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By Kuliundheft
Part XIII The week passed uneventfully, and Vincent downplayed or sidestepped remarks about his place in the upcoming vote with fluid subtlety, turning the conversation always to William and Pascal. He enjoyed the irony and the challenge of it, as he gently campaigned against himself. If Father noticed, he said nothing, and Vincent’s amusement only grew as his efforts appeared to be working. When they couldn’t seem to pin down his opinions on important topics, most people lost interest altogether and drifted away feeling vaguely dissatisfied, and any contrition he might have felt over being less than forthright, even slightly less than entirely honest, was easily tempered by his confidence that his motives were just. After lunch on the day of the common meeting, the schedules on the duty rosters were all short by two hours so that the community could gather in Father’s chamber to hear each of the three Council candidates say a few words and answer questions before the vote. The votes would then be tallied during supper, and the new Council member announced at the end of the common meeting that evening. Of course, Vincent’s name still didn’t appear on any of the work rosters, anyway, and wouldn’t until the following week if Father had his way, but he had found plenty of doctor-sanctioned work with maps that needed updating and reworking before spring. With his singular combination of intimate tunnel knowledge and unending patience for precise cartography, Vincent had always been particularly well suited to both drawing the maps and collecting the data for them. Still, with his schedule becoming necessarily more regulated so that he could be consistent about the children’s classes, his exploratory excursions had dwindled over the last year or two, and he found himself confronted with the measurements and journals of less precise explorers. As he moved the entire project from Father’s study to his own chamber in preparation for the day’s community gathering, he weighed the merits of tutoring the worst offenders in the error of their ways versus using them as a reason to simply go and do the thing himself, something he found intensely appealing after the last weeks. Idly contemplating this quandary, Vincent made his way down to lunch, which consisted mainly of stew made from last night’s dinner and a heavy corn bread. Without a word, Beatrice added a second and third piece of bread, until his plate could safely hold no more next to the steaming bowl, and sent him on his way. In a community where everyone accomplished everything by the sweat of their collective brow, the amount of food Vincent’s body demanded was still embarrassingly large, and had been since his mid-teens. It was years since he’d even paid attention to the fact that the kitchen staff loaded his plate with disproportionate quantities of rice, potatoes, bread—anything that was dense and plentiful, just to keep him full without squandering precious resource. But today he was pleased by the cornbread, a welcome, sweet change from the usual starches. As usual, Brian was easy to find, the only one sitting alone and silent. He looked up when Vincent sat down across from him. “Nervous?” he asked before dipping his head back over his stew. “About my place in the vote today?” Brian offered a quick nod. “No. I expect my recent nomination will have little bearing on the results. Pascal seems to have been the overall favorite for weeks now, but William has many strong supporters, as well.” Vincent bit into the first piece of cornbread, pleased to find that it was the dry, crumbly kind with grainy bits of cornmeal that were a pleasure to chew. “Huh. That’s not exactly how I’ve heard it. Got your speech all prepared?” “There won’t be much speech-making to be done, in the way you may be used to. Each nominee will have a few minutes to sum up their suitability for the position and answer any questions, but our community is small. We have little need for the hyperbolic rhetoric that’s prevalent Above. Those who would say that they don’t know William or Pascal well enough to decide, or else who don’t understand our way of life well enough to know which they think would be preferable, have likely not been with us long enough to have a vote.” “So how would you ‘sum up your suitability for the position,’ then?” Vincent took a moment to answer, starting into a second piece of cornbread in the meantime. “My nomination was premature. Having had the week to consider, I imagine most of the community agrees.” “That so?” “It’s the logical conclusion. The decision was made in haste.” Brian nodded, then committed himself to his stew. There was something he wasn’t saying; Vincent hardly needed empathic abilities to conclude that, but Brian often liked to keep his own counsel, particularly when he was trying to puzzle out some new aspect of life Below, so it didn’t seem worth pursuing. “Olivia tells me that both Madeleine and Andrea are settling into classes with the other children. My younger students will be starting Oliver Twist next week, if Madeleine would like to join us.” “Oliver Twist? Do you think she’ll be able to keep up? Most