked very different. Their ancestors had been from all parts of the world, so there were people who looked like Thumeka, people who looked like the ones she had met in England, and everything in between. And now that Thumeka was bundled up warmly, even their clothes were the same.
What was not normal was the cold. Thumeka had already forgotten what it was like to be so horribly cold, the bit of her face that was exposed felt like it was being stabbed with a thousand icy needles. The sun shone brightly but did not help a bit, which seemed almost insulting to her. Yemurai would definitely tease her for rushing off to a place with such terrible weather again.
Leon hadn't thought it would be so easy to get hired by the IDC. After a brief interview to make sure that he did know how to work a library, he had been hired to sort through documents and file them. His first day would be tomorrow.
Now that he had a job, Leon was able to relax and enjoy his last evening off, tired from a day spent hauling rubble. Marcellus was also going back to his actual job within days, as his school was finally reopening, so they could almost pretend that things were normal. The Capitol was still completely trashed and hundreds of thousands were living in the piles of rubble despite the extreme cold, but Leon's family was alright, and that was all that mattered.
Of course, everything was still rationed, but as an IDC employee, he would get higher rations and more paper money, even if you could buy less and less with it with every passing day - Leon had no idea what was going on there, nobody did, they were all waiting to see what new rock-bottom it would smash through next. Leon wasn't looking forward to coming home from work only to queue for hours, but at least he would work inside a building, not in the streets.
"Do you really think these trials are going to happen?" Marcellus asked, looking up from his lesson plans. Maybe twenty percent of teachers had been fired, for being completely ideologically unsuitable, but Marcellus had always been the quieter sort of teacher. And then again, they were all experts in knowing when to keep a lid on it and when to speak freely. It was only the real hardbitten fanatics who couldn't adjust to keeping quiet.
"I don't care," Leon said. "As long as I get paid." In reality, he cared a great deal. He wanted the criminals to be named and punished instead of everyone continuing to go on about the evils of the Capitol. But Marcellus just didn't get that.
Mom chuckled, typing something on her computer. "If it all falls apart, you won't get paid." The factory they had used to work in was still in ruins and would remain so for the nearest foreseeable future, though hopefully by then, Mom would have her license and Leon would be in the archives. If Leon thought about it, they really were an exceptional family. They had their own apartment and not even in the 'five generations under one roof' way, and Mom's desire for learning had rubbed off on Marcellus, who Leon often forgot was technically a social climber, having been the first in the family to not only attend highschool, but graduate college as well.
"Then they better indict half the Capitol," Leon said jokingly. "So I can get paid." He flopped back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. The radio was playing foreign music. It was a new program - 'Foreign Hour' - on the culture channel. For an hour, they played music from all over the world. Right now, it was playing some sort of jaunty tune from Morocco.
Just weeks ago, Leon wouldn't have been able to tell Eastern Asia from Eastern Europe, but by now, everyone was acting like they were all experts in geopolitics. The building busybodies, in all seriousness, discussed far-off wars and who Panem should trade with. Marcellus told everyone who was willing to listen that rich countries would turn up now and buy all of Panem. To Leon, that seemed a more appealing alternative than many.
"When's Dad coming home?" Marcellus asked.
"Late," Mom said. She, too, was tired from a day spent hauling rubble.
"No, I mean, how late?"
Mom shrugged. "Past midnight, I assume." She paused and typed something, eyebrows furrowed. "Having access to that database makes things so much easier," she muttered under her breath. Even Marcellus couldn't complain about the firewall being removed. He pretended that he didn't look over Mom's shoulder every time she watched soccer, but Leon knew he did.
"Is that really all you think about?" Marcellus demanded.
"What?" Mom sounded confused.
"I don't understand - am I the only one around here who feels completely lost? We've got a completely new regime after over a century of dictatorship, and you're all acting as if everything is completely normal!"
"You feel lost?" Leon asked.
Marcellus slammed down his pencil. "Completely and utterly."
"I don't know," Mom said, typing on her borrowed computer. "I like it. How many times did we think I'd finally be able to pay for my exam, and then we had to buy shoes or a new water filter for the tap? And now it's free."
Marcellus sighed. "I'm also happy you don't have to pay for your exam anymore. But I just don't understand anything. I don't know what to tell the kids. There's no more script to follow."
"Let's watch soccer?" Leon suggested. He was like Mom, he drifted along looking for advantages without being too stressed about the things he didn't like.
Mom looked conflicted for a few minutes before nodding. "I think there's actually a match on right now."
