On their way to Kara’s place, Ember gave one of the wristbands to his sister and tried, rather half-heartedly, for he was tired, to instill it with some symbolic value. Maggie was pleased with the gift and giddy with the anticipation of a late-night talk with her brother, which she at last resolved to have.
Their conversation, however, was not to be that night, for when the group arrived at Kara’s place, there was a scrawny, rat-like boy—perhaps just barely in his teenage years—perched on the steps.
“Davis? What are you doing here?” Kara asked, apparently addressing one of the lower down revolutionaries, whose soles duty it seemed was to pass along news to other, higher ranking members.
“I have good news and I have bad news,” the pip-squeak boy said, with a voice resembling his physique.
“Let’s do the good news first,” Sven said.
“Daryl’s retuned,” he said, moving his hands together and clawing at his lips with rat-like motions.
“What?! Really?! How?!”
“That’s wonderful!”
“What’s the bad news?”
“The bombings have started up again.”
Chapter 15: He Returns
The next day Sven, Kara, Maggie and Ember, skipped their usual morning meeting with Styles. They elected instead to go directly to one of the revolution’s secure outposts to discuss Daryl’s return with other revolutionaries. Davis, and his twin sister—an equally rat-like creature, by the name of Evangeline, with a long, pointed nose and beady eyes—guided them to the station. There was not much in the way of conversation along the way. When they arrived at the complex—a small dark seminar room, buried under the dirt and enclosed by a hidden, heavy, bolted, steel door—they were greeted by Davis and Evangeline’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Rutabaga.
Mr. Rutabaga was a small pallid, balding man with large ears, one of which had a small piece torn out, and a protruding nose, under which lied a frail, withering mustache which, one imagined, he over-groomed, perhaps as compensation for his receding hairline. His hunched back only magnified his small stature. Mrs. Rutabaga was equally mouse-like, but more so in behavior than in appearance. Her wild, wiry, and unwieldy hair only reinforced her frantic, vigilant behavior. Her face was also pale, but had, in the middle of its cheeks, a faint reddish blush. They were traditionally dressed, he with a sweater vest, khakis, and large-framed glasses, and she with a long flowery dress.
Their children huddled under Mrs. Rutabaga’s arms. Bending down to embrace them, she pulled them closer, as if protecting them from predators, and glared at the group, as if insinuating that they had put her children through danger.
“All is not well,” Mr. Rutabaga practically hick-uped. “Something is not right here… I don’t like this one bit… not one bit…”
“Daryl is here?” asked Kara.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Rutabaga with a frantic fervor, “He is in there.”
“Will you be joining us?” Sven asked.
“Oh no,” Mrs. Rutabaga shrieked, bringing her children closer. “I think it’s time that we finally took the family to the Northern edge of the B-Z… at least until this storm blows over… We have done our part.”
“I don’t like this one bit,” Mr. Rutabaga said, nodding his head meekly. He seemed incapable of talking above a whisper and was humbly, almost apologetically, submissive in tone and equally affected in manner. “Something is not right here.”
“The password,” she said to the group, her red cheeks flaring up as she spoke, “is ‘conflagration.’” She huddled her children with one hand and grabbed her husband’s with the other, “Come on children, let’s go! Come on!”
“Mrs. Rutabaga?” Kara asked, “will I see you again?”
Her face turned grave. “I do hope so. You are a nice girl, Kara. I remember helping your parents watch over you when you were just a child. You have become a fine woman… Do be careful, Kara.”
“Sometimes, it’s best to be concerned about your own self-preservation,” Mr. Rutabaga added cryptically. “This doesn’t have to be your fight.”
“Come on children, let’s go.” And with a quick scurried movement, the rodent family left.
“Cowards,” Ember remarked after they left.
“It is not yours to judge,” Kara rebuffed. “Do you have children? You don’t know where they are coming from. We all have our own decisions to make… We all come from our own perspectives… never forget that.” Ember felt small and ashamed but offered nothing in the way of an apology.
***
Around the table sat twenty-four revolutionaries, perhaps half of which were old, bearded men. They had come, so they explained, from various districts across the Buffer Zone. Some claimed to represent a larger group from elsewhere, while others said that they were loners. Bradbury, relegated to a seat of seeming insignificance, sat with his head propped up on his hand. Next to him was a tall woman, by the name of Mira, with dread-locked hair and a dirty face. Presently she addressed Daryl, who was sitting on the other side of the room.
“And how did you escape… logistically speaking?”
Daryl was a man in his low forties, but appeared much younger. He ran his fingers through his coarse black hair, “I escaped from the same place where I entered. I made a small burrow under their wall, about half way between their north-east and south gates.”
“You could find it again?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“It was that easy? You just burrowed underneath the walls?” an elder man asked incredulously.
“Yes, it was that easy.”
“And why have you returned after having risked so much to enter in the first place? Have you accomplished what you set out to accomplish?” Mira asked wisely.
