Revolution in the Underground (21 page)

“Is everything okay down there?” shouted Mrs. Helsinki from above.

For a moment, no one answered out of awkwardness.  “Everything’s fine Mrs. Helsinki,” Kara shouted back at last.

“Okay dear, play nicely.”

Ember and Sven looked down at the ground.  They felt too embarrassed for Styles to look at him directly.  Styles had lost his composure and it was readily apparent that he had, at least momentarily, let his emotions triumph over his reason.  While this, in and of itself, was by no means a crime, it would forever taint his representation as a calculating, rational leader.  Never again, Maggie felt, would he have the same aura.  Something was lost by his outburst, and everyone seemed to recognize that. 

Even Styles seemed to regret his eruption.  He straightened his shirt, ran his fingers through his hair, and breathed in to regain his composure.  “Sven, tomorrow I will need you to come with me and help me lift something.  Maggie, I want you to take this dagger.  Luna, you will stay with me tonight.  Tomorrow we will begin the next phase.”  Styles looked at Maggie with some uncertainty and handed her the dagger.  She received it with disbelief and even greater hesitancy.  “Now go!  Get out of here.  I don’t want to look at any of you.”
              “You want me to go too?” Luna asked, standing up to join the rest.

“No,” he said with great frustration.  “You stay...  Everyone else goes.”

As Ember went towards the exit he inquired from Kara, in a whispering tone, whether or not they should inform Styles about Daryl’s return.  Kara shook her head, and Sven, agreeing with the decision, gently pushed Ember out of the room. Maggie, who intentionally lagged behind, waited for the rest of the group to go up the stairs before approaching Styles.

“I said that I only want Luna here.  Leave now!” he said rudely.

Although Maggie did not have the best impression of Styles, she couldn’t help but find him more likeable as the result of his outburst.  She empathized with his vulnerability.  His failed attempt to restrain his emotion and the subsequent cathartic release of it reminded her of the Ember of old, and the memory softened her heart and made her nostalgic.  Furthermore, she was hit by a wave of calm kindness not all that uncommon after a brief, soothing nap.  All this combined to give her a more favorable view of him.  “You know what I think?” she said.

“No, and I don’t care.”

“I think you could have escaped but just chose not to.”  He did not answer.  “I think you stayed for us.  I think you have a heart.”

“You’re wrong.  I didn’t do this for you…  It’s just… It can’t be left unfinished.”

Maggie walked out with a smile, gripping her new weapon tightly as she left.

              When Ember awoke the next morning, he was alone with his sister in Kara’s living room.  He knew from last night that Sven had to go with Styles to pick something up, but he could not account for Kara’s disappearance.  They had never been left alone at Kara’s place before and, for some reason, he found this desertion more vexing and more curious than Sven and Styles’ mysterious mission.  Not wanting to wake his sister, who just now rolled drowsily onto one side, Ember crept quietly into the kitchen to search for Kara.

             
There was a faint muttering from behind the door connecting the kitchen to the family room.  As Ember walked nearer to it, the voice did not grow in volume nor did it lessen in indistinction.  The door was cracked open just enough to tease the eyes without offering anything of value.  He approached it cautiously and crouched down beside it.  The voice resembled Kara’s in both tempo and tone, yet seemed to possess some indescribable quality that made it both foreign and distressing.  What was most concerning wasn’t the incomprehensibility of the murmurs, which could have been incidental, but rather its inaudibility—which is to say that the speaker spoke with the disturbingly clear intent of concealing herself.

             
Though he could not resolve a single word, he could tell, by syntactical breaks and varied syllabification, that sentences were being said and thoughts were being explained.  In fact, Ember could even surmise by the changing pace of delivery, that the speaker was describing something, perhaps even in considerable detail.  A clause of rapid mutterings sandwiched between two longer, and slower garbles, for example, suggested the offering of superficial information—as if given as a parenthetical aside.  The relative brevity of one fragment, contrasted with the drawn-out groans of another, suggested complex thoughts with both independent and subordinate clauses.

             
So pointed and unbroken were the mumbles that Ember couldn’t help but ponder the recipient for which they were intended.  Through the crack in the door Ember saw a crippled hand with fingers that contorted inwards in what appeared to be an uncomfortably forced position—and although he did not readily recognize the hand, there seemed be something faintly familiar about it.

He gasped slightly and, at that very moment, the voice stopped its rant.  His heart beat fast.  He heard some pacing in the room behind him, and for a brief moment he was sure that the speaker would open the door and discover him.  Instead, however, another voice, different in tone but similar in nature, started up.  The ringing voice was quiet and forcefully childish in tenor—as though it were from an adult who was imitating the sounds of a juvenile.  As with the last voice, it was feminine in quality and slightly reminiscent of Kara’s.

