Chapter 10 Meditation

When Cressida revived, she was lying in one of the beds. Bunyan, who had presumably carried her there, was standing a few meters away, looking awkward. She muttered "Wha' happened—"

"You fainted," said Bunyan. "When Andromeda jumped over the cliff."

"Is there a possibility that she's still alive?"

"I'm sorry, but no. The tracker stopped picking up her heartbeat, and that's when they fired the cannon. And when the hovercraft went to pick up the body, they said it was obvious that her neck was broken. At least it was a fast, nearly painless death."

Cressida started crying. "This is so horrible. It's as if she was my daughter."

For some reason, that statement enraged Bunyan. "She was not your daughter, Cressida. If she was, she would be a Capitol girl, dressing in useless finery and maybe having fun watching people die in the Games."

"I – "

"No, I know where you're coming from. You got to know her as a human being, an innocent and likable human being. Sam was just as human and innocent, but not likable, so you didn't care when he died. They started with 22 other kids out there, all of them human and mostly innocent. All but one is going to die, and you don't care because they didn't get under your skin."

"I –"

She was interrupted again, this time by the room's telephone. Bunyan went to answer it, while Cressida wrestled with confused emotions. When the mentor came back, he was even more annoyed. "That was Caesar's show. They want me to appear and express what I feel about having lost both my tributes. And of course I'm not allowed to say 'Two more lives snuffed out for no reason; are you satisfied?' " With that outburst, he seemed to get himself under control. "After that, the Gamesmasters will want to collect the tributes' effects, to ship back to the District 10 with their remains. Could you gather them while I gone? There won't be much, just the clothes they were wearing when they were reaped. After that we'll basically be expected to vacate these quarters until next year's Games, so get your own things out as well. I'm going."

After his departure Cressida got up to check Andromeda's and Sam's rooms. It occurred to her that, after a day or two, there would be nothing left in the Capitol to indicate that Andromeda had even existed there. District 10 might have some sort of memorial to her, but Cressida would not be allowed to travel there. Cressida would have no souvenir of her, except in her head.

Well, that was not entirely true. There was electronic footage of her, in the parade and in the interviews with Caesar. One could not program a Capitol TV to play back a scene at will, but Cressida worked for the Capitol media. She decided to call a friendly colleague to send a recording of the interviews over to the TV in her own flat, pretending that she wanted to make professional notes on them before reporting to work again. She could see Andromeda that way.

She was about to leave when there was a buzz at the door. Answering it, she found herself facing a woman who would have looked sour even if her skin had not been dyed yellow-green. "Is the rep from District 10 here?" she demanded.

"No, he's at the TV studio."

"Well, I have a message for him. I'm a sponsor, and I had a lot of money riding on the District 10 girl. Now, I understand if my tribute gets killed by another tribute, it's just bad luck, the odds are not in my favor. But doing herself in is another matter. I wasn't warned that that was possible, and I want my money back."

Cressida was horrified. The girl had lost her life, Cressida had lost a loved one, and here was this lady whining about money that she could afford to lose. Fortunately Cressida was used to concealing her emotions; she had had occasions where she had to appear on camera. "Well, I'll tell him if I see him."

"IF?"

She had used the word offhand, but she couldn't resist throwing a scare into the bitch. "Well, he might just decide to go back to District 10 after leaving the studio. Nothing keeping him here." The woman turned a paler shade of green as she realized the implications. The Capitol minimized contact between itself and the Districts, except for the shipment of goods. It would be almost impossible for the woman to force Bunyan to disgorge the money once he was back in District 10's Victor's Village, unless he chose to do so. "Good luck catching him," Cressida added in a fake sweetly manner. "May the odds be ever in your favor." She closed the door in the woman's face, and muttered some choice words that she had learnt from Sam in the past few days.

