Keeping Luna Read online

  She continued.

  “It has recently come to our attention that portions of the civilian population are engaging in trading. This trading, in that it…”

  She was interrupted by another member of the council, a woman about twenty years her senior. “This isn’t new business.” She scoffed.

  “Excuse me?”

  “This isn’t new business. Trading has been occurring since the establishment of the state eighty years ago, and will continue to happen tomorrow, no matter what piece of ‘legislature’...” - she was using the middle and index fingers of both hands to affect quotation marks - “...you happen to pass. We already have anti-trade laws in place that forbid interpersonal trading. These laws are ignored, as they ought to be, by the populace at large, by the local enforcers, and by every person in this room.

  “If a form needed filling out, sending, reading, and responding to, every time someone nudged their toothbrush off the counter and into the toilet, nobody would be getting anything done. No. If you lose your last toothbrush in the can or break a coffee cup, you knock on your neighbor’s door and you trade them a pair of socks or a tin of soup and you replace it.” The woman ceased her rebuttal, very much satisfied with herself for being the one to put this tragic little girl in her place, and was now doing her very best to pierce Geena with a look of resent. A sigh of something approaching laughter filled nearly every seat in the room.

  “IF I may be allowed to finish a sentence…” Geena bit back, stern and assertive, but without coming off as impassioned. “…then I will tell you that no less than a dozen people, or in most instances groups of people, have been engaging in trading in such a manner that they have actually established lines of credit and debt with their fellow citizens. Some have fallen into such a state that they are handing over half of their monthly ration allowance to these creditors, in one form or another. That’s half a dozen cited cases in this city alone.”

  “That’s absurd. If you…”

  This time it was Geena who talked over the elder councilwoman, cutting her retort into mumbles and then silence within the space of a second.

  “They have done this by introducing small, secretive gambling operations into their neighborhoods, often within the high-rises themselves.”

  While talking, she passed the stack of papers to her right and they continued on their way, each board member taking one copy before passing on the remaining pages.

  “Having placed agents within these operations, we’ve learned that citizens are wagering goods and commodities with the hope of increasing their own personal wealth. Inevitably, most end up in the pocket of the creditor, who builds for himself a position of power in the community. Some of these creditors have even been able to buy off local enforcers, effectively becoming more influential, and thus more powerful, than the state. More powerful than us. Is THIS a situation that we should be content to ignore?”

  The older woman across the table from her was looking down at the paper that she had in her hands, and now resembled a beaten dog in her posture. Lamar enjoyed at least this much of the moment, although there was still a very palpable apprehension welled up within him.

  “Very interesting,” the Chairman spoke from the head of the table opposite Lamar. “What is the course of action you are proposing now, Counselor?” His emphasis of the word ‘Counselor’ rang pleasantly in her ears.

  “I wish to propose a Reassign and Relocate for any person caught trading with the intent to build wealth, or with the purpose of either creating or paying off debt.”

  Lamar sighed and closed his eyes for a few seconds before opening them again. There it is, he thought, having now heard the two words he had hoped would not be spoken during this session.

  “I see. Then I suppose a show of hands is in order…” the Chairman was holding his hands out in front of him, and now turned them outwards as if he were opening the top of an invisible cardboard box, gesturing to every person seated at the table. “Those in favor of R’n’R for any individual found guilty of commerce with the intent to build wealth or manage debt?”

  Every right hand in the room was raised, including Lamar’s and that of the older Counselor who had initially opposed Geena’s resolution. She knew now that it would be dangerous for her to prolong her hostility towards this new member of the board. And Lamar knew that not a single proposal for a Reassign and Relocate had been rejected in well over twenty years. Once those wheels were in motion, it was best not to resist.

  “The motion is passed,” the Chairman announced.

  No additional new business came to follow, and every member of the council did their very best to appear casual as they raised themselves from their seats and eyed the door eagerly. Tradition dictated that Geena now stand with the Chairman near the exit and exchange short pleasantries and handshakes with the other councilmen as they made their way out.

  Every councilman had done this at the conclusion of his or her first quarterly summit, and they all would have agreed that there was nothing pleasant about it. Every handshake seemed either too limp or too forceful, and every counterfeit smile was met with another in kind.

  The older woman with whom she had jousted maintained what she believed to be an air of dignity as she offered her impotent hand and mumbled her way past Geena.

  As the last person to make his way through this procession, Lamar shook her hand with alarming vigor for a man of his years, and half-bowed with a more believable sense of respect than any of the others could manage. “Counselor,” he said as his head was ascending from its dip. The word had been the same salutation issued from each board member in passing, also a tradition, and served as a token of recognition that she was now officially one of theirs.

  By the time Lamar had entered the hallway just outside the large assembly room, all of the other councilmen were well out of sight, down halls and around corners and behind closed doors.

  Across the narrow hall stood a young man, with light brown hair that was growing its way over his ears, dressed in black slacks and a white button-up shirt. He didn’t look comfortable in these clothes, and the shirt did nothing to conceal the fact that his upper body, although so slim it could be called wiry, was doughy and undefined.

