Vox Read online

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Christina Dalcher

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Dalcher, Christina author.

  Title: Vox / Christina Dalcher.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Berkley, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018012390 | ISBN 9780440000785 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780440000822 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Misogyny—Fiction. | Women—Fiction. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction | Dystopian fiction

  Classification: LCC PS3604.A35355 V69 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012390

  First Edition: August 2018

  Export Edition ISBN: 9781984802491

  Jacket photo of woman by Karan Kapoor/Getty Images; jacket typography by Doctor Letters

  Jacket design by Steve Meditz

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_2

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Chapter Seventy-two

  Chapter Seventy-three

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Chapter Seventy-five

  Chapter Seventy-six

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  Chapter Seventy-eight

  Chapter Seventy-nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Readers Guide

  About the Author

  In memory of Charlie Jones

  linguist, professor, friend

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A man named Stephen King once said, “No one writes a long novel alone.” I was ten or so when I first read those words at the beginning of ’Salem’s Lot. They still ring true today.

  Vox was born of multiple mothers and fathers, and I owe thanks to all of them:

  To my agent, Laura Bradford, for her honesty and clarity and cheerleading. No writer could wish for a better champion of her work.

  To my US editor, Cindy Hwang at Berkley; my UK editor, Charlotte Mursell at HQ HarperCollins; and the entire teams at both publishers for their fierce enthusiasm.

  To my early readers, Stephanie Hutton and Caleb Echterling, for speed-reading a novel written in two months and helping to make it shine.

  To Joanne Merriam at Upper Rubber Boot Books. Without her original call for submissions to the Broad Knowledge: 35 Women Up to No Good anthology, Dr. Jean McClellan’s tale might never have happened.

  To Ellen Bryson, Kayla Pongrac, and Sophie van Llewyn, who critiqued the short story with keen eyes and told me to keep going.

  To the amazingly supportive crowd of flash fiction writers and editors who have sung out my short work over the years. Y’all know who you are.

  To you, dear reader, who will ultimately judge this story. I do hope you enjoy it. Most of all, I hope it makes you a little bit angry. I hope it makes you think.

  And finally, to my husband, Bruce, who supports almost everything I do. And who never, ever tells me not to talk so much.

  ONE

  If anyone told me I could bring down the president, and the Pure Movement, and that incompetent little shit Morgan LeBron in a week’s time, I wouldn’t believe them. But I wouldn’t argue. I wouldn’t say a thing.

  I’ve become a woman of few words.

  Tonight at supper, before I speak my final syllables of the day, Patrick reaches over and taps the silver-toned device around my left wrist. It’s a light touch, as if he were sharing the pain, or perhaps reminding me to stay quiet until the counter resets itself at midnight. This magic will happen while I sleep, and I’ll begin Tuesday with a virgin slate. My daughter, Sonia’s, counter will do the same.

  My boys do not wear word counters.

  Over dinner, they are all engaged in the usual chatter about school.

  Sonia also attends school, although she never wastes words discussing her days. At suppe
r, between bites of a simple stew I made from memory, Patrick questions her about her progress in home economics, physical fitness, and a new course titled Simple Accounting for Households. Is she obeying the teachers? Will she earn high marks this term? He knows exactly the type of questions to ask: closed-ended, requiring only a nod or a shake of the head.

  I watch and listen, my nails carving half-moons into the flesh of my palms. Sonia nods when appropriate, wrinkles her nose when my young twins, not understanding the importance of yes/no interrogatives and finite answer sets, ask their sister to tell them what the teachers are like, how the classes are, which subject she likes best. So many open-ended questions. I refuse to think they do understand, that they’re baiting her, teasing out words. But at eleven, they’re old enough to know. And they’ve seen what happens when we overuse words.

  Sonia’s lips quiver as she looks from one brother to another, the pink of her tongue trembling on the edge of her teeth or the plump of her lower lip, a body part with a mind of its own, undulating. Steven, my eldest, extends a hand and touches his forefinger to her mouth.

