“Rhonda. I want to talk about Rhonda.” Already blood was suffusing into the cramped features of Quentin Chang’s face.
“So you do,” responded Gabriel, looking at the others and taking note of their stance on the matter. “I take it that your objections to Rhonda are mainly in the area of her Fan Club, is that right? You have a problem with some of the loonies? You don’t like nasal-dicks, Chang, is that it?” Chang’s face was approaching purple, but Gabriel continued. “What’s the matter, your wife not getting enough lately? Not failing in your duty as a Father, are you? Give your wife a good poke at least twice a week, because if she calls me one more time about how you won’t even touch her, then I swear I’m going to drop over and pork her myself! Now what was it you wanted to say about Rhonda?”
A flutter of laughter rippled through the members of the assembly.
“You bastard!” screamed Chang. “You know she drops those suggestions into the Stream for a joke! It’s a joke! You can’t understand a joke when you read one, Gabriel? What kind of joke does it have to be before you understand it?
The amusement continued and Gabriel could not suppress a grin that was threatening to widen into a smile. “Nobody wants to fuck your wife, Quentin, least of all me. Sure it’s a joke! We all got it, I got it! I got the joke! You don’t get the joke, Quentin. The joke is that it’s the fifteenth time she’s invited me over to fuck her brains out and some of the people who work in my office are beginning to think of taking her up on it.”
“That bitch! I want her on the List!”
“So, list her. Charley, put Quentin’s wife on the updated List.”
Charley Anderson nodded and picked up a pencil. “Under what category, Gabriel?”
The Director of the Grief Team glanced at Quentin Chang. “Working Women; afternoon assignations only.” He watched the pencil do its work and then turned back to Chang. “Now let’s hear about Rhonda.”
“Rhonda’s not the problem...you get that bitch listed tonight, Charley! I want to see it on TV tonight!... it’s these fucking Fan Club Mulls, some of these disgusting mutants are getting out of control and...”
“...with your permission, Gabriel,” Ferria d’Mont smoothly cut the cuckolded husband off at the crotch. “Quentin, as you have only been with us for a very short period of time, perhaps you are not aware that Rhonda’s Mulls are a protected resource of the Nation and therefore may not suffer the infringement of any of their rights under the Mall Act for Mulls.” Ferria paused long enough to flash the Director a look clearly denoting her request to allow her this opportunity to instruct the new member.
“With this in mind, I would suggest that the matter be assigned to Greenbands. Expanded Team presence in the area will ensure that Rhonda’s Mulls have adequate space within which to offer their adulation and will also help to alleviate the general press in the malls. It will also enhance the coverage on TV reports and will make these ‘disgusting mutants’ as you call them very happy as well. Fan-Mulls are, after all, Mr. Chang, part of the show. Perspective is everything, Mr. Chang.” Ferria turned her perfect teeth loose in a smile which practically electrocuted Quentin Chang, who sagged back into his seat, hardly knowing what had hit him.
Gabriel nodded. Dogs’breath, that girl is good, he was thinking. Below, he felt himself beginning to stir. “Thank you, Ferria. Anything else? Peter?”
Peter Heckbert opened a large black binder and adjusted owl-rimmed glasses. “Yes, thank you, Gabriel. Today I went to the Holding Pens in SkyDome and I am sorry to say that it’s getting worse in there all the time. The quality of the rations has dropped and that means cannibalism is starting up again. The littlest ones just don’t have a fair chance when there is an imbalance in the Rations as serious as this and it is indisputably a direct result of insufficient rations. We must increase their allotment immediately, and not just more of those fucking canned sardines either! There’s no earthly reason why we cannot divert some of the flow out of the Bammo! cannery...”
“...robbing Peter to pay Paul, that is...,” muttered Quentin Chang.
Heckbert ignored the interruption. “I would also like to receive confirmation of my intention to dismiss the idiot who ordered the decrease in Rations in the first place. The number of missing WK’s is edging close to seventy over the last thirty days. That’s unheard of, even when the program was started.” He paused, removed his glasses for effect, and continued.
“Now there is another problem in the Dome. There is a serious disturbance in the pens, one which the Yellowbands tell me defies punishments and, with the greatest respect, Gabriel, your sermons on the Jumbotron are having little effect. If I am correct in my thinking about this, this problem represents a greater threat to the order and management of Skydome than a few barbeque pits out in left field.”
“You have our undivided attention,” granted Gabriel.
