The eleventh floor is over thirty meters from the ground. From up there everyday things on the ground look very small. Unity Square down below would sometimes fill with swarms of people—despite the fact that this was supposed to be one of the most closely guarded government districts in the State—but from a height of thirty meters it makes no difference whether there are a hundred people down there or a thousand.
Often I would draw a chair up to the corner of the large windows and gaze out, down into the square at support rallies organized by the army and the investigative police or out to the northeast and the striped, glowing sky, which by now had spread and already engulfed both the north and all of the east.
If people aren’t willing to see, they won’t see anything. In a new place everything looks perfectly clear at first. You know exactly what has to be done. Then your eyes grow accustomed and your mind becomes numb. You’re at once awake and asleep, and while you’re awake you’re making sure that no one disturbs you while you’re asleep.
If I made a mistake, then it was this. When you no longer have the will to see, then you certainly won’t see a thing. There’s no mention of this mistake in my history book, or anything else about the final stages of my reign, for that matter.
I’m not a saint, and I’m not stupid. Omitting things isn’t lying. I have no reason to lie. I’ve never had a reason to lie, neither in the State of K nor here. But then again, who would be mad enough to nail themselves up for nothing?
A being so much bigger than man can’t hide his handiwork, Father would say when things happened that were almost beyond his control. Or was it that some things are bigger than you and me?
Every April without fail the stream would flood the garden and my sister and I would try to row across the yard. She was so light that she could row a plastic sled all the way to the flagpole at the other end of the garden, but it took a couple of planks and some styrofoam to carry me. The water was a grey color from the clay in the garden and shone, it was like a mirror in which you could see your face and behind that the great clouds in the sky.
I don’t suppose I would ever have gone to the zone to report on events had Eeva and Aspi not been settled there. Young couples were asked to go there to farm the wasteland in between the reactors, so-called “Pure Food” Farms were established, more to help create a positive image than because they reaped any great economic benefits. That was over twenty years ago now. Eeva and Aspi’s two daughters were born there.
I first went there to do a report on farming, then after the reactors had been destroyed I volunteered to go back and report on the news. Eeva and Aspi’s younger daughter Taira had died. No one who had been living in the zone was allowed across the border back into the State. I would go and visit Eeva, Aspi, and Ireina whenever I was up there reporting, and take them food and money. This could have got me into a lot of trouble, as any form of contact with the zone was forbidden, but I still visited and took them money every now and then.
Aspi was employed as a dirt transporter when hot earth began being moved from the reactors to the areas surrounding the heat-retaining units. By replenishing the hot soil, energy could be transferred to other areas of the State. Aspi was put to work with others who had lived in the zone and those sent across from prisons. Transporting dirt required a large workforce: work was conducted in three shifts a day, seven days a week.
Eeva joined the Ash Crosses and on the command of some prophet cremated all those who had died in the reactor explosions, dug up those already buried and burnt them, committing their bodies to fire and air.
I can’t be held responsible for what happened to Eeva and Aspi’s family. How could anyone have helped them when even keeping in contact was forbidden and strictly controlled? Of course, reporters are even more closely guarded than others, and once I took on a more powerful position I could hardly be seen to favor my own relatives. The law is the same for everyone, and I couldn’t be responsible for bringing a shadow like that upon the Secretary General’s office, let alone upon myself.
You can’t do everything you want. People who had lived in the zone were simply not granted permission to leave; it was nothing to do with me, it was a question of general order and security. Eeva and Aspi didn’t understand anything beyond themselves and with their constant letters and requests they put me in a very awkward position. As if it were all my fault, or as if I alone could have decided their fate. As it turned out, this couldn’t have been further from the truth.
After the devastation, the zone wouldn’t even have existed for the rest of the State without me and The Truth Show. There would have been nothing but emptiness. The wind would have howled behind the border, but there would have been no one there; there are never people on the other side, just disturbance and problems. As long as people continue talking about something, at least it exists. But when people don’t talk about it, the wind just howls and the northeastern sky is aglow day and night with aurora borealis, and even that is explained away as protuberances of the sun, and the power cuts and the lack of heating are what they are: nothing but terrorism or the work of the enemy. Without State publicity the northeastern zone would have disappeared altogether.
I didn’t allow the zone to be forgotten. Something removed from the mind doesn’t exist. In my reports I etched out an image of the zone so many times that it stayed put. Without The Truth Show the people living in the zone would have had nothing. There was no point in Eeva and Aspi sending me their letters, first to me personally, then to the channel and finally to the Secretary General’s office when I was promoted; keeping such contact caused me a lot of trouble.
When I first visited the zone everything was well and good. Eeva and Aspi were farming their land, Taira and Ireina were little. I was filming my report and interviewing people. At night you could see a glow burning in the sky above the reactor silos, like seven bright moons in a line.