Leon moved over to the table, sitting down next to Mom. On the screen, twenty-two women were running around a field in Montevideo. Leon recognized one of the clubs - they were the ones with the dark-blue jerseys, Mom's favourite. The other team was in white with red markings. So far, it was zero-zero.
For a few minutes, Marcellus pretended to still be interested in his work, but he soon gave up on that pretense. Leon glanced at the clock. It wasn't even nine yet, but maybe it would have been better for him to go sleep early, so he was fully rested for the next day.
Thumeka climbed out of the taxi, stretching out muscles made sore by the endless potholes, but when she saw the place where she would be staying, she froze. This wasn't a hotel, this was a mansion! Thumeka pulled out her phone and took a picture.
"Should I carry your bags for you?" the driver asked.
"No, thank you," Thumeka said, ignoring the odd look the driver gave her. Holding her duffel, Thumeka paid for the ride. It was laughably cheap, as all things were in Panem. It had been even more cheap in the Districts. Thumeka hadn't thought that such an extreme core-periphery imbalance could exist in this day and age, but everything was possible when it came to Panem. There had been something of an extractive colonial regime about it, but no land-based empire could have ever boastes such extreme inequality between the capital and the regions.
Thumeka got her backpack out of the trunk, slung it on, and thanked the driver for the ride. She had arrived by train from Eight, where she had spent a day looking into food distribution. And now, she was in the Capitol, to report on how transitional justice was going.
So far, she hadn't seen any reason to feel good about anything. The country was democratizing, yes. An autocratic top-down system was being replaced with local self-rule and people were able to choose their representatives. The way they were getting to it, though, had less to do with justice and more - with brushing the past under the carpet. Not atypical for a civil war, and even more so in a situation where democracy had last been seen eighty-three years ago. Quickly disposing of the dictator and clumsily trying local collaborators wasn't too shabby as such things went, but it was certainly nothing to be proud of. Thumeka tried not to judge the locals for their naive optimism, but it was a little bit annoying, how sure they were that things would be good from now on.
How the inter-District trials fit into the system was what Thumeka wanted to discover. The very fact that the trials were being called that said a lot about the previous isolation of the Districts from each other. As far as she could tell, everyone was acting in a way that reminded Thumeka of when countries got along, though she had never heard of international trials.
Thumeka made her way up her path, boots grinding on the damp pavement. It was February, and snow was everywhere. Thumeka liked snow, but only from a distance. It wasn't fair, that something so pretty could be so cold and unpleasant. She reached the door, which was taller than most, and pressed the doorbell.
A middle-aged person who showed clear signs of not very good plastic surgery opened the door. "Good day," he said with a slight bow. His accent was hard to make out for Thumeka, who had learned the standard English accent. "Are you from the press?"
"I am." Thumeka showed him her press badge. Who was this man? He was dressed in cast-offs and his manner was servile. Probably a cleaner of some sort who had worked in the house before. That would explain the shoddy surgery - he must have gotten it done in some basement by an amateur.
"Come on in, then," he said with another bow. "Take off your boots and coat here."
They were in a long corridor with closets at the sides. Thumeka put her boots on a shoe rack and hung up her coat, stuffing her gloves, hat, and scarf in the pockets and sleeves. Some of the places were already labelled, and Thumeka nodded approvingly. "This is a neat setup."
"Oh, thank you!" The man smiled slightly.
"You're the one responsible for this?"
The man nodded. "This used to be my house, but the IDC stole it. At least they let me stay." He looked at her coat. "Do you have any more coats or shoes? There aren't any closets up there."
Now that was interesting. Thumeka had witnessed many riches-to-rags stories back home, but never anything quite like this. "I do," she said, taking off her backpack and opening her suitcase. Aside from her heavy coat, she also had a light jacket and a windbreaker, as well as a pair of running shoes. Thumeka easily found them all and put them away, suitcase suddenly becoming much lighter.
"Forgive me, but are you feeling well?" the man asked in a servile way.
"I am." That was a typical reaction to hearing her speak. As a child, she had spoken in a slow, drawling monotone that had made people think she had a cognitive disability. Thumeka had improved her vocabulary and social skills to the point where she could be a journalist, but the monotone remained. "Where is my billet?"
"Let me take you there." He checked her card again. "It's all by language groups. How many languages even are there in the world?" He sounded awed. Thumeka didn't tell him that she spoke six languages and that her country was home to speakers of tens of different ones.
The palatial house showed signs of having once been even grander than it was now. Thumeka suspected that many things had been looted.
