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Tears welled in her eyes when Treyna Bilji paused at the doorway of her modest home. Resolutely, she blinked them away. She had weeped for too long. The time had arrived for action, no matter how small or ineffectual her efforts might be.
Still, she could not quite pull her gaze from the living room where she and her husband, Bertarr, had spent so many happy evenings. Midday sunlight flowed through the dust-covered windows. In happier times, such sloppiness would have merited her immediate attention. Now...? Who cared if the glass hazed with dirt and grime?
Well-used yet stylish furniture glowed in the bluish light. On that rug, their only son, Seltin, had taken his first step. The sagging couch had supported her and Bertarr on many a late night as they made spontaneous love while Seltin slept in his upstairs bedroom. Tri-dees covered the walls, each picture capturing a special memory, the normal events, anniversaries, and birthdays that made life the wondrous flow it was.
Compressing her lips, Treyna eased the door closed. She did not lock it. When her sisters came to remove her belongings and place their house -- no longer their home -- on the market, she did not want them to pay for a locksmith. If someone slipped in before then and robbed the place... What did that matter? Soon, she would be beyond such worries.
The door clicked shut as she gave it an extra pull. They had been meaning to shave a layer from the edge to fix that. Perhaps the new owners would see to it.
Smoothing the lines of her simple, sleeveless blouse and the calf-length dress she wore only on rare occasions, the housewife and mother headed down the sidewalk.
Sounds of commerce and travel swirled in the air around her. Though a distracted portion of her mind recognized that background noise, her thoughts focused elsewhere. Managing to steer clear of danger, she nevertheless walked through the pedestrian traffic with no sense of who or what she passed. Perhaps some greeted her. She doubted that, however.
Since Bertarr and Seltin had disappeared, none of her former so-called friends had visited. What condolences had come her way had shriveled and blown away when those she knew learned what had happened. Guilt by association? Or fear of drawing attention to themselves?
Neither sufficed to excuse their avoidance. Explain, yes, but not excuse.
Absently, Treyna pushed back a fallen lock of graying hair from her wrinkled forehead.
Of course, perhaps she would have reacted the same had the positions been reversed. Dealing with new situations did not appeal to her much. Bertarr had been so much better at handling the novel and the strange. She had improved over the years, her husband's steadiness acting as an unobtrusive example she had learned to follow, almost through a process of osmosis.
Seltin had evidenced a blending of their personalities. His joyous take on life infected all who knew him.
A faint smile curved her weathered lips.
His energy often led him into trouble, but nothing too serious. Nothing he could not either talk his way out of or make aright easily enough. He understood people. More importantly, he understood himself. An unusual quality in most people. Rarer still in someone so young, barely a full-grown man.
As she neared the plaza, Treyna's steady pace faltered briefly. Only a moment, however, did she hesitate. Surely she could be forgiven a stutter in her soul as her fate drew closer. A fate chosen, in a sense, but also a destiny forced upon her by the Neklar Council.
They would not know her from an asteroid in the sky, but they made many decisions, set many chains of causes stretching into effects. They could hardly be expected to be aware of all the consequences arising from their choices. No, the repercussions of their behavior usually fell on others to endure.
Lifting her chin ever so slightly, Treyna proceeded across Suppa Street. Halfway to the opposite side, she jumped at the blare of a thundering transport. Momentarily flustered by the impatient electronic howl, she paused then leaped forward to safety, inches from a crushing death.
The driver who had nearly killed her did not slow nor even wave a hand. The blue-gray trailer filled with foodstuffs hugged the curve towards its unknown destination. Perhaps the open market. Perhaps a restaurant. Perhaps a hospital.
Staring after the transport, Treyna inhaled a deep breath. Whatever its goal, that cargo would not be one she would consume. Food would be the least of her worries.
Four scraggly trees marked the corners of the squalid park occupying the center of the rundown plaza. Their rope-like limbs drooped under the heavy weight of spiral leaves shriveling from the heat and dryness. Once, the central fountain -- like many scattered throughout Parum City -- had sent streams of refreshing liquid to the trees' bases. That "wasteful extravagance" had been terminated by the Council years before.
Stiffly, Treyna climbed the five steps to the sunken bowl of the extinct fountain. Her bones ached with incipient age. She had born Seltin later in life. While they could have sought medical assistance from the government hospitals, they had preferred to accomplish their tiny miracle on their own. So little in their world truly belonged to them. At least the new life she had nurtured in her womb after so many years of diligently trying came from the union of her and her husband. Seltin had been theirs. She had even chosen to deliver at home rather than subject them all to the tender mercies and prying eyes of the Neklar care system.
