After a while, she got used to the silence. Her breathing and heartbeat ceased to fill the room. Her prison came to seem a home. Long before she made peace with the quiet, she had come to know every corner of the cell. She knew by then that each of the corners was exactly ninety degrees and the distance from floor to ceiling just over two meters. The floor lay in a perfect square; each wall ran three meters, just long enough to pace. The walls and ceilings were white, pure and unsullied white, as if to remind her that she was not. The floor lay like a gaping pit. Its dull and dead black surface reminded her of the pit down which they had told her she would fall. The knotted rag throwrug which they had permitted her to keep seemed, at times, to float over the Abyss. She had placed the rug next to her bed, centered beside it, so that she might step on a stable surface in the morning. Her bed was plain but not uncomfortable, its single thin, blue quilt more than sufficient for an environment where the temperature never changed. Aside from the bed, the only pieces of furniture were a small stool and a table with a bible on it. The door to the bathroom was part of the wall at the foot of her bed. The other door, the one through which they had brought her, was hidden. She was no longer even sure it existed.
The food that somehow found its way to the compartment in the bathroom was the only evidence she had that anything outside her room still existed. She had learned the times when the food would arrive. During her first days of captivity, she had often forgotten to check and, as a result, been forced to skip meals. If there was anything still in the box, the machinery would deliver no food.
The bathroom itself was a small cubicle. The toilet stood on one side with a sink beside it, on the other side, was a sonic shower. It had taken her nearly three weeks to recognize it for what it was. Before that, she had bathed in the sink.
Neither her room nor the bathroom held a mirror, so she was unable to see how she had been changed by her captivity. She knew that her scalp was no longer bare. Her hair now nearly covered her ears. She tried to estimate the length of her incarceration by the length of her hair, but she realized that the calculations were problematic at best. For all she knew, they might send someone in to trim her hair every time she slept. It would be so easy for them to put gas through the ventilation system... (She did not know what the system was or how it worked, but she knew it would be easy for them. They were quite particular about things like that.) At the very least, she knew that they must be watching her, perhaps constantly, perhaps intermittently. They would be waiting for her to crack, to go mad, to recant--
But she had determined at the beginning that they would not have the satisfaction of being proved right about her. She would not parrot their messages. She would not touch the bible on the table nor, indeed, the table itself. The stool, she had moved to the other end of the room. Somewhere deep within her mind, she had begun, for a time, to doubt her resolve. Maybe they were right about her... Maybe she had sinned greatly... Maybe she would recant to escape the silence--
But, after a time, she made peace with the silence. They both agreed, she and silence, that there was no need for other conversation than that dialogue that might pass between gas molecules as they spun through the void which they could never completely fill. She felt no need to sing, no need to talk to people she had known. What poetry she could recall needed no verbalization. The air itself spoke the lines far better than any human tongue might aspire to do.
She found that her pact with stillness had other consequences. She no longer felt trapped. The air ceased to seem heavy. She felt no need for sun or rain. She no longer wished for space to run with the wind caressing her hair. That world had no more reality for her, and she ceased the pacing that had been her nearest approximation of that freedom. She no longer performed jumping jacks or pushups-- Rather, she began practicing the exercises she had learned when yoga had still been legal. She found that she was able to make these exercises into a part of the calm that surrounded her. They made no disturbance of the air, incited no desperate feeling of helplessness.
The book in the corner gathered dust.
She woke slowly with the conviction that there was someone else in the room. As she came to consciousness, she tried to dismiss her certainty by labeling it a dream. She could hear the air moving through someone else's throat into the lungs and back out again. She tried to convince herself that such a thing was impossible, but her senses told her that someone was violating her treaty with silence. Her ears told her; her nose told her; even her left arm gave evidence. She knew that, when she allowed them opportunity, her eyes would corroborate. There was someone lying beside her.
She opened her eyes carefully, as if there were some spirit near that might make the evidence vanish out of some malicious whim to make her doubt her own sanity. She saw whiteness, the same whiteness she saw every morning, the same whiteness she saw at the time in her cycle that she had decided to call morning. She slid her left arm under her and levered herself up to a position from which she could view what lay beside her.