"The first floor is for work," the man, who had introduced himself as Petrus, explained. Thumeka noticed that, too. All around were journalists sitting on couches and typing on computers. "There's also a kitchen, but there's not much in the way of food, thanks to rationing." She'd be eating at a military canteen, of all places. "Upstairs are the bedrooms. In the first basement level there's games and the like, the second is for laundry." He pointed at a giant staircase ahead of them. "Let's go."
The house had five floors, not counting the basements. Thumeka wasn't sure why anyone needed a house that size. She had covered plenty of the ultra-rich, but the idea of someone having this in the dirt-poor Panem was much more unpleasant. On the third floor, they set off down a short corridor until they reached a door with the number '3C' neatly stencilled on it.
"Here you are," Petrus said, bowing again. "If I may ask-"
"Go right ahead."
"What is it like in Zimbabwe right now?"
What was it like in Zimbabwe? "The Web is crying over the Mars rover that got stuck in a hole five years back because it took a nice picture of the sunset."
Petrus' mouth fell open. "W-what?" he asked, eyes wide. "Mars?"
"Er, yes?"
"There's a - what? - on Mars?"
"A rover," Thumeka said, understanding what was going on. She had read defectors' accounts of how patchy even ostensibly the most elite education in Panem was, but she had not really understood what that meant. "Like a remote-controlled car, except it has a bunch of tools it can use to analyze its surroundings and send the information back to Earth. A couple of scientists run social media accounts in its name in various languages."
Petrus closed his mouth and shook his head in awe. "You people send machines to other planets?"
He made it sound far more impressive than debates about budget and the nationalist one-upping Thumeka usually read about. "Well, yes."
"And it's stuck in a hole? Like a car on a rural road?"
Thumeka pitied rural dwellers. "It's only one. There's a couple more there, and they're doing fine."
"Wow." Petrus sounded sincerely impressed. Thumeka had thought the culture shock had been bad in England, but to not know something as elementary as the existence of space programs, the most-trumpeted about achievements of the Great Powers? "That sounds so fascinating." He shook his head again. "Let's go inside, shall we?"
Thumeka pushed open the door and walked inside. The place was crowded with bunk beds, though only a few seemed to be in use. The room held five two-level bunks and nothing else, though things were already scattered all over the floor. All of the sockets had massive power bars attached, and that made Thumeka remember something.
"How's the electricity?" she asked, still reeling from the exchange. "Water? Heating?" It was warm in the house, but that could easily be temporary.
Petrus smiled slightly in that servile way of his. "Everything works here."
So journalists got special privileges. Thumeka had passed people huddling next to open fires and clearing rubble without gloves.
"Thank you," Thumeka said. "I'll just get settled in now."
"Bathroom's through that door. I hope you enjoy your stay!" Petrus stepped out the door with a final bow.
Thumeka sagged as she realized she had arrived. She would stay here either for six months or until the trial of the key criminals ended. She walked around the room, taking stock of all of the little details. Under each bottom bunk there were two drawers, but there was nothing in the way of closets, as promised, but there were a few hooks in the wall that were being used for bags. A row of small lockers, two by five, stood along one wall - for valuables, most likely. There were also cardboard boxes on a small table labelled 'FREE' in Swahili and English, containing all sorts of things - pencils, menstrual hygiene products, chargers. Thumeka had already gotten a charger with an adapter, but she had an extra cable in her duffel, which she tossed into the box. She did the same with the other boxes, tossing in a few extras.
After some thinking, Thumeka settled on a bottom bunk in a corner. She wrote her name on a blank sticker attached to a pole and went about unpacking. Her things fit easily into the large drawer, but she could already tell that keeping it neat would be a hassle. The backpack and duffel went on hooks on the wall nearby, which also had to be labelled. She picked a top locker at random, unlocked it with the key that was in the lock, and put her laptop inside. The key went on her keychain.
Now wearing a pair of rubber slippers over her socks, Thumeka went to check out the bathroom. There were three stalls, which was a surprise but not one that she was inclined to question, and three improvised shower cabins. They were tiny, with canvas walls for privacy, and the showerhead had been replaced with an odd setup. There was a short pipe that made one stream of water three, attached to three hoses, which were in turn attached to three showerheads. Thumeka mentally applauded the creative soul who had come up with that.
That done, Thumeka went to explore her temporary home. She waved to a few people, who waved back at her. There was the feeling of a move-in day. Thumeka wondered what would happen to those who came too late to snag a place. Would they have to go to another place? This house was quite far from downtown, but it was smack in the middle of the most destroyed municipality in the entire Capitol, which made it a place of interest.
