Veracity

by Laura Bynum

  The men's feet are heavy on the wood floor. Each clunk of their hard-soled shoes, loud. They swallow up the sounds I'm making as I scoot toward the space beneath the old bed. Every exertion brings bile up into my throat, but by the time their feet stop in the kitchen, I'm halfway there.

  "Skinner, if I have to tell you to go out to the car one more time . . ."

  "What? What are you going to do?" The Blue Coat named Skinner is walking around in circles. "You're not my superior."

  "Am until October."

  "Fuck October!"

  The other man doesn't respond. I imagine him to be tall with a face set in a permanent frown. He scares me more than the petulant one. The quiet ones are usually worse.

  Skinner's stomping feet conjure an image of a narrow man with a pointy goatee and an upturned jaw. "You know that was a bullshit call!"

  "Doesn't matter." The quiet man is pacing back and forth. I can't tell which way he's going. Maybe into the room above the kitchen, the one hiding behind a door and a set of corner stairs, or maybe toward me.

  I lift my head and feel the room tilt violently. I throw up into my mouth, press my hands to my lips. They're only two rooms away.

  "Goddamnit, Gage!" Skinner is yelling up the corner stairwell. "Let me at least check out the bedrooms!"

  I can barely make out Gage's response. "You really think she's going to be waiting for you in the bedroom?"

  "Oh, she's waiting." Skinner laughs but there's nothing like humor in it.

  I stop listening. With great effort, I kick out a leg and wag it back and forth, clearing off as much of the dust as I can before pushing myself under the bed. It's a wasted effort. I've left them a direct trail.

  "She's not going to be in the house!" Gage has come down from the room above the kitchen. His voice is much closer, much stronger. "Now get out there and check her goddamned car!" For a big man, he's light on his feet. He's already all the way across the first floor, just outside my door.

  "If she's not here, why are we checking the house?" Skinner has moved up next to him. "She broke three hours ago!"

  "Exactly my point."

  "Exactly my point. It was three hours ago, John! Just three hours ago!" Skinner is right in front of Gage. I can see the man's shoes from under the bed, five feet beyond my own. As I'd imagined, he has short, narrow feet. "Nobody breaks slate and runs that fast!"

  Gage grunts and pushes the man away. "She was a Monitor, Jingo. You think she wouldn't know what's coming?"

  "From what I've heard, running isn't high on their priority list for at least twenty-four hours."

  Gage's voice shifts, affects disdain. "Why are you so hot for this? What's going on with you?"

  Skinner shifts from one foot to the other. Takes a cautious breath. "You think I need help. Don't you? You think I need fucking help!"

  "I think all of us need help. It's the nature of the job."

  Softer and with the hesitation of embarrassment, Skinner continues. "I think about it all the time," he says, stepping left foot right, right foot left. "501A. 501B. 458. 482. Christ, man." Skinner is on the verge of crying. Shift, shift, shift. I imagine one of his fists knotted up and stuck in his mouth. "I dream about it, even. I wake up and all I want to do is go out and bust somebody just so I can call a number on them, you know?"

  "You want my opinion, you were doing exactly what you were supposed to do to that girl. It was a Book of Noah infraction, for Christ's sake! What if that kind of talk started up again?" Gage's voice gets louder as his indignation grows. "You were charged by the Confederation of the Willing to deliver those numbers! It's what we do to keep the peace! Think about it! What would it be like if the average citizen got the idea that that kind of talk was a possibility? It would be chaos! If bullshit like what happened with that girl didn't happen once in a while . . ." He stops. Shrugs. I can see his trouser cuffs lift. "Who knows?"

  Skinner exhales. "Yeah."

  "Now, you get what I'm saying?"

  "Yeah." Skinner clears his throat. "But how can we do these things during the day and then go home at night and, I don't know . . . be normal? You know? How do you turn it off?"

  "You get the hell out when you're told. That's how. You listen to the cop on patrol with you." Gage's tone has changed. It's become almost soothing. "Go see that girl you like. Ezra."

  "I don't know . . ."

  "I got this. Go."

  Skinner hovers quietly for a moment, then pushes through the squeaky front door and starts his car. But he doesn't drive away. Instead, he turns off his car and sits there inside. I wonder if the Blue Coat named Gage has even noticed. I doubt it. He's just come into the room.