“It has to do with a WK named Mutt. No last name. He’s a feral Kid, dropped by ferals. We caught him when he was a tadpole but he was untrainable...”
“...thought he was dead,” interjected Chang who, for his pains, read each and every line of the weekly Team reports.
Again, Heckbert ignored the interruption. “This Mutt was correctly judged as unfit for export and too wild to take a chance on for TV, but he disappeared three days before his appointment at Domestic Consumption. His tattoo number was never found on any manifest, nor was his murder ever reported or a body discovered. Nevertheless, as Mr. Chang correctly remembers, we did report his death.
“About three months ago, rumours began circulating through the pens that Mutt had escaped. Not been removed, not been killed, not been barbequed, but escaped! The idea of escape, something which we have successfully contained for years is, in my opinion, in serious jeopardy.
The Yellowbands have gone to great lengths to end the matter, ‘discovering’ a planted corpse. Despite the thirty-one Kids whom we had identify the remains as Mutt-no-last-name, the rumour refuses to die. There is a growing belief that Mutt is alive on the Outside. It’s positively eerie, I tell you, and it has to be stopped!”
“Why?” asked Gabriel.
“Why? Don’t you know anything about religion, Gabriel? These are the exact conditions which lead to the creation of a religion or a belief system.”
“I’m a little rusty, I’m afraid. I haven’t thought about these things since the last priest was driven out. Father Louis of the Purple, I think it was. Do you remember Father Louis, Peter?”
“Ah... no. No I don’t.”
“Well most don’t. Thank you for your report, Peter. Go ahead and fire your rationing expert if you wish. I believe Cleansing can always use the help. As for this new Messiah, Peter, a little shit named Mutt was apprehended not more than an hour ago. We’ve been watching him for days and I think it’s highly unlikely that he’ll manage to escape twice.”
Ferria d’Mont, who had been watching the proceedings with great interest, felt her smile turn to wax. Mutt captured? What had happened to Roy Glyn?
“Watch the situation,” Gabriel continued, “push the Yellowbands to the limit. They always give up too easily. I’ll record a new salvation video and focus directly on the problem. Will that satisfy you?”
“Ah, yes. Yes, it will, Gabriel. Thank you.” With a snap, Heckbert’s black binder was closed. “And if I may, I am needed elsewhere at the moment. Stephanie’s dancing in Centre Court downstairs. Honour the child and all that, you know.”
“Honour the child, Peter. Thank you. And give Linda and Stephanie my very best. Further business? No? Good morning to you all then. Ferria, do have an extra moment for me?”
Quention Chang approached the Director, thought the better of it, and hurried after Charley Anderson instead. His cocksucking wife was going to gets hers if it was the last thing he did.
Ferria, who had needed several moments to digest Gabriel’s news, was nonetheless ready for the encounter. Her relationship with the Mayor had opened enormous possibilities for her but,
as yet, the Mayor’s son was an unknown, undefined entity. One worthy of careful scrutiny certainly.
Gabriel wasted no time. “Ferria, your intelligence far surpasses my own and Elias’ for that matter. Are you surprised that I openly admit this to you?”
Ferria was equal to the task. “Not surprised, Gabriel. Flattered actually.”
“Tell me, Ferria, why did you buy Roy Glyn and send him Outside?”
Dog’sbreath! You knew all along!
The Director had been dipping into her files in the Stream, tracking her movements, looking for something out of the ordinary. Dogs’breath, you’re incredibly good! How deep were you able to delve? Is there nothing you cannot not fish out of the Stream?
Ferria had anticipated a question regarding her purchase of Roy Glyn but nothing beyond that. She had concocted an intricate history of events that she believed would keep Elias happy and, in a pinch, hold Gabriel off, at least until she had dealt with the boy that Roy was bringing to her. Now she was rapidly assessing what she could and could not say as the Director sat waiting, a wan smile on his face.
The boy in her dreams, the pale, solemn child whom she feared, knowing instinctively, innately, that her survival demanded that she dominate him! Possess him! Even now Roy Glyn was probably hurrying the Kid through the Malls, through lanes that Ferria had shown him, discreet passages where movement escaped the vidkams and certain types of business were conducted by other citizens from time to time.
What does Gabriel know about the boy?
What did she know about Gabriel Kraft?