All in all, plenty to look forward to, even if purely from a correspondent's standpoint instead of a human one. Thumeka decided to go take a walk.
"Do you remember when McCollum died?" Latreya asked as the three of them walked past the site of a former statue of his on their way to a meeting.
A patch of cracked pavement was obviously less weather-worn than the rest. The only sign that a statue had ever stood there. "Yeah. I was what, twenty-five?"
"I can't believe we're so old," Chee grumbled. "Some of the people we advise were born under Snow!"
Decius still thought of dates in the Panem style, even after five years in Thirteen. It had been the year 48 when Snow had come to power. "My great-aunt always reminded me McCollum was mortal. And then he was suddenly mortal."
"In my family, we thought reunification had arrived," Latreya said.
Decius chuckled. "I don't think I was thinking in those categories back then. My great-aunt was aware of those sorts of things, and she told me it would be Snow's turn now. It felt absurd. I couldn't imagine anybody other than McCollum in charge. And then a few decades later, I couldn't imagine anyone other than Snow."
"What a nightmare," Chee said with a sad shake of their head. "We had Coin for, what, fifteen years? I have niblings who lived their entire conscious lives under her."
"Remember when we were kids and Kermalli felt like a constant?" Latreya reminisced. "My first elections, I voted against someone who had been in power the entire time I was aware of the concept of government. But he was only in charge for sixteen years. Chose to step down after his fourth term."
"Step down?" Decius said half-jokingly. "What a concept."
They walked in silence for a while, Decius lost in his memories of the days when statues like the one that had stood in that lot had been put up.
"Look," Latreya hissed as they turned a corner, "a foreigner!"
Startled out of their thoughts, Decius and Chee whipped their heads around to see an oddly-dressed person filming the street with a handheld camera.
"Let's go talk to them!" Chee said. "I bet I can talk to them." That was by no means a guarantee, even if the person's light skin and round eyes made it relatively likely that Chee could talk to them.
Decius, for his own part, was also curious. "Exactly," he said. "Let's go talk to them before they disappear." The journalists all had their own priorities, and surprisingly few were interested in talking to them. It was enough to drive Decius insane. They had precious little time to go wandering around, and when they did, it was the journalists who didn't have the time for three random researchers.
The country was opening up - one Heiko Laur, a former civil servant from Seven turned spy turned IDC representative, had been appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs and was already busy at work discussing with his foreign colleagues. The journalists on the ground were just the most visible part of that opening, even if they were disappointingly taciturn.
This one, at least, showed some interest in talking, but there was a different problem. "No English," he said with a shrug. He had a wide scarf wrapped around his head and face against the cold.
Latreya tried her Turkish, and a flicker of recognition came over his face, but he just looked confused. Chee tried next. They said 'do you understand me?' in German, and then what was probably the same phrase in other languages.
Suddenly, the man's face lit up, and he said something. Chee winced and said something else. "He speaks Arabic," they said, sounding irritated. "He won't be able to understand spoken Hebrew."
Hopefully, Chee wouldn't take this as a sign that they needed to learn Arabic. "Then what did you say to each other?" Latreya asked.
"Greeted each other - it sounds the same in both languages."
"Can't we try English?" Decius offered.
Chee snorted. "And have you start ranting about Tokyo? The poor man wouldn't know what hit him."
"Come on," Decius whined. "Didn't you also want to talk to foreigners?"
Taking a deep breath, Chee turned to face the man and asked him his name. They were able to find out that he was called Aziz, was a photocorrespondent, and here for a few weeks, but they were also running late to the meeting and had to go soon after that.
Mary walked out of the meeting feeling like the weight of the world was on her shoulders. The list of defendants was by now quite certain, with Thread being the only missing one and the other ones all in custody. Despite that, they were taking two steps back by agreeing to do more investigation on the others now that there wasn't a time constraint on them. There were massive difficulties with the documents, as even the archives were impossible to sort through without people who knew the ins and out of them, to say nothing of the boxes of miscellaneous files and unlabelled photographs they kept on finding.
Fortunately, that problem was on its way to being ameliorated. Jessica Chime, a former archivist in the presidential archives, had offered her services and would start working soon, there was no shortage of clerks and the like willing to help do the actual sorting, and, best of all, Snow's former personal photographer and social media expert had offered his services as well. Mary was on her way to meet this Junius Meersten.