After she had looked, for a moment, at the still, sleeping figure, she realized that she had been holding her breath and forced herself to exhale. There was indeed someone beside her. The first human being she had seen in-- How long was it now? As she stared at him, her first reaction began to dissipate. She had to be rational. It was not rational to be irritated. He almost certainly had not chosen to be here.
She inched her body away from his and leaned against the slick, white wall that blocked her further retreat. He was between her and what freedom the rest of the room offered; she could not get out without waking him. She shivered. So this was their revenge for her resistance. Now that she preferred to be alone, they would force her to accept company.
She wondered what he was like. Would he respect her rights to her room, or would he attempt to force changes? His bearded face told her nothing. She inhaled slowly, attempting to achieve the calm that breathing exercises always brought. She moved her eyes over the man to view the rest of the room, searching for other changes. There were several. Her throwrug was still in place, but one of the legs of the table rested on it. The table and book had been dusted and moved back to the central position they had occupied when she first came to the room. There was a small painting on the wall opposite the bed. She had never seen it before. She felt an almost unbearable desire to leap off the bed, rush over and tear it from the wall. That painting did not belong there. She had no objections to the scene depicted, a long brown road through purple countryside under a deep blue sky. It gave the room more color, but... That painting did not belong there!
A noise from the man beside her recalled her attention to more immediate matters. He was waking up. She took a slow, deep breath; there was no need to panic. But she was panicking; she had not been so frightened since she first realized that she might never see another person again. Here was a man, and he was waking up! She flattened herself against the wall. One of his fingers twitched, then stilled. He was awake.
She could tell from the way he opened his eyes that he knew she was there. First, he opened slits, then, as if to catch a ghost off guard, his eyelids sprang open and their eyes met. They stared at each other for a long time. Neither dared move. At last, she knew that she had to speak. But even as she opened her mouth and began trying to recall the manner of forming words, he spoke.
"Forgive me. It's been a long time."
His lips closed on the final m as if they had only accidentally opened to let it pass, as if they were guards whose carelessness had permitted a prisoner to escape and were determined that no one further should leave. She thought a while before answering.
"A long time," she agreed, at last.
He nodded, then sat up and swung himself off the bed. His face showed surprise when his feet hit the rug, but he made no comment. He vanished into the bathroom.
She took a moment to sort out the events of the past minutes, but thought gave no answers, so she rose and made her bed. There were two blankets now. She supposed the other must be his.
She had begun her morning exercises by the time he emerged from the bathroom. She had been careful not to look through the door frame. She did not know whether or not he expected privacy. When he came out, she went in. She shortly discovered that he, also, had a morning routine. His movements differed from hers, but, like her, he chose to postpone eating until after he had fully awakened. After they had both finished, they went into the bathroom to eat. He opened the food compartment.
They both stopped. As she realized that there was no greater amount of "food" within the box than there would have been for her alone, a small sound escaped her. It was really no more than a sigh, but it caught his attention. He turned back to look at her. She hesitated. He looked down at the food, then stepped back. She moved forward. She stared for a moment at the bread, cheese and potatoes. Finally she picked up the bread and tore it carefully in half. She offered one half to him while keeping the other for herself. He extended his hand. She knew that he agreed that her solution was correct. As he took the bread from her hand, they touched for the first time since they had awoken together. The shock of that contact held them both motionless for a moment. She was surprised to find his flesh so solid, so warm. Then he stepped back.
When she gave him his share of the cheese, she was startled to discover
that he had nearly finished the bread. She did not know how anyone
could eat with that speed. He accepted the cheese with great care.
She guessed that he was afraid to let their hands touch again. Their
eyes met. Again, it was he who turned away. She divided up
the potatoes.
For some reason, their routines clashed-- He wanted to sleep when she wanted to exercise. He wanted to meditate while sitting on the bed and began just as she was preparing to sleep. Indeed, the bed was one of their chief sources of difficulty. It was not large enough for both of them unless they were willing to accept the same intimacy that had so frightened them when that first "morning." Still, they did not discuss the problem. Indeed, they never spoke; they had both been too long without reason to do so. The first evening, he solved the question of the bed by taking his blanket and pillow and sleeping on the floor. The next night, she returned his blanket to the bed and took the floor for herself. He tripped over her on the way to the bathroom.