  I can see the toes of the man's shoes ten inches from my hand. Wet bits of mud are caked around the heels. The leather's been scarred in the latticework pattern of someone who climbs through ditches to run people down. He walks toward the closet and stops. He's looking at my daughter's picture taped under the doorframe, has had to bend his knees.

  The light begins to flicker. Gage's shoes become black blobs that float toward me from the closet. My foggy mind wants to stretch out a finger and find the curled loop of his shoestring and pull him to me. Maybe he would hold me first before he raped and then killed me. Maybe I'd find it in myself to keep from begging for mercy. The thought of a few seconds of shared humanity is enticing. Maybe for a moment the two of us will remember that we'll be held accountable for each other's welfare when we get to Heaven or wherever it is I'll find God waiting.

  The black shoelaces unravel and out slips a long leather tongue. Then the tongue rescinds and a single hand is placed flat on the floor, then the other. Down comes a face. It's in frame and then out.

  Time drifts a little. A new face is looking at me. The lips open and deliver a squeaky voice that confirms my suspicion.

  "Who do we have here?"

  It is not the deep-voiced Blue Coat named Gage anymore. It's his partner. The one with the narrow feet and the trembling voice. Something about him wakes me up, and puts me on edge. He's feral. Reminds me of a fox. His hair is short, a reddish brown, and his fair skin is reddened by thoughts of what he'll be able to do to me. The numbers he'll be able to call. He can use his fists, his teeth, his sex. If he's been granted a Special Use permit, his weapons. A knife. Maybe even a gun.

  "Gage!" he shouts, smiling. "We caught her!"

  This Blue Coat is anxious. Before he can get to me with his body, his colors crawl beneath the bed and fill up every square inch of space. This man's aura is a cloud of noxious gray and pulsating red. It even has a scent of mold. Of rotting fruit.

  "Move out of the way, Junior Partner." Gage kneels down and the other man's smelly gray cloud rescinds, and, with it, the smelly Blue Coat.

  The two argue for a moment about who has dibs. The Blue Coat named Gage appears to be the other's superior and, as such, has rights to me. He reminds the other Blue Coat named Skinner that they share a district and will therefore have to work it out. Or one of them will go to a far worse place, if that can be imagined.

  "And it ain't going to be me, partner," Gage says.

  They continue to debate in louder voices and then Blue Coat Gage appears under the bed.

  Oh, Candace.

  There is the stubbled chin and the taut lips. The wide-set dark eyes the color of moist earth. The slightly long, wavy hair.

  Oh, Christ, help me. It's the man who killed my best friend.

  Gage's face rolls in and out of focus, like a tide. But, even so, I'm sure it's him. He smells the same as I remember from my office. Of musk. Of exertion and fatigue. Even without the scent and the eyes and the too-long hair, I'm doomed to know him forever. Even when he's a corpse, all bones and empty sockets. It's the man who killed Candace. The Blue Coat who shot her a few feet from Mr. Weigland's office on the Murdon Building's hundredth floor.

  Gage stares into my wide eyes, and for a moment, there is no discernible expression on his face. Nothing other than the mildest look of surprise. An
d then, without warning, I'm yanked out from under the bed. Lifted off the floor and slammed against a wall.

  "Leave her in one piece, man," Skinner says glibly, not meaning it.

  I can't see this man. My face has been taken between Gage's hard fingers. He's turning my head from side to side, studying me. Grunting. He's just another bitter Blue Coat so bored with the gruesome trivialities of his job, he resents the effort it will require to rape and dismember me. As fatigued as I am by my break, I refuse to give in so easily. With all I have left in me, I draw up my knee quickly and catch Gage in the crotch.

  "Jesus Christ!" he howls, but doesn't let go.

  Success boosts my energy, so I kick at Gage's Achilles' heels according to the instructions provided in one of my recruitment letters. While he's jumping from one foot to the other, I use the blade edge of my hand on his neck.

  "You want me to jump in there?" Skinner is laughing from somewhere behind his partner.

  Gage shoves me hard against the wall. "She's my collar! My punitives!"

  Skinner stops laughing and walks into my peripheral vision. I catch a glimpse of his sharp, darting eyes. "Hey, man! I found her! That means you're sharing numbers, goddamnit, and I'm going first!" He walks closer and puts a hand on Gage's shoulder. "I'm not kidding, John! You know good and goddamned well I don't do seconds!"

