Coriolanus felt a new sense of threat rising up inside him. He’d tried to shrug off Sejanus’s misguided behavior in the Capitol, but here it was different. Here he was viewed as an adult, and the consequences of his actions could be life or death. If he helped the rebels, he could find himself in front of a firing squad. What was going on in Sejanus’s head anyway?
On impulse, Coriolanus opened Sejanus’s locker, removed his box, and slid the contents onto the floor carefully. They included a stack of mementos, a pack of gum, and three medicine bottles prescribed by a Capitol doctor. Two appeared to be sleeping capsules and the third a bottle of morphling with a dropper built into the lid, much like the one he’d seen Dean Highbottom use on occasion. He knew Sejanus had been medicated during his breakdown, Ma had told him as much, but why had he brought these here? Had Ma slipped them in as a precaution? He flipped through the rest of the contents. A scrap of fabric, stationery, pens, a small chunk of marble crudely carved into something that might be a heart, and a pile of photos. The Plinths had annual portraits taken, and he could map Sejanus’s growth from infant to this past new year. All the pictures were of family, except an old photo of a group of schoolchildren. Coriolanus took it to be one of their class, but no one looked familiar, and a lot of the kids were dressed in rather ill-fitting, shabby clothing. He spotted Sejanus, in a neat suit, smiling pensively from the second row. Behind him towered a boy who he took to be much older. On closer inspection, though, the pieces fell together. It was Marcus. In a school photo from Sejanus’s last year in District 2. There was no record of his Capitol classmates at all, not even Coriolanus. For some reason, this seemed the greatest confirmation of where Sejanus’s loyalties lay.
At the bottom of the pile, he found a thick silver frame holding, of all things, Sejanus’s diploma. It had been removed from its fine leather folder and transferred to the frame, as if for display. But why? Sejanus would not in a million years hang it on the wall, even if he had a wall to hang it on. Coriolanus fingered the frame, tracing the tarnished metal, and flipped it over. The back panel seemed slightly askew, and a tiny corner of pale green paper peeked from the side. That’s not just paper, he thought grimly, and slid the fasteners to free the panel. As it popped off, a stack of freshly minted bills spilled to the floor.
Money. And quite a lot of it. Why would Sejanus have brought so much cash to his new life as a Peacekeeper? Would Ma have insisted? No, not Ma. She seemed to feel money was at the root of their misery. Strabo, then? Thinking that whatever his son encountered, the money would shield him from harm? Possibly, but Strabo usually handled the payoffs himself. Was it something Sejanus had done on his own, without his parents’ knowledge? That was more worrisome to think of. Was this a lifetime of allowances carefully squirreled away for a rainy day? Withdrawn from the bank the day before his departure and hidden in his picture frame? Sejanus always complained about his father’s habit of buying his way out of trouble, but had it been ingrained from birth? The Plinth method of solving problems. Passed down from father to son. Distasteful but efficient.
Coriolanus scooped up the cash, tapped it into a neat stack, and flipped through the bills. There were hundreds, thousands of dollars here. But what use would it be in District 12, where there was nothing to buy? Nothing, anyway, that a Peacekeeper’s salary wouldn’t cover. Most of the recruits were sending half their paychecks home, as the Capitol provided almost everything they needed, short of stationery and a night at the Hob. He supposed the Hob had the black market, but he hadn’t seen much to tempt a Peacekeeper once the booze had been bought. They didn’t need dead rabbits, or shoelaces, or homemade soap. And even if they did, they could easily afford it. Of course, there were other things you could buy. Like information, and access, and silence. There were bribes. There was power.
Coriolanus heard the voices of his returning squad. He swiftly concealed the cash in the silver frame, being careful to leave one tiny corner of green visible. He repacked the box and stored it in Sejanus’s locker. By the time his bunkmates rolled in, he was standing over Ma’s boxes with his arms spread wide, wearing a big grin and asking, “Who’s free on Saturday?”
As Smiley, Beanpole, and Bug tore open the boxes and unpacked the treasures within, Sejanus sat on a bed and watched with amusement.