Still, they did not speak. Silence, when courted too long or too well, is a jealous lover. She sometimes considered speaking but feared that words might shatter the very air, might cause the world to split, to fragment, until they were left with only each other and an unconscious void.
The food continued as it had begun. There was too little.
They began meditating more and exercising less. Still, they did not
speak. Even their breathing was quiet. Before, they had not
wished to stir the air, to remind themselves of human sounds; now, they
could not avoid such reminders. There was still at least one other
person in the world. Try as she might, she could not deny his existence,
nor he hers. But neither's world could admit the other.
"What is your name?" he asked one morning as they both sat digesting their inadequate meal.
She stared at him. After a moment, she realized that this was the first time she had really looked at him since that first morning when the silence had begun to melt. After an even longer pause, she answered him. "Micah," she said. "My name is Micah."
Neither of them spoke again for several hours. Then, as they were settling in to sleep, she asked, "What's yours?"
He looked startled, frightened almost. She wondered if she had looked that terrified when he first spoke.
"Rafe," he answered. His mask shattered in a smile that was almost a laugh. "My name is Rafe."
She smiled back at him; then, almost afraid, she turned away and pulled her blanket over her head.
That morning was not so different from others, but something Micah could not have identified had altered, something subtle. Rafe met her glance as he walked past her into the bathroom. He smiled. Rafe...
Was that it? She whispered her own name once, then said it again, more loudly. She realized with wonder that she had forgotten that she had ever had a name. Silence uses no names; it knows those within it far too intimately to require them. She smiled with the wonder of it. She had a name!
Rafe must have heard her; he was just emerging from the bathroom. He said nothing. He only smiled.
He did speak again, later. They both did. During those few days, though they still allowed silence its place, they rediscovered the beauty of sound. They spoke, asking each other polite questions. They spoke, playing silly guessing games. They spoke. After the long timelessness of silence, they spoke. After the first few days, he sometimes sang. Micah refused to do likewise on the grounds that her voice was much too bad. Rafe refused to believe her.
"Well, I used to recite poetry..." She felt oddly embarrassed to admit it. "But only when I was alone."
"Recite something for me, please."
Either because it was Rafe who asked or because she felt it fair or because she wanted to, Micah agreed. "Promise you won't laugh--"
"I promise," he responded solemnly.
While Rafe waited, patiently, attentively, she considered what to say next. "'Out of the night that covers me--'" she began.
His face changed as he recognized the poem. "Don't," he said. "Don't. Not that one."
He didn't speak again for the rest of the day, but at least he hadn't laughed.
Early the next morning, she asked him about the poem. He looked at her, for a moment, as if he regarded the question as impolite, and she thought that he wouldn't answer. Then, at last he did.
"I'm sorry. I used to love that poem... I whispered it to myself when they wouldn't let me speak at my trial. I made a crutch of it to keep me from collapsing-- It broke under the weight of being alone, crushed by silence."
She nodded. There was nothing she could say to that. He had used "Invictus;" she had used a handful of Emily Dickinson's poems. After a time, she found words that needed saying. "The silence almost crushed me." Even later, she went on, "Then, I realized that I didn't have to fight it. That I could love it, instead."
He nodded and did not answer. That was how their conversations
went. They might go hours, or only minutes, between comments.
Neither ever forgot what the other had been speaking of; neither ever forced
words to come when it was not time for them.
"Did you ever think," she began on another occasion, "that they might have planned to let the silence destroy us?"
He answered immediately, almost as if he had been waiting for her to ask that question. "They have to make us admit we're wrong, or they might have to admit that they are."
She thought about that all day. "It didn't work," she announced at last.
He laughed.
"I used to wish they'd just killed me... Then it didn't matter."
"They must have thought it would." He remained silent for a long while after he had said this. Then he smiled gently. "That must be why they've put us together. They thought that if solitude didn't break us, company would."