So similar and yet, so different, were the voices that Ember found himself constantly vacillating between the notion that it originated from the same speaker or different ones.  The juxtaposition of the two voices, which came in the form of rapid alternating interjections, but never at the same time, as if a question-and-answer interrogation, removed all doubt.  It was the same speaker.

The implications were not lost on Ember and he jolted back almost immediately upon their realization.  The situation had been strange enough when Ember had thought that someone was talking to herself.  Ember had many times before, especially during moments of deep introspection, spoken to himself, and although he had spoken far more tersely and disjointedly with himself than this voice did with itself, he could have forgiven the incident if this was all.  The assumption of a second character by the singular person and the subsequent apparent chatter of engaged discourse between the two, however, was a derangement that could not be overlooked. 

He was not all that entirely sure of what to do.  If he returned back to bed now, the thought of the episode would forever weigh in his mind.  If he opened the door and confronted the speaker, however, he was sure to inspire embarrassment and perhaps even provoke fear.  In fact, the anticipation of confronting the speaker frightened Ember.  He did not worry that the speaker would assault him, but rather that the expression of her horrored mortification would stop his heart’s beating.  He could see the ghostly terror of the speaker’s face in his mind, and the thought of gazing at it terrified him. 

So bare and exposed would be the encounter that there would be no hiding from the one simple, and inescapable truth—that the speaker was conversing with herself.  It would become immediately obvious, upon the instantaneous opening of that door, that something had occurred that probably shouldn’t have.  Both speaker and eavesdropper, though they might initially pretend otherwise, would be instantly and completely aware of one another’s understanding of the situation.

He listened to the spirited banter of the two-voiced mutterings until he could take it no longer.  Ember stood up, whipped open the door, and to his horror saw Kara gesticulating to some empty void, mid-syllable.

Her face, like her fingers, were artificially contorted in a way that could not be accidental.  Though vicious, unbalanced, and unmistakably deranged, the face still possessed an alluring beauty.  What haunted Ember most, however, was the gaped mouth and ghostly horror that fell upon her face, which was made ten times worse by his previous anticipation.  So raw, so unbridled was its dread and so visceral was her reaction, that Ember’s heart momentarily stopped its beat.  He grabbed at his chest where the sharp pain struck and gawked back at the terrorized face in startled bewilderment.  Both speaker and eavesdropper were paralyzed.

As the breath returned to her lungs, Kara put down her hand, which was in the midst of some gesture, and normalized her face as inconspicuously as possible.  Ember, for his part, slowly wiped the beads of sweat from his brow and breathed in heavily.

Now was the awkward phase.  Engage too soon and you risk making apparent that something required being covered-up.  Engage too late and you risk drawing attention to the very thing that had just passed.  Their sub-optimization was of the latter variety. 

Their eyes caught each other’s for a few chilly seconds.  It was Kara who was first to speak.  “How long were you standing there?”  The inquiry was a half-hearted attempt to see if feigning ignorance was a reasonable course of action.  More accurately put, the inquiry was designed to probe whether or not Ember would agree to play ignorant with her—she knew that he knew, and she knew that he knew that she knew that he knew, all that was left was to decide what to do about it.  She looked down, now not only embarrassed for getting caught but also ashamed for trying to deny it.  “Well… ya… okay,” she said as if finally accepting reality, but then walked towards the exit, as if intent to discuss nothing further.  Ember blocked the way.

Ember knew that Kara was the type of person perfectly capable of leaving things unsaid.  She could be caught doing something and even indicate her involvement through some tacit admission or gesture, and then just walk away and never discuss anything.  He knew that if he let her go now, he might never get the chance to discuss the incident with her.  He did not want to have that sort of relationship, but, more importantly, he didn’t think it was healthy for
her.
  As she made for the door, therefore, he did not budge.

With her head still down, she walked into him, and attempted to push him aside as though he were the last object, that, if bypassed, could spare her from further misery.  “Come on,” she said as if pleading with him, pushing a little more forcefully now than before.  “What are you doing?”

Ember put his hands on her shoulder solidly, and she instantly melted.  She brought her left hand to her eyes to cover her bursting tears as Ember brought her into full embrace.  “It’s okay.  You can tell me.”

“No… no I can’t,” she said in-between sobs.

“Why not?  You can tell me anything.”

“Because it,” she said, sniffling, “won’t be the same.” 

“I won’t judge you, I promise.”