Coriolanus leaned on the bunk above him. “Thank goodness for your ma. Otherwise we’d all be flat broke.”
“Yes, not a penny between us,” Sejanus agreed.
The one thing Coriolanus had never questioned was Sejanus’s honesty. If anything, he’d have welcomed a little less of it. But this was a bald-faced lie, delivered as naturally as the truth. Which meant that now anything he said was suspect.
Sejanus smacked himself on the forehead. “Oh! How did the test go?”
“We’ll see, I guess,” said Coriolanus. “They’re sending it to the Capitol for grading. They said it could take awhile before I get the results.”
“You’ll pass,” Sejanus assured him. “You deserve to.”
So supportive. So duplicitous. So self-destructive. Like a moth to a flame. Coriolanus started a bit, remembering Pluribus’s letter. Wasn’t that what Dean Highbottom had kept muttering after his fight with Coriolanus’s father all those years ago? Almost. He’d used the plural. “Like moths to a flame.” As if an entire flock of moths were flying straight into an inferno. A whole group bent on self-destruction. Who was he referring to? Oh, who cared? Drugged, hate-fueled, old High-as-a-Kite-Bottom. Better not to even wonder.
After dinner, Coriolanus put in his first hour of guard duty at an air hangar on the far side of the base. Paired with an old-timer who immediately dozed off after instructing him to keep an eye out, he found his thoughts fixating on Lucy Gray, wishing he could see her, or at least talk to her. It seemed a waste to be on guard, where clearly nothing ever happened, when he could be holding her in his arms. He felt trapped here on base, while she could freely roam the night. In some ways, it had been better to have her locked up in the Capitol, where he always had a general idea of what she was doing. For all he knew, Billy Taupe was trying to worm his way back into her heart at this very moment. Why pretend he wasn’t at least a little jealous? Perhaps he should have had him arrested after all. . . .
Back in the barrack, he penned a quick note to Ma, praising the treats, and another to Pluribus to thank him for his help, then to ask him about getting strings for Lucy Gray. His brain tired from the test, Coriolanus slept deeply and awoke already sweating in the hot August morning. When did the weather break? September? October? By lunchtime, the line from the ice machine extended halfway around the mess hall. Slated for kitchen detail, Coriolanus braced himself for the worst but found that he’d been upgraded from dishes to chopping. This would’ve been a welcome change had he not been assigned the onions. The tears he could live with, but he became increasingly concerned about the smell that radiated from his hands. Even after an evening of mopping, it still drew comment in the barrack, and no amount of scrubbing erased it. Would he be reeking when he saw Lucy Gray again?
Friday morning, despite the heat and his unease around the Citadel scientists, he felt a certain relief that he’d be dealing with birds that afternoon. Though unlikable, they left no noticeable odor. When Beanpole collapsed during drills, the sergeant had his bunkmates haul him to the clinic, where Coriolanus took the opportunity to get a metal can of powder for a heat rash that extended across his chest and under his right arm. “Keep it dry,” the medic advised. He had to suppress the impulse to roll his eyes. He’d not been dry, not one moment, since he’d arrived in the steam bath of District 12.
After a lunch of cold meat-spread sandwiches, they bounced along in the truck to the woods, where the scientists, still sporting their white lab coats, awaited them. Just as they teamed up, Coriolanus learned that Bug, lacking a partner on Wednesday, had been working in tandem with Dr. Kay. She’d been so impressed with his agility in the branches,
she’d requested him again. It was too late to switch partners, so Coriolanus followed her group into the trees, hanging as far back as he could.
It was no use. As he watched Bug carry a newly baited cage up into the first tree and swap it with one holding a captured jabberjay, Dr. Kay came up behind him. “So, what do you think of the districts, Private Snow?”
He was trapped like a bird. Trapped like the tributes in the zoo. Fleeing into the trees was not an option. He remembered Lucy Gray’s advice that had saved him in the monkey house. Own it.
He turned to her with a smile sheepish enough to acknowledge her nailing him but amused enough to show he didn’t care. “You know, I think I learned more about Panem in one day as a Peacekeeper than I did in thirteen years of school.”