  Without a word, he pushed the wheelchair he had in front of him out into the middle of the hall and positioned it behind Lamar, who now sat down.

  They had wheeled some fifty meters down the hall and were nearing the elevators when the young man opened his mouth. “Everything went as expected, sir?”

  “Do we speak in the hallway, Gabriel?”

  “No, sir.”

  After taking a sharp left near the elevators, they found themselves walking across the skyway that connected the main government office building to one of its satellites, a twenty-two-story residential high-rise which served as housing for many of the municipal workers who served in and around the Capital.

  They were met with another bank of elevators upon entering this building, and they took one of them to the top floor, remaining silent for the duration of their brief commute.

  Every floor beneath was split up into sixteen separate living quarters, but here on the uppermost floor of this massive building there were only four, and an H-shaped corridor joined the four rooms from the central elevators. Gabriel pushed the wheelchair to his left coming out of the lift, then left again, and then he halted facing room 2201. Lamar rose to his feet unassisted and placed his thumb on the security scanner. Hearing the lock turning over, he pushed the door open and entered.

  “If you won’t be needing me any further, sir, I’ll just be on my way…” Gabriel tried to excuse himself politely.

  “Come in. Leave the chair.” Gabriel knew that this was neither a request nor an offer, so he did as he was told, closing the door behind him.

  “Follow me.”

  The two men walked down the apartment entryway and entered the last of three doors on their left, just shy of the point where the hall opened into an immense, lavis
h living space. As they walked, Lamar began speaking.

  “That new one today… Geena was her name… she did well to make that proposal of hers. If there’s one thing that room can agree on, it’s throwing folks into the grinder.” Gabriel didn’t follow his meaning, but got the feeling he wasn’t really meant to.

  In the room they now moved into there was a modest wooden desk of solid build, and behind that a window. Instead of seating himself at his desk, Lamar slid into one of two soft leather armchairs that sat in front of it. He motioned for Gabriel to take his place in the other one, and noted the extra bit of shine on the young man’s forehead as he sat down.

  “So then….” Lamar began. He sat there, silently studying Gabriel for at least thirty seconds. He could see the anxiety that Gabriel felt in this moment, all nerves and sweat, his knees bouncing around impulsively; and Lamar indulged enough of his own sense of sadism to let this horrible silence persist for much longer than was necessary.

  “So then,” he began again, tempted for a moment to repeat the awful, soundless abuse. “How long have you been working as my aide now, Gabriel?”

  “Six months yesterday, sir,” he responded quickly, anxious to get the dialogue rolling, although still completely baffled and more than a little anxious as to where it might be leading.

  “Six months,” Lamar echoed. “Half a year. And how many times have I invited you into my flat in those six months?”

  “Roughly none, sir. This makes one in a row.”

  Lamar appreciated the phrasing of this response, but did nothing to acknowledge it. He reached across the small coffee table that lay between the desk and the two padded armchairs in which they sat, which were angled more towards one another than towards the desk. On the spotless glass pane of the table was a brown glass bottle with no label, and two short, thick-bottomed glasses. He pulled the cork from the bottle and poured about two fingers into the glasses, which seemed to light up, refracting a hundred shades of rippled swirling amber.

  Placing the bottle back onto the table, he took up both drams and held one out for Gabriel. Gabriel took it and brought it up to his nose, his eyes twitching and nose wrinkling. He coughed from the fumes.

  “Aw, you haven’t even tried it yet.” Lamar laughed, holding his glass up for a toast. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” Gabriel repeated, still hoping that something would somehow save him from having to drink this… whatever it was.

  He brought it reluctantly back under his nose, carefully holding his breath this time, and forced the liquid back in two large gulps before allowing himself to breathe once more. When he did breathe, a more convincing cough erupted from him, and he tried to choke back the tears that accompanied the burning in his nose and throat. He clumsily set the dram back on the table, the sound of glass on glass filling the room for a second before being absorbed by the books on the bookshelves and the rest of the room’s varied decor.

  “HA! Hahaha!” Lamar loved it when he didn’t have to fake a laugh. It seemed such a seldom occasion these days.

  “I never told you to drink it all in one go! Haha!”

  He leaned forward once more, and to Gabriel’s horror began pouring more into his empty glass. Then he sat back, grinning ear to ear, and took a small, controlled sip, letting it work its way over every part of his tongue before finally admitting it down the hatch.

  “Ooh. That’s nice,” he half-whispered, the other half of his voice seemingly taken by the drink. “You have to take your time with it.”

  Gabriel had started to sweat quite profusely now, and felt as though his face were being lit up from within by a low flame.

  If ever there was a better time to start this conversation, Lamar thought to himself.

  “Do you remember when you interviewed for this position, Gabriel?”

  “Yes… but… what was that, sir?” Gabriel was still struggling to speak clearly, and wiped once more at the sweat on his forehead with his fingers, pushing it up into his hairline.

  “Oh, that? Scotch. Thirty year. Strong. Now answer the question.”

  “Huh? Oh yeah. The interview. Yes, sir, I remember.” Control of his tongue was returning to him, and he was feeling just a bit more at ease in his chair, his fingers loosening their stranglehold on the armrests.