She had held the squalling newborn on her still-swollen belly. Wet and dripping though he was, he had driven the pain from her mind. Her total awareness focused on that red and wrinkled bundle. In that timeless span, no one and nothing else had mattered. Even Bertarr's laughter of joy and her sister's happy tears had been merely background to her own complete connection to her first-born son. The bond she had formed in those first ticks of his independent existence had chained him forever to her heart.
In a very real sense, they had become two halves of one entity: mother and child. Her child.
Now the Council had stolen even that small wonder from her life. Her son and her husband -- her partner over the meager years of their youth and the creeping comfort of middle-age -- both gone on a random draw, like so many meat-animals selected from a herd.
Treyna's eyes narrowed as she beat back the fear and the anger and the tears threatening to erode her hard-won composure. She would not grant the Council the satisfaction of knowing the agony it had engendered in her. Her hurt, at least, remained her own. The Neklar authorities had not yet unearthed a way to steal that from her, as well.
Once she reached the broad center of the fountain, she straightened and gazed out across the plaza.
Few people had noticed her just yet. Most had affairs of their own to consider. The troubles visited upon strangers hardly mattered in the mundane scale of concerns.
She waited.
One man's gaze swept across her spare figure, stuttered and zoomed back, then darted away. His pace accelerated. In seconds, he disappeared around a corner, the odd sight of that lone woman buried from his consciousness.
Out of sight, out of mind.
That could be the mantra for her fellow citizens, Treyna thought. Ignore the reality staring you in the face and perhaps it will cease to exist. Evade, deny, avoid. If you don't acknowledge the problems disturbing you, then they will trouble you no more. An attitude she no doubt shared to a certain degree. That willful blindness had exacted its terrible price from her. She could do little now to shutter the vision that had expanded, at last, within her soul.
She opened her mouth to speak, but the dryness there blocked her words. Swallowing, she cleared her throat and tried again. What she would say, she did not know for certain.
"I want to speak today," she said, "for myself and for my husband and son who are no longer able to do so."
No one turned, no one listened. Her quavering voice vanished among the rumbles and hums and clangs of traffic and people.
Thinning her lips, she repeated her announcement. This time she increased the volume until the shouted sound broke through the barrier of indifference engulfing her.
A small girl and boy looked up at the strange woman perched high above them. When their parents returned, annoyed, to retrieve them, the young man and woman found themselves curious, as well, to discover what ailed this odd woman disturbing the tranquility of their square.
"All my life," Treyna said, "I maintained my energies upon my own concerns. My education, my husband, my child, my job. Day by day, week by week, year by year, I plodded or dashed or staggered along as circumstances or my own feelings dictated. Neighbors, I paid attention to, yes. Family and friends, too, of course. The rest..." She shrugged.
"I never realized how much I hurt myself and those I loved the most." Her words shook slightly then firmed as her resolve strengthened. "I thought that if I kept my head down, no hammer would ever seek me out. I thought that if I obeyed the rules and did as I was told, I could snuggle into my own small corner of the world and be left alone. I thought that if I deflected my attention from the destruction happening around us, to the people I knew or knew of, then I and mine would be spared."
Her voice strained to a higher volume. "I was wrong!"
Person by person, couple by couple, spectators accreted to the gathering crowd. Some sported expressions of amusement or derision. Others carefully held their eyes rigidly forward, never exchanging visual cues with their companions. A few braver or perhaps simply confused listeners glanced uncertainly at one another as Treyna's words sketched in a portrait of the trap that had ensnared her in its tangling threads.
"A month ago," Treyna said more calmly, "an Enforcer came to the door of our home. One," she said, lifting an index finger into the air. "Not a squad, not a group, not an army. One. Alone. He did not even bother pulling his weapon. He knocked on our door, confidently, forcefully."
The words flattened into sameness as she relived the minutes when all her security, all her dreams, all her happiness had evaporated in an instant.
"My husband answered the door. He always did when he was home. His responsibility, he said. Mine was to raise our son to be a man. Even more importantly, to be a decent human being." A ragged breath filled her lungs. "The Enforcer told my husband to fetch our son. Bertarr did as instructed. I don't believe even then he truly suspected what was happening. Such occurrences intersected others' lives. Not ours.
"Seltin emerged from his room, his mind still toiling on a problem from his studies." An indulgent smile warmed her expression. "He wanted to be a scientist. Always, he asked 'why.' Sometimes I could even explain 'why.' That day, however, I would ask that same question a million times. No answer ever came. Not until later, anyway."
Traffic clogged the nearer lane of the street. While waiting for their turn to continue, drivers listened to the strange woman's testimony and grew reluctant to miss the ending of her story.
The loud crunch of two vehicles colliding heightened the chaos.
