Story: Palma (part three)

Palma

(part three)

The Wainwrights had come when the invasion was expected. Only expected, like an inundation, a volcanic winter, a thing that must be horrible in its encroaching effects. The sky had remained blue. Taxis had crawled the capital. Palma had gone out in heels and velvet.

Past midnight the café tables had been crowded.

David was to write this story; Mary, to pursue the Hidtha—madly, to make voters of them, have them know their rights. She had for weeks spoken to the Ftheorde with an off-kilter familiarity. The Hidtha did not tell their names. Mothers called sons and daughters differently from fathers. Only the titles, which were immutable, could be used by non-Hidtha.

“What has David been able to do today?” Palma asked. At the prefacing sigh, she turned her mind to her own thoughts. She told herself not to hate Mary.

Wainwrights were allowed by the G.R.A., they were citizens of an Alliance nation. They had that channel, to theirs of the four Governors. Mary could petition a visit to any sector, any city in any department. She could visit the peninsula.

Pains, depressions, delusions, waved across the capital, and no intervention by the Governors had stopped these catching David. His writing fanned into life…rarely now. Then waned and died. Palma wanted Mary to believe the pills from the health clinic were killing him, not his kidneys. He had gained so much weight. If he would allow his wife to walk him to these gatherings…

He told her to let him be alone. He mourned for himself, being alone.

Mary had no undernotes, Palma had faith in this…Mary’s brew of persistence, emotion, and fecklessness was aura, flesh, and bone. Her depths were alike to her shallows. She was martyring herself towards a life without David. She was using the Ftheorde’s strong arm, when as envoy he passed the barriers.

She was exercising her power.

“…I put every key word with an underline, see, Palma…”

Palma glanced at Mary’s book.

“That was my idea, my hope anyway… I could interview David, tell him the Utdrife are allowed citizenship under the latest proposal, say…”

David, asked to lift from his pillows, stub out his cigarette, answer simple questions, would give his thoughts. Mary would record them. Something to send to his magazine would grow.

“Ftheorde,” Palma cut her off. “Shall I tell you the Precautions? I start every session reminding the monitors we know what they’re doing. I call them Doug and Sadie. If I have it wrong, they can stop by and introduce themselves. The G.R.A. use enhanced soundwave or thermal imaging. They track us through walls. Through bodies. Doug and Sadie are in the room with us at all times, and we want to host them kindly, give them volumes and volumes of data on this and that. They don’t know if what we talk about matters. They have to pay attention.”

3

Tourmaline

Tourmaline (part four)

(2016, Stephanie Foster)