After that meeting, she would have the entire afternoon to work on the conspiracy charge. At last, some time to do her actual job.
Meersten was already there in the booth in the federal archives where she had told him to be. He was middle-aged and overweight, though he showed signs of recent weight loss. He was looking through photographs and writing something on his computer when Mary entered the booth. "Good day," he said in an unpleasant accent, standing up. Mary offered her hand to shake, and he took it.
"I see you have started work," she said approvingly. Photographic evidence would be crucial, almost as crucial as documentary evidence. A witness could be mistaken, ten witnesses could be repeating an inaccurate rumour. A photograph in this context, though, was very unlikely to be a fake.
Snow's personal photographic archive had turned out to be categorized in a way nobody could understand. There was no catalogue, no index, no labels on boxes and shelves. It was lucky they had interned Meersten by accident, and luckier yet that he was willing to cooperate. He had been released for that reason.
Meersten glanced down at his stack of photographs and nodded. "I have." He showed the one he was holding to her. It depicted a child dressed as a NCIA major standing in front of a barbed-wire fence. With a shock, Mary realized that the child was actually a younger Talvian. In a prison camp, no doubt. If she tried to insist that she had never known what conditions in prisons had been like, this would prove her wrong.
"She looks so young," Mary remarked. In her mugshot, Talvian had looked quite normal.
"That she does." Meersten drank some water out of a metal bottle. "We used to crack all these jokes about her when we knew nobody was listening. That you had to tell your kids to be careful at school because Talvian was there, undercover as a ten-year-old. That the government was going to release postage stamps depicting her life-sized." He smiled slightly.
Of course, there had been nothing funny about the head of the NCIA. Upon coming into her high position, she had kicked off a massive purge, starting out with looking for 'spies' and 'saboteurs' among the ordinary people and culminating with forced retirements, imprisonments, and executions at the highest level of power. Dovek had become minister then, replacing the previous one, who had been executed for alleged corruption. Mary was fully willing to believe that she had been corrupt, but had that been the real criterion, the entire government would have had to be shot.
"That's funny," Mary said, because she was unable to laugh.
Meersten's face twisted slightly. "Talvian's first mission was to pose as a sixteen-year-old and spy in a school."
Shocked, Mary looked at the unassuming man with new eyes. "Where did you get that one from?" she asked. Talvian's personal records had been destroyed. "Can you provide proof?"
Meersten smiled. "What kind of rules of evidence are we playing by?"
"Anything with probative value will be allowed," Mary said. They had settled on that one without too much issue. This was a trial by judges, not an easily swayed jury. "If it is deemed relevant by the defense, they can enter material on the mating habits of Antarctic penguins," she cited an old precedent. If it resulted in 'affidavits by the bushel', she was willing to live with that.
"I am willing to pay good money to see that!" Meersten exclaimed. Mary did not dignify that outburst with a response. "Um. In that case, I take this as a sign that I should do some investigating? What should I look for?"
Mary thought for a few seconds. "You will be given a long-list of people we are considering trying first," she said, cursing today's meeting. "I assume you know your way around the Web?" Meersten nodded. "Put together a team - feel free to re-hire your previous assistants, if they are still around - and focus on that as well as the photoarchive. We have Web experts, but none who can identify people half as well as you. Please tell this all to Tom Lamont, he's the head of the documents department."
"I will. Thank you very much for the job," Meersten said seriously. "I spent months in Thirteen before they finally realized I was more useful here."
"Oh, so you were in Thirteen?" Mary thought of Slice, the only potential defendant who was there. "How was it like?"
Meersten shrugged. "Alright. They kept me in a cell for days with nothing to do, so I went crazy for a while, but once they started interrogating it became easier. And then they realized I know how everyone in the elite looks, so they sent me to you."
That was a good sign. "Thank you very much, Mr. Meersten. Welcome to the team."
"You're welcome." Meersten drank some more water and focused on another photograph.
As the days crept by, Dora began to suspect that she was out of her depth. The trials of collaborators were never-ending, and it was hard to keep abreast of all of the changes to the Administrative and Criminal Codes. Some of the changes made no sense to her and seemed to have been implemented for the sole purpose of decreasing the prison population.
Dora was feeling more and more as something of the past that should have long been put on a shelf. Even a simple murder trial could have something unexpected pop up. And, worst of all, everyone was pointing to her as an example of what a judge ought to be. They saw only the fact that she had never taken bribes in her life, and not that she was completely out of place in this rapidly changing world. When people decried the judiciary for legitimizing the regime even when they made ostensibly just decisions, they turned around and said they didn't mean her. Dora had no idea how to respond to that.
