by Edge O. Erin
The fact that the Yugons had a plan to mitigate repercussions illustrated a pledge to mend a relationship that had foundered at the island.
MEM’s coordinated and proactive approach had given them a head start, but there was so much in play, and so much at risk.
Scorp had been whisked away to a safe house where he could still work remotely. In-person MEM meetings were postponed for the foreseeable future, and Kyles Books was closing for renovations, with the most sensitive gear and intel being secreted away to other locations. Keeper and Hitch would be “on holidays” while renos were happening.
Cooper and Claire remained committed to MEM, as evidenced by Claire’s upcoming mission to the Ghan Garden Estate to resurrect Mariot, and Cooper contributing to an investigation of Menhance.
Jon was going to continue as ‘Daco’. He wasn’t going to be dissuaded from job, faith, and cause — which he found synonymous — so there was no point in trying, even though she did try. It was said that no one was indispensable in any company or organisation, but her godson was close.
For a “Grand Lady,” she wasn’t feeling all that great, and she began to delegate a few things to another.
Time chips away at us all, she thought, and before her faculties became too eroded, a successor would need to be groomed.
She finished the handwritten letter and had it sent off. It had been many years since she had seen her Bajausy friend, and while they were, in many ways, worlds apart, she still loved him and was committed to making the world a better place for everyone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Formerly called “Ghan of the Goddess”, the image-conscious Ghans changed the name of their home estate to promote more than their natural fertility and noble nature. Boasting the region’s largest seed bank and an incredible array of trees, flowers, and flowering shrubs, the “Ghan Garden Estate” conveyed nurture and stewardship. Once visited, it was easy to believe the world’s preeminent family cultivated more than just power and prosperity. There were no more beautifully manicured forty hectares on the planet, and even Claire could not contain her excitement knowing she would be there in just a few more minutes. She sighed and looked up from the brochure to refocus on her mission, for she was no tourist. The elderly woman seated across was looking at her and the brochure.
“The brochure doesn’t do it justice.”
“I can only imagine,” Claire replied.
“So, this will be your first day on the job out there.”
It wasn’t so much a question as a statement, for this was a worker’s car, and the Ghan Garden Estate was the next and last stop on the line.
“Yes. I’m a temp. Someone called in sick at the last minute.”
“Oh, really? And who would that be?”
Goddess, an inquisitive one, great, just great. “Play nice,” she told herself.
“I don’t know, all I know is someone called in sick, and I am to report to ‘Fence, Gutter and Border Cleaning’.” Claire glanced at her official document. “Mr Mauder.”
“Oh. ‘Frenchy’ is what we call him, but you best call him Mr Mauder.”
Claire just shrugged and looked at the digital display above the door. Three more minutes and they would be there.
“What’s that you got there?” The lady, whom Claire decided was a nosey crone, pointed at her air-ride.
Surely, she knew, but just needed to ask to lay the foundations for more “blabber.”
“My air-ride, it helps me get to work on time as I don’t walk particularly fast.”
“Yes, I saw you had a limp. Well, maybe that’s why you were selected to come in for the day; the Ghans do like to help the disadvantaged.”
Claire took a deep breath and resisted the retort that was so badly needed. She acquiesced, “You may be right.” Two more minutes. Crux, was this train ever going to get there!
“Beyond your impairment, what makes you so special? Where did you work before?”
Claire had to bite her lip, and she really bit it. Goddess-damn hag of a dog-beating-dick-wanter!
She used her backstory. “Here and there, often at Kempers Garden.”
“Oh, really! I know a lady there. Bethy. You know her?”
One more Goddess-forsaken minute before they got there.
Her backstory didn’t cover more than a few names, and Bethy wasn’t one of them. She winged it, “I knew a Betsy. About sixty-five, but I haven’t seen her for a while now.”
The woman looked at her curiously. “Bethy is seventy-five if she’s a day!”
The bell rang for their stop… thank heathens and heavens! “Well, I don’t want to be late for my first shift. It’s such an honour to be here. Have a great day! Maybe I will see you later.”
“You will as I often have to keep an eye on and clean-up after you ‘on the verge’ cleaning types.”
Bitter Bitch! Claire made as if she didn’t hear and got off the train; limp or no limp that old biddy wasn’t going to catch up to her to ask one more lip-biting, anal-probing, ear-poking, psyche-sucking question!
The exit security check was very much as it was when they bordered the train. Paperwork check. Fingerprint check: the filmies Claire had on held fast. “Carrying anything other than your air-ride, Trudy Portland.”
“No.”
“Anything else to declare?”
“Only my desire to work hard.”
The woman just looked at her blankly. “Go ahead, stay to the left. Mauder is running late, so you will have to wait over by his office. You know where it is?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, go and wait there and for Goddess’ sake keep out of people’s way. Next!”
She headed directly for Mauder’s office. Mauder was more than running late, Cooper had seen to that.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw the buxom security guard stopping the old bag from the train. When she left, Claire had planted an EM tag on her jacket, which would cause her to be delayed for a while.
