The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [166]
“Food?” the Dear Leader asked.
Ga nodded.
“Go on,” the Dear Leader said.
“And on another skid were little Bibles, thousands of them, shrink-wrapped in plastic.”
“Bibles,” the Dear Leader said.
“Very small ones, with green vinyl covers.”
“How have I not heard any of this?”
“Of course we didn’t accept it, we left it on the runway.”
“On the runway,” the Dear Leader said.
“There was one other thing,” Commander Ga said. “A dog, a baby one. It was given to us by the Senator’s wife herself, bred from her own stock.”
“Food aid,” the Dear Leader said, his eyes darting about, thinking. “Bibles and a dog.”
“The food is already prepared,” Ga said.
“And of the Bibles?”
Ga smiled. “I know an author whose thoughts on opera should be required reading in all civilized nations. A thousand copies could easily be obtained.”
The Dear Leader nodded. “About the dog, what Korean pet would be the equivalent? A tiger, perhaps? A tremendous snake?”
“Why not give them a dog back—we’ll say it’s the Senator’s dog, and say we’re returning it because it’s selfish, lazy, and materialistic.”
“This dog,” the Dear Leader said, “must be the most vicious, snarling cur in all the land. It must have tasted the blood of baboons in the Central Zoo and chewed on the bones of half-starved prisoners in Camp 22.” The Dear Leader looked off, as if he wasn’t at the bottom of a bunker, but on a plane, watching the Senator being ravaged by a rabid canine for the sixteen hours it took to return to Texas.
“I know just the dog,” Commander Ga said.
“You know,” the Dear Leader said, “you broke my driver’s nose.”
Ga said, “The nose will heal back stronger.”
“Spoken like a true North Korean,” the Dear Leader said. “Come, Commander, there’s something I’ve been meaning to show you.”
They moved to another floor, to another room that looked just like the last one. Ga understood that sameness was meant to confuse an invading force, but wasn’t the effect worse on those who must daily endure it? In the halls, he could feel the presence of security teams, always just out of sight, making the Dear Leader seem eternally alone.
In the room was a school desk with a lone computer monitor, its green cursor blinking. “Here’s the machine I promised to show you,” the Dear Leader said. “Were you secretly mad at me for making you wait?”
“Is this the master computer?” Ga asked.
“It is,” the Dear Leader answered. “We used to have a dummy version, but that was only for interrogations. This one contains the vital information for every single citizen—it tells you date of birth or date of death, current location, family members, and so on. When you type in a citizen’s name, all this information is sent to a special agency that dispatches a crow right away.”
The Dear Leader ushered Commander Ga into the chair. Before him was only the black of the screen, that green flash. “Everyone’s in here?” Ga asked.
“Every man, woman, and child,” the Dear Leader said. “When a name is typed on this screen, it is sent to our finest team. They act with great dispatch. The person in question will be found and transported right away. There is no evading its reach.”
The Dear Leader pushed a button, and on the screen appeared a number: 22,604,301.
He pressed the button again, and the number changed: 22,604,302.
“Witness the miracle of life,” the Dear Leader said. “Do you know we are fifty-four-percent female? We didn’t discover that until this machine. They say that famine favors the girls. In the South, it’s the opposite. They have a machine that can tell if a baby will be a boy or a girl, and the girls they dispose of. Can you imagine that, killing a girl baby, still in the mother?”
Ga said nothing—all babies in Prison 33 were killed. Every couple of months, there was a termination day in which rows of pregnant inmates had their bellies injected with saline. The guards had a wooden box on casters that they pushed around with their