Veracity

by Laura Bynum

  I shake my head. "No." The wastelands had me worried about our worth. About mine. I smile and Lilly joins me.

  "In the beginning was what? Come on, now, they've made sure you know your Confederation Bible. Tell me what it says in the Book of John, chapter one, verse one."

  "'In the beginning was the Word.'"

  "'And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' It's with the revocation of the word that we lost our country. And, by God, it's with the word we're going to get it back!" She pats my arm. "We're the linguists! The language people, the cultural intercessors! This is the Holy Grail of critical thinking right here beneath your feet! We're the ones who'll be able to explain the nature of this country's imprisonment to its prisoners! Seeing as a good number of the people we're fighting to free will be fighting us, it's a pretty important post, don't you think?"

  I blink. "Yes."

  "Do you know what number we are on the government's most-wanted list? Two! Right here in Bond sits the number two most-wanted group, after the Streator crew. And that's just because they're a bunch of techno-geeks that have already hacked into the system."

  "Two," I repeat. I had no idea.

  We're that important, and unbeknownst to Jingo Skinner. Amazing.

  "Lilly, what is it we're going to do? I mean, what is it we're going to be?" I ask quickly. Before we get buzzed down to wherever.

  Lilly's smile shines in the dim light. She's been waiting for this question. "We're going to form a new government. One with elections and checks and balances. Those who represent us will be of us, see? We're going to yank out those goddamned plutocrats, theocrats, and autocrats and reestablish a democracy where the government is only so large to serve the needs of the least of our people and only so personal to allow for freedoms as outlined by the Constitution. I'm talking about the old Constitution, now. The one with a Bill of Rights!"

  We're going to be the next government. And I'm going to be a part of it. The news distracts me. I lose some of what Lilly's saying.

  "Oh, and Jingo shot Ezra's dog." Lilly shakes her head, whispering, "Don't tell Ezra. She loved that dog no matter what she likes to say."

  There's a piping of static overhead. Ezra's voice is filtered through the noise. "Protocol, please."

  "Sojourner," Lilly says. "Now open the door!"

  Sojourner. It's a word I've never heard before. It sounds like a spice. Something one sprinkles over soup.

  Lilly steps down and I follow thoughtlessly. Like a child, without a backward glance. Just below me is the shiny edge of a step that falls off into an abyss. I hadn't anticipated the absolute blackness. The portal door closes behind me and even the step's white edge disappears. My foot dangles over eternity. I could make one false move and be dead on a concrete floor. The thought prompts another--I could survive these stairs and be down here indefinitely. I forgot to look back, savor the small bits of sunlight coming through the kitchen blinds. And now it's gone, until.

  Down goes one foot, finds a board, then comes the other. It's pitch-black. Like stepping into a hole. I could close my eyes and it would make no difference.

  "Watch your step, now." Lilly's taking the stairs fast. She knows each and every one of them. "There's a turn to the left down here. Follow the handrail."

  I put out my hand, swallow loudly. Thank you, Jesus. There's the cold metal bar she promised.

  Lilly hears. "You okay?"

  "Fine," I lie. Step onto a new surface, this one concrete. We're down thirty feet, maybe forty.

  The stairs end in a cavernous dark. It collects my breaths and echoes them back to me, providing no hint at its depth of field. Lilly has moved on ahead so I wait. I can sense people out there I can't see. They're watching me and seeing me. Hearing me in my breathy panic. It's like standing on a stage, the audience beyond a black maw. I wait for someone to collect me and set me on mark. To introduce me. Attach a microphone to my shirt. Point me toward the camera's red light.

  "Ladies!" A black form is coming toward me. By the look of the stride, it's a man. Without meaning to, I back up, thinking he's going to run me down. But he moves deftly past. Heads for a panel of television monitors behind me, stacked beneath the stairs. "Did we secure the front door?"

  Lilly answers from somewhere out in the blackness, "Yes, Noam."