schools don’t teach that sort of stuff till high school up top.” “The most enduring stories are the ones we can revisit many times as we grow older. I have no doubt she’ll be able to enjoy and sympathize with Oliver’s trials. What further meaning she can take from it now will be her own, but if it resonates, as good literature must, she’ll revisit what she knows about the story again and again in her life. We can do no more than open the door.” Brian smiled, scraping out the bottom of his bowl and taking the last spoonful. “Yeah. I kinda’ figured I’d get some answer like that. I’ll let her know. Well. I’ll see you later, then. Good luck.” Vincent nodded, but said nothing as Brian got up and left. The mess was already beginning to empty as people finished eating and drifted toward Father’s chamber in twos and threes. When he had finished his own meal, he went in the same direction. Mary greeted him and showed him a seat at the table. The center of the chamber was being left open as the speaker’s floor, and the community was already pressing shoulder to shoulder to fit. Pascal entered with Edward leaning heavily on one arm. When he had his father situated, he sank into the chair beside Vincent with a nod. William arrived last, untying the strings on his apron as he stumped down the stairs. “Well, now that we’re all gathered,” Father said, and the chamber quickly hushed, “I’ll go over the procedure for today’s vote, as a reminder to everyone, as well as for the benefit of those who are new to the community. As all of you are no doubt aware, this evening’s common meeting will be different from most, as we will be selecting a new member of the Council to take Edward’s place. This afternoon, each of our three candidates, William, Pascal, and Vincent, will have a few minutes to speak and answer any questions. Now, I must stress, that these should be relevant questions that will help you and the rest of the community make this decision today.” People around the chamber traded smirks and rolling eyes at the memory of Jonathan’s long interrogation of Winslow over increasingly disastrous and unlikely resource shortage scenarios from the last vote. “Everyone will then have the remainder of the day to decide and cast their ballot into the box here.” Father laid his hand over the padlocked wooden box. “The vote will be tallied with the entire Council present, with the result to be announced at this evening’s common meeting. Are there any questions?” After a moment’s silence, he nodded. “All right. Who would like to speak first?” William stepped forward without hesitation. After a moment to ensure that he had everyone’s attention, he boomed, “We’ve got a good life down here. There isn’t a one of us who doesn’t know it, who doesn’t appreciate it. I look around here, and all I see is good people. My friends. My family. We’ve got something down here most topsiders don’t know a thing about. And I can’t really put a word to it, exactly, but I know what it feels like, being a part of all of you and not the poor, beaten soul I was up top. “But all the good feeling in the world won’t keep our children safe and fed. It won’t keep topsiders out. It won’t heal us when we’re sick; it won’t stop the spring floods. The way I see it, we’re secret enough, over all. And there aren’t any arguments we can’t settle amongst ourselves. Way I see it is resources. Resources is the thing we can always run shy on. Food and clean water and warm clothes are the things that can turn good people frightened and angry if we have too little. I believe you’re all good people. We’re all down here for a reason. So as long as we make sure we have enough, the rest will take care of itself. We’ll all take care of each other.” A few whispers and nods met his conclusion, but no one addressed William directly, and he resumed his seat. Father stood. “If there are no questions for William? All right. Pascal, I believe you’re next.” Pascal nodded and shuffled to the floor. He considered his audience, nearly two hundred souls that broke bread with him, respected him, spoke through him on the pipes. He flicked his wrist in an unconscious effort to catch up one of his batons, to ground himself with the familiar weight, but this was official community business, and there were no batons there; Vincent caught the way his fingers faltered and then were shaken out. Finally, he began with, “I have little to say. You know me. You know my pipes. They keep us connected, however far we stray from each other in a day. When there’s danger, when the all-safe goes out, when there is celebration. We would be so many disparate souls, alone in the dark, without the pipes to unite us, to remind us of who’s coming and who’s waiting. “I was born here. My life, my legacy, is here. I know that if we cannot speak to each other, then we are lost. To be on the Council is to be a voice. It means to stand in times of worry and despair, to never abandon the post, to never lie down. To never go silent. This is what my father has taught me. We are at all because we are together. That must never change, or we are lost.” He paused, and the moment drew on, quiet. He shrugged. “Like I said, I have little to say. My qualifications, my