Her smile echoed his, and they said nothing more that day.
Somehow, during that time after they rediscovered speech, they began to share the bed. They slept together, but there was nothing more to it than that. Micah realized hazily, that there was something wrong with such a situation and, recalling a little of life before the room, wondered if the nebulous they to whom she and Rafe referred with increasing regularity had been putting something in the food. Although it had been years (She thought) since she looked at a bible, she seemed to recall that God was supposed to disapprove of sex.
The food ration had remained unchanged. They no longer expected anything more than they had found that first morning. Neither of them spoke of food, either. Instead, they were silent as they both lost weight. They no longer knew how long they had been together, nor could they guess how much longer they would be able to live on the rations that might, barely, sustain one. Time had changed oddly. It could only be measured by their own words.
One morning, she awakened before he did and walked into the bathroom. She opened the panel of the food compartment and looked at the usual, scanty ration. She looked at it, and her stomach told her that she could very easily eat all of it. Her body told her that that small portion of food was just what she needed to live just a little bit longer, that the life of the man sleeping in the other room was of no importance when weighed against her own survival--
Shutting that compartment took all the will she had built in the years before the room. When Rafe woke, she was crying, and she would not tell him why.
When she sobbed and shook her head, he nodded and turned away. He walked across the room. He stopped just short of the table that held their only book. Without looking at her, he picked up the book and opened it. He flipped through a few pages. She curled herself up until her head rested on her knees and began rocking back and forth. He still didn't look at her.
"You know," he said, after a few minutes, "there are some good things in here."
She didn't answer.
He turned to look at her, but she didn't meet his eyes. He sighed. She refused to meet his eyes, to even look in his direction. She heard the dull thunk that meant he had returned the book to its proper place. She heard the sound of his bare feet moving toward her, then the rustle of his clothing as he knelt beside her. His hand touched her hair which, by now, was nearly shoulder length.
"There are some good things in that book," he asserted. "Maybe they aren't so bad either... Maybe--"
She uncurled violently, jerking away from his gentle hand. "Damn them all," she said. "May their God damn them all!" Her anger pulled her to her feet. He rose also and seemed about to try to soothe her. She looked at him and shook her head. "No." She chose to answer the question he had wanted to ask. "They may be damned-- They are damned, but I'm not, not yet. And you're not, either."
He nodded and stepped toward her. She never forgot the feeling of his arms around her, the feeling that, if there was nothing else, there was always him and their love for each other.
The next morning, she woke alone.
She knew immediately, of course, but still sat up to look, as if her eyes could be used to disprove what all her other senses told her. Rafe was not in the room. She stumbled out of bed, her foot catching in her blanket as she hurried toward the bathroom. But he wasn't there either.
Because she could think of nothing else to do, she splashed water on her face and returned to the main room. Now, standing in the frame of the doorway between the two small chambers, she let her eyes move over the walls, the floor, in a search for some trace of what had happened. But the floor remained its usual unbroken black-- Her eyes checked and returned to a certain place on the floor. She knelt and touched the floor beside the bed. She touched only floor. Almost without conscious intent, she looked up at the wall opposite the bed.
Rafe's painting still hung there.
She looked for a little while, almost hoping that the canvas and wood would dissolve and vanish, would disappear and leave her no proof. When reality refused to yield to desire, she clenched a fist and pounded the equally unyielding floor. Although she felt no pain, she stopped after a moment and let the tears come as they would.
Truly, they must be experts. They must know in precise detail how any individual might be broken and how to try again if one method failed. They had taken Rafe and left her no way to disbelieve the memory...
She cried until there were no more tears. Then, she made herself go into the bathroom and check the food compartment. The food behind the panel was more than she or Rafe had seen at any meal during the time they were together. Acting on a vague memory, Micah did not permit herself to follow her first impulse and devour the offering. Rather, she limited herself to a very little more than her usual portion. Her stomach, she realized, could not handle such a massive amount of food all at once. She could eat more later. Since she could not predict how long this unprecedented generosity would last, she very carefully selected the messier portions of the meal to consume and removed the bread and cheese. These bits of nourishment, she placed on the table with the bible where they would be safe.