  "You know why I'm asking?" He turns around and I see his features in the blue light of the screens. He's around Lilly's age, in his sixties, has a long nose and no hair to speak of, although on him, the two qualities are attractive. He's my height, five feet eight inches, and is built like a bull with rounded shoulders that pull at the seams of his sleeves.

  His eyes catch me in the act of staring at his arms. I can't imagine how he's stayed so fit while living underground. "Who are you, again?" he asks.

  "Harper Adams!" Lilly answers, suddenly next to me. She takes me by the hand and pulls me over to where the man stands. "She's our Monitor! Don't you recognize her?"

  "Sorry." He smiles apologetically and turns back to Lilly. "Did we get the door shut?"

  "Yes, Noam! I got the door shut!"

  He talks to Lilly while thrusting a large palm my way. "You know why I'm asking. We can't have another incident like last week with Jingo just wandering in." He turns back to me and smiles over our shaking hands. "Nice to meet you . . ."

  "Harper!" Lilly supplies.

  "Harper! Yes! Nice to meet you, Harper." He gives me a smile and I accept his firm shake.

  "Nice to meet you, sir."

  "Noam Feingold." He reaches out and wraps a hand around my bicep, measuring, grunting. "You've been training?" he questions.

  I grow red, thankful for the dark. "Yes."

  Noam crosses his arms in the physical act of study. Taps a finger thoughtfully against his lips. "No recent illness? You've had your shots?"

  Before I can respond, Lilly answers as if she'd been with me at all my appointments, "She's up to date on her immunizations but does tend to get run down easily. She had appendicitis last year. Gets sinus infections and flu bugs." I must make a noise, some small protest. Lilly looks over and pats me on the shoulder. "It's okay, dear. We're not going to kick you out for being puny." She turns back to Noam. "Now, I've already talked to Patsy. She'll have a full panel done when we've been seated in Wernthal, but Harper will have to be shipped to Marietta." She says this as if I were a parcel.

  "To the CDC?" Noam seems mollified, like myself. "Jesus, Lilly! She doesn't have the plague!"

  "The Centers for Disease Control is the only modernized facility we'll have functional for at least six months!" Lilly replies. "I'll need her for at least two full days of testing so you'd better make sure the council knows!"

  "Testing?" I interrupt their back-and-forth.

  Lilly nods. "Allergy testing, a full thyroid panel, the basic heart regime, not that I anticipate anything. I'm sorry you couldn't have had this done earlier, darling. You were watched too closely. Tests like these would have seemed suspect. You're too important to go without a checkup."

  You're too important to go without a checkup. What Lilly means by this is, You're too important to go and die on us. It makes me smile. I like this woman immediately, with her light blue veil of honesty and even the sporadic sparks of impatient orange. She's absolutely without guile. Someone I can trust.

  "What about her headaches?" Noam asks.

  My headaches? I've only been to the physician once for headaches that are really migraines. I vomit. Lose portions of my vision.

  "I'm quite sure they're hormonal. She's tremendously irregular." Lilly nods.

  How do they know about that?

  Lilly puts a hand up to my face. Strokes my cheek. "I believe you're polycystic, dear. It's why you don't ovulate regularly. It's too bad I couldn't have gotten you that little bit of information from here. Those bastard doctors out there now . . ." She leaves off. Shakes her head. "We'd have had you pregnant again in no time." I realize with a shock that she's talking about the few years after Devon and I
had Veracity when a second conception eluded us.

  "Were you a doctor, Lilly?"

  She blinks at my question. "I'm an anthropological linguist! But down here, it's not like it is up there. We're too few in number to be pigeonholed in one field of study. Underground, we all wear multiple hats. I can deliver babies, hotwire a car, and teach you the English language. It's different for each collective. It depends on what textbooks and other training materials we find. We keep all of them."

  "We have a sort of interlibrary loan system." Noam smiles like a proud father. "We digitize our books. Send them out on flash drives. The whole resistance participates."

  The whole resistance. I wonder about the number, how many separates constitute a whole. Turn to Lilly and ask instead, "How many babies have you delivered down here?"