  John Gage is holding my wrists so hard, my hands have gone numb. I turn my head and catch his angry retort in my left ear. "I'm the Senior Officer here, Skinner! That makes her my collar! Deal with sloppy seconds or get the fuck out of here!"

  For just a pause, Gage loosens his grip and I'm somehow able to slip away. I make it to the living room and almost to the kitchen. At the threshold, I'm spun around. Caught with his outstretched hand and hung out on the end of his arm the whole way back to the bedroom.

  "I'm not going anywhere!" Skinner follows us as we move. Once we're back where we started, he stands at the end of the bed, complaining as I'm pushed down on top of the yellow comforter. "She's my fucking collar! I have rights!"

  "Then stand there and watch, but shut the fuck up, will you?"

  As Gage rears back to yell something else to his partner, I sit up and begin to struggle against him. He gives me the smallest push and I'm sent an inch into the yellow comforter. Breaking my slate has left me too weak to continue this fight, so I fix my gaze on the ceiling and think about my daughter. It's unimaginable, the things I've given up, and for nothing. For more of the same.

  "She's a Monitor, for Christ's sake!" Skinner is yelling.

  "Keep it up and I'm going to report you for obstruction of punitives!" Gage shouts. "Get the fuck out, Skinner, or shut the fuck up! It's one of the two!"

  Skinner is livid. He's begun to pace back and forth at the end of the bed. The pacing stops only when my trousers are yanked off and flung across the room, followed shortly by my panties. "'Any and all officers present may take part in punitive actions against a rogue Monitor'!" he quotes. "And seeing as I don't do seconds, you're keeping me from my due service! Maybe I should report you for obstruction of justice!"

  Gage ignores the other Blue Coat. He unbuckles his trousers and leans forward, pressing both his hands against my own. "Whatever, asshole." And with that, he makes a surging motion that takes us both an inch or two up the bed. But there is no contact. No penetration. "Stand there and give me a play-by-play if you like." Gage grunts, pretending at a satisfaction he doesn't feel. "It's up to you."

  "Goddamnit, Gage!" Skinner shouts.

  Gage ignores his partner's frustration, then starts thrusting again in a new way. This time holding on to my legs so I can't avoid the most intimate tangle. We are a mockery but Skinner's been taken in. The other Blue Coat's mind sees what it wants to, but there is no rape here. No violation other than the hot abrasion of John Gage's legs against mine.

  Gage turns his full attention to me, reciting my punitives as his thighs scrape against my own. "Harper Adams. You're being served the following Confederation codes: 501A, 93B, and, if I have the strength for it, 878. The hour is roughly 1700 and we're at the farmhouse located at 2050 North Province Road just outside Bond."

  Pop. A button comes off my blouse and rolls across the floor. It stops on Skinner's boot, paused in the doorway.

  "She's my collar," he whines.

  "Then stay. But let me tell you something now." For the first time since my back hit the bed, I turn my face toward my attacker and see Gage's frown. He watches me as he talks to his partner, contrition all over his face. "No cop with an obstruction of punitives charge will be able to keep a partner. Not even out here in the sticks. And no partner, no badge. It's your choice, big mouth."

  Gage's eyes are drawn. A line has formed down the center of his forehead and exclamation marks punctuate the outer corners of his lips. It's an expression that says, Don't be afraid of me. With it comes another shove, another grunt. Another foot moved up the bed, the two of us locked at the hips. I try to turn my head and he quickly looses a hand and forces my face back to his. Play along now.

  "Jesus Christ," Skinner pouts. He's about to give up.

  I do as told. Struggle. The next jolt is stronger. It hurts my thighs and, for a million reasons, I begin to cry.

  "You going to finish up soon, or what?" Skinner's voice is a blend of bitter and sweet. He's somewhere between pouting and needing to mend fences with his superior officer.

  "I'll be finished when I'm finished. Now shut up."

  "You'll do her, then? Finish her off?"

  "Yes, yes," Gage agrees, and without another word, Jingo leaves.

  As soon as the front door slams, we stop moving and wait like this, coupled. Hitched at the groin. I can hear Skinner's squad starting through the left-open front-porch door. Then the sound of his tires on the gravel drive.