But the meals continued to be large, and she began to regain the weight she had lost. After a time, she resumed her exercises. She tried to return to the routine she had followed before Rafe, but she was apt to find herself staring at the purples and browns of his painting or sitting, listening to a voice singing, a voice that wasn't there. She did not cry. Not after that first day. She knew, now, that someone must be watching her, and she would not let them see that she hurt.
Had she not still had the painting, she knew that she would immediately have questioned her sanity, would have wondered if Rafe had, indeed, ever existed. Still, time, or what passed for time in the void that held her, dulled the memory. Her hair grew longer; she slept and ate and slept again. Sometimes, she had conversations with Rafe. Sometimes, she told him all of the things that his existence had made her remember...
Those who watched must have thought her heartless, for she never spoke.
Perhaps that was why the next step toward destruction came so soon after she had regained her physical health. She woke, visited the bathroom, performed her stretches and went to get her food. The panel opened but revealed no food. There, where she expected to find bread or eggs, she saw three sheets of paper. Her hands shook as she lifted the papers from their resting place. She shut the panel carefully. At that moment, she must have had some premonition of what those papers might say, for she shook her head and left the bathroom. She sat on her bed and, carefully holding an expression of indifference, began to read.
On this day, June 14, Year of Our Lord, 2189, I, Elizabeth Biedermann, find it my solemn and sorrowful duty to sentence some of the sinners the Church has placed in my care to death. I grieve that these individuals must meet the most merciful G-d without showing any sign of repenting their most horrible crimes against Him. I pray for their souls and ask that all followers of the true G-d do likewise.
Micah's first thought, as she read, came from the date on the document. It had been three years... They must have cut her hair. Then she absorbed the rest of the words. She almost didn't have to look at the remaining sheets of paper.
She set the first sheet down on the bed and put the others down beside
it. Both of the other documents began in the same way. They
stated that, to alleviate crowding in the prisons, fifty percent of those
incarcerated for the last rebellion were to be killed. She bit her
lip in an effort not to give voice to any sound that might tell the watchers
that they had hurt her. As she had suspected, both sheets were orders
of execution, one for her and one for Rafe. Neither was signed.
The next morning, her life changed again. Her first hint of difference came in the moment before she opened her eyes. She heard the sound of someone else breathing, but she had been half expecting that. She was alone in her bed; that surprised her. But something else was different...
She opened her eyes and turned over so that she could see the room. And found herself facing a wall... Startled, she flipped herself over in hopes that she had just gotten disoriented, but the room that greeted her was not the room she had inhabited for so long. It was too big, and it was not square. There was another bed near the far wall. Someone, she thought it was Rafe, lay sleeping in it.
She slipped quietly out of bed and crossed the room. She noted in passing that her rug lay precisely midway between the beds. She stepped on it to confirm its reality, then continued on. She smiled. Her new roommate was indeed Rafe. She gently touched his shoulder.
He awoke with a start. "Sorry." Micah grinned. "I just wanted to say good morning."
"Or good whatever..." He sat up and looked around.
"Look familiar?"
"No."
He climbed out of bed, and they began exploring. There was not all that much to see. Two beds, two stools, two tables, two books, one rug and one painting. And two sets of papers that neither wanted to see. The bathroom facilities were no different from what they had become accustomed to except that the food compartment was bigger and delivered enough for both of them.
They ate, sitting on the edges of their respective beds and grinning foolishly at each other. Micah spoke first.
"I've missed you..."
He nodded. "I wondered-- You might have forgotten. I mean, I had proof that you'd been real, but--"
"They left me the painting."
He nodded again and rose to do his stretches.
Later, after their second meal, he asked her about the papers.
"I found them in my room yesterday." She saw no reason not to tell the truth. "They say something about overcrowding and threaten both of us."
Something resembling despair filled his eyes even as he smiled at her. "Good. I just wanted to see if they said the same thing mine do."
They spoke no more that evening of papers or of death sentences or of Church law, but, when Micah woke the next morning, Rafe's tiny pile of paper was gone.