  She smiles. "Twenty-four. But we don't have the facilities we need. Seventeen survived. Twenty of the mothers." The smile fades for a moment. But then Lilly sets her eyes across the room, on a woman standing with a young man, and it returns. "Ben and Mary Dean. She's our first pregnancy in seven years." I can see a moderate bulge beneath the woman's high-worn skirt. She's five or six months along. And in love with her husband, who's in love with her. Every time they touch, the air between them ignites.

  "What do they do?"

  Noam answers, "Mary is our seamstress, and in charge of keeping an inventory of our living supplies. Ben is a computer technician and a backup runner."

  Lilly takes me by the arm and walks me toward a crowd of waiting people while she talks. "We smuggle families with children over to Springfield, where we have physicians who can provide them immunizations and better health care. You should see it there! It's ten times as big as this bunker and just full of kids. Wonderful! They're like little generators of hope."

  Noam turns me toward the crowd. "Sorry to interrupt, but we have a few people waiting to meet you."

  Forty or fifty sets of eyes stare back at me from the near and far ends of the long space. Men and women, young and old, with every color skin and every color hair. All are watching me intently. Not one of them has said a word since I've been here. And with a room this size, anything, a whisper, would have echoed.

  This basement world must run eighty feet long and be the width of the house and surrounding fields above it. The floor tells the tale of its progression: the portion closest to the pantry is poured concrete, the next a composite of paving stones and brick, the next tamped down earth. Zigzag posts have been erected to support the low ceiling that runs forever. If I were to wake here in the middle of the night, I'd think they were apparitions. Women and men set on posts, stooped in the act of holding up this underground world.

  Lilly prods me with a finger. "Introduce yourself."

  I swallow. "Hello. I'm Harper. Adams."

  Lilly leans in to whisper. "Not everyone's been following your recruitment, dear. Tell them a little something about yourself."

  I straighten up. Start again. "I've been a Monitor for over two decades. I'm divorced. I have a daughter, Veracity. She'd be eleven years old now. She's the reason I'm here."

  The audience is watching me intently. Soaking in my every word. They're staring at my clothes. My dirty hair. Some of them slide forward to touch my hands. Some thank me for making this choice.

  "Protocol requires us to give you a formal introduction, but there are forty-seven of us," Noam says. "And within the next few weeks, there will be hundreds. Try to remember first names and areas of expertise only."

  Lilly interrupts. "There's more to it than that!"

  "She's not going to remember more than that!"

  "She should at least know field numbers!"

  Noam acquiesces. "Okay," he says, turning to me. "Let me give you an example. I'm Noam Feingold. I was a college professor of American history in the town you know as Roslyn. History, by the way, is the word that means a record of important events . . . of all the things that have come before. America is what this part of the world used to be called . . ."

  America?

  ". . . and those of us living in America were referred to as Americans."

  Americans. I cringe. Another name taken away.

  "Now," Noam continues. "I'm married to Lilly Bartlett here and have been slate-free for sixty-two years." He pulls down the collar of his shirt and shows me his bare neck as proof. "I hid out here in Bond after the Pandemic and happened to meet Lazarus. He brought me down here. Saved me, really."

  I can't take my eyes off Noam's sixty-two-year-old skin, marbled by time and youthful sun, but without a slate or even a scar. Beautiful.

  "You forgot the field number," Lilly says.

  Noam rolls his eyes. "I'm ranked seventy-second on the field list. I'm going to be a senior judge on the Checks and Balances Board."

  Most of this means nothing to me. I ask the question I hope will be easiest. "What's a field number?"

  It might have been the easiest question but, from their faces, I see it's not the easiest answer.

  "The field list ranks our most important people into the hundreds of thousands," Noam says. "The closer you are to number one, the more guards you get when it's time to take the field."

  Lilly slips her hand into her husband's. "Everyone on this list will have a role in the new government. We'll be serving in it, creating it, teaching our new world about it. Your number on the field list directly correlates to how integral your role will be to the new government's success."

  It's a scary thing to consider. I wonder what number I've been assigned and Lilly can tell.