She sat on the couch, cup of tea in hand, and watched as her grandchildren did their best to destroy the house. Bull's eldest was twenty and Wesley's youngest had just been born, but they seemed to get along just fine when it came to running around their grandparents' house like a herd of elephants.
A notable exception was Keisha's five-year-old daughter, but then again, Dasha hadn't been like everyone else for a very long time. The girl was currently hiding out in Dora and Jack's bedroom. Deciding that she needed some peace and quiet to think and that this was not the place to do it, Dora made her way to her bedroom, cup of tea in hand.
Inside, Dasha was sitting cross-legged on the bed and reading a book almost as big as her. 'Reading' was not the best way to put it - her granddaughter didn't have the vocabulary needed to read a legal text. But it did look impressive when Keisha had guests over. "What are you reading?" Dora asked.
Dasha lifted up the book so that Dora could read the cover. 'Legal Ethics for Judges'. She hadn't just picked a book at random. She had gone through the shelf to find something that didn't have nearly as many nonsensical words and letters everywhere. Dora wondered absently if Dasha even knew what 'v.' meant as she sat down on the bed. Her granddaughter looked to be annoyed by the intrusion. Ashley had been the same, though instead of reading, her daughter had done odd repetitive tasks, like sorting beads or unraveling a scrap of cloth, for hours on end.
"Is the book interesting?" Dora asked. Dasha nodded. To a five-year-old child, such a book might as well have been written in a strange code, or a different language. "What's it about?"
"Rules for judges," her granddaughter replied, not raising her eyes from the book. Dasha never looked anyone in the eye.
"Why aren't you playing with your cousins?" It wasn't good for a little child to spend their time cooped up in a room.
"I like reading more."
"We're eating dinner in half an hour."
Dasha winced. It was a small motion, but Dora noticed it. Her granddaughter was the pickiest eater she had ever seen. The girl refused to eat anything with flavour in it, and even moderately heavy food made her sick. Keisha and her husband Aaron were content with feeding her unsalted boiled potatoes and fresh black-market fruits and vegetables - Dasha was obsessed with spinach, eating the mildly bitter leaves like candy - but privately, Dora thought it was wrong of them to shell out so much money instead of teaching Dasha to eat like a normal person. Ashley had also started out like that, but she had learned to tolerate most foods eventually even without the strap that had been applied to Dora and her siblings when they had tried to be picky.
"I'll come back to get you then." Dora stood up and left her granddaughter to her legal ethics. Maybe she should also revisit that book, now that it was generally expected that legal professionals followed their own laws. Not for the first time, Dora wondered why she had been picked. Had her stubborn sticking to the letter of the law no matter what the proverbial telephone said truly been the reason? She often thought that they would have been better off picking a younger judge, one who had not lived a lifetime in this system.
Or perhaps that was just insecurity talking, after that one meeting. It was hard to tell herself that she had done everything possible when not only had that been not true - her only intent had been to apply the law correctly, with no thought for what she had been serving - but there was the example of the decorated Rebel Xia.
They were right, she realized now. Even if her decisions had been perfect, there was no getting around the fact that charges had never been brought against individuals who were in favour with the ones in power. Dora had worked for a system that protected the biggest criminals around, and considered herself important because she hanged small-time bandits and out-of-favour corrupt civil servants. Compared to fighters like Smith, Gaudet, and Wyatt, or even the suicidally dedicated Chatterjee, she had nothing to hold her head high about. Now that the judiciary had been depurated, she was nothing to be proud of. She took no bribes? And? Nobody did. Once a rarity, judges like her were commonplace now.
Dora decided to call Juan. Her colleague from One was even more insecure about his place, having offered his resignation twice now. Perhaps they'd be able to help each other.
After the interview with the sixteen-year-old rapist, it was finally time for Miroslav to take the role of a patient instead of that of the doctor. He took his seat in the office and took out his notebook, feeling rather embarrassed. He had been able to skip the usual queue because he was considered vital to the occupation effort - highly unfair, he had told them so, but the IDC needed him healthy.
The therapist, a harried-looking man in his thirties, walked into the room. He was a total stranger, as Miroslav had gone out of his way to find someone who didn't know him. To do otherwise would have been unprofessional. "Hello, Miroslav," the younger man said. "My name is Shawn, I'll be your therapist for this session. What brings you here today?" He sat down on a comfortable office chair.