  I could tell them what they want to know: All men at the front of the classrooms now. One-way system. Teachers talk. Students listen. It would cost me sixteen words.

  I have five left.

  “How is her vocabulary?” Patrick asks, knocking his chin my way. He rephrases. “Is she learning?”

  I shrug. By six, Sonia should have an army of ten thousand lexemes, individual troops that assemble and come to attention and obey the orders her small, still-plastic brain issues. Should have, if the three R’s weren’t now reduced to one: simple arithmetic. After all, one day my daughter will be expected to shop and to run a household, to be a devoted and dutiful wife. You need math for that, but not spelling. Not literature. Not a voice.

  “You’re the cognitive linguist,” Patrick says, gathering empty plates, urging Steven to do the same.

  “Was.”

  “Are.”

  In spite of my year of practice, the extra words leak out before I can stop them: “No. I’m. Not.”

  Patrick watches the counter tick off another three entries. I feel the pressure of each on my pulse like an ominous drum. “That’s enough, Jean,” he says.

  The boys exchange worried looks, the kind of worry that comes from knowing what occurs if the counter surpasses those three digits. One, zero, zero. This is when I say my last Monday word. To my daughter. The whispered “Goodnight” has barely escaped when Patrick’s eyes meet mine, pleading.

  I scoop her up and carry her off to bed. She’s heavier now, almost too much girl to be hoisted up, and I need both arms.

  Sonia smiles at me when I tuck her under the sheets. As usual, there’s no bedtime story, no exploring Dora, no Pooh and Piglet, no Peter Rabbit and his misadventures in Mr. McGregor’s lettuce patch. It’s frightening what she’s grown to accept as normal.

  I hum her to sleep with a song about mockingbirds and billy goats, the verses still and quiet pictures in my mind’s eye.

  Patrick watches from the door. His shoulders, once broad and strong, slump in a downward-facing V; his forehead is creased in matching lines. Everything about him seems to be pointing down.

  TWO

  In my bedroom, as on all other nights, I wrap myself in a quilt of invisible words, pretending to read, allowing my eyes to dance over imagined pages of Shakespeare. If I’m feeling fancy, my preferred text might be Dante in his original, static Italian. So little of Dante’s language has changed through the centuries, but tonight I find myself slogging through a forgotten lexicon. I wonder how the Italian women might fare with the new ways if our domestic efforts ever go international.

  Perhaps they’ll talk more with their hands.

  But the chances of our sickness moving overseas are slim. Before television became a federalized monopoly, before the counters went on our wrists, I saw newscasts. Al Jazeera, the BBC, Italy’s three RAI networks, and others used to occasionally broadcast talk shows. Patrick, Steven, and I watched them after the kids were in bed.

  “Do we have to?” Steven groaned. He was slouched in his usual chair, one hand in a bowl of popcorn, the other texting on his phone.

  I turned up the volume. “No. We don’t have to. But we can.” Who knew how much longer that would be true? Patrick was already talking about the cable privileges, how they were hanging on a frayed thread. “Not everyone gets this, Steven.” What I didn’t say was, Enjoy it while you can.

  Except there wasn’t much to enjoy.

  Every single show was the same. One after another, they laughed at us. Al Jazeera called us “the New Extremism.” I might have smiled if I hadn’t seen the truth in it. Britain’s political pundits shook their heads as if to say, Oh, those daffy Yanks. What are they doing now? The Italian experts, introduced by underdressed and overly made-up sexpots, shouted and pointed and laughed.

  They laughed at us. They told us we needed to relax before we ended up wearing kerchiefs and long, shapeless skirts. On one of the Italian channels, a bawdy skit showed two men dressed as Puritans engaging in sodomy. Was this really how they saw the United States?

  I don’t know. I haven’t been back since before Sonia was born, and there’s no chance of going now.

  Our passports went before our words did.

  I should clarify: some of our passports went.

