by Bill Etem
Chapter 7. Life in Menzies
They stood atop the hill as Seraphinaria tore her map into seven sections. Seraphinaria and her kids, Jackson, Morgan and Jay-Jay, took a huge district – Seraphinaria didn’t tear the map very carefully! – a huge district bounded by the Merle Oberon Freeway from where it intersects the Jennifer Lawrence Expressway and then over to the Edens and down past the Kennedy, the Eisenhower, the Stevenson, and then down the Dan Ryan until it meets the Jennifer Lawrence, taking then the Jennifer Lawrence back over to the Merle Oberon. Valmyristarsis and her kids: Heather, Jasmine, Hugh and Buddy got the section which was bordered by Lord Curzon Street as far down as Father Coughlin Avenue and then taking the Coughlin as far as John Buchan Place up to Rush Limbaugh Drive and back over to Curzon; Casilevatates and her kids, Jacqueline and Camille, got the section of the city which spanned everything between Admiral Canaris Avenue and William Stephenson Street; Navorrasicaa and her kids, Barb and Curt, got the section which lay between Herschel Grynzspan Avenue, Herbert Lom Boulevard, Richard Johnson Lane, Erskine Childers Street and Igor Gouzenko Parkway; Mirabrasantes and her kids, Luke, Marla and Brent, got the section enclosed by London Drive, Berlin Road, Miami Way and Chicago Avenue; Misevasundia and her kids, Shelby, Mercedes and Jocelyn, got the section between George W. Bush Avenue, Ann Coulter Street and Sarah Palin Parkway; Sevaladelia and her kids, Desiree, Delilah and Dante, took everything in the district between Helen MacInnes Avenue, William F. Buckley Jr. Boulevard and John Le Carré Square; Heliomirabellisima and her kids, Kayla and Guilia, took the entire area between Karla Court, Kim Philby Lane, Lady Macbeth Boulevard, Judas Square, Bill Haydon Street and Guy Burgess Terrace. Katie, Debra and Martha were given the OK to hang together, and Al, who would have the easiest time finding work and an apartment, as most of the Hibernian males his age had been killed off in the interminable wars with Avallonia, was asked to find work and an apartment within a block or two of the prison. Everyone was asked to look for a huge abandoned warehouse somewhere in the city. They could use a place to take the escapees immediately after the breakout; there everyone could be given maps, clothing, knives etc., and directions to the place outside of the city where everyone could meet up again, a place where everyone would then get their provisions, ruck sacks, tents, blankets, cloaks, layers of thick clothing etc. They went over the final details one more time, as the adults wouldn’t see each other again until Saturday, today being Monday. Everyone had to acquire sewing items, needles and thread etc., and big piles of cloth of various fabrics: cotton and wool and leather especially; and acquire food and weapons, but slowly and inconspicuously. They would have to supply perhaps more than 1,000 people with clothing, perhaps there would even be 1,500 Avallonian prisoners who would eventually be sprung. Katie, Debra and Martha, who would have the most free time, would be in charge of making hundreds of cloaks and trousers out of the wool and leather; they would need huge amounts of canvas to make tents and ruck sacks for the escapees. Whether they made their escape through Hibernia or the Krull Republic they would need to have thick cloaks and thick layers of multiple trousers, as this sort of armor, along with having long knives, was the best way to defend themselves from the tigers and the packs of hunting dogs used by both the Hibernians and the Krullites. Well, there wasn’t much they could do against tigers, as one swipe of a tiger’s paw would easily break a woman’s neck, but a warrior woman wearing thick clothing and wielding a long knife could easily slay even the biggest and most vicious dog. How weakened the prisoners were from long confinement was another question impossible to answer. No doubt they would gain strength fast once they had some big meals and got some exercise on the march home. With all of their expenses they might have to pull the kids out of school and have them find jobs also. They would either have to steal or purchase everything required to arm and provision a small army. Everyone was thinking that they would probably end up pulling a heist, holding up a bank or robbing a warehouse to get the material to supply the army. Every adult was also thinking it would be best if they could snatch the kids of the guards on a single day, but this was something they could table for now and bring up at future meetings.
Everyone hugged everyone else as they said their goodbyes. Luke and Debra had sort of an awkward parting. She had made it clear long ago that she needed to find someone older than Luke, still it was a bittersweet parting for both of them. Perhaps she would now have that chance. Trying to appear as inconspicuous as possible, the crowd of over 30 people broke up and descended the hill taking several different routes leading in several different directions.