Dr. Kay laughed. “Yes. There’s a world of education to be had out here. I was assigned to Twelve during the war. Lived on your base. Worked in these woods.”
“You were part of the jabberjay project, then?” asked Coriolanus. At least they’d both had public failures.
“I headed it,” said Dr. Kay significantly.
A major public failure. Coriolanus felt more comfortable. He’d only embarrassed himself in the Hunger Games, not a nationwide war. Perhaps she would be sympathetic and give a favorable report to Dr. Gaul on her return if he made a good impression. Making an effort to engage her might pay off. He remembered that the jabberjays were all male and couldn’t reproduce with one another. “So these jabberjays, they were the actual birds you used for surveillance during the war?”
“Mm-hmm. These were my babies. Never thought I’d see them again. The general consensus was they wouldn’t last the winter. The genetically engineered often struggle in the wild. But they were strong, my birds, and nature has a mind of its own,” she said.
Bug reached the lowest branch and handed down the cage holding the jabberjay. “We should leave them in the traps for now.” It wasn’t a question, just a remark.
“Yes. It may help reduce the stress of the transition,” agreed Dr. Kay.
Bug nodded, slid to the ground, and accepted another fresh trap from Coriolanus. Without asking, he made for a second tree. Dr. Kay watched approvingly. “Some people just understand birds.”
Coriolanus felt, unequivocally, that he would never be one of those people, but surely he could pretend to be for a few hours. He squatted down beside the trap and examined the jabberjay, which chattered away. “You know, I never quite grasped how these worked.” Not that he’d made any effort to find out. “I know they recorded conversations, but how did you control them?”
“They’re trained to respond to audio commands. If we’re lucky, I can show you.” Dr. Kay pulled a small rectangular device from her pocket. Several colored buttons protruded from it, none of which were marked, but maybe age and use had worn the markings away. She knelt down across the cage from him and studied the bird with more affection than Coriolanus felt befitted a scientist. “Isn’t he beautiful?”
Coriolanus tried to sound convincing. “Very.”
“So, what you hear now, this chatter, it’s his own. He can mimic the other birds, or us, or say whatever he likes. He’s in neutral,” she said.
“In neutral?” Coriolanus asked.
“In neutral?” He heard his voice echo from the bird’s beak. “In neutral?”
Even creepier when it’s your own voice, he thought, but he gave a delighted laugh. “That was me!”
“That was me!” the jabberjay said in his voice, and then began to mimic a nearby bird.
“It was indeed,” said Dr. Kay. “But in neutral, he’ll move on to something else quickly. Another voice. Usually, just a short phrase. Or a snatch of birdsong. Whatever catches his fancy. For surveillance, we needed to put him in record mode. Fingers crossed.” She pressed one of the buttons on her remote control.
Coriolanus heard nothing. “Oh, no. I guess it’s too old.”
Dr. Kay’s face, however, wore a smile. “Not necessarily. The command tones are inaudible to human beings but easily registered by the birds. Notice how quiet he is?”
The jabberjay had fallen silent. It hopped around in its trap, cocking its head, pecking at things, the same in all ways except its verbalizing.
“Is it working?” asked Coriolanus.
“We’ll see.” Dr. Kay hit another button on her control, and the bird resumed its normal chirping. “Neutral again. Now let’s see what he’s retained.” She pressed a third button.
After a brief pause, the bird began to speak.
“Oh, no. I guess it’s too old.”
“Not necessarily. The command tones are inaudible to human beings but easily registered by the birds. Notice how quiet he is?”
“Is it working?”
“We’ll see.”
An exact replica. But no. The rustling of the trees, the buzzing of the insects, the other birds, none of that had been recorded. Only the pure sound of the human voices.
“Huh,” said Coriolanus, somewhat impressed. “How long can they record for?”
“An hour or so, on a good day,” Dr. Kay told him. “They’re designed to seek out forested areas and then are attracted to human voices. We’d release them into the woods in record mode, then retrieve them with a homing signal back at the base, where we’d analyze the recordings. Not just here, but in Districts Eleven, Nine, wherever we thought they’d be of value.”
