The crawler eases its way up the fifth pillar. It's Sunday, which means most of the Peacekeepers are out of the building, finding things to do with the districts' only day off from work and school. This morning as I walked into the plaza, people were huddled around the screens. Curious myself, I decided to see what has become of that girl, Katniss. The replays cover days old events, because little has happened since Katniss dropped the tracker jacker nest. Indeed, Katniss is still unconscious as are the Career tributes.
I have a lot of time to wonder about Rue's situation, even though I could work on my portable system to analyze the data I have already gleaned from these pillars. The Games are too distracting. It's been five days since the bloodbath. Fourteen tributes have died, leaving only ten.
Rue is elusive, sure. Yet, I didn't expect her to last this long. I still don't dare to think that she has a chance to win the Games. The surviving tributes are Careers, Thresh, the wounded boy from 12, Katniss, and some other kids. I can't remember them all. There's just no way that I can imagine Rue surviving the Games, unless the Gamemakers flood the entire arena as they did several years past. Rue can climb higher than anyone else. Katniss demonstrated on Cato the dangers of climbing higher than the branches will tolerate.
There's no weight division for tributes. That would be too logical, I grunt sourly to myself. Where is the entertainment value in having a seventeen-year-old murder someone half his weight? Incomprehensible! For me, the Treaty of Treason isn't about the districts' historic uprisings so much as it is the Capitol's utter betrayal of humanity.
Maybe the only way that the citizens of the Capitol can justify this devaluation of human life is by having it constantly portrayed and propagandized as pleasant sport, including the false appreciation enforced upon the districts. Perhaps that was what Scipio sought to undermine. I still didn't see anything terribly unusual on the screen. Just the normal wanton slaughter.
Once the crawler reaches the top of the pillar, it begins a faster roll downward. I toss the cable outward toward the next pillar as it curls up on the stone floor. After the device reaches the ground, I replace the memory card with a fresh chip and take the apparatus down into two halves. Once reassembled, it begins climbing the sixth pillar.
All that separates the Capitol from the majority of Panem is participation in the Hunger Games. The Capitol doesn't participate except to host the festivities each year. Other than that, they are mere spectators. At least the three districts that see the Hunger Games as laudable pursuits participate and lose at least one volunteer per year.
While I can't comprehend their acceptance of the Games, their attitude is at least honest. They participate happily, because the only alternative is to participate unhappily, like the rest of us. It's a mark of depravity to happily send your child to die, but perhaps not so worthy of criticism as sending two dozen of other people's children to die, merely for your pleasure and power.
I sigh and copy the information from the memory card to my computer and glance at it, making sure the diagnostic readings show that the information is good. I shuffle through a few screens showing scraggly lines. The technical readouts are what I prefer, although the computer can compile them into a comprehensive 3d image, showing potential weaknesses and fractures. That can be useful for stress-over-time-testing.
This pillar is like the other four. No serious damage, but some abnormal pressures near the top where the joints rest in the hub. If this is all there is in each of the twelve pillars, the Main Office should be fine, perhaps only needing small repairs for the roof. Sure, it will eventually fall. All structures do. However, the metal in the superstructure will rust out completely several centuries before the pillars would fail. There is some stress damage. It's just not enough to amount to anything more than mere data on my reports.
Sunday. I still haven't told Meyla about the dinner on Tuesday. She knows what I think of Volente Covas although she only met him once. One doesn't simply blow off an invitation/command to eat with a Captain of the Peacekeepers. Still, every subconscious urge in me screams to find some reason to cancel. What if Hannah's kids come down with illness and the family needs help caring for them, during the trial of the Games? That might work.
Still it's a bad idea, especially considering that Covas seems to be generating a deeper interest in me. If he had taken even a fraction of this concern for Mason... I replay the what-ifs in my head over and over. Nothing new this time. Sometimes a new scenario presents itself in my mind's eye. Not today. Just the same old gully of spite; Penrose and Covas.
After scanning two more pillars, I decide it's time to call it a night and pack up my gear. The batteries need to be charged anyway. This job is lonely, being ignored by every single passing Peacekeeper. That's fine, but my emotionally charged thoughts are giving me a headache and I can barely see colors as a result.