  "You'll have plenty of guards." She smiles, uncoupling herself from her husband. "I'm Lilly Bartlett. I was a linguist at a university in Joad and am married to Noam Feingold. I broke my slate thirty years ago and rank sixty-eighth on the field list. I am to serve on the Board of Expression and the First Amendment Council and will focus on reconstituting language. I'll be working closely with you, Harper."

  "Adams!" Ezra yells from somewhere farther back. I turn to find her patting the empty seat of an aluminum chair that's been dragged out into the middle of the space. Behind it, walls just high enough to provide the barest privacy create separate rooms. They remind me of the cubicles that fill the Murdon Building and aren't much bigger. In place of doors, dowel rods have been stretched across the openings and sheets of canvas hang to the floor. They're tiny spaces in which to live and work. About a fiftieth the size of my home.

  I take a seat on the aluminum chair and face my audience.

  "Name, rank, position. That's all," Ezra whispers, giving me the same advice as did Noam, then disappears.

  The people queue up in a single line, become a vein that runs all the way to the stairs and halfway back again. Most of their skin, regardless of color, is ashy and pale. Lilly tells me that despite supplements, they're all suffering from vitamin deficiencies. It explains the purple bands beneath their eyes. The sallow skin.

  Those at the head of the line are older. The younger set has fallen back to give their elders first go. I listen to their ranks, from number two to the hundreds, and note the tasks they're to perform in the new world. Chief Counsel of the Health Advisory Board. Chief Architect of something called the Internet. Lead Researcher on the Semantics and Symbiotics Council. Principal Advisor to the Board of Economic Recovery. Chief, Principal, Lead, Head. Titles that come up with rhythmic regularity. All suggesting important roles I've never heard of.

  Their pre-Pandemic jobs are varied. I don't bother to commit them to memory. Lilly tells me it's been like living inside a university. That some of the smartest people in the world are standing in line waiting to meet me. And I'm the only one sitting. I'm glad Ezra isn't here to watch them shake my hand and shuffle by. It's a strange relief when the younger set begins their introductions and the field numbers climb well into the thousands.

  This community is split almost evenly between those who do and those who don't have slates. Some necks reflect the dim light like sand, some like water. Some were br
ought here to hide years ago when the Confederation began killing nonconformists. Others were late additions, having been slated against their will and having chosen to run. Each person is a revelation. The things they've given up astounding. I'm overwhelmed and without the proper words. Need to know what this is I'm sensing in these people, need the words so I can tell them what I admire before they walk away.

  "Lilly, what makes them do this? What's the word?"

  Lilly looks at me. "What do you mean? What makes who do what?"

  "What makes people give up what's easy for what's right?" There's no word in the Confederation of the Willing that fits.

  "Courage," Lilly says, her face turned toward the crowd. The word has to wind its way around her turned body to reach me. "It's called courage."

  I use this descriptor for every person thereafter. Each time, my eyes water, my voice breaks. It's insufficient. Like using the word bright to mean the sun.

  After so long, Lilly cuts in. "Let's stop for a while. You need to use the restroom?"

  I nod.

  I'm escorted to the farthest corner of the bunker, to a room made up of three walls and a canvas door. The toilet is a hole in the ground with a place marked for one's feet.

  "You know where to find us when you're done." Lilly motions me in, then leaves.

  I put my hands against one wall and bend over until my upper body is horizontal. I want the tears to fall straight off my face so they don't leave a trail.

  These people have lived too much of their lives in a squalid basement masked by the stench of filth. I stand there, bent, leaking onto the soil for only a few moments. I won't keep these people waiting. They've been waiting long enough.

  When I come back to the main room, the line has dwindled to ten or fifteen people. Gangly twenty-year-olds standing idly, scratching their elbows and hands. Softly, they give me their name, rank, jobs--past and future, their palms that feel like they've been crafted out of sandpaper.

  "It's the work," Lilly whispers, holding up the line with her explanation. She says these kids with no parents, no concept of freedom, no memories to buoy them up, get the worst duties. Tearing down trees with their bare hands. Tending gardens hidden between rows of tall thistle.