Once the silos’ outer walls, several meters thick, had collapsed in the explosions, the reactors became little suns. The protective structures around the silos fell to pieces and the ceramic mass melted. Everything in the vicinity was burnt to a crisp and the light could be seen for hundreds of kilometers, filtered into radiant beams. When the light had gone, all that was left was the heat. When the heat began to disperse, the sky was left striped with soot and smog. Light is colder when parts of it are missing. Under this constant shadow the zone was plunged into a grey twilight, which at first was contained and limited to the zone itself, but then began to spread its chill to the rest of the State. First the weather changed, then the climate. From my panoramic windows at the Secretary General’s office, I had to acknowledge it as it moved closer week by week. There was nothing anyone could do about something like that advancing.
In The History of K, I included an extract from the prophecy of the Ash Crosses, because after all these years it seemed to encapsulate something very true about those times.
“And the sky disappeared, like a parchment rolled up, and all the mountains and the islands and the plains were uprooted and moved towards the north, from which night was cast upon the earth; from which the rapist of the earth arises, sent by God. The end of ends is nearer than near, no verdant plants shall grow on earth, bushes shall stand barren, fruit shall fall to the ground unripe, the ground shall be covered with hoar frost, frost shall be covered with ice, ice shall be covered with snow.”
Back then these words spread a message of fear, and there was no need to increase fear throughout the State. There need only be an appropriate level of fear, then humility will flourish. If there is too much fear, there is only paralysis or anger and cornered rage. These are dangerous matters—all anger and activity must be turned as swiftly as possible against either the external or the internal enemy, thus reaping benefit from them too. All tumult which reigns within the human soul can be used to govern.
I was good as Secretary General, skilled, but at a time like that nothing is quite sufficient. A cold era had arrived. The sun was
striped with sheets of radiation and soot belching from the collapsed reactors and could no longer warm us.
Like a crooked Venetian blind it covered the State halfway across the sky, from the horizon up at a forty-five degree angle. Hundreds of thousands of square kilometers had been caught in a dry, snowless winter, and every month when I received new readings and results, winter had indeed come closer. Statistics no longer spoke of winter but of winters at varying definable stages. The coldest was the dead zone at the middle of winter, on either side of this were autumnal winters and before them vernal winters or dead summers; month by month they approached like a great beast.
As Secretary General I ought to have been able to prevent such a thing from advancing, but nobody has that kind of power—no amount of knowledge or technology can regulate the weather or the climate. Nobody mentioned the A.C. Hahl Mountains any more, raised to protect the State; in fact, they had been deleted from most newer maps.
And despite the fact that all State information right down to the thoughts of our citizens was brought up to my office, carefully collected and screened, I still couldn’t prevent it. I couldn’t make out the whole, just disconnected pieces, like sailing throughrocky rapids, all you can see is what you can make out through the spray and the boulders as you rush forward headlong.
One of my mistakes was that I became too caught up with the details, when what I should have done was simply concentrate and try simply to see. I didn’t trust other people, after the first few months I no longer trusted anyone at all, and so I tried to make as many decisions as possible myself, and it was this which eventually ruined what was left of my ability to see. Those who opposed me were isolated from society; unity was the priority—my priority, everybody’s common priority. Thus unified, the State was to grow to a new level of greatness, until it was true to its name, the State of K, but by then it had already outgrown itself. A cancer had grown within it, born of itself, fanning its own flames.
I restructured the voluntarysecurity-service organizations, as both around me and directly below me I needed easily maneuverable forces. There’s nothing on my conscience about what happened back then. If unity is the democratically accepted goal of the majority, then it is everyone’s common aim. There is no acceptable justification for working against the State.
Those who opposed this were convicted of treason. I wasn’t the one who made these decisions, but I did give the State courts clear instructions. Anyone even remotely suspect was interrogated, because interrogation is by far the most effective method of speedily banishing inappropriate thoughts from the mind.
The office research department kept a close eye on changes in public opinion and in people’s reactions. Very often I gave speeches on all channels directly to the people. I had to try and convince our citizens that perhaps this cold era would never come, or that it would never reach us, or that it would be so far in the future—and not during our lifetimes—that we would never have to prepare ourselves for all those winters. Autumns would not become winters, but every year winter would blossom into spring, and June would not be merely the beginning of the dead summer.
My position required me to speak with an air of hope: that everything would change for the better as long as the State had the necessary strength of character and remained unified. Given the situation, I either had to increase trust and faith amongst the people or frighten and threaten them with the internal or the external enemy. This was my job, but no matter how much fear or hope the leaders of a mighty State can compress into their words, no matter how much they tell people to turn a blind eye, they can never purge the mind of every single citizen. Of course I knew that the State would never become a single pure block of steel, not even if you were to melt it down and forge it again, for inside there will always be unmelted grains of sand and grit.