“You couldn’t just set microphones in the trees?” Coriolanus asked.
“You can bug buildings, but the forest is too large. The rebels knew the terrain well; we didn’t. They moved from place to place. The jabberjay is an organic, mobile recording device and, unlike a microphone, it’s undetectable. The rebels could catch one, kill it, eat it even, and all they would find is an ordinary bird,” explained Dr. Kay. “They are perfect, in theory.”
“But in practice, the rebels figured out what they were,” said Coriolanus. “How did they manage that?”
“Not entirely sure. Some thought they saw the birds returning to base, but we only recalled them in the dead of night, in which they’re virtually impossible to detect, and only a few at a time. More likely we didn’t cover our tracks. Didn’t make sure that the information we acted on could have had a source other than a recording in the woods. That would’ve brought suspicion, and even though their black feathers are an excellent camouflage at night, their activity after hours would be a clue. Then, I think, they just started experimenting with them, feeding us false information and seeing how we reacted.” She shrugged. “Or maybe they had a spy on the base. I doubt we’ll ever really know.”
“Why don’t you just use the homing device to call them back to the base now? Instead of —” Coriolanus stopped himself, not wanting to seem like a whiner.
“Instead of dragging you out in this heat to be eaten alive by mosquitoes?” She laughed. “The whole transmission system was dismantled, and our old aviary seems to store supplies now. Besides, I’d rather have my hands on them. We don’t want them to fly off and never come back, do we?”
“Of course not,” Coriolanus lied. “Would they do that?”
“I’m not sure what they’ll do, now that they’ve gone native. At the end of the war, I released them on neutral. It would have been cruel otherwise. A mute bird would have faced too many challenges. They not only survived but mated successfully with the mockingbirds. So now we have a whole new species.” Dr. Kay pointed up at a mockingjay in the foliage. “Mockingjays, the locals call them.”
“And what can they do?” asked Coriolanus.
“Not sure. I’ve been watching them for the last few days. They’ve no ability to mimic speech. But they have a better, more sustained ability to repeat music than their mothers,” she said. “Sing something.”
Coriolanus only had one song in his repertoire.
Gem of Panem,
Mighty city,
Through the ages, you shine anew.
The mockingjay cocked its head and then sang back. No words, but an exact replica of the melody, in a voice that seemed half human, half bird. A few other birds in the area picked it up and wove it into a harmonic fabric, which again reminded him of the Covey with their old songs.
“We should kill them all.” The words slipped out before he could stop them.
“Kill them all? Why?” said Dr. Kay in surprise.
“They’re unnatural.” He tried to twist the comment so it sounded like it came from a bird lover. “Perhaps they’ll hurt the other species.”
“They appear to be rather compatible. And they’re all over Panem, wherever jabberjays and mockingbirds cohabited. We’ll take some back and see if they can reproduce, mockingjay with mockingjay. If they can’t, they’ll all be gone in a few years anyway. If they can, what’s one more songbird?” she said.
Coriolanus agreed they were probably harmless. He spent the rest of the afternoon asking questions and treating the birds gently to make up for his callous suggestion. He didn’t mind the jabberjays so much — they seemed rather interesting from a military standpoint — but something about the mockingjays repelled him. He distrusted their spontaneous creation. Nature running amok. They should die out, and die out soon.
At the end of the day, though they found themselves in possession of over thirty jabberjays, not one mockingjay had been caught in the traps.
“Perhaps the jabberjays are less suspicious, given that the traps are more familiar to them. They were raised in cages, after all,” mused Dr. Kay. “No matter. We’ll give them a few more days and, if needed, we’ll bring out the nets.”
Or the guns, thought Coriolanus.
Back at the base, he and Bug were chosen to unload the cages and help the scientists position them in an old hangar that was to be the birds’ temporary home. “Would you like to help us care for them until we take them back to the Capitol?” Dr. Kay asked them. Bug gave one of his rare smiles in assent, and Coriolanus accepted with enthusiasm. Besides wanting to make a good impression, it was cooler in the hangar, with its industrial fans. That seemed better for his heat rash, which had flared up impressively in the woods. At least it made for a change.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Page 38