Daryl rose to his feet, as if to begin an emotional testimony, “We were right. It is as bad as you think. There are no liberties. Everything, from words to thoughts are controlled. The inner ranks cannot be infiltrated, especially not by an outsider. These people are hardly human any more. They operate on a complete day-to-day basis. They have no thoughts outside that of the party’s. They have no families. No hope. No ambition. No emotion beyond hate for Auctoritas and love for the party leader, which they call alternatively, The Supreme Leader, The Eternal Leader or Father. The commoners, with whom I resided, are not watched closely. They are allowed to have families and mostly, when they are not mining for ore, pass the time with drink.”
“If I am not mistaken,” a foul-smelling gentleman asked, “you originally went to Imperium with the hopes of becoming one of the inner ranks… to assist with non-violent evolution and, perhaps, provide insider information should the revolution ever breach their walls… by these measures was your trip not a failure?”
“Like I said, the inner ranks cannot be infiltrated. It is something you are born into… But the commoners… I know how they think… I know how they feel… I return to you now, not to announce my failure, but to announce a success.”
“Success?!”
“Success,” Daryl repeated. “Ladies and gentleman, the revolution is upon us. In two weeks time we will be a freed people!”
“By what means?”
“To what ends?”
“The commoners,” Daryl argued, “dislike the Eternal Leader as much as we do. They are a great sleeping power, waiting to be re-awakened. They do not even know about the Buffer Zone. All they need is a reminder of what life should be like and then they will join us. Of this I offer my most solemn of guarantees. They will join us! On this I give my word! My life! My honor!”
“And what would you have us do.”
“Talk to the commoners. Convert them… They will rise up.”
“How.”
“We all go in at once,” Daryl said boldly. “And we go in unarmed.”
“Hogwash!” shouted Bradbury, pounding his fist on the table.
“That’s insanity!”
“What?!”
“Why?”
“You have to thin
k about this from their perspective. It seems counterintuitive, but I assure you that this is the only way. The commoners are a paranoid people,” Daryl explained.
“Understandably so,” chimed a woman.
“If we go in with arms, they will construe us as the enemy. Remember, we are talking about an extremely isolated demographic. They have no knowledge of our existence. To them, there is only their government and that of the enemy. They are easily frightened… We need to be careful about how we introduce ourselves.”
“That’s madness!” Bradbury shouted. “You expect us to go in without weapons!”
“Your weapons,” Daryl assured, “are nothing. What do we have? Some swords? Maybe a few bombs? Make-shift mortars? It’s nothing. They have guns… a trained and well-fed army of police. Computer-assisted machinery.”
“Computers?!” someone cried disbelievingly.
“Yes. Computers. And lasers too.”
“Lasers?!”
“Yes. We stand no chance if we fight them head on. Our best weapons are our own voices.”
“Which is why we need to strike and then flee… create terror and intimidate by mystery. It is the only way!” Bradbury argued.
“No. The only way is to convince the commoners,” Daryl said defensively.
“And why should we all go in at once? It risks too much.”
“We only have a narrow window for this to work. When I first arrived, people did not believe me… they did not understand the B-Z, nor the freedoms we have. They were intrigued… but they did not believe me. They did not believe that a better life existed elsewhere… but some of them… I could see their faces turn… I could see the hope return to their faces… Now that the rumor of my existence has festered, the people are primed to believe. That is why we need to act now. No more than two weeks. But… there is a downside to this… we no longer have the luxury of surprise. The rumors have, by now, made its way to the government… we will, therefore, not have much time when we arrive. Should we only send one, two, or even twenty-four revolutionaries to stir up spirits, the revolution will be brutally suppressed before it even gets off the ground. We need to reach the threshold. Once reached, the movement will snowball, and there will be no way for anyone to stop it. Furthermore, if we go all at once, the commoners will have no choice but to believe us. Now is our only chance.”
“You expect us,” a wise woman challenged, “to send all of the revolutionaries into Imperium? All at once? Un-armed? And what if we should fail? What then of the revolution?”
“I know it’s hard to believe. I know it’s counterintuitive… but this is our only chance. In the best-case scenario, we come in, convert and rally the masses over night, and accrue defectors from the middle ranks the next day, and accept the government’s surrender that night. Worst case scenario… we fight and lives our lost… if we fail, we will be round up and publicly executed and/or tortured. Our actions, will, however, not be in vain. It will live in the memories of the commoners. Not even the Eternal Leader can expunge those types of memories. So too, in our homeland of the B-Z will our memories live on. New revolutionaries will take our place. They will know of our sacrifices all will be emboldened by it. If we die, we will die for an ember… but even the smallest of embers can grow into great fires!”
“This is preposterous!” Bradbury cried.
“That as it may be,” Mira said, seemingly sympathetic to Daryl’s argument, “We should consider his advice. Daryl, how long do we have?”
“I told some of the people that I would return in a week’s time… I wouldn’t wait more than two weeks.”
“The only way we can win is to disorganize!” Bradbury shouted, his face red with anger, “Create chaos! It is the only way to defy the status quo!”