Halfway home, gear heavy on my back, Scipio meets me in the street. This hasn't happened since he recruited me. "Hi, Kip. How are you doing?"
"Fine, Scipio. What's on your mind?" We head toward my house a few blocks away.
"I've received word that you're going to have a sit-down with Captain Covas, soon."
I shoot him an alarmed glance. "What, you have someone in the Peacekeepers?"
"We have several Peacekeepers helping us, Kip. You know that."
I shrug my burdened shoulders. "Well, yeah, we have a dinner scheduled. I'm thinking about canceling though."
Scipio lets the breeze own the moment. Sometimes he hopes people see the flaws in their own words. I just don't want to acknowledge them. "It's not a dinner. It's a sit-down."
I stop short and turn to Scipio. "What do you mean? What's the difference?"
Scipio drops his voice to a hushed growl, "Word is getting around the District that you've got a chip on your shoulder-"
"You think I don't?"
Scipio waves his hand. "That's not the point. The Peacekeepers are gunning for any surreptitious associations. If you don't meet with Covas, you'll be pegged. You can't avoid this. He's feeling you out." His eyes are icy, beard quirking with each crunching, whispered word.
I stand there thinking, wondering whether my own time is going to be up soon, whether my wife or my sister or their kids will bear the cost of my choices. I can't allow that. "What do I have to do?"
Scipio takes my arm and we continue down the lonely street. "Just meet with him. Be civil and you'll be alright. Trust me." We make a final turn. "And Kip? If you're tagged a suspect, you can't have any contact with anyone in the movement and you can't visit the safe house. If I have to, I'll sacrifice one man to protect the cause, even myself. Do you understand?"
"I guess so." My voice struggles, quiet and slow. I'm playing chess against the whole world! My opponents are the barbarous Peacekeepers and their alter ego rebels who seem to want never to rebel, never to stand up.
Scipio leaves and I watch him go down an alley before I head into my house. Meyla isn't home. My bag thumps to the floor of the hall closet and my attention immediately turns to the cupboard. Meyla always keeps tea prepared because we've both grown accustomed to it. The best drink that isn't expensive.
I thumb the button on the television and sit on the couch. The tea is room temperature, of course. Pretty much everything we drink is lukewarm. In the Capitol we drank refrigerated water and milk. It was awkward every time, the chilling sensation against the throat and in the chest.
The screen shows relative inactivity in a live picture-in-picture screen in one corner. The rest of the image is filled with various replays of the action this year so far: the melee at the cornucopia, two boys fighting almost drunkenly in the woods, Katniss' marathon flight from the fire, Peeta slashing a wounded tribute in the night, and so forth.
Nothing is going on at all. The smaller image zips to Rue. My insides squirm. She's foraging berries from some bushes, actually on the ground. Come to think of it, in all the time I have watched the Games so far this year, she's spent almost all of it up in trees. That's been a safe strategy so far.
Scipio's words echo back to me. "If you're tagged as a suspect, you can't have any contact with anyone in the movement," almost a threat, really. The underground will treat me as much a threat as any Capitol loyalist, if I don't comply with the Peacekeeper's combing search for the underground itself? Scipio never told me to lie about my involvement to Covas, since that goes without saying.
Who did he have that could know that I'm being singled out for investigation, anyway? It would have to be an officer that had some level of access to Covas' work. Is there someone working in the Main Office that I can trust? I ponder this over another gulp of tea, but the numerous faces and names that I know don't seem to fit, any of them.
I don't know a great deal about the command structure and task distribution among the Peacekeepers. That's not really anyone's concern except the Peacekeepers themselves, so it isn't exactly public knowledge. Anyone could be working for Scipio though, laying low, trying to avoid being noticed while gathering information, theoretically vital to the fabled rebellion that Scipio assures me will soon arrive.
Taking another swig, I feel trapped; cornered and caged like an animal in a meticulous game of politics. On the one side, the Capitol is running rampant over anyone it so chooses to destroy, using the Peacekeepers as its spear. On the other side, the underground is so petrified of discovery that no serious change is attempted, precluding the entire point of having a covert subversive program, in the first place. And me, stuck right in the middle, ready and willing to strike the one, if the other would just help.
