people's tribunal
"Nothing forgiven, nothing forgotten." For the millionth time, each family member of PentaFive Alpha shares an injustice they witnessed, a ritual the family goes through every night, and where so many of the same injustices get repeated ad nauseam with no real consequence to any of them. Nothing is forgiven or forgotten in this family, yet nothing seems to get done about it.
When it's her turn to speak, Pound clinically recounts her exchange with Bogart earlier that day.
".... and no matter how much effort I put into cleaning my hands, doing my hair and makeup, changing into fresh clothes, in their eyes I'll forever be a dusty PentaFive."
She waits for the circle's answer, the one that never changes.
"Nothing for -"
"Curious." Pontecorvo doesn't raise his voice. He never has to. "You repeat Bogart's insult like it hurts you. But you agree with him. Every time you play at looking like the upper blocks." A sigh escapes from someone's mouth. Someone else's eyes roll, and it's like the family is watching a fight no one asked to referee. "You think PentaFive is dust. You just needed someone else to say it."
Pound tries not to flinch. "That's not what I said."
"It's what you meant." He doesn't look away from her, doesn't blink, doesn't do any of the things a person does when they're bluffing. "You'll dress it up as an injustice done to you. It's easier than admitting it's one you keep doing to yourself."
The circle stays silent, waiting to see if the ritual survives the interruption. It's the same argument he's made a hundred times before: her devotion to beauty is indulgence, collective sacrifice is difficult and ugly, and doesn't ask to be liked. She's heard it enough times to recite it herself, in his voice, in her sleep.
Pound reaches for the only weapon she has left, the one she wears every day precisely because he tore it once in front of everyone, and she refused to let that tear be the end of the story. Her fingers find her blue neckerchief, the seam raised faintly under her thumb, self-soothing disguised as composure.
"Speaking of injustices," she says, hating how much effort it costs to sound unbothered. "Some of us remember standing in this room the last time you decided what a piece of silk meant." An unsteady breath escapes before she catches it. It tastes like Harmonix.
Something flickers across his face. Not quite guilt, not quite regret, gone before she can name it, disappearing into the silence he'd conjured. He was already greying, nine years ago, when Pavese walked through that door and didn't come back, entrusting him with the leadership of the family. She'd been just old enough to understand what that silence meant. It's a language she's since become fluent in. But it's his mother tongue. Pound can't tell, in this light, whether his hair has gone fully grey, or if it's just covered in concrete dust he never bothered to wash out from this morning's shift.
"I recall," he says, a flint edge to his voice, interrupting the growing murmur of discomfort and impatience coming from the rest of the family. He does recall. He never forgets. That's the part she hates the most: not the tearing, which was almost a mercy, quick and silent. It's that he noticed the white back-stitched scar. He's noticed everything about her for years, filed it away with the same cold thoroughness he uses on Codex amendments, and Mastiff speeches, and never once let her see what he intends to do with any of it.
The family finishes the ritual without them this time, a little ragged around the edges. "Nothing forgiven. Nothing forgotten."
The shuffling of boots and supply crates stops as Pontecorvo raises a finger, his eyes darting across that dirty, scribbled notebook of his.
"There's one matter I'd like to raise with the rest of the family, if you all may allow it."
Poliakoff, ever the diplomat in a tweed suit, motions for people to return to their seats. "Why, certainly!" He chuckles. "The people's tribunal is an open forum, dear Pontecorvo, as it always has been. You needn't ask permission." Pound wonders why the stylistic affectation in his voice had never been a problem to Pontecorvo. Why is he allowed eloquence but not her?
"As I believe you all know, our dearest Puccini and Puskas have succeeded in securing a Union and a Family license." Applause and whooping (howling, barking, woofing, in Penhaligon's case) explode amongst the family members. Pontecorvo tries on a smile for two seconds before moving on.
"But as a family we stand on precarious ground. We have two RED citizens, and risk losing them to the reboot if nothing changes. As a member of this family and a Sinergy representative, alongside Penhaligon and Puskas, I can assure you we are pursuing every legal avenue possible that may allow us to materially change the Schneider scale and the reboot conscription rules."
Penhaligon deflates just a little bit. He makes a point in trying to hide it but Pound can see the strained muscles on his temples struggling to maintain his stoic and purposeful expression. He's a RED himself.
Pontecorvo continues his speech about the situation of the family, how PentaFive Omega stands to be dissolved with three RED citizens, how the block will struggle with a reduction in numbers, his fingers flicking through annotations and statistics fresh from the latest Sinergy session. But Pound can't stop noticing how with every word, Penhaligon makes himself a tiny bit smaller, the already feeble light in his eyes dimming into darkness as he drifts his eyes towards the entrance to 1K.