  I found this out through the most mundane of circumstances. In December, I realized Steven’s and the twins’ passports had expired, and I went online to download three renewal applications. Sonia, who’d never had any documentation other than her birth certificate and a booklet of vaccination records, needed a different form.

  The boys’ renewals were easy, the same as Patrick’s and mine had always been. When I clicked the new-passport-application link, it took me to a page I hadn’t seen before, a single-line questionnaire: Is the applicant male or female?

  I glanced over at Sonia, playing with a set of colored blocks on the carpet in my makeshift home office, and checked the box marked female.

  “Red!” she yelped, looking up at the screen.

  “Yes, honey,” I said. “Red. Very good. Or?”

  “Scarlet!”

  “Even better.”

  Without prompting, she went on. “Crimson! Cherry!”

  “You got it, baby. Keep up the good work,” I said, patting her and tossing another set of blocks onto the carpet. “Try the blue ones now.”

  Back at my computer, I realized Sonia was right the first time. The screen was just red. Red as fucking blood.

  Please contact us at the number below. Alternatively, you can send us an e-mail at applications.state.gov. Thank you!

  I tried the number a dozen times before resorting to e-mail, and then I waited a dozen days before receiving a response. Or a sort of response. A week and a half later, the message in my in-box instructed me to visit my local passport application center.

  “Help you, ma’am?” the clerk said when I showed up with Sonia’s birth certificate.

  “You can if you do passport applications.” I shoved the paperwork through the slot in the plexiglass screen.

  The clerk, who looked all of nineteen, snatched it up and told me to wait. “Oh,” he said, scurrying back to the window, “I’ll need your passport for a minute. Just to make a copy.”

  Sonia’s passport would take a few weeks, I was told. What I was not told was that my passport had been invalidated.

  I found that out much later. And Sonia never got her passport.

  At the beginning, a few people managed to get out. Some crossed the border into Canada; others left on boats for Cuba, Mexico, the islands. It didn’t take long for the authorities to set up checkpoints, and the wall separating Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas from Mexico itself had already been built, so the egress stopped fairly quickly.

 
“We can’t have our citizens, our families, our mothers and fathers, fleeing,” the president said in one of his early addresses.

  I still think we could have made it if it had been only Patrick and me. But with four kids, one who didn’t know enough not to bounce in her car seat and chirp “Canada!” to the border guards—no way.

  So I’m not feeling fancy tonight, not after thinking about how easily they kept us prisoners in our own country, not after Patrick took me in his arms and told me to try not to dwell on what used to be.

  Used to.

  Here’s what used to be: We used to stay up late talking. We used to linger in bed on weekend mornings, putting off chores and reading the Sunday paper. We used to have cocktail parties and dinner parties and summer barbecues when the weather turned. We used to play games—first, spades and bridge; later, when the boys were old enough to tell a six from a five, war and go fish.

  As for me, on my own, I used to have girlfriends. “Hen parties,” Patrick called my nights out with the girls, but I know he didn’t mean it unkindly. It was just one of those things guys said. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

  We used to have book clubs and coffee chats; we debated politics in wine bars, later in basements—our version of reading Lolita in Tehran. Patrick never seemed to mind my weekly escapes, although he’d joke about us sometimes, before there wasn’t anything left to joke about. We were, in his words, the voices that couldn’t be hushed.

  Well. So much for the infallibility of Patrick.

  THREE

  When it started, before any of us could see what the future held, there was one woman in particular, one of the louder sorts. Her name was Jackie Juarez.

  I don’t want to think of Jackie, but all of a sudden, it’s a year and a half ago, not long after the inauguration, and I’m sitting in the den with the kids, hushing their laughter so Sonia doesn’t wake up.

  The woman on the television is hysterical, Steven points out when he returns to the den with three bowls of ice cream.

  Hysterical. I hate that word. “What?” I say.

  “Women are crazy,” he continues. “It’s not like it’s news, Mom. You know that saying about hysterical women and fits of the mother.”