`Herschel Grynzspan Avenue?’ asked the cab driver. `Where the hell is that?’
`Let me show you where it is on a map,’ said Navorrasicaa, as she took the map from her pocket while her kids, Barb and Curt, looked at the two horses which pulled the cab.
`OK,’ said the driver. `I know that neighborhood.’
`Do you know of an inn in that neighborhood?’ asked Barb.
`Don’t worry kid. I’ll find you one,’ said the driver.
Navorrasicaa got into the cab after her kids. Then driver snapped the reigns to get the horses moving. The morning was clear and bright. The air was invigorating but not too chilly. The city of Menzies sprawled for many miles and they didn’t arrive at an inn until well after noon. Herschel Grynzspan Avenue was a broad thoroughfare which ran the gamut from industrial to retail commercial to wholesale commercial to seedy dilapidation, whereas the nearby Herbert Lom Boulevard was, turn by turn, either trendy and chic or else it was vigorously industrial. Elegant brownstone dwellings, mansions actually, reposed close to huge factories. Navorrasicaa noted a few taverns on some side streets. She supposed it was more than likely that someone who worked at one of those taverns knew someone who knew someone who worked as a guard at the prison. When they got to their room at the inn Navorrasicaa consulted her map of Menzies to locate the closest elementary school. Curt was only 4 but she needed to find an all day kindergarten for him. Barb was 7 so she needed to be in the 2nd grade.
`I don’t want to go to all-day kindergarten,’ said little Curt as the three of them settled into their room at the inn.
`Hell, when I was your age, I had to go to all day and to all night kindergarten,’ said Navorrasicaa. `You kids got it soft.’
`Yeah, you young punks are soft,’ said Barb to her little brother. `I go to all-day school where I spend hour after hour after hour torturing my mind and body with mental and physical exercise, to strengthen and toughen my mind body, so that I can fight and defeat any warrior I meet combat.’
`You can’t remain an uneducated weakling all your life, Curt, dear,’ announced Navorrasicaa.
`I still don’t want to go to all-day kindergarten,’ said Curt. `I’m only 4, and a kid is not even expected to start kindergarten until the age of 5. Try to see things from my point of view for once. First, you’re making me go to school when I’m too young. And then you’re making me go twice as long, every day, you’re making me endure twice as much as what most 5-year-olds have to endure. So there’s a double or even a triple injustice there.’
`A triple injustice you say?’ asked Navorrasicaa.
`Well, where’s the mistake in my reasoning?’ asked Curt.
`Why do I have get up and look for a job tomorrow? And after I find a job why do I have to get up early every morning and go to work all day? Why do I have to feed you, and clothe you, and take you to the doctor when you’re sick? Why do I have to work all day and then come home and get your dinner, and read you stories, and make sure you do your homework, and make sure you don’t screw things up by telling your new classmates who we are and what we’re doing here? Why do I have to worry night and day that we’ll all be thrown into prison sometime soon?’
`As you’re always telling me: “you made your bed and now you got to lie in it”,’ said Curt. `I want to have my cake and I want to eat it too, but I can’t have my cake and eat it too, ca
n I? I can either eat the cake and then I won’t have any cake after I’ve eaten it, or else I can have the cake but I can’t eat it, I can just stay hungry and stare at my cake. Is that fair?’
`Them’s the breaks,’ said Barb as she kicked her feet up on the bed. `I never had to go to all-day kindergarten, but you have to go to all-day kindergarten. I just had to go to half-day kindergarten. So that sucks for you but it’s a big win for me!’
`You can’t know that for a fact. By attending all-day kindergarten, instead of half-day kindergarten, I might be saved from getting run over by a team of horses. Or I might learn something valuable at all-day kindergarten which I would not have learned at half-day kindergarten. So you can’t say for a certainty that it sucks for me.’
`Well then it mostly likely sucks for you.’
`That’s right, it most likely sucks for me, and that’s why I say it is a double or perhaps even a triple injustice.’
`Well, what would you do instead?’ asked Barb. `I’ll be in school all day. Mom will be working all day. When you make new friends at all-day kindergarten they will certainly be at all-day kindergarten all day long. You wouldn’t be happy sitting in this room all alone for half the day. So what are you bitching about?’
`I ought to be playing with friends in the afternoons, going fishing, or going to the park, which is what I would be doing if I went to half-day kindergarten.’
`Well I want you enrolled in all-day kindergarten, so you might as well quit your complaining,’ said Navorrasicaa. `Barb, watch your brother. I have to go apply for jobs and I have to find schools for you two ASAP.’