Treyna ignored the yelling and recalled that encounter with Neklar authority. "'What do you want with our son?' my husband asked. 'I've come for both of you,' the Enforcer said. 'You've been Conscripted.'"
Treyna's mouth thinned. "The Enforcer might as well have been announcing the time of day for all the impact it had on him. For me, however, time congealed into a thick syrup, slowing everything and promising to smother me beneath its weight.
"Seltin tried to protest, to complain, but Bertarr glanced fearfully in my direction and silenced our son. The Enforcer told them to come with him. He did not even permit them to say good-by."
Twin trails of tears flowed along the curves of Treyna's cheeks. "I wanted to stop them, to say something, to denounce the Enforcer and what he had come to do. But I remained silent. I did not challenge him, I did not object, I did not assert myself in the defense of my family. I was terrified that if I complained in the least, I would lose them both." Bitterness seeped into her trembling voice. "Well, I lost them both anyway. They are gone. Vanished as though they never existed. I lost what I most valued in life, and I never raised a finger to help them or to denounce their captors."
No longer did Treyna hold back her tears. The culmination of her tale would arrive soon...along with the squad of Enforcers she saw marching briskly into the plaza. To restore order, no doubt. Order and security. What she had thought she desired all her life. The goal that had stripped her of her will to continue even as it had stolen what she had supposed it protected.
"It is time to resist Conscription," the woman said, crying. The emotional tremor in her words did not suggest weakness, however. "Time to stand up for our humanity. Time to tell the Council and their Enforcers that we are not their slaves, to be disposed of as their whims dictate. If you labor under the false notion that Conscription will never reach out for your loved ones, you are mistaken. If you fool yourself with the idea that silence will protect you, you face the greatest danger."
The Enforcer squad plowed through the assembled people, leaving the onlookers sprawled on the pavement or stumbling away.
Two Enforcers clambered onto the dry fountain. One held the shouting woman's forearms while the other placed stasis-cuffs on her wrists. None too gently the pair dragged her down. A moment later, her words stopped as though sliced in mid-syllable.
Quickly, the crowd dispersed. Soon, no evidence remained that a woman named Treyna had ever spoken there...or even existed.
Across the street from the square, Jayla Cassim hovered in the sheltered shadows of the Machin Bakery entryway. Her arms hung rigidly at her sides as she stared towards the deserted fountain where the crazy woman had delivered her story. The heat-distorted image of that now-empty space blurred as tears welled in Jayla's dark brown eyes.
She had never seen the anonymous wife and mother before. Jayla had simply been ready to enter the bakery for her weekly purchase of bread when the solitary figure standing atop the fountain had snagged in the edge of her vision.
The stranger's words had burrowed their barbs through Jayla's carefully constructed facade of studied indifference and lodged in a memory she did her best not to recall.
Six months earlier, her fiancé had missed an evening appointment with their marriage planner. At first, Jayla had been terribly embarrassed sitting in Cresla Pralox's office as they waited for her absent lover to arrive. Finally, she had profusely apologized for Kren's thoughtlessness and stormed over to confront him at his apartment.
Convinced he had irresponsibly forgotten their appointment, caught up in some novel or game, she had been fully prepared to deliver a verbal lashing. When he failed to answer the bell or her insistent pounding upon his door, however, her pique had quickly cooled to concern and then to a frozen worry after he did not respond to a phone call.
Not until the next morning did she learn from his neighbor across the hall that Kren had been Conscripted.
The months since that day of his disappearance had been a roller coaster of despair, dread, and deadened nerves.
Now this incident...
The woman's pleas had pierced the scab protecting Jayla's heart...and reignited the guilt she felt at not officially protesting Kren's conscription.
Jayla blinked. Other customers squeezed past her unmoving form, coming and going as they completed their daily chores. How long she lingered there, Jayla did not know. Abruptly, however, she discovered herself in the middle of the street, vehicles honking and screeching to a halt as she stumbled in the direction of the older woman's defiant protest.
As she approached the lonesome fountain, Jayla paused. Tears flooded her cheeks. Her fingers convulsed into fists as though trying to hold her back from the action she contemplated.
The sun beat on her, relentless in its intensity. Seconds ticked past in slow-motion.
Jayla shook her head, muttering her reluctance to proceed, the foolishness of her impulsive reaction to a peculiar woman's advice.
Straining, she lifted one leg and placed it on the lip of the fountain. She grunted, rising, and then wrapped her arms around her chest, holding her head down, closing her eyes in silent meditation before turning to face the streaming crowds of her fellow citizens.
A shuddery breath filled her lungs. Whatever happened would happen. She had made her choice. At last.
"I want to speak today," she began, "for myself and for my fiance who is no longer able to do so...."
