VERACITY
VERACIT
A NOVEL
LAURA BYNUM
Pocket Books
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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New York, NY 10020
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright (c) 2010 by Laura Bynum
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Pocket Books hardcover edition January 2010
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Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bynum, Laura, 1968-
Veracity--1st Pocket Books hardcover ed.
p. cm.
I. Title.
PS3602.Y57V47 2010
813'.6--dc22 2009024767
ISBN 978-1-4391-2334-8
ISBN 978-1-4391-5595-0 (ebook)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The day I received the bid on Veracity, I'd just had a biopsy on my left breast. Two days later, I received a. confirmation that it was cancer, and b. my contract from Pocket Books. It's been a hell of a ride. What began with a trip to the Maui Writer's Conference (and, while there, winning the Rupert Hughes award for Veracity ) culminates today in a way-too-brief list of people to whom I am grateful. It is painfully, unforgivably short, considering there are so many of you who were a part of not just helping me heal, but keeping me on track with my work. Were I to list you all, I'd double the size of this book.
Before going right into my acknowledgments, I should mention that surgery and radiation have cured me. I hope Veracity can serve as not just a cautionary tale about retaining our words and knowing the difference between fact and opinion, but also about not losing hope.
To my family--my generous husband, Eric Bynum, and our extraordinary daughters, Alex, Tea, and Sammy; my three mothers and three fathers, Trudy and Harold Watson, Bev and Walter Clark, and Sheila and Frank Bynum; my courageous siblings, Christina Olshefsky and Patrick Dill; my siblings-in-law, Paul Olshefsky and Joel, Natasha, and Portia Bynum.
To those of my family who've helped from a little farther afield--my grandfather, Wilbur Long, Joyce Stover, Don Burch, and Mary (Mom Mom) Bynum.
To my friends--Janet Child, Colleen Cook, Jessica Hall, Barb Johnson, Rhonda and Tony Sinkosky, Carol Ordal, Ronald Rose, Ruth Stoltzfus, Christy Uden, Sonja Wise, Greg Wolf, Tammy and Greg Ziegler, and others too numerous to mention.
To my Illinois and Virginia physicians and caregivers--Dr. Schaap, Dr. Ogan and his bunch of rowdy ladies, Dr. Boyer, Dr. Lander, and Dr. Hendrix and her amazing crew--I was editing throughout my treatment and could not have finished this novel without your support and love.
A special thanks goes out to Dan Conaway who, as Simon so eloquently put it, is my creative beshert. If I could turn your insights into gold, we'd be able to put all our children through college. Also to Simon Lipskar, Sylvie Rabineau, and Jennifer Heddle for their insight into and support of this book.
Most of all, I must acknowledge my Creator who gave me the best diversion of my life on one of its darkest days.
This novel is dedicated to the most spiritually sentient woman I know--my grandmother, Irma Long.
December 23, 1918-July 9, 2009
apostasy
discriminate
ego
fossil
heresy
kindred
obstreperous
offline
veracity
apos-ta-sy : a total desertion of or departure from one's religion, principles, party, or cause.
CHAPTER ONE
AUGUST 4, 2045, EARLY AFTERNOON.
The deeper I get into the prairie, the more I realize that what I've been told about the wastelands is false. The trees here are green. The crops, tall and heavy with corn. There are no black clouds threatening to drip acid onto my car, no checkpoints full of frothing police ready to execute every onerous code they see fit. I haven't seen a Blue Coat since Wernthal. God willing, it will stay that way.
An old farmer is hitchwalking down a line of corn. I see him in my rearview mirror as a blotch of spoiled yellow. This is how our world considers the inhabitants of this land. Spoiled and decrepit, not useful. But neither are they considered clever enough to pose a threat. So they enjoy the otherwise restricted bounty of nature. A wide-open sky. Grass. Neon-free, unfettered space. I envy them this, but only so much. We live in different prisons, but in prisons nonetheless. Theirs is made up of memories of the beforetime. Mine, of concrete walls and security checkpoints, of no birdsong and no breeze.
Fewer line boards are posted alongside the roads out here. Just one every few dozen miles instead of the standard one per block. Posters of non-sexually attractive housewives blink as I drive by. Stay Happy, at mile marker 1. Stay Healthy, at mile 32. Remember the Pandemic. Mile marker 78.
Used to be something different. Honor Those Who've Fallen, to communicate the whole of it. But the word honor got too many people thinking. The concept sparked a small fire in those of us not quite doused out, and we began to discuss the dis honorable things required of all citizens living here, things that didn't get printed on line boards. And so in small, quiet ceremony, in the ripping down of a hundred thousand posters, honor had the honor of being our first Red Listed word. We woke the next morning to Safety First and We Don't Want to Go Back to the Way Things Were, Do We?
The countryside is more beautiful than I remember, even like this. Bales of trash instead of baled-up hay. Abandoned farmhouses dotting the land like weeping sores. I can't stand to see their burnt or age-worn structures, or their insides seeping out onto the unmowed lawns. I was born in the country, as were my best memories. I won't desecrate them by noticing these shells of civilization zipping past my car windows. In fact, I'll go faster. It's unlikely Blue Coats will pick me up on the way to my break site anyway. They won't be out patrolling in the heat, in the wastelands where nothing happens. They'll come later when the Fatherboard sees I've gone rogue. It will be the most excitement they've had in months.
Maybe they won't be carrying guns. Not all Blue Coats get them. Most guns are reserved for the brigade lined up outside the National House like dominoes. Tin soldiers in tidy rows, they flash weaponry used to guard President and his cabinet of Ministers. Keep people from considering assassination, keep those who try anyway from achieving their goal. Guns also go to police assigned to specific jobs. Hunting down runners and the quick dispatch of terrorists.
Aside from this ignoble guard, the largely gun-free system has flourished. Fists, elbows, knees, mouths, teeth, the fleshy weapons carried by men, the ones used to inflict more intimate punishments--these broadcast an absolute and terrifying power the business end of a pistol doesn't match. When a Blue Coat exacts a punishment, scars are left and people see them.