Barb and Curt stared at the walls for a few minutes after their mom left the room.
`Let’s go over it again, shall we?’ said Barb.
`No! We’ve already been over it a million times,’ said Curt.
`Practice makes perfect,’ said Barb. `Where are you from?’
`A farm in the northern part of the Krull Republic,’ said Curt.
`What was the name of the town closest to your farm? What is the capitol of the Krull Republic? Who is the Krull President? Who is the top Krull general? What sort of farm did you have? What sort of crops did you grow? What happened to your father? What was his name? What were the names of your neighbors on this farm in the northern part of Krull? What was the name of your best friend back in Krull? What was the name of my best friend? What did she look like? Was her hair black? Was she a blonde or a brunette? What about the woman who was our closest neighbor. What was her name? What was the color of her hair? What were her kids names? Describe each of them to me. Describe what our other neighbors looked like. The cops will take us into different rooms and if we give different answers to easy questions like these, we’ll be hanged as spies for sure. What were the names of out neighbors? What did they look like?’
`I forget,’ said Curt with a smile on his face to let his sister know he was joking. `I’ll just play dumb and pretend I lost my wits after I got kicked in the head by a horse.’
`No! I don’t want to be hanged as a spy!’ exclaimed Barb.
`Keep your voice down, the walls might be paper-thin and the neighbors might hear you,’ said Curt. This might seem like an especially shrewd observation for a 4-year-old, but he had been ordered repeatedly to pipe down earlier with the same words by his mother.
`Give me the answers and I won’t need to raise my voice.’
The kids rehearsed their cover stories for a few minutes and then fell asleep exhausted. They woke up when they heard the door slam shut. Navorrasicaa was back from her errand.
`Did you find a job? Did you get us enrolled in school?’ asked Barb.
`We’ll worry about that tomorrow. I needed to get a new outfit or two. What do you think of this blouse I bought? Be honest! Does it make me look fat?’
`It makes you look like a big green banana that’s been bruised a little,’ said Curt, after Navorrasicaa stripped down to her bra and panties and then put on a shiny, shimmering green sweater and her new skirt, a black cashmere knee-length thing that seemed to cling tightly but perhaps not too tightly to her hips.’
`I got some new shoes as well. What do you think of these pumps? They’re cool as hell aren’t they? You kids sure look like dumb hicks with that nasty stuff you’re stuck having to wear - stupid old cloaks and thick wool breaches. You look exactly like what you claim to be: the kids of a couple of pig farmers.’
`When do we get new clothes?’ demanded Barb.
`I don’t know. First you have to be good. Second you have to obey and not give me any of your backtalk. Third you have to be nice to Al. I know he’s not your dad, but your dad is dead, and Al’s the best thing we got round here in the man department, and he’s coming over to take me out to dinner in half an hour. So you better be nice to Al if you want to get out of that pig farmer getup you’re wearing.’
`But Seraphinaria said,’ Barb began, `that we’re not to have any contact with Al, or with any of the moms and their kids.’
`Oh Seraphinaria can just stick it. If Al and me want to get together and have a romantic dinner in a romantic restaurant then I think we are entitled to do so. Seraphinaria can just butt-out. Her orders are like double or even triple injustices.’
`But if she finds out your disobeying orders she can cause lots of trouble for you,’ said Barb.
When Navorrasicaa got back from her romantic dinner with Al, she had some news to tell her kids.