“Representatives,” Mira said, addressing the crowd, “Do you think you can organize your constituents in two week’s time?” A few nodded, while others offered their hearty assents. “We should then, return to our groups and at least begin the motions. In the rare case that we go through with this plan, we will be ready. We should leave it open as a possibility. We can discuss the merits of the plan, and decide whether or not to go ahead with it on a later date. For now, we should start spreading the word.” There was some disquietude amongst the audience, but most, even some of the more vocal critics, eventually agreed to start the process as a contingency.
“Daryl,” Kara said abruptly, catching the rest of the revolutionaries off-guard, “there is something you should know. Ember and Maggie… Here come on… stand up…” Kara tugged on Ember’s shirt. Feeling a bit out of place, he was slow to rise. His sister followed soon after, equally hesitantly. “They are from outside of the Underground.”
Daryl’s eyes widened. He looked around at the other revolutionaries, all of whom had already known for more than two weeks. He gathered, by the way that the others stared at him, that they awaited his response and from this he surmised that their origins had already been taken as fact. Daryl grinned for a transient moment and then seemed to gag on his own tongue. He closed his eyes, and gulped to gather his thoughts. “We will need you to convert the commoners. You are, now, more than ever, vital for the cause.” Though Maggie had witnessed a great many deal of responses, Daryl’s struck her as uncomfortably contrived.
“And what of the bombs?!” Bradbury reminded. “Fifteen people were injured yesterday in the downtown district of Matsi.”
“You don’t suppose,” Sven said aloud, motioning for Maggie and Ember to sit down, “that there is any connection to the fake bombings at the rave a few weeks ago, do you?”
“I doubt it. The rave was nothing more than a prank,” opined one of the quieter men. What followed was a raucous debate amongst the revolutionaries. Though there was by no means a consensus, most ended up taking the position that the events were somehow related.
“And who is responsible for this?”
“It must be Imperium or Auctoritas!” Bradbury said convincingly. “They are trying to destroy the revolution. This is why we cannot be meeting like this. If we spread out we will be immune to their efforts. We are vulnerable in this concentrated form.”
“Or,” said another man, “perhaps it was an opposing revolutionary party… one that wants to overthrow the establishment but not to open the Gate.”
“I heard,” said a man who seemed to be reciting a very distant and tertiary-sourced rumor, “that the Abyssians are planning to rise up and make a third state of their own.”
“Hogwash!”
“They essentially already have their own isolated state… no one goes down there… not even Imperium’s Police.”
“They do not have the means.”
“And how do you know? No one knows how deep the Abyss goes. For all we know there can be tends of thousands of them… waiting… sitting… and waiting…”
“That is nothing but childhood rumors. The Abyssians have made it perfectly clear that they don’t want anything to do with our affairs. So long as we leave them alone, they will leave us alone.”
“Have you seen them? They are hardly human!”
“Jericho! That’s irrelevant!” one man chastised.
“I know… but still… their eyes are so small… and their skin so hairless… I have seen one, you know?!”
“No one cares… back to the issue of the bombs.”
“It is from Imperium,” Bradbury reassured, his face redder than ever. “And, I suspect, if we should meet again like this, a bomb will be our fate. We must separate!”
“Give it a rest Bradbury!” came an ostensibly omnipresent voice.
“No! I am trying to save the revolution here! You need to listen to me! You will see! You will all see that I am right! And when you do… you’ll come crawling back to me!” Bradbury got up violently, proceeding to the exit. On his way, he whispered angrily to Maggie and Ember, intending for Kara and Sven to hear as secondary targets, “You have set the revolution back one hundred years.”
Though neither
Maggie nor Ember was bothered by his words, it did seem to affect them in other ways. For one, it marked the first time that a revolutionary had lamented their arrival. It also seemed to signify a transition in their relationship to others—no longer were they strangers deserving of pampering. They were regular revolutionaries now, with nothing more than their unusual origins to their names. Maggie and Ember felt uncomfortable with the new roles. They did not want to give their opinions on revolutionary matters—they had no opinions to offer. They felt their celebrity status slipping away from them.
***
After the meeting, which continued for another meandering hour, they walked over to Sven’s basement to inform Styles about the news. Ember and Maggie were so exhausted and overwhelmed by all the new information that, when they plopped down on the couch, they initially failed to notice that it was Luna, and not Styles who was tending to the plant.
“Where is Styles?” Kara asked.
“Don’t know,” Luna responded.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?!” Sven exclaimed, becoming the first one in the bunch to find alarm with the situation.
“I don’t know where he went. He didn’t tell me. How was your day?” Luna asked, innocently unaware of the growing concern brewing in others.
“Wait a minute… what?” Kara said, just now suspecting something bad.
“You were here the whole time, right?” Sven interrogated further.
“That’s correct.”
“So you saw him leave?”
“Affirmative.”
“Did you ask him where he was going?”
“Yes.”
“And?” Sven was quickly becoming annoyed with Luna.
“And… he said he didn’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s it? You didn’t press him for answers?!” Sven said, no longer hiding his frustration.
“Nope.”
“And why not?!”
“He said he didn’t want to talk about it.”
Revolution in the Underground Page 19