Walking carefully yet confidently, she took in her surroundings. Halfway to Mauder’s office, which was a stone and mortar building tucked into hedge and hill, she realised that what was underfoot was like nothing she had ever tread upon. The grass was so thick and soft! It was so luxuriant that it made her momentarily forget she had a bum foot.
She stopped and smelled. Wow, the air was sumptuous! It was a potpourri of diverse flora, many of which she had never even seen before in her entire life. Vines — she reckoned they might be a variety of clematis — snaked their way high into trees. A set of flowering shrubs she recognised as “Bleeding Hearts” were probably six feet high, easily twice as high as the plant their landlord had allowed her to have on the rooftop. A big bee droned by.
“Oh my! A bumblebee!”
She looked around nervously to see if anyone heard the girlish squeal of delight. No drama.
To her right, a stand of some sort of evergreen trees with big leaves and curious red berries waved calmly, and on her left giant pines stood guard. She saw some cones on the ground and made as if to walk over to them when she gave her head a shake. No, Claire, you have someone special to see and a job to do, so stay on task!
She strode towards the office, and after a knock produced no response, she peeked through the window. Nobody home, whew! When no one appeared to be looking her way, she ducked around the corner into the shade of the western wall as it bumped against a security fence, which was hardly recognisable due to the large, luxuriant hedge dominating it. She pulled apart the base of her air-ride, got what she needed, and a minute later cut back enough of the caging to squeeze between the wall of the shack, the fence and hedge. She kept tight to the wall as the foliage had not grown flush to it, but just as the imagery indicated, it enveloped the back of the shed and overgrew the top. Hollowed out in the centre, it allowed orphaned children the Ghans ‘employed’ to deliver food, sundries, and supplies to the field office, the backdoor of which — just like the front — was opened with old-fashioned keys the
y could not secure. Claire was short enough to make it down the tunnel by hunching low.
Presumably, the children wouldn’t be bringing anything out until Mauder, or his substitute arrived and directed them to do so via the main feed. The children entered the hedge via a wing of the service area located almost directly below where Mariot was held. The children didn’t have to pass any biometric scans or key in any passwords to make the transit. As she moved along, the hedge gave way to stone walls and damp earth, and thirty feet further, a large door stood ajar and partly unhinged. She approached the door cautiously and could hear some clattering and commotion and occasional childish banter. If the informant were correct, the children would break at 9:30. They would go topside via a lift dropped down from the ceiling to play games in an outside compound, and she would have about fifteen minutes to pass through their work area and gain passage through the security doors where their minders occasionally came through.
A bell rang, followed by the squeal of what had to be the mechanical lift coming down. She heard the children running over and chattering excitedly as they ascended. A clang and a click followed when the elevator was secured topside. She waited for a minute. All was quiet, so she stepped out.
“Hi. Who are you?”
Crux! She looked at a boy of about ten, sitting forlorn and sad on a big bag of mulch with his chin cupped in his hands.
“Are you going to yell for help?”
“Why should I? Are you planning to hurt me?”
“No, I am definitely not going to hurt you.”
“Okay, so I won’t yell then.”
“Thanks.”
“Can you play marbles with me?”
Poor kid. Neither he nor his clothes looked like they’d be washed in a week.
“Um, I wish I could.” She hadn’t played marbles in years and honestly rather missed it.
“I really wish I could, but you see, I’m in a rush and can’t stay.”
He looked at her questioningly.
She trusted him for some reason and blurted out, “I’m here to see my sister.”
“Is she the one they talk about, the one in the bed all the time? The mother of clones?”
Now, how did he know that?
“I think so. You see, I am not supposed to be here.”
He popped off the crate like he had a spring on his bottom. “Ya, I kinda figured that out!” He walked by her and poked his head out the door into the passageway. “No one is coming. That Mauder-fucker is late. Did you have something to do with that?”
“Maybe,” she winked at him.
He smiled, “Super-duper!”
“But I do really have to go,” she said.
“Can you take me with you?”
“I can’t, I wish I could, but I just can’t. There is tight security; I don’t even know if I will make it.”
His head went low, and he collapsed to the ground as if his feet were kicked out from him. “I’m not supposed to be here. I am not a cast-off like the rest. They took me! No one believes me!” He pounded his fists on his thighs. “Please take me with you.” He started to cry.
She didn’t have time for this but couldn’t leave him so.
“Hey, listen up. I got in by cutting the fence that runs through the hedge’s outer edge at Mauder’s office. You could squeeze out easier than me. Once out, there is a drainage gutter that runs along the edge of the hedge. If you stay low and are quick and careful, you could get to where the gutter empties into the pond. On the far side of the pond is an outlet pipe… you should fit through it. The water spills into an aqueduct. The aqueduct runs towards the ocean.”
“I’ll do it!”
She risked even more, “When you get out, visit Kyles Books on Freemont Street. The sign will say “Closed for Renovations,” but someone will see you if you stick around for a while. Ask for ‘Sunday’s Book of the Week’. You got that?”
“Yes.”
“Tell it to me back.”