reasons, are written in the way that I have lived my life among you. You know me. The rest is your decision. Thank you.” He remained in place for a moment or two before taking the respondent silence as his cue to exit. He dropped into his chair, and his hands immediately began tapping out an unconscious rhythm against the wooden arms. The sound was quiet, but Vincent could pick it out. It was an older form of code, shorthanded from the original Morse-based system, but still less terse and less efficient than their current communications. More melodic, Pascal always insisted. With some concentration, Vincent realized it was poetry his friend was rapidly burning through. Frost. They were pipes of pagan mirth, And the world had found new terms of worth. He laid him down on— “Vincent?” At Father’s entreaty, Vincent stood and used the space of his steps to refocus his thoughts. He looked around the room, met the curious gazes of adults and children alike, world-weary souls brought back from the brink and fresh, eager faces that had known the fickle, golden light of candleflame all their lives. Ragtag, beaten and bruised, homespun, and spitshone—flourishing against every odds any sane, practical man might care to wager. All for the fathomless power of a dream, a whimsy. A notion so powerful that it defied all the precepts of civilization across—over the top of—God’s green earth. He stood under the weight of their attention, their trust, those he loved most dearly, and felt the rightness of his words. “I’m honored and grateful to you all for considering me, but I believe that my nomination was made too quickly. The events of last week are still fresh in everyone’s minds, but they represent only one brief moment in our community. In voting today, we must consider the years each nominee has spent among us and choose the truest voice. “Pascal was born in these tunnels. His father helped to found this community and has long maintained our communications, without which we would be disconnected from each other. Pascal has lived his entire life by our highest ideals, and has already acted as proxy for his father many times in the last months. He understands who we are and who we strive to be as well as any man here can. He has been a kind and steadfast friend to so many of us, and his voice on the Council would be one of truth and justice. “William came to us from Above, and now he serves us all, not only with his cooking, but by the care with which he maintains our food stores. He understands the limits of our resources perhaps best of anyone. He also understands the dangers of the world Above and what must be done to shield ourselves, to protect ourselves and all that we love. He is a man of strength and passion, whose words on the Council would ever be heard, ever be fought for.” “Both would serve the Council with pride and care. Both understand the responsibility that they would carry, and both are equal to it. This is the choice upon which we must focus, and not the extraordinary events we’ve recently weathered. Our choice today must be the one we feel will most consistently and assuredly represent our needs.” He looked around the chamber once more, avoided meeting Father’s eyes. “Thank you, all.” He stood in place for a moment as speculative whispers eddied around him, but became satisfied that his meaning had been taken and understood. He had turned back to his chair when Brian leaned down over the railing of the upper level then and spoke. “Hey, can I say something to everyone?” Father exchanged looks with the rest of the Council before nodding. “Go ahead.” “Thanks.” Brian looked around at all the curious faces in the room. “Okay. Look. I know it’s not really my place to tell you all your business. And God knows I’m not very popular around here. But my short time here, I’ve learned some things have to be said when they have to be said. “Now, Vincent here, he’s not out for glory. We all know that. So he wants to ignore what happened last week. But I can’t.” “Brian, please—” Brian waved Vincent’s protest aside. “No, this has to be said.” He addressed the room at large again. “You all know he saved me and my girls, but he’s right, that’s not what’s important for this election of yours. What’s important is everything else. “In the first day I knew Vincent, I learned more about mercy and loyalty and love and the strength it takes to do what’s right than I’ve ever seen Above. It was a jaded, frightened fool that mistook this man for a danger. But somehow, and I can’t tell you how, but somehow he saw a good in me that I thought had died long ago—I don’t know if I ever even believed it was there—and he drew that good up to the surface, made me see it for the first time in so long.” His gaze swept the room again. “I know you all know what I’m talking about. I can see it in your faces, he’s done the same for so many of you. This place is good for the soul. You are all so full of love and mercy, I can’t even understand it. But who does more to inspire that good in all of us than Vincent? “So when you talk about service, when you talk about who’ll do the best for this society of yours, Vincent’s right. Forget about last week. Forget about me. But think