She spent several days considering the matter. She wanted very much to ask him, but she didn't want to hear him lie.
"I didn't know," he said a few cycles later, "that you were a part of the revolt."
Micah did not respond immediately. When she finally answered, her voice held more than a hint of scorn. "Did you really think they'd put anybody else in these holes?"
Rafe regarded her with astonishment. She had never before directed her anger at him. He shook his head. "Nobody really important even lived to stand trial. Why shouldn't they put the thieves and murderers in here with us?"
"You can bet that the prison administration wouldn't bother trying to make two thieves repent--"
He didn't answer.
An hour or so later, she found words to continue. "I don't know why they bother... Even if I broke, or you did, what good would it do?"
He hesitated, and she wondered if he was afraid he might offend her again. "I don't know how long you've been in," he began. She waited for him to finish, then realized that he was expecting her to speak.
"I was with the group that tried to take the television station in L.A."
He nodded. "Since the beginning, then. Since before we even knew we'd lost." He seemed to huddle down into himself. "I was out there for a long time after, almost a year. They weren't very concerned about people like me at first. Oh, if I'd gone home or anything, I'd have been arrested immediately, but there wasn't any major search on for me in particular..." He trailed off. She knew that he was no longer seeing her and wondered what it was he did see. She knelt beside him and put a hand on his knee.
"Rafe--" He seemed to be coming back from a great distance. "It's okay. Really--"
"I'm sorry. It's strange, though. At the time, I was almost offended that they weren't after me specifically... Anyway, the Church ran a series of show trials and let people speak in their own defense. They let Elizabeth Rangi speak--"
"Oh--"
"Exactly. I think they're still trying to counteract her. That's why they'd like us to break. A few penitent rebels might at least help." He smiled, but his face expressed more bitterness than humor. "The problem is that the ones who break aren't nearly as convincing. There were three major riots in Dallas alone... That's how they caught me. I got involved in one of them and even gave a speech. I wish I knew how that came out... I was leading an attack on the Cathedral when they gassed us, but when they tried me--" Rafe shook his head. "For all of that Elizabeth Biedermann's piety, I don't think that "God's Republic" is having an easy time."
"I hope not," Micah said. Rafe nodded, and they spoke no more
that day.
Micah woke in the middle of her sleep cycle. She rose and visited the bathroom, then returned to bed. She couldn't sleep. She decided that there was no reason to force herself to rest; after all, she wasn't going to be doing anything strenuous, just eating and talking and sleeping again. She sat on the edge of her bed and picked fuzz balls off her blanket. She threw the tiny pieces of fuzz onto the floor and wondered if anyone would ever sweep them up. She looked around the room. Something, she decided abruptly, had to change. She found herself drawn to the table that held "her" bible and her papers. She picked up the three neatly folded sheets and began tearing. Not until the pieces were too small to be halved again, not until the death threats were illegible, not until then did she stop.
She looked at the floor. It was covered in shreds of paper, or, at least, the area about her feet was. She regarded the scraps for a moment in silence; then it occurred to her to wonder how much paper would be required to cover the entire floor. She opened the bible...
When Rafe woke, she was more than halfway through the volume from his table. She answered his incredulous stare with carefully chosen words. "I've had enough of this--" The words were precise and as carefully formed as the print on the pages she was destroying.
"Micah--"
"I've had enough."
He was wise enough to say nothing further. When she had finished the last destructible scrap, she finally looked at him. "I've had enough of this game," she said. "You know something. Tell me."
He tried to deny any unshared knowledge, but she was in no mood to listen.
"Tell me," she snarled. "Tell me what your papers said-- Now!"
He hesitated.
"They told you, didn't they? You know whether or not we're going to die! Tell me, now."
"We're not going to."
She almost sighed at the release, but something about the way he had said it wasn't quite right... She looked down at her homemade confetti, then raised her eyes to meet his. "Which one of us?" she whispered. "Which one?"
His eyes met hers for a moment, and he didn't speak. Then he turned away. "Me," he said. "My sentence came signed."
Her tears were for both of them.
Three days later, they killed him.