He repeated it word for word.
“And if you should get caught?”
“I won’t.”
“But if you do?”
He got her drift, “I won’t say anything, I promise!”
“Go then.”
“Oh, thank you so much, ma’am!” He ran over to her and gave her a big hug.
“Thank you for not squealing on me.”
He smiled and was gone.
She took off her outer layer of clothes, put them into another bag and jammed it under a compost bag that reeked of spoiled potatoes and rotten onions. She now had on the red, green, and white uniform of a dietician.
She crossed the room to the entry corridor. No one. She saw the light of a stairwell spill out into the passage and moments later was on a landing at the top of said stairs and getting out her biometrics box.
She pressed the “Ready to Analyse” button on the kiosk.
“Lick the depressor and slide it into the slot.”
She grabbed one of the depressors, slid it into her vial of pseudo-saliva, and then put it in the kiosk.
The light blinked green, the door slid open and emerged on the worker’s food prep floor. Dieticians occasionally came down here to ensure food quality met minimum standards. She walked past two food-preppers who didn’t even look at her. At the end of the hall was another security checkpoint, and she ducked into a single-occupancy washroom to prepare herself.
She lifted her pant leg and pulled out a reinforced waterproof bag tied from around the base of her leg. She filled it up with water and secured it to her brace and pulled the pant leg over it again. Now she carefully took a lens out of a tiny capsule in her biometrics bag and put it carefully over her right eye. She took a couple of deep breaths and exited the washroom. A food inspector almost walked into her.
He stopped short and gave her an approving raise of the eyebrows. She was no Mariot but bore a slight resemblance and was attractive in the way a confident Red often was.
He glanced at her nametag. “You’re not the on-duty dietician responsible for this floor, are you?”
“No, I am not; just here comparing recipes.”
“Well, don’t go with the one she has for ‘Three-Bean Salad’. Apart from gaseous, it’s the physical shits!” He looked at her expectantly, and she smiled faintly.
“What is with you dieticians? No sense of humour!”
The man continued down the hall, and she was thankful for that.
At the next security checkpoint, she was commanded to stand still on the two weight-bearing footpads. This part was the reason for boosting the weight of her leg. Her weight needed to be evenly distributed not to have her condition revealed and approximate the mass of the person she had replaced for this day. That dietician had been doped up and would be sleeping until noon.
A green light blinked, “Weights and balances good, move to the retinal scan now, please.”
She turned her head slightly and leaned her right eye into the viewer. A light moved back and forth, then back and forth again. “Please step back and allow for calibration.”
This better work.
“The first scan, inconclusive. Please stand still with your right eye as close to the camera as possible.”
She did it again; this had to work!
The light moved across her right eye again.
“Please step back. Test complete. Please proceed.”
She exited the chamber and was now on the floor and in the wing where Mariot was held.
She grabbed a trolley with partially eaten meals and wheeled down the hall. Two more turns to the right. First, turn, no problem. She left the cart behind and made for a washroom again. One woman was vacating massively — and out of both ends by the sound and smell of it — — and she couldn’t help but wonder if it was the three-bean salad.
She retrieved a small device from her ‘box of tricks,’ and, after pulling back the seal, applied it to her throat and performed a short voice test, which was masked by the lady next door sound
ing-off.
Claire opened the door to the hallway ever so slightly. It really was her lucky day, for no one was there, and she walked directly to the final security kiosk. If she could only make it through this one, she would be able to see where Mariot lay. Her palms were sweaty, and she was parched. She took a drink from the fountain and cleared her throat before stepping to the kiosk.
“Enter your unique passcode for today and state your name and designation for validation and voice authentication.”
She keyed in the passcode — 9785163 — which they had intercepted this morning and said, “Audrey Stapes, DTI1436.”
“One minute, please.”
A moment later, a receipt printed.
“Please take the receipt and proceed.”
She looked at the receipt and memorised the seven-digit number she would need to exit.
She grabbed a chart from the dieticians’ folder hanging on the wall and pretended to be studying it intently as she walked towards Mariot’s room. She sensed people walking by, but she focused on the chart—a few more steps. “Walk slowly, walk slowly,” she told herself. She leaned her shoulder against a stanchion of the glass wall and continued to look at the chart until she heard no more footsteps. Only then did she look.
Through the glass, she could see another wall; this one not of glass, but concrete. Only a small window afforded a look inside. A person lay on a bed, but she couldn’t see the head. She moved away from the stanchion a bit and could now see the pretty face of her older sister with her auburn hair spilling across the pillow. It really was Mariot!
Joy, anger, love, pain, exhilaration, and frustration washed over her with such frequency and amplitude that she felt herself faltering and had to grab on to the stanchion for support.
“I love you, Mariot,” she heard herself mutter. How she longed to touch her cheek and hope that by speaking to her, she would magically awaken. She heard people approaching and tore her eyes from Mariot back to the chart she held in her now trembling hands.
‘Stay calm and be mindful, this isn’t going to happen overnight’ is what Cooper had told her and she used those words to steady herself and think of what she was here to do.