A Kitchen With Three Old Women
There were three old women in the kitchen.
There was Helga. There was a tall thin woman called Iris (not the same Iris as the next-door neighbour's daughter, but Mara made a small note of the coincidence). There was a small round woman called Mrs Vogel. *Wait*, Mara thought — but said nothing. She would, she would later realise, find out she was wrong about this. The Mrs Vogel in the kitchen turned out to be the next-door Iris's grandmother. The connection was, she would learn, deliberate. The reform network was very local. Many people knew each other's families. That was, Helga said, both a strength and a vulnerability.
The three old women were drinking tea. They had a fourth cup poured for Mara.
They asked her, gently, why she had come. Mara told them.
They asked, gently, what she wanted from them. Mara told them — what she could; she had not, herself, fully worked it out. *I do not want to volunteer. I do not want my brother to go back. I want to know what I can do.*
Helga listened until Mara had finished. Then Helga said:
"You can do a great deal. Most of it is small. None of it is fast. The reform we are working on is a twenty-year project. We are aiming for 2055. You are fifteen. You will be thirty-five in 2055. You will, if we succeed, be in the part of your life when the country is finally figuring out what to do with the abolished Service. You will, by then, be —