  “Good. Now stop calling me sir and tell me, if you can, what I said would be required of you above all else?”

  “Well, you said ‘Gabriel Yakima, what I need most in this place is honesty. Someone I trust, and someone who trusts me enough to be direct and truthful, absolutely.’”

  “Is that my voice you’re doing there?” Lamar smiled. He hadn’t seen Gabriel relax to this degree before. The whiskey was working already.

  “Yes, sir… I mean, yes. Yes, I’m afraid it was.”

  “Not bad.” Lamar smiled. He hadn’t heard anyone try an impression of him since his wife had passed so many years prior. She really had it nailed down. “Yes. I believe that’s what I said…”

  “Verbatim.” Gabriel cut in.

  Gabriel’s memory was normally quite sharp, but he had been so stressed during their first interview that his brain had stored an even more immense heap of input than it normally would undertake to do. He recalled every word spoken. The way the sparse government meeting room had smelled. The position of the hands on the clock behind Lamar. The way his own chest had beat like a kick drum.

  “Yes. Good. But we aren’t there yet, are we, Gabriel? We don’t trust each other as I had hoped, do we?” He desired no reply and kept right on talking, adopting the tone and cadence of a lecturing professor.

  “And how could we? Every day in this world, we are forced to tell a thousand small lies, although the brunt of them are just omissions. But an omission of the truth is just as good as a lie, is it not? There is dishonesty in withholding, and we are taught to withhold quite a bit. It is a matter of survival. So let me be clear; I do not expect that you be truthful outside of our meetings. Actually, I don’t recommend it all. It would be unsafe, to say the least.”

  Gabriel nodded, knowing there was more to come.

  “But while we are together, and behind the safety of my doors, we will be absolutely honest with one another. It’s the only way this will work. And this has to work, so I will be the one to get the ball rolling. Let’s start with a question, a very simple question. Look at me now. What do you see?”

  “Well…”

  Gabriel had taught himself many years back to say “well” in place of “uh,” in order to sound less clueless than his classmates had whenever they attempted to respond to a teacher’s question.

  “Drink. Slowly, this time.”

  Gabriel took his glass up from the table and braved it once more, taking a tiny nip at it and hoping his head wouldn’t explode this time. He felt different, and in a manner that he couldn’t quite define. Fuzzy. His head did not explode, and though his nose was full of fumes once again, he was able to tame the moment.

  “Good. Now talk.”

  “I see… a man. A leader of men…”

  “Now you’re just bullshitting me. Take another drink and try again.”

  Another sip. Gabriel almost felt like he enjoyed the taste.

  “I see an old man. A tired man. Lonely.”

  “Yes. A decent start, if not obvious. I can take over from there.“ Lamar brought the dram to his thin pale lips again and then continued, his speech filled with borrowed heat.

  “You see a miserable lump of knobby flesh that has lived more years on this planet than he ought’ve. You see a relic, an artifact that no museum desires. I am the oldest man in this Nation, within all the realms of this towering empire. I had a mother, and a father, and a brother, and am the last to be able to say such. I am the only one remaining of the original Twenty-Five, and the last to remember its once noble aspirations.

  “I will now tell you a story, or rather begin one. If I told you everything now, you would end up in an institution.

  “Eighty-two years
ago. Jesus. Eighty-two years ago I was nineteen, a programmer in the Marine Corp of the United States of America. You know of America? You’ve read whatever it is we wrote about it in those books?”

  “Yes,” Gabriel replied, remembering to omit the word “sir” this time.

  “Well forget what you read. I’ll tell you. It was once a very great land indeed. Some made habit of saying it was the greatest, but those tended to be the people who never left its borders... or did so within the confines of some insulative vessel, such as the military, as was true in my case.

  “But it seemed that the more we insisted on our greatness, the less we worked on its foundation, as if greatness were something to be born with, something to inherit, instead of something to be worked for. And I was just as guilty as the rest. Just kept waving that flag.”

  Lamar was pleased to see Gabriel taking a pull from his glass without provocation. “It’s not too bad, is it?”

  “It might be the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.” Gabriel’s eyes looked slightly blurry, and he was smiling an easy smile.

  “Ha! Don’t get caught saying that in front of your partner! Haha! But you might do well to take it slow. This stuff has a history of putting people on the floor.”

  “But aren’t we breaking the law?” Though he posed the question in earnest, Gabriel wasn’t really too concerned about the answer. Not at that moment.

  “Absolutely. We are. The prohibition of alcohol is one of the few restrictions we made that I agree with fully in an objective light. It damages the body and the mind, both in the moment itself and well after, if you keep it up. And the social havoc… you couldn’t imagine. Viewed subjectively, though… recreationally… it can be a lot of fun.”

  Lamar was also feeling it now. His lips were loosening, equally content to lean towards either a smile or conversation. He continued.

  “And right now I believe the consumption of single malt scotch whiskey, in moderate to large quantities, to be totally necessary, Gabriel. We both have some walls to take down, and I don’t know of a better way. Now, where was I?”