In the corner-shot, the Career tributes are unconscious surrounded by landmines, guarded by the boy who replanted the mines, Teodor. He was stung also when the horde of tracker jackers followed the Careers back to the lake. In the miniscule image, Teodor rubs his head with both hands, attempting in vain to scrub away the murkiness that I have experienced myself.
District 11's massive agriculture plots are rife with the detestable insects, genetically designed to indispose any victim, at least for hours if not permanently. The Careers and Katniss too, still lying in that ditch, were stung more than twenty four hours ago and none are remotely close to combat ready. Katniss had yet to awaken at all.
In the kitchen, I hear the house door open. Meyla comes in to greet me. "Oh, Kip, you're home. Good."
"Hey." I stand up and shut off the television. My wife looks inquisitively at me but I shake my head. "No change yet."
"Oh. Well, that can be good, though." She bites the corner of her lips, thinking about poor, sweet Rue.
"Until the audiences get bored." Both of us know that the Gamemakers will always try to keep the broadcasts riveting, even if they have to drive kids into close quarters to generate more mayhem.
Meyla waves me into the kitchen, "Come here. Let me show you what I did today."
On the table, there's a worn leather sack that we use to bring home groceries. She reaches into it and pulls out a paper receipt like the one I was given at the Office of the Reaping on Monday afternoon. "I've been collecting donations all day," she says.
I look at the amount line, surprised. The number is almost as high as what we had donated earlier. That's eager generosity considering the bare-bones wages in this district. Most people can't afford enough food for themselves, which completely removes them from the pool of those who may spare something. For one day, this is amazingly generous.
Maybe Rue's impressive wind-dance through the trees is giving our neighbors a cause for pride. Typically the tributes we send to the Games are older and heavier, too much so to do much more than the usual tree climbing.
Rue is more talented then most young pickers, besides her wispy stature. Such graceful movements give her the illusion of total weightlessness. I recall Hannah having spoken so proudly of her daughter's talents. It is truly astounding to witness them and even my broken heart takes pride to know that the world is watching her do the impossible. It just won't be enough, so amazement in the Capitol isn't enough for me, either.
I fold the paper and give it back to Meyla. I try to work encouragement into my voice. "That's great. I can't believe so many people donated." My tone remains flat.
"People gave what they could. I only went through a few parts of town asking for donations. I think I'll walk to Wayspoint tomorrow and see if anyone would be willing to give." She refers to the other small town several miles walk through endlessly rolling fields, orchards, and vineyards. Meyla tilts her head so her silky hair slides away from her eyes.
Acknowledging her idea with a nod, I get a second cup and fill it with tea, refilling my own. "Listen, Mey. There's something we're going to have to do and it won't be easy."
She takes the second cup and sips. "What is it?"
"Volente Covas wants to have dinner with us. Sort of feel me out, I guess."
Meyla doesn't react, just waits for me to continue, so I go on tacitly avoiding certain words in case our house is being monitored. "I've been told he's going after subversives and that he thinks I fit the pattern."
She almost says something, bites her tongue. I know what it would have been anyway. I do fit the subversive pattern in every way because I am fomenting insurrection. Motive could already be assigned to me, considering the hell I tried to raise about Mason's death and Covas' discarding the matter entirely. Sometimes motive is enough for the Peacekeepers to crack the whip. Never mind my actual ties to the underground. Meyla shrugs her shoulders. "We'll have dinner with him then. We wouldn't have a choice about it, right?"
"Not a wise choice, it seems." My wife doesn't share my opinions about Volente Covas. She was able to forgive his actions somehow. No penalty against Penrose will bring Mason back. Meyla doesn't take her logic a step further, as I do. What about the next victim of Peacekeeper aggression? What about Rue and the Capitol's annual circus of violence?
Justice has to be done, otherwise there can be no hope! Although Meyla doesn't like Covas, she also doesn't boil with anger the way I do. The meal on Tuesday will probably be easier on her than me. That seems to be true of everything. It might be that Meyla has worked the resentment out of her system, which has permitted her to move on these past few days. With renewed purpose, she can abandon the hopelessness we feel and find peace in easing the lives of those we love.