`Al says this prison is an old fashioned sort of fortress. What they do is they put thick iron chains on the prisoners and then they stick them in dark stinking dungeons. They don’t have many guards. They don’t need many guards, or at least they don’t think they need many guards, because they think the thick walls in the dungeon and the iron chains make everything secure. There are no watchtowers, no search lights, no razor wire. Al says cutting through the iron chains on the prisoners is no big deal. He says he can make something that he calls `hardened steel,’ which is made out of iron, nickel and carbon, and with this hardened steel he says he can cut through 1,000 iron chains in less than 2 hours. If he makes 10 cutters then we could be in and out in maybe 15 minutes. So the whole prison break is just a matter of taking control of the main guard house without alerting the cops, and then we can get in and out of there in half hour at the most, assuming we have to free 1,000 prisoners. It will take Al a few days to get the nickel, iron and carbon together, and he needs to find a forge and a blacksmith to make the cutters, four or five will be enough, and then he says we’re almost ready to go. It will take us at least three weeks to amass enough food and clothing for 1,000 people. He says it’s best to make the breakout in broad daylight, on a busy work day, like at 10 am on a Tuesday, when there are lots of carts and horses on the streets. The horses and carts will keep the roads congested so the cops won’t be able to move too fast. We’ll be on foot and we can dodge in and around the carts. There are 11 warrior women counting Katie and Debra but not Martha, who’s not a warrior though she has a commission, and we have to treat her like an officer, up to a point. With Al that’s 12 people who can fight, and Jackson, Desiree and Luke are all pretty strong though they’re terribly young. Anyway, each of the 12 will be leading 12 groups, each group has from 40 to 100 ex-P.O.W.s in it. Each of the 12 leaders will take a different route to the abandoned building. Then each of the 12 takes her group via separate routes to the meeting place outside of town. Then it’s over the back country and home to Avallonia. Who’s going to stop an army of 1,000 people armed with knives in the back country? And spring is almost here so it shouldn’t be as cold as it was before, but if it is cold then that works to our advantage, because we’ll have the clothing and the tents and the blankets to enable 1,000 people or even more to survive in the cold. Al just needs to prove to us that he can in fact cut through thick iron chains as fast as he says he can, and then we have to get the clothes and the provisions and 1,000 long kn
ives ready to go. We’ll be in and out of this city in three weeks at the most. I’m not going to bother sending you to school next week. I’ll have you sewing pants and making cloaks in this room once we get the material. Pretty soon we’ll be looking for a warehouse, something Al can bust into like a cat-burglar on a dark night and then quietly loot it. Al says the best way to get inside the prison is for me to pretend I’m a school teacher leading a class of little kids to visit the prison. We’ll scratch the idea of taking the kids of some guards as hostages; we’ll cancel the idea of threatening to cut their throats. Al says that such threats will lead to reprisals against Avallonia. Reprisals will cut into our popularity back home, and what cuts into our popularity back home will also cut into our profits. There’s also the consideration that Katie or Debra, though they say they are ok with it as long as no one gets hurt, might have other plans if we threaten any kids. The rebelled once because of intolerable treatment of people. Once I’m inside with you kids, the 10 other warrior women will also slip in, and then we take control of the prison, and then Al and a few others go to work on those chains. Anyway it’s time you kids got to bed. It’s a school-night after all.’
`Ah can’t we stay up and think some more about how we’re going to free those prisoners?’ pleaded Barb.’
`On a school-night? Are you crazy? It’s off to bed for you two!’
The weird thing for Curt the next day at school was that he found himself in the same kindergarten class with two other new kids, though he knew them quite well. The teacher made the three new kids stand beside their desks and say their names and announce where they were from. So Curt, Guilia and Dante all had to say they were from farms in the north of the Krull Republic, and they all had to pretend they never saw each other before.
`That’s incredible you’re all from the same part of Krull, and you all show up here, today, in Menzies, and none of you know each other! That’s amazing,’ exclaimed the teacher.
`As they say, truth is stranger than fiction,’ said Guilia.
`I hear they got huge vicious farm dogs all over the Krull Republic,’ said the teacher, a middle-aged, pleasant-looking woman who was addressing her comment to Curt in particular.
`They don’t die easy, ma’am. You got to stab `em a lot to kill `em,’ replied Curt.
Guilia and Dante approached Curt at recess and told him it would look weird if they didn’t speak to each other, if they acted like they didn’t want to get to know one another. Curt agreed with this sort of thinking and then he told the girls about what Al had been saying to his mom the night before.
`I’m glad we’re not going to threaten to cut the throats of any kids,’ said Guilia.
`That would be weird if you became friends with a kid at school one day, and then the next day your mom is holding a knife to his throat, and threatening to kill him if his mom doesn’t cooperate by unlocking some prison doors,’ said Dante.
`If he was your true friend, and not a fake friend, then he would still want to be your buddy even if that sort of thing happened,’ volunteered Curt.
`What do you think?’ began Guilia, `was the teacher rolling her eyes in disbelief when we told the class we were all farm kids from the north of Krull, and we never saw each other before, after we all show up in Menzies for her class on the same day?’
`Most people are too wrapped up in themselves to give it a second thought,’ said Dante.
`If they think we have a deep dark secret,’ began Guilia, `they probably think we have to pretend we don’t know each other because our moms and dads are also the brothers and sisters of each other. Parts of the Krull Republic have a bad reputation for that sort of thing.’
`Wait a second, you’re saying what now?’ asked Curt.
`I’ll explain it to you later,’ said Dante. `You and me should run along and play with those boys over there. It would look suspicious if we hung with this chick all recess.’