An hour later she was in her own flat, installing the interviews recording on her TV. She realized that she would have a problem. Her home TV was not designed to fast-forward. Since the tributes were interviewed by District order and Andromeda was District 10, this meant that she had to sit through 18 earlier interviews. Later she would edit the tape at work, but at the moment she was anxious for a sight of Andromeda.

She had, of course, seen the interviews before, live, a few days ago. At that point she was regarding the other tributes as competitors, and was relieved to see that few of them, except Cashmere, impressed the audience much. But now, when she was not distracted by wishful thinking and was remembering Bunyan's dictum that other tributes were not that much different, she found herself re-interpreting them.

The boy from District 3 was boasting of his skill in inventing new electronic gizmos. That might have impressed people in District 3, but it fell flat in the Capitol. Caesar rescued the situation by remarking how Beetee has won his game by inventing nifty weapons.

The girl from District 5, who couldn't be much older than 13, was wearing a costume that exposed her breasts almost down to the nipples. Even by Capitol standards that was outrageous on a girl who had just started puberty, and Caesar couldn't spin it. Doubtlessly she, or a clueless stylist, thought that was the only way for her to make an impression.

The boy from District 8 had declared, frankly but naively, "I know I'm not going to win. Why can't everybody just agree that I'm a loser and let me go home?" The audience had thought that very funny, and so had Cressida originally. Now she realized that the question made a lot of sense. If the purpose of the games was to honor a victor who embodied the virtues of Panem, why not release a boy who admitted that he was no hero? And why should responses at a televised interview affect whether a tribute was to live or die? If she remembered the Death Lists properly, all three of these tributes were already dead.

Finally they got to District 10 and Andromeda. It was as impressive as Cressida had remembered it, but now it had a pathetic air. All that hope gone to nothing. Cressida started crying again, and turned off the recording without even trying to watch 11 and 12.

She wasn't sure how long she sat there, lost in grief, before the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Cressie? This is Plutarch. Tried calling at the Training Center but apparently you'd already left. I wanted to know whether you could come back to work tomorrow, now that you no longer have duties to District 10."

I – " it was going to be impossible to just walk in to work as if nothing had happened . She would, of course, be expected to help with covering the rest of the Games, the deaths of the rest of the tributes but one. She couldn't do it. Everything about her job seemed different now. And yet she couldn't just pull out without an explanation. What could she say?

"Plutarch, could you stop by this evening for a talk?" She had a high-enough rank in the office to make a request like that. Though she wouldn't keep her rank after that.

"Hmm, yes. Nothing happens at night in this year's Games, I suspect all of the tributes are afraid of falling on a slope in the darkness. Is eight o'clock all right?"

"Yes."

So she had between now and eight o'clock to decide what to say to Plutarch. She couldn't just pretend to have a better job offer for her talents. The whole media business was a government monopoly, and the Hunger Games show was the most prestigious thing in it. Any step out would be a step down. Could she tell the truth? Plutarch was a friend as well as a boss, but he was an important figure of the government. Her conversation with Plutarch would be private – that was one of the reasons for asking him to visit her at her flat – but if he found her attitude frightening, he might feel obliged to tell somebody else. Snow, if he heard of it, would be displeased, and Snow's displeasure could be dangerous.

Then she remembered Andromeda's scale of values. She had killed herself because she had failed to live up to her resolution not to hurt anybody during the Games. Cressida, by contrast , was already feeling like a coward.

And so, as Plutarch walked in, Cressida poured out her feelings, knowing that if she stopped to think, she would be too terrified to start talking again.

"Plutarch, I can't do this any more. I've learnt what it's like to be a tribute, and I understand the horror of it all. I don't want to be a part of the horror. I'm leaving. Please, let me go."

Plutarch looked astonished, and then he composed his face into something unreadable. Cressida wondered how much trouble she had put herself in. When he finally spoke, his voice was amazingly calm. "I don't want you to leave, Cressie."

"But don't you understand? I can't serve the Games any longer. I hate the Games!"

"I quite understand, Cressie. You see, so do I."

TO BE CONTINUED