about who you all were before you knew him, or who you might have been if you never did. And then think about how if he can do that for each of us, if he can find the good in us that most of us didn’t even know was there, what would he do for the whole place on this Council of yours? That’s what I’d think about, if I was voting.” Brian stopped there, and the loss of his voice left the room in a strange, intense silence that drew on, even as the spectators began to exchange looks or shift slightly under the heaviness of the contemplative quiet. Vincent, under the pressing weight of renewed speculation, found himself compelled to break the silence. “Thank you, Brian, for speaking your heart. What you’ve said is worth more to me than I can tell you.” He looked around the chamber, into the faces of those he loved, of those who loved him, and found a greater intensity than mere curiosity. His gentle mischief against himself felt suddenly weak and brittle; he needed to explain, to know that they saw at least that which was most important, that which would remain unaltered. “All of you are worth more to me than I can tell you. There have been dark hours in the longest nights when I’ve imagined what my life would be without all of you, and I feel such sorrow. I think of the empty shadows and endless silence that I would endure, and I find myself near to despair. But with the morning’s first messages on the pipes, with the passing of the first lanterns outside my chamber, I remember that I will never have to know that life, and I’m grateful. In those moments, I feel a peace that erases all the dark hours of the night. My love for all of you, my devotion to all of you, will not change after today. It runs deeper than elections or Council decisions can. It can’t be changed by any vote. I stand by what I said earlier. The choice is between William and Pascal, just as it has been for weeks. Months. My place here among you won’t change, as surely as my affection for all of you, my brothers and sisters, will not change.” Silence followed his words, as well, and he used it to take to his chair again, leaving Father to intervene this time. “Yes, well,” the patriarch
said as he stood. “We certainly cannot deny the difficulty of today’s
vote. Everyone has until The tunnel dwellers all stood and shifted, loitered to wait for friends or slid out of the chamber as quickly as they could get through the crowd. Vincent joined Pascal near the table; William was already behind the screen that had been wheeled in from the hospital chamber to ensure the privacy of each person casting his or her vote. It was traditional that the nominees voted first, as they were expected to remain outside of Father’s chamber for the rest of the afternoon. There was little history of strong-arming any kind of vote Below, but tempers could flare, and there was no point in creating the opportunity for dishonesty, or even the impression of it. As it was, afternoon classes had been cancelled so that the children could help get the community’s chores done on this abbreviated workday, so Vincent would have no difficulty in keeping out for a few hours, alien as the concept of Father’s chamber being closed to him felt. After the events of a few moments ago, he was eager to return to the project, to soothe his mind with the unfeeling details of cartography and sentry placement. Pascal looked up at him, considered him, but said nothing. After a moment, William reappeared, and Pascal replaced him behind the screen. When it was his turn, Vincent wrote Pascal across one of the provided strips of butcher paper, folded it in half, and dropped it into the box. Contrary to his own intentions, Vincent’s progress with the maps was minimal to nonexistent the rest of the afternoon. Not long after he returned to his chamber, Jamie appeared to ask if he had seen Mouse; she had taken it upon herself to keep him in line while his injury healed, but he had apparently slipped away from her watchful eye. Again. When she got a negative reply, she stayed around to remark on how much Mouse had always looked up to him, how much everyone looked up to him. Minutes after she left, Michael arrived to seek his teacher’s approval of his efforts at improving his penmanship. Michael explained in earnest how very much he admired Vincent’s own fluid style of writing, as well as his ability to always choose just the right words. The boy eventually took to the gentle hints about work they were both meant to be doing, but he had no sooner left than Dominic and Rebecca each appeared at the doorway within moments of each other. The former wanted to announce that, having diligently practiced what Vincent had taught him, he had finally defeated Jamie in their last staff bout, and when would their mentor be back on the training roster? The latter was at least blessedly more direct. Rebecca let him know that quite a number of people had noticed his recent melancholy and wanted to know if there was anything she or the others could do, and didn’t he know they were always there for him, just the way he had so very often been there for them? The gentle kindness meant in her every word and gesture served to remind him of how very carefully