Neither Micah nor Rafe displayed any surprise when the strangers entered. While both had been expecting this moment, neither was willing to grant the enemy even that minor victory. The invaders came through the bathroom, and Micah had a vague feeling that she should have guessed that the door would be there. All the other necessities were.
There were five of them, four guards and an officer. The officer held several papers in her hand. For a moment, no one spoke. Rafe's eyes met Micah's, and he shrugged.
One of the guards moved forward. He was carrying two books. His highly polished black boots clicked on the tile floor and made tiny rustling sounds as they encountered the scraps of paper. He placed the new bibles on the two tables. Micah looked from the guard to Rafe and back again. She stared at the paper that covered the floor.
"There are some good things in those books," she said. The room was silent; even the guards seemed to be holding their breath. Micah raised her head so that she could see Rafe.
He shook his head. "Not enough, Micah." His voice was steady, and she admired his conviction. Then she noticed that his right hand, the hand that the invaders could not see, was clenched so that the nails would sink deep into the palm. She realized then how close he was to breaking and knew that one more word would make him give in, would make him live.
Her eyes filled with tears, and she found that she could not speak.
Boot heels clicked as the officer stepped forward. She cleared her throat. "Rafael Eliott?" she asked. Rafe nodded and rose. "It is my duty to carry out your execution as ordered by my superior, Warden Biedermann. It is also my duty to act as your confessor should you desire to acknowledge your sins before God. Do you desire to make confession?" Rafe shook his head. "Very well. The sentence will be carried out-- Now." As she spoke, she raised her right hand. With the end of her speech, her hand chopped through the air.
The guard who had delivered the bibles moved to stand beside Micah. One of his hands came to rest on her shoulder to prevent her rising. She didn't even look at him. The other three guards surrounded Rafe. The officer came forward, set her papers carefully on one of the tables and pulled out a pair of gloves. Once the gloves were on, she reached into a pocket and pulled out a deadly looking gun. She held the gun delicately, inspecting it as if she had never before seen a similar instrument of death. Taking small, deliberate steps, she moved toward Rafe.
He made no move to escape, but, when the officer stopped, he said, "Give it to me. I'll do it myself."
Micah saw the woman shake her head but could not see her facial expression. The woman replied softly, "Why, brother Eliott, you, of all people, should know that the Good Book prohibits suicide..." Micah saw the muscles in Rafe's face tighten, saw his jaw clench. She tried to look away, but, as her head began to turn, the man standing beside her placed his hands on either side of her head and forced her to look. Micah saw the officer raise the gun. She heard the explosions as the bullets were propelled toward Rafe. She saw his body convulse as the slugs struck, saw blood stain the wall and start dripping toward the floor. She made no sound as she watched him die.
The hands released her. Her eyes dropped to her lap to view her whitened knuckles. She shook with a silent sob. Somewhere, far away, the officer spoke again. Boots clicked, paper crinkled, and people moved. When Micah finally looked up in the returning silence, the intruders were gone. Rafe's body still lay were it had fallen. If she hadn't been able to see the spreading stain as blood ran through the close woven fibers of his blanket, she might have thought that he had tripped and used the bed to save himself. Micah returned her gaze to her hands. She unclasped them and flexed the fingers several times. She continued flexing and clenching her hands until she was done crying. When she felt that she had sufficient command of herself, she rose and crossed the room. She stood, hesitating, over the body then looked uncertainly about the room. Her face hardened and the softness of grief was swallowed by the flint edge of anger. She knelt beside Rafe's still form, ignoring both the blood and the rustling scraps of paper. She pushed Rafe's legs onto the bed and proceeded to lay him out in what her mother would have called "a proper manner."
Then she destroyed the bibles.
The next day, when it became clear to her that they were not going to move her immediately to another room, she began gathering handfuls of paper and flushing them down the toilet. The improvised carpeting made far too much noise, and she wanted no sound to intrude on her mourning, to disturb the heavy slumber of the still figure on the other bed.
She kept vigil over the body that first night. She had decided that she would not let them take him away without saying goodbye. Besides, although she did not like to admit it to herself, she could not have slept with the body there. She would have been too certain that it would walk while she slept, that it would...
