Mary tried to ignore the sobbing of her sister in the next room. It had been two days since They came to her village and she was still in shock. Two days is the minimum time to wait, Alex had said, before Talking. Alex was the fellow from the Engineers Sans Frontiers who had given her the Kit. This was not first time she had to use it, but it was over a year ago... she tried not to remember. The ESF had come into her wartorn country, as they always did whereever they saw the poverty that follows tyranny. The Engineers, Mary had heard, got their money from some anonymous group of California Norte businessmen, from that place they called Sallay-Vallay, but Mary knew little of such distant things. They had the geopolitical immunity of the Red Circle or Docteurs Sans Frontiers agencies but were more like the Corps of Engineers. The ESF had come to build (or rather, repair) the roads into the villages. This was permitted by the Rulers, it was after all free help. They could set up generators but that was about all that the Rulers wanted the peasants to have. There were not enough trusted police to monitor all the calls if every village had phones, after all. Besides the bulldozers, chainsaws, and other machinery for turning jungle into road, the ESF brought equiptment that let them stay in touch with their headquarters. They had some kind of telephones, that didn't need wires. But their communications were as controlled as the peasants. Armed soldiers loitered around the engineers' base and kept an ear towards the phone station. The ESF were guests of the Rulers, dismissable at their whims. Much like the Soldiers dismissed peasants in night raids, only with less permenance. ....... During her regular chores, Mary snuck out to The Place where she had buried It. Under the jungle mould was an olive drab case that she brushed off and lifted out onto the ground. She unlatched it and took out the metal box within. Then she put the waterproof case back under cover. She moved away from that site, taking the metal box. Sitting down, she took a key from around her neck and unlocked it. Inside was a pocket-sized computer, a solar panel and some batteries, and a small tin that originally held mints but now had electronics inside and a pair of buttons and LEDs outside. There were some other cables in there too. Mary knew none of these words, indeed she could not read or write. But Alex had explained to her how to use it, and made her demonstrate what he had taught until she was confident. Mary slid the little black stone on the side of the larger, silvery slab with the shiny window. It beeped, lit up, then pictures appeared in the glowing window. A little blue line at the bottom of the window was most of the width of the window, which was good: it meant she wouldn't need to fill up the little yellow cylinders, which took a day. You had to put the cylinders into metal holders in the back of the blue plate and then leave the plate in the sun for a day. Blue side up. And the cylinders had to be pointed the right way, though there were little pictures near the holders to show you ---the cylinders had a nipple on one end and were flat on the other. The ends had different markings, too, one like the cross worn by the missionaries who occasionally visited, and one a single line. It was also possible to make fuel by turning the handle of a little gadget that Mary had seen, which was good because you didn't have to wait for the sun, but she didn't have one of those. One of her neighbors had a radio that worked with such a handle; turning the handle for a minute would play about half an hour's worth of music from the one station that they could hear. You could see inside this radio, and there was a coiled spring in there, and it rapidly turned the shaft of something that actually made the fuel for the cylinders. Turning the handle coiled the spring, which then turned the fuel-maker. How spinning a shaft could make fuel was beyond Mary's comprehension, but it worked. The missionaries had been impressed by Mary's ability to turn fur into fine thread with a spinning shaft, but you could *see* that; making radio-fuel by spinning was invisible. That radio had also been a gift from another fellow with the ESR. The little window now showed a padlock, which told Mary that the box had checked itself over and was healthy. She also looked at the sides of the box, and saw that the wax along its sides was unscratched. It wasn't wax exactly, it was wax that hardened into stone, "metal poxxi" Alex had called it. It made it very difficult to open the window-box (except for where you put the cylinders into it), and nearly impossible to open and put back together without it being evident. But no one had found the buried case or opened the locked tin or changed the insides of the window-box. Alex had explained that she was trusting the box to protect her secrets, and that if someone tampered with it it might tell them. Mary buried these gifts well when she could not have them with her directly. Mary studied the box in her hands. The green thunderbolt of the ESF was blinking in the window now. She touched it, and recited a phrase which she had spoken to the box when Alex had made the box "hers". Alex had said to memorize that phrase, and tell no one. And to speak it only to the box, and only when you are alone with the box. The phrase itself made little sense, it was a rhyme her daughter had come up with when she was younger. The box, for its part, seemed to know her voice, because she had to repeat here rhyme a few times when she had that bad cold. After a moment, the box chimed and flashed a picture of Alex as a way of greeting her, then presented several pictures. She touched the picture of someone talking. This caused the scene in the window to change, presenting her with two little colored squares. One of them would make the box remember what she said; the other went back to the first set of window pictures. Mary touched the first square and began talking. When she talked louder, the square was brighter, and when she spoke softer, it was dim. Finally she stopped talking, and after a few seconds the box knew she was done. Now the box showed her arrows which she knew let her listen to her message, and decide to send it, save it, or forget it. She listened to a few seconds of it to make sure it worked. She didn't think she sounded like the voice she heard, but Alex had said that you hear yourself differently, and the voice from the box was saying, in her language, what she had just said. She wiped away a tear, for she had described what They had done to her sister's village. .... Mary put the computer in one pocket, then remembered that the she had to check that some of the cylinders had fuel for the tin. Again, the cylinders had to point in the right direction, but there were pictures showing how. She put some into the holders on the bottom of the tin and pressed a red protrustion, which caused a red light to light. When she stopped pressing, the light went off. This meant that the tin had fuel too. She put the tin, with cylinders still in their holders, into a pocket on the other side, and trudged off further into the forest. Now she had to find one of the wires. ........ Which had she used before? The one by the East Hill she remembered, so this time she would go right at the Big Rock and use the wire on the West Hill. Alex had explained that when you use a wire, everyone can hear you, so its important to use different wires and different times, so anyone who'se trying to find you has a harder time of it. ........ She rested after she found the tree with the wire. She ate some hard bread and cheese, and her mind drifted to the story Alex had told her. The window-box remembers what you said to it. It makes what you said "smaller" and hides it in a krypt ---the missionaries had mentioned krypts, they apparently kept corpses in them, something that disgusted her, but these were strangers, from far away, after all. Maybe they didn't have wood to burn to purify the bodies, so they *stored* them... ick. So the window box, picking up the train of thought, takes my voice, shrinks it, hides it, then tells it to the tin... Mary jerked, realizing that she might have forgotten to bring the cables, but she had grabbed them without realizing it, they were in the same pocket as the tin. She didn't want to have to make the trip out to the wire twice. The tin uses the wire to shout my hidden voice, she mused. How ironic, They try to keep us silent, so we are forced to shout ---with hidden voices. And Alex, miles away, was able to hear the inaudible shout, unhide it, and pass it on. It was like the radio Mary's neighbor had, she realized, only the radio shout was not hidden. Alex had explained that even if They were listening, they would not hear her voice on their radios. And while Mary could only talk to Alex, Alex explained that he could talk (and write!) to people far away. Many people; and all their conversations could be private. Mary didn't see how this was possible, her Talker only worked with Alex in the field camp, but that's all she needed and Alex said it made it easier to use if it worked this way. Mary pressed the red button again, and the light indicated the batteries hadn't dislodged. She found one cable and plugged one end into the tin, attached the other to the wire which went up into the tree. Then she took another cable and connected the window box to the tin. The ends of the cables had different shapes and there was only one way to fit them together. Ok, now she was ready to shout. She pressed a different, green button on the tin, which caused a green light to glow. This button stayed pushed-in when she took her fingers away. Then she went to the window-box, and found the picture of the letter. She tapped this twice, and a picture of two gears turning was animated on the screen. There was also a short line displayed, which grew as minutes passed. This was like the fuel-line, the longer the line the more voice had been shouted. In fact, as Mary waited, she saw the fuel-line shrink. But the gears stopped and the picture changed back to the green thunderbolt. This meant that her voice had been sent. She hoped Alex would listen to it soon, because it was urgent. She knew that Alex didn't have to be listening, that his window-box would hold her voice for him like it held it during the jungle-walk to the wire. She pressed the green button again and the glow stopped. She then moved the stone on the window box and its window darkened. Pulling the cables loose, she slipped them into her pocket, hid the end of the wire, and departed. ...... A lot had happened. Their had been more fighting, and distant flashes and booms, and talk that They had been replaced. Mary had heard of no more raids for some time, and people from the "new" goverment had eventually visited and explained that Fear was over. They even tried to explain a list of "rights" or "freedoms" that Mary now had. Mary thought this was rather scary, perhaps a trap, but over the months that followed she saw that one could speak, or travel, or meet freely and that They did not roam at night any more. There had been talk that the Gringos had helped the resistance, which had been hopelessly weaker than the well armed Rulers had been. There was now talk that vehicles with the ESF's green thunderbolt had been seen in the city, and so Mary found an excuse to travel there. She stayed in a church there, which was accustomed to helping the locals when they came to town, and had the priest there try to contact Alex through the ESF people in town. During the last day she could stay before returning, the priest explained that he had contacted Alex but that he was unable to visit; but he had sent something for her. The priest held a small black box in his hand, different from the ones in her Talking kit, and led her to another room. He turned on a large box with a window that glowed, but showed no picture. He slid the black box into an opening in the large glowing box, and moving pictures appeared in the big window. There were rows of Outsiders, dressed more like the missionaries than Alex's more jungle adapted garb. The priest explained. "This is a movie of the Gringo Rulers, and they are deciding what to do about the Tyrants they helped us evict. Many of them distrusted the Tyrants but had no evidence of his crimes ---did you know that all our telephones were listened to, back then?" "Anyway, this is a real movie. About four months ago. The Gringos are trying to deciding if the Atrocity stories have any truth. This was hard for them, because they are far away, you know, and They controlled what the world thought about us. But this is the meeting where they decided to help us." That is nice, Mary interrupted, somewhat hypnotized by the moving pictures. But what has this to do with me? "Look there. Do you recognize him?" Alex was there, he was facing the rows of people dressed like missionaries, and he was holding something up. Everyone was looking at him. What an odd thing to send me, Mary thought; I can't make out his face very well. "Wait, dear, I have to turn the volume up." said the priest, twisting a knob. And Mary heard that voice.. the one that the window-box repeats when she talked to it.. saying what Mary had said.. to the Gringo Rulers.. (c) 2000
participants (1)
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Blank Frank