he needed to keep his own counsel, how much of himself he could not explain without frightening them, and what impassable gulfs those truths created. But he was well done with self-pity, and he assured Rebecca that he was feeling much better, that he could never forget the love that they showed him every day. He found so much unwarranted attention uncomfortable, a fact that he dealt with by doing his best to soothe and assure the people that came to him and to send them away again contented and unworried. By supper, he felt weary but confident that the sudden focus on him would evaporated with the common meeting and the results of the vote to fill everyone’s minds. Still, everyone he met on his way seemed to have warm smiles and bright words just for him. William was the notable exception; he handed Vincent his plate without a word, his every angle and gesture speaking of tension. Vincent started to inquire, but the cook only grunted and moved on to the next person. There seemed to be no evidence of the cornbread that had been such a treat that afternoon, tonight’s supper being chicken and rice. When Vincent looked down at his plate and felt dismayed to find that it seemed to consist of little besides rice, there being only vague evidence of either chicken or peas and carrots, he chastised himself for making demands in the dead of winter. Had he not praised William’s persistent economy with their food stores only hours ago? Perhaps that was why it was on his mind to begin with. He searched the tables for Brian, having come to enjoy his mealtime company and now feeling a need to connect with him since the events of the afternoon gathering, to thank him for his intent, if not necessarily his methods. It was no small surprise to find the topsider in easy conversation with both Pascal and Cullen, the latter of which noticed Vincent and waved him over. “It’s all so very…European,” Brian was saying as Vincent sat down. “European?” Vincent asked. Cullen laughed. “Brian doesn’t like the communal baths. I admit, they take some getting used to. Sometimes, a man just doesn’t want an audience.” “Exactly!” Brian crowed. “It takes a great deal of ingenuity and work to maintain the hot water systems that we do have—” “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Cullen said with a wave of one hand, bringing Vincent up short. He leaned across the table toward Brian. “That’s what they all tell you down here. Well, these two have never had a real shower in their lives, I guess they don’t know the difference. But I’ll tell you what, I took up with this waitress topside for a few weeks last summer, just to have a shower all to myself once in a while. And I damn well left the seat up every time.” Vincent exchanged a bewildered shrug with Pascal, but Brian snorted appreciatively. “I can almost believe it,” he said. Cullen’s attention swung to Vincent as though he hadn’t dismissed the other man only seconds earlier. “So. That was quite a speech this afternoon.” “Everyone seems to think so,” he answered diplomatically—and truthfully. “Well, clearly William’s not happy about it,” Brian said. “I thought he saved all the grizzle for me. Can’t imagine what he found that bit under.” Vincent followed their gazes down to his plate, where he had been making steady progress on his portion of rice; some meals were meant to be savored, others just filled the gap, and these he tended to eat mindlessly. On closer inspection, he found that what chicken he had been given was indeed a bit lean on actual meat. It had never occurred to him that William might have intentionally skimped on his portions. He never had before, why in the world would he start? “Well, now,” Cullen said, his tone suddenly low and disapproving. He turned toward the kitchen. “If that isn’t just bad form.” Vincent followed his gaze, raising his head just in time to see William turn away from Cullen’s glare a little too quickly. The guilty gesture seemed to confirm Brian and Cullen’s suspicions. Surely Vincent hadn’t left anything vital out of his description of William’s skillset that afternoon? He looked at Pascal for an explanation of this strange slight. William must have felt that Vincent had skewed the vote in some inappropriate way, leaving him at a clear disadvantage to Pascal, but he couldn’t figure it. “What you said this afternoon was compelling,” Pascal said. “But surely not in a way that would distort the vote unduly?” Pascal shrugged. “‘Distort’ implies results that are somehow twisted or wrong.” Vincent stared at the smaller man incredulously; if Pascal had reason to suspect the same as William clearly did, then he expected to win the vote. But Vincent had never heard him speak so smugly, blatantly presuming that his appointment to the Council was right by some absolute definition. Winslow arrived suddenly and loudly, in his usual custom, effectively derailing the entire line of conversation. Vincent plowed through the rest of his meal, only half aware of the conversation around him, feeling unsettled in the crowded mess. With well more than an hour left before the common meeting, Vincent excused himself on the need to do some of the work he hadn’t been able to through the afternoon. |