Miroslav was sitting on a firm couch. On a table next to him were all sorts of things to distract oneself - knitting needles, crochet hooks, and yarn, all sorts of fidget toys, and the like. In his own office back in Thirteen, he had had similar distractions, though fewer in number. "Eating disorder," Miroslav said. "Or perhaps 'disordered eating' would be a better term - I haven't been formally diagnosed with anything, but something is definitely wrong." He handed Shawn the notebook. "Ever since arriving here from Thirteen, I've struggled with controlling my food intake. I binge-eat at meals constantly. In the beginning, I would often eat until I made myself sick, but that has fortunately stopped." Eating so much still made him feel horrible and disgusting, but he was able to not make himself binge to the point of throwing up, which was something.
Shawn nodded, going through the notebook where, for the past while, Miroslav had kept careful track of what he ate and when and if he made himself vomit afterwards. "You seem to be on top of things," he praised him. "You have even identified potential triggers, and you are binging less as time goes on. That was a smart move, to only eat at military canteens."
"Thank you," Miroslav said. "But it's still not working as well as I would like." Being given a tray of carefully rationed food, even if it wasn't perfectly aligned to his needs, was halfway to a solution, even if it often ended with him eating a meal and then going somewhere else to eat something less licit. "It's just going back to my previous life, having everything be decided for me, which won't help once rationing ends and I'm completely on my own."
"It is still a step in the right direction," Shawn pointed out, "that you are capable of looking at several options and choosing what is better for you now. Now, what you have signed up for here is an evaluation session. Would you be interested in continuing this conversation with someone who specializes in eating disorders? A support group, perhaps?"
"That would be great," Miroslav said, acutely aware of what the waiting list would be like. Here in the Capitol, the officially taxpayer-funded healthcare had in reality been bribe-funded, and trying to get the system up and running properly in the middle of an indescribable overload caused by the war was extremely difficult, even with Thirteen providing resources and expertise.
Shawn nodded and wrote something down. "Now, did this come as a surprise or have you had issues with control before?"
Miroslav nodded. "Once, when I was in Iqaluit for a conference." Shawn's serene facade broke open as he stared in amazement. "That was five or so years ago. I had just been published in a prestigious international journal, so Coin let me go. I went there to present my paper about how children and teenagers of various ages adjusted to living in the strictly regimented Thirteen."
"You're a sociologist?" Shawn asked.
"Psychologist."
"You must be feeling rather like a dirty washing machine," he said with a small smile. Miroslav chuckled, getting the joke. A washing machine could wash other things, but not itself. "So, what happened at the conference?"
"I suppose the first warning sign was when I was in the hovercraft and ate every scrap of dinner even though I knew it was too much," Miroslav reminisced. "I didn't think much of it at the time - it was simply too good. In Thirteen, they tried to keep morale up by adding spices and the like to food, but because of its cost, food was a good deal blander than elsewhere. The next morning, I found the free hotel breakfast and ate until I threw up because I psychologically couldn't stop. I had no idea how to do so."
"You had never been in a position where you had to decide independently what and how much to eat."
"Exactly. I had a similar problem with the hotel open bar, but that could easily be avoided by not drinking at all. But I couldn't just stop eating." Shawn nodded sympathetically. "I ended up spending most of my time with my roommate, with whom I also had to share a bed."
Shawn's eyebrows came up to his hairline. "Do tell."
That was Miroslav's favourite part to tell. "The hotel was overbooked, so they decided to put two people in one-bed rooms and bring up fold-out cots. No cots were ever brought up, I had to sleep in the same bed as a total stranger for a week. My wife thought it was the funniest thing ever. Still does. In any case, my roommate and his colleagues were always with me, so I adjusted my portion size to be more like theirs. You've noticed in my notebook - if I'm eating with someone else, I eat much better." Miroslav was still in touch with the people he had met there.
"But you are concerned about what happens when there's nobody around."
"Exactly."
Shawn closed the little notebook and handed it back to Miroslav. "Small steps are good. If the presence of another person helps you stick to better eating habits, use that as often as you need."
For the rest of the session, they discussed ways Miroslav could stop himself from overeating. Nothing bulletproof came to mind, but he walked away from the session feeling much better about himself than he had in a long time. Shawn had also advised he get some physical exercise, but Miroslav didn't have enough time for that. He had work to be doing. In just twenty minutes, he had a meeting with the psychiatrist who had taken over the treatment of Peeta Mellark. That was one less job for him, at least.