She makes her way to me and squeezes my hand, knowing everything about me that can be known. We once gave everything to each other and Mason was the embodiment of our charity with each other. It nearly ended our marriage when he died; the unrelenting misery, living with the one person who reminds you of what's lost. We really didn't work through that. She settled into a routine of living a quiet life and I put the horror of Panem's government in my sights, hungrily accepting the burden of vengeance.
I need to feel this way. I need to hate them! If I don't, Mason's nineteen years cut short will have meant nothing! His memory is tainted with my ire for the Capitol and I can't recall my son without inevitably finding some shred of resentment to hang on to and pull, until my every waking moment is filled with spite. Emotional fuel for the attacks that I know must be unleashed against the powers that be.
How am I going to face Covas with this pent up rage? His careful observation is going to pick apart my defenses, unearth the truth of my darkened soul. This dinner is sure to end in my arrest, probably my wife's arrest, and whatever torture Covas determines to be proper. Nothing will have been changed other than a few more lives snuffed out. The rest will remain captive and shrouded by a choking blanket of control, like candles getting only enough oxygen to have a tiny dot of flame, never more, never burning brightly, and often extinguished by the thinnest breeze.
Meyla wraps her arms around me and I smell her hair, rosemary. Tears streak my face, even as I reinforce my stony expression. My hands slide around my wife's back and I weep in complete silence. For the agony I cultivate and conceal. For the stress. For Rue and my sister's family.
My wife kisses me, her sweet lips sending electric shocks through my chest that could light up Three Corners most nights of the year. She lays her head on my shoulder and kisses my neck. A moan of acceptance escapes my lips as I my hands rub between her back and her hair. I've forgotten how tender Meyla's touch can be, how amazing it feels to be desired by my wife. I want her too. I miss the closeness we shared when we were husband and wife, not just two people who live together. I want to be there for her.
My tainted, weary spirit pleads with me to succumb to these natural urges. Just vacate the underground, Kippen. Meet with Covas as your heart is healing, your mind is forgetting, and live on the rest of life. Mourn Rue with your sister's family and try to make each day a brighter one! My conscience battles itself.
The thought of my delightful niece brings to mind her words to me the last time I saw her. "I'll be brave, Uncle Kip." Earnest eyes stare at me through the past two weeks. Mason's crooked grin joins my niece's gaze and my heart trembles, wavers between those condemned relatives and this one who is doing everything she can to console me.
Meyla glimpses my lost eyes and tries to bring me back to the moment with another gentle kiss, only this time the sensation repels me like a blast. The back of my head slams into the cupboards, throwing stars across my vision. One arm around my wife, one hand grabs my head as I mumble, "I'm sorry. It's just…"
What? What is it? Her eyes inquire. Why are you still so set against living?
I can't abandon these children! No one will stand up for Rue. No Peacekeeper stood up for Mason to see proper punishment dispensed. No one in the Capitol stood up for Katniss who subjected herself to the vicious Hunger Games to spare a sister who will return to the reaping. I will not abandon them and the rest of Panem! I have a chance to make the world a better place, something Scipio claims hasn't happened in well over two hundred years!
Meyla's expression falls with my rejection and she slides of out the hug. Both hands rub the back of my head where a knot has already formed. My wife walks into the bedroom closing the door softly behind her.
My throat closes, eyes staring at the door. I'm a terrible person, tasting my wife's comforting offer before rejecting it, throwing it back in her face. She's not mad. Just sad that I won't let go, the way she has. I have isolated myself from everything except the anticipation to exact justice through my own strength. Can I set aside my feelings and pursue these goals dispassionately? A man at peace is content and not soon to change anything. The man who is ready to change things has a mind plagued with problems worth addressing. Maybe I should try to contain my passions. I could try to limit them to a manageable level, if I could find a way to forgive Covas for letting Penrose completely off the hook, or the Capitol for the Treaty of Treason. I doubt that I can. In any case, it would take time to put this genie back in the bottle. Certainly far more time than the few days I have until Covas questions us over plates of expensive food.
Scipio suggested that I be civil. If the Capitol is an example, I plan to be accordingly civil.