The same place where all of PentaFive and EsaSix do the important work of maintaining the Bunker, holds the door to 10K, where the Reboot Crew will go to die in two days. Or rather, to perform the ultimate and utterly necessary sacrifice of exposing themselves to deadly radiation to reboot the supercomputer Marilyn and guarantee another 25 years of survival for everyone in the Bunker - the last surviving humans on Earth.
Even through the rising volume of overlapping voices, Pound only has eyes for Penhaligon subtly picking the skin around his nails. She is pulled back into the circle when another round of much softer applause cuts through the numbness.
"Wonderful, thank you very much, Poliakoff and Poincaré. I'm sure I speak for the family in expressing gratitude for your commitment to PentaFive Alpha, and we guarantee that any child born of your union, even if said union was formed out of duty, will have all 10 of us as their parents."
"That's right, you all better pull your weight or I'll be coming for you in your sleep, you idiots." Poincaré lovingly punches Penhaligon on his arm, and everyone laughs, a brief respite from the bleakness of the situation. Pound doesn't, still processing the leaps in logic that would have led a family of trade unionists striving for more freedom to request its members to form unions in the name of duty, and not love. She keeps that thought to herself and smiles at Poliakoff, who is sheepishly looking at Poincaré, the warm blanket of Harmonix relaxing her shoulders.
"Obviously as leader I will also volunteer." Pontecorvo's hand is raised as he scans the others. "We must secure at least two genesis pods, and some of us might have licenses denied. Three couples improves our odds." He doesn't ask directly, but he's waiting for someone else to volunteer.
Pound takes stock of the absurdity unfolding in front of her eyes. Puskas and Puccini already have a license. Poliakoff and Poincaré have dutifully volunteered. Penhaligon and Poe are RED, so they can't, even if they wanted to. Planck glances towards PentaFive Omega down the tunnel. Proust is suddenly very interested in his shoes. Presley, who's always nervously walking around the circle, never sitting down with the rest of the family, takes refuge in the shadows across the hall.
Pound raises her hand.
It's Penhaligon's voice that echoes through the tunnel first, too loud. "What the fuck?" Poincaré is already talking over him, hands up, some rapid, placating string of words about how sweet the gesture is, how nobody's asking anyone to do anything tonight, but if she really wants to she can apply for the union with her instead. At that, Poliakoff sheds his diplomatic tone. "No," he says, too fast, too flat, before catching himself. "I mean, Pound, you don't have to. You don't." The rest of the family fills in around them, a mess of half-formed sentences, Proust laughing at the wrong moment, Puccini asking for order, and none of it quite reaches Pound, who is still watching the space where her own voice should probably be.
Pontecorvo raises a hand, and the circle falls quiet. Not immediately, but obediently, in stages. He looks at Pound for a long moment. Not angered, nor pleased. Reading her the way he reads the Codex, searching for the article that needs amending.
"Pound." She concludes his hair is definitely clean, that's not all concrete dust. "Are you sure?"
"Of course she isn't! This is insanity!" Penhaligon pleads at her. "Has he pressured you into this?" He continues pushing, first at her, then at Pontecorvo, then at Poliakoff. His voice is desperate, Pound is aware of the contentious history between him and Pontecorvo, much like between Pontecorvo and her.
Through the voices that are too loud, and her skin that is too warm, Pound manages to meekly raise her voice to finally say something.
"It's fine, Penny, I want to help the family, can we please stop shouting?"
"Fine," Pontecorvo says, as he finishes writing something in his notebook, a plume of dust jetting from the pages as he loudly closes it. Nothing in his voice gives away what he's decided about what he's just seen. "Pound volunteers." He looks at her and pauses, briefly enough that only she notices it. "Three couples. It's settled."
When they all close the meeting by holding hands and reciting the family motto: "no one left behind, no one a master," Penhaligon never takes his eyes off Pound. When he finally does, it's to seethe at Pontecorvo. She should talk to him, probably, try to explain how her hand rose before she could stop it, how the loudness, the shouting and the conflict became unbearable, but it'd have to wait. Pontecorvo was already going over the schedule for the next day, the next steps, the next plans.
As they exit the tunnel, she catches Penhaligon staring at the 1K door again. She imagines the family shrinking, one empty seat at a time, until all that remains is people left behind. She'd rather carry the weight of the vault herself than watch this family lose one more person to that door.