Thumeka got back from her walk when normal people were just beginning to head out. That was no problem, given that it was time to call her wife. Thumeka positioned herself comfortably under the blanket and dialled the number.
Yemurai appeared on the screen, dressed in a bathrobe and with her hair in a silk scarf - Thumeka's was cropped very short out of laziness. It was a weekend for Yemurai. For Thumeka, the word 'weekend' would lose its meaning until she returned.
"Ooh, earbuds?" Yemurai asked teasingly.
"And there's nobody in here right now."
Yemurai rubbed her hands together, smiling evilly. "Regretting leaving already?"
For most of her career, Thumeka had worked in fairly dangerous assignments, but they had all required a few weeks away from home at most. England had been the first time apart long-term, and the two of them had taken to the long-distance relationship much better than Thumeka could have ever hoped for. Sure, Yemurai was the only person whose hugs she tolerated and in fact craved, but a month from now, all she would want from her wife would be the regular provision of inane office gossip and the willingness to listen to rants about how terrible the weather was.
It wasn't a month yet, so Thumeka drank in the sight of Yemurai with her eyes. "Of course not," she said in a deadpan voice that, paradoxically, others considered to be more emotional than her normal one. "After England, rubble and corpses feel like home."
Yemurai laughed. "Putting the retraining to good use?"
Before being sent on dangerous assignments, journalists were trained so that they knew what to do if a terrorist group kidnapped them into sex slavery or something else of the sort. Despite having spent six years at constant risk of being shot on accident or on purpose and with shells falling on her head, Thumeka had still had to go through a refresher. "If I get kidnapped and told to kill a colleague, I've got more excuses for why I can't pick up a gun than I did in first-year statistics assignments."
"Oh, really? You know, your profs weren't allowed to actually kill you."
Thumeka laughed and brought her phone closer to her face. If only she could reach through the screen and touch Yemurai! "Anyway, how are you?"
"Missing you."
"So do I, sugar-stick."
"Stick?" Yemurai asked, falling for the bait deliberately. "You sure?" She let her bathrobe fall down from her shoulders, and Thumeka felt like all the breath had been sucked out of her.
"It's more of an ironic nickname-"
"How sure are you there's nobody who can see your screen?"
"There's nobody in the room, I'll tell you if someone does come in."
"Well, then." Yemurai did a little dance that made Thumeka reach her hand towards the screen, as if she could actually reach through it. "What do you think?"
"I can't even speak, my mouth is completely dry."
"What, did the moisture go somewhere else?"
"You could say that."
"Say, do you have privacy in the bathrooms where you are?"
"As a matter of fact I do," Thumeka said in her best imitation of a sultry voice.
"Why don't you give me a show now?"
Thumeka leapt out from under the covers and dashed to the bathroom. Sexy dancing in a toilet stall wasn't the worst way to start this assignment.
A/N: Thumeka is on the autism spectrum, which is why she speaks in a flat, slow monotone, but the fact that she is a journalist means that Petrus assumes that she is either sick or drunk, and it's politer to inquire about the status of an important person's health than to ask if they're already one too many in at eight in the morning. From what I can tell, usually, people with obviously odd diction tend to also have cognitive impairments and more serious problems with functioning in society, but ASD symptoms are weird. As is, if Thumeka was sincerely indignant, it would sound like the fakest thing ever, and condolences sound robotic coming from her. Note that I myself do not have any kind of disordered speech, aside from a mild stutter and speaking way too fast, so I'm not an expert on how Thumeka sounds.
By the way, there's this one historical figure who was basically written as autistic in this one historical fiction book (someone points out that he's lacking the part of his brain that gives most people their social skills) and it honestly makes too much sense (all the history books point out his flat voice and inability to seem sincere which is such a red flag in hindsight), so now I really want to ask the author if that was on purpose because now I feel even worse for the poor guy because now he's all of a sudden Relatable, which is a weird thing to think about someone who lived and died over a hundred years ago. Ahem. I can rant more about this if you're willing.
Thirteen's leaders had a tendency to be as long-lasting as German chancellors - Adenauer ruled for fourteen years, for example, Kohl for sixteen, Merkel also for sixteen. Compared to the big country's leaders' outdoing of Lukashenko, Brezhnev, and even Stalin, that feels like nothing.
Here is what Leon's apartment building looked like before the war (complete with Aunt Busybody from the fourth floor looking out for anyone with the temerity to try to go on a secret date). I found the photo on Russian-language Twitter, it wasn't stated who the photographer was. imgur dot com /a/C6elK58