  Gage is staring down at the tears collected in my eyes. I look away and they slide across my cheeks.

  "You okay?" he asks.

  I don't remember answering. All I know is that a weight lifts off my hips, and then I'm gone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  JUNE 14, 2045. MORNING.

  Every morning I leave Veracity with a neighbor who gets her to the bus stop. I make the drive to work and eat my breakfast of a plain bagel with a cup of black coffee while waiting for the security guards to show up.

  From the air, the capital city of Wernthal looks like a fallen moon. A disk smashed flat into the Confederation's east-central hills. Its round outer layer is all road, a ribbon of cement wide enough to keep the surrounding woods at bay. The center is a contrast of spikes and bumps. A cleat made up of diminutive office buildings and skyscraping monuments to President and his Ministers. The largest building in Wernthal is the Geddard Building, headquarters for the nation's Blue Coats.

  A massive hunk of cement around which roads have been bent, the Geddard Building doesn't draw the eye or reflect the sun. The windows are small and blacked, the doors made of something metal that can't be broken through or knocked down. It isn't pretty because pretty doesn't communicate the right message. It covers three city blocks and has rooftop vents that belch waves of heat into the oily air. We're made to drive around it as a daily reminder of the hundreds of thousands of policemen working there. Some of them living there. They are ever present because of what's locked up tight in the basement: the redactors. These machines control all uploads and downloads. Gathering everything we say and do, documenting everywhere we go and distributing all freshly Red Listed words to the slates implanted in our necks. There are tens of thousands of redactors, referred to as slaves, uplinked to the one master. The key to our slates has been stored in a room a third of a mile long by a third of a mile wide forty or fifty feet beneath an infestation of Blue Coats.

  President's residence is the National House, the oldest building in the Confederation, boasting the largest patch of domesticated grass. It's retained more of its original character than most buildings are allowed because, as President likes to say, he has a softness
for the beforetime. The National House, its adjacent gardens, and the surrounding business district are all considered a part of National House Square. Twelve blocks by twelve blocks, it boasts the most colorful streets in the country. Here, rules about the aesthetic are relaxed. President's gift. A little magenta, a little green, a little purple. Colors rarely found anywhere else.

  The tented rooms used by prostitutes are cherry red. There's one on every corner. Inside, male and female prostitutes provide a variety of sexual services for so many credits each. According to the All Equals Law, every citizen aged eighteen and up has equal access to all government-sponsored products and services. It's supposed to mean there's no adult these sex workers can turn away, though files of this nature have crossed my desk a time or two.

  The prostitutes are heavily costumed, or sometimes nude, whatever best expresses their sexual style. Each wears a corresponding red sash that runs from one side of the neck to the opposite hip. Customers wait outside for their turns, smoking cigarettes and drinking alcoholic beverages purchased from vending machines. They're unconcerned who sees them queued up between the velvet ropes. It's custom in the Confederation. Men wave as their neighbors pass. Women talk to one another about recipes and cleaning supplies, then disappear through the front door and come back out again, pink-faced and smiling.

  In between the prostitutes' quarters are small tents set up by the state clergy. Purple and green, they serve as counseling offices and Occlusia dispensaries. Inside, one of the Confederation Pastors delivers the approved word of God to those needing a little recap between Sundays. If there's an honest-to-goodness God's man in residence, these movable churches also dispense compassion, sanity, and hope. As with any other profession, quality varies. Like with the prostitutes' quarters, people tend to go where there's a line.

  I don't visit either. As far as I'm concerned, both are designed for the same purpose. To sedate us. Or sate us, if just for a little while. President says it's not his preference, this safety-driven life we lead. If it weren't for his Ministers and all their research as to what's healthy for us and what's not, he'd allow us more to do than drink ourselves blind and fuck ourselves limp. This campaign has worked. I've grown less hateful toward President, even knowing what I do. And harder toward his twelve bug-eyed compatriots, who not so many years ago had real duties that mapped to real titles. Minister of Appropriations. Minister of Governmental Affairs. Minister of Tracking and Data. Now they are simply Minister Thomas. Minister Abbott. Minister Hawthorne. There is no separation of anything anymore. It is a blend, our government. A chocolate malt giving ridiculous orders. I'm amazed we've made it this far.