They left the body there until it began to stink. She had not meant to sleep, but exhaustion got the better of her, and, when she woke, all trace of him was gone. When she looked closely, she could only just see traces of blood on the far wall where someone had rushed through his part of the cleanup. Rafe's blankets, the bloodstained blankets were gone, and new, amnesiac squares of wool covered the bed. They had even taken his painting. She wondered if he had next of kin who would be glad to receive some memento of a lost relative.
Her food ration returned to its normal level, but she found that she could not eat. She kept thinking of Rafe. Most of her ration joined the bibles in the toilet. Until they removed the corpse, she did little but sit staring at it. Sometimes, she curled up with her knees against her chest and rocked, and, then, she felt as if the air she inhaled had somehow been sharpened so that it cut, so that her lungs would bleed, so that her chest would be perforated as she tried to force the air out. At those times, she cried.
Even when she started moving around the room again, she still could
not bring herself to touch Rafe's bed. She could touch the spot on
the wall that had once been colorful, but she did not dare touch the bed.
She sometimes stood, looking at it, for an hour or more, and, a few times,
she even reached to touch it.
Then she began to feel cold. She did not realize, until the fever
started, exactly what was wrong. It had been more than three years
since she had been ill. When the chills came again, she curled up
on her bed and built a nest around herself with her blanket. She
was just thinking clearly enough to realize that she needed more blankets
and that the only source for such an item was Rafe's bed.
Shaking slightly, she crossed the room. She put a tentative hand on the blanket, half-expecting Rafe's ghost to rise from the sheets and deny her the comfort. Nothing happened. She lifted the blanket. Nothing. She didn't even find stains on the mattress underneath. Arms shaking, she buried her face in the blanket and cried.
The next day, she made herself eat normally.
Gradually, she brought herself back into the routine she had established
before she met Rafe. She ate, she slept, and she exercised.
She let the air sing her songs, and, sometimes, it sang with Rafe's voice.
She was not entirely surprised to hear noises from the bathroom one morning. They would have to return for her eventually. She did not even bother to turn and look.
First came the sound of a throat being cleared; then a voice spoke. "Micah Raggoya?"
She finished chewing, swallowed and answered, "I am." She still did not turn.
The voice continued, "Your case has come up for review. Your presence at the trial is required."
She rose and turned to view the speaker. A young man, an officer, stood in the bathroom doorway. Two guards stood just inside the main room, one to either side of the door. She wondered that they had sent only three.
A corner of the officer's mouth twitched in impatience. "Your presence at the trial is required," he repeated.
She shrugged, then bent over and picked up her rug. She shook it out and hit it so that the dust flew out. Then she folded it carefully and laid it over her arm. "Lead on," she said.
There were four more guards waiting outside in the hall. She stood in the middle of the corridor and looked around as they took up their positions around her. The walls seemed to stretch on forever, broken only by numbers which, Micah assumed, must mark the entrances to other cells. The small group began to move.
She never knew exactly what had happened. She never asked. The guards couldn't have told her, and she really didn't care. All that mattered as she left her room was that they were going to let her speak. She pictured herself denouncing the Church and provoking the final rebellion that would sweep the corrupt theocrats from power but, after a moment, recognized the image for the delusion it was. She did not have the words, and Rafe, who did, was dead.
As the strange procession moved through the silent corridors, she sensed his presence beside her. She knew that he was there, but, when she looked, she found that she was alone with six guards and their silent commander. She glanced at the guards flanking her and smiled. They might have killed him, but they could not separate him from the silence. And the silence was everywhere. It permeated the prison complex, filled the long white halls, echoed off the small plates that signaled doorways and kept company with those locked within. None of her companions heard it. With the click of their boots, with the rattle of keys and the efficient swish-swish of uniforms and bodies moving, they resisted, defied the quiet. It answered them gently, with echoes that faded into stillness like drops of water falling from leaves into a still pool after a rainstorm.
Micah smiled. They had no strength to draw on. She
raised her head. She had the silence-- The silence and Rafe.