She closed her eyes, using her left thumb and index finger to wipe the tears to the bridge of her nose, as in a pinching motion.  “Close the door,” she commanded

“So you’ll tell me?”

“What choice do I have?” 

Ember closed the door and followed her to the beat-up couch.  She moved a pile of journals and trinkets and sat down.  Ember likewise cleared a space and sat down next to her, turning to face her as she spoke.

“I wasn’t born in the Underground.  I’m not exactly sure where I’m from, but I know it wasn’t from here.”  Ember nodded as if this were a reasonable assertion and fair starting off point.  “I remember the trees, the forest, the rivers—just as you and your sister have described—but I don’t remember much about the people.  On my fourth birthday,” she said, her face turning grave, “I got into some disagreement with my parents… at least, I think they were my parents… my real parents that is… and I… I… wandered off into the forest.  Well, you probably can figure out what happened from there…”

“No, no I can’t,” he said, trying to fit the jigsaw pieces together.  “What did you fight about?  I don’t understand.”

“That’s the thing…  I don’t remember… That’s what hurts me most about all of this… I simply don’t remember.  I was only four years old.  I remember feeling angry and cheated, but nothing more.  I wandered into the forest, hoping to make my parents regret doing whatever it was that they did to me, and then…  like you, I fell down a hole… and the next thing I knew I was here in the Underground.”  The tears of a more mournful variety began to pool in her eyes.

“And what happened next?”

“It’s all really a blur.  I had a very serious concussion, and apparently I was expected to die.  After I was nursed back to health, I told everyone my story but they all called me crazy.  You have to consider though, that this was back in the day when the thought of an outside world was coming under attack—even in the Buffer Zone.  It was popularly believed at the time—as it still is in many parts—that the Underground was all there ever was and all that ever will be.  Luckily the revolutionaries got a hold of me before the Police could come and take me away.  I was then adopted by two middle-ranked revolutionaries by the names of Marty and Marilyn.”

Inundated with information, Ember could not yet decide how to divide out his sympathies.  Instead he probed further, “Did your foster parents believe you?”

Kara tipped her head thoughtfully and wiped the tears from her eyes.  “Marty and Marilyn—the people I would come to call my parents—loved me very dearly.  They were very eccentric, inventor types whose major claim to fame was in scientifically proving that the only way the Underground could subsist after four hundred years was if it were an open system—that it must exchange matter and energy with an outside world.  In other words, they proved that there must be some exit to the outside world.  They were, in this sense, in the best position to believe me.  They spent most of my childhood searching for my entrance, and had invented various tools designed to dig through and around the Underground.”

“So, did they believe you?” he asked, not seeing where she was going.

“I think… I think they wanted to believe me… but after years of no evidence, I know they must have become doubtful.”

“Why ?”

Kara sighed as if it pained her to recall the memories.  “We were a very eccentric family.  When I was ten, my mother used a machine to try to dig her way out of the Underground.  She was gone three days, and when she returned she was completely crazed—foaming at the mouth and severely dehydrated.  From then on, she was never quite the same.  Leaving the Underground became an obsession for my parents—not so much because they hated it here, but rather because they wanted to
know
of the existence of an outside world.  You can imagine how this all made me feel.  Here I was, a child born to an outside world and it wasn’t enough for them.  They told me that they believed me but each act of desperation evidenced the contrary!  If they really believed me then they wouldn’t have searched so hard.”

“Maybe they just really wanted to leave?” he suggested.

“No…  They wanted to
know.
  They wanted to
see
with their own eyes! 
Hear
with their own ears! 
Smell
with their own noses!  They wanted this, because they did not believe me fully!  My own parents thought I was crazy!  They loved me dearly, but they thought I was crazy!  You can just imagine how this made me feel.  My own parents!”  Kara paused and looked down pensively before continuing, “Only my neighbor really believed me.”

“Sven?” he asked.  Kara nodded tearfully.  “So what happened to your parents?”

“Every year, they would alternate… trying to dig their way out of the Underground.  You can also imagine how this appeared to the revolutionaries.  My assertions were seen as brainwashed beliefs—a natural consequence of being raised by such obsessed foster parents.  We were labeled fringe extremists and our views were almost completely ignored.  And then, finally it happened…  About a year ago from today…  My mother left once more to dig her way out, but she never returned.”  Tears came flowing down her red cheeks.  “It’s the not knowing…  that’s the hardest.  The thought of her dying somewhere in the dark void… alone… not ever knowing… it’s tough, you know?”

“It will be okay…” he said, struggling against his curiosity to appear supportive.  He put his arm around her.