Story: Palma (part five)

Palma

(part five)

Some other prisoner shouting this conspiracy in the jail mess. More probably, as prisoners were allowed conversation with only assigned partners and advisors, only rote responses to their guards. Anton had harbored his nonsense, risen to his roommate’s bait with I-can’t-be-fooled smugness, and his Utdrife roommate had reported it.

After the Hidtha lands were shrunken to the peninsula, the young could take no more for themselves. Utdrife began arriving in empty lots, streets made dead-end by debris. Their numbers grew; they looted where their caving skills helped them tunnel, mining out of destroyed malls v-neck sweaters, wingtip shoes, neckties, tennis racquets, duvets and pop art carpets, copper skillets, puffer coats, racing bikes. They reveled in the middle-class encrustation of their campsites, reveled in their new costumes—and the G.R.A. sergeants (their possessions safe at home) laughed.

Then found the Utdrife jobs to do. Taught them guns. Taught them phrases to speak by radio, reporting, before the cell towers were allowed to rise again. Freedom, employment, stuff… Lack of any compunction towards their parents’ scruples. To their fathers and mothers the Utdrife became nameless.

The Hidtha wanted not to trade one would-be arbiter for another; they were not stupid or primitive, to be played by the invaders against the resisters for trinkets. They wanted the past restored. They knew they would get only the past.

This entente between herself and the Ftheorde rested, then, poised on Palma’s care not to show her sympathies. The Ftheorde, the Father-Herdsman, had a wisdom of years about him; he might suspect where a rebel’s heart would lie.

“Do I understand you, that you don’t want to buy Anton’s contract from the jailers? Not for yourself personally, or even to avoid embarrassment if Anton’s roommate… Mismanages things.”

Frederick pitched in, at this, to translate, and briefly he and the Ftheorde spoke.

The Ftheorde said: “For Utdrife, no. They are not of my land. They are not of my law.”

Recollection made Palma give a glance to Mary. The flush had receded, but Mary sat with the crossed hands and ankles of an inward choice to be formal with this rude woman.

“You next,” Palma told her. “Read Anton’s letter. After I say this, about the anniversary. I remind you of those things we must not do. How careful, in a week’s time, we must be. And if Anton can join us, we’ll ask Mary to bake us a Jocelyn cake…” She added, “If David feels up to company.”

In fact the monitoring could function at times as a power of wishing. Where Palma named an enemy, named one of her own imprisoned agents…where benefit coincided, the G.R.A. might place him in her hands.

5

Tourmaline

Tourmaline (conclusion)

(2016, Stephanie Foster)