The people swimming through those rapids haven’t made the river flow. There’s nothing on my conscience about what happened back then, because all power had to be concentrated on what was good for the State. No one can prevent the future from coming. I tried hard, but my time in the rapids was wearing thin.
When I began to uncover conspiracies and resistance, at first I tried to deal with it gently. The final six months alone were a very dark time indeed. The security-service organizations were faithful to the last, and I had to use them like a stone in my hand.
At first you try to swim, just swim, then you try to stay afloat and dodge the rocks. Then you stop caring.If you take a knock, then so be it. In a tight spot people always have to cut their losses. Ultimately all you can do is look out for yourself.
There’s nothing on my conscience whatsoever about what happened back then. Things simply happened the way they did. Of course there were some small matters I could have dealt with differently. When it was time to leave, I moved to the nearest neighboring country. Here I have never had to lie or deny my name.
Here I can live in peace. No one comes up nosily asking who I am. Here I am nameless. Or rather, not nameless, but the nameless person who wrote The History of K. That is my name here and the previous one I have given up.
Watcher
Leena Likitalo
Leena Likitalo is an up-and-coming talent whose stories have appeared in Weird Tales, Waylines, and Abyss & Apex, along with genre magazines from Finland. She attributes the inspiration for her uncanny tales to years spent on horseback and at the bottom of chilly pools playing underwater rugby. “Watcher,” which first appeared in Weird Tales #359, is her first story in English. It’s a subtle yet stunning portrait of a broken civilization, caught in an unforgiving cycle . . .
1.
If we weren’t confined by the grey walls, they would fall off the edge. There was no choice but to obey the Watcher, to stay inside in the cool, while the Butterflies kept walking along the glittering edge of the disc, day after day, night after night.
I envied the Butterflies nevertheless, their long delicate limbs and quick steps, the smoothness and effortlessness of their movements. Light made their translucent hair and wings glimmer in shades of red, silver, and gold regardless whether it came from the stars or sun. I desired to be one of them, for it was always twilight inside.
The memory of my kind is short, but we knew the herd wasn’t always the same. It was better not to think about it. We were all safe if we just sat on our chairs in the oval-shaped room and pretended to listen.
The dim room was devoid of any details except the two opposite doors, tall and small, each rivaled in darkness only by the other. Me and my kind were forbidden to open the doors, but we couldn’t stop wandering near them or imagining where they might lead. The tall door was locked anyway and only the Watcher could open it. The small one was unlocked and it tempted us all because there was a window above it.
The lanky towering creature that we called the Watcher was always there, observing, asking us to gather around him, always prompting us to listen, but he couldn’t be trusted. He was not one of us. The Watcher smelled different, of unhealed wounds and burnt flesh. His face was hidden behind a metal mesh mask and his body was covered in a smooth silver armor that made his awkward steps creak and click. At rare times he seemed almost gentle and caring, though even then he couldn’t understand the need to see the Butterflies.
Sometimes the Watcher failed in his task. He was just one and we were many. When that happened I would creep with my chair next to the small door where the grey walls threw almost black shadows. If you climbed on your chair and rose to your toes, you could see outside through the narrow window. If the Watcher would still not notice me, that’s what I would do.
The sight blinded me every time, made my heart beat extraordinarily fast with the greatest fear and anticipation. Sometimes the Watcher would notice me just then, lift me down, grasp me by my tail, but if I evaded him, the window would reveal a view to another world.
The Butterflies always walked along the edge of the disc, always the same circular route, day after day, night after night. They of
ten looked sad despite all their magnificence. It might be that they didn’t understand how privileged they were, how free they were compared to me and my kind. They could smell the shades of the wind and feel the sun caress their ethereal faces. They weren’t confined inside grey walls.
But such was the way things were. Me and my kind were destined to sit in the oval room and listen to the Watcher. When he spoke of duty and necessity his voice echoed mechanically from the walls and we didn’t question his words, not anymore. The older ones in the herd said that a long time ago we had, but nothing good had come out of it. The walls had just turned darker and the floor cooler beneath our bare paws.
We did remember Watcher’s warning. He wanted us to understand that we all had our own place and if we would break the balance others would suffer. The Watcher had said that if we weren’t confined by the grey walls, the Butterflies would fall off the edge. We tried to believe him, but the temptation to open the small door and walk outside was greater still.
2.
We all hated each other, though hate was not quite a strong enough word, for we detested everything and our life was full of pain and agony.
We could not quite decide which were worse, the days or the nights. Sunlight made balancing on the hard diamond path easier, but during the days the sun tore at our useless wings and whipped our backs so that we bled and cried.
Yes, the light made our tears glitter, but that was a meager consolation. And the nights . . . the nights were cold and we shivered so much that our hair twisted and danced in strange ways. It was so chilly that our tears froze and dropped over the edge into the black abyss below. It reminded us that one of us had to fall, and that we hated even more.
It Came from the North Page 16