Until Ferria had won the opportunity to serve Elias, she knew what every Child-of-the-Malls knew: that peace, happiness, and security were provided by the Grief Team, the product of Mayor Dickie’s amazing mind. And she knew that the pre-eminent figure attached to the Grief Team was none other than Gabriel Kraft. He was a hero, a man of much self-sacrifice; strong, true, wise, brave, and heroic. It was a cant that had served him well. Ferria was eight when she first experienced a pang of hero-worship one evening when Gabriel appeared on TV. She was in love with him for years until her own life began to take shape, drawing her forward to her own destinies.
At sixteen, she had been appointed to a position made necessary by Elias’ inability to ever remember anything. It afforded her a first-hand look at the reins of power in Toronto Nation and Ferria, hungry for power, had immediately set about making herself indispensable to the Mayor…which was mainly why she was fucking him. Which was why anybody fucked anybody really.
Ferria’s intelligence quotient accelerated her inclusion into the draft for the position in the Mayor’s office. To her delight, she had been selected as the first choice on nine of twelve lists. Impressed and intrigued by the exercise of power which Mayor Elias possessed in the Malls, Ferria had begun searching for the means to enhance her obsession with power. Her interest in using the system to her own advantage multiplied each time she observed how deftly, and wastefully, the Mayor used the Stream; ordering repairs and improvements in the Malls, checking on specials, adding to a debate, speaking with ambassadors from the World Trade Zone, or simply calling on citizens to see how they were. Such pitiful dealings when one had the power to move mountains! Thus, on occasions of the Mayor’s absence, Ferria began to conduct her own fishing expeditions, discreet dippings that nonetheless left tracks until gradually she discovered how to disguise them.
Within a day after she stopped the proceedings on Countdown to Horror to purchase Roy Glyn, an act which she had committed without thinking or hesitation, Ferria had been using the Mayor’s authority to request the surveillance of Mutt WildKid. Roy had babbled about the Kid who escaped from the Dome and had unwittingly provided her with the means to find the boy in the dream. Further enquiries among some of the more persuadable Yellowbands in and around the Mayor’s office, ones who had worked in Dome, were happy to provide the Executive Assistant with information.
It was true that Elias always left the enforcement issues up to Gabriel whose ability to maintain the status quo was legendary in the Malls. Other than the odd incident involving Wildkids, the citizens experienced rarely a ripple in the calm waters of their everyday lives, so keenly did Gabriel navigate with his hand on the tiller. Ferria, sensitive to those in whose veins power flowed, watched and listened and waited for her opportunities. Ferria thought she knew her quarry.
The Grief Team, as conceived by Mayor Dickie and refined by Elias and Gabriel, existed so that life in the malls could exist. Its origins, founded deep in the wisdom, experience, and common sense of Mayor Dickie, were the stuff of which Toronto Nation had been born; a determination to provide and ensure a life for the survivors of the Viruses, two wars, and the after-effects of eight nuclear detonations on the planet.
Ferria knew her history.
The citizens had moved into the Malls, rejecting religion and accepting shopping. They had learned to dream again under the tutelage of Dickie Donalato, the Father-of-the-Malls, who created the Grief Team in the belief that life in the Malls should evermore be life worth living.
“Ferria?”
You are a good-looking man, Gabriel. Strong, intelligent, heroic…and by anyone’s standards, cruel beyond belief.
“Forgive me. I’m sorry, I was thinking.” She turned up the wattage of her smile, taking refuge in her sex.
Gabriel’s practiced eye had already assessed Ferria for fuck-ability and decided that she was kinky. The Director, who had indeed been plumbing the depths of the Stream before the meeting, did not know of Ferria’s predilection for pubescent males but he did know the story behind those perfect teeth. She knows that she has no official listing until Revelation Night, so her sex choices haven’t officially been declared. She could be fucking one of Rhonda’s Fan-Mulls and we’d never have a clue.
Gabriel had been able to catch a large number of reports on Ferria d’Mont out of the stream: Stages of Childhood reports, family status reports, academy assignments and marks, mallshopping records, Stream requests, clearances, neighbours’ reports, Mall TV choices, and hundreds of other observations since Ferria d’Mont had been hatched in Cedarbrae. Collectively, there seemed to be no pattern that Gabriel could decipher.
“It’s a dream of mine to be Mayor of Toronto Nation one day,” Ferria began. There was a flash of perfect teeth. “I know that’s beyond precociousness, but it’s my dream anyway.”
Gabriel’s smile was thin, his words clipped cleanly. “Sometimes dreams come true. I’m listening.” His voice was calmer now, relaxing, soothing. The hard lines in his face softened, his eyes reflecting warmth and companionship. This was Father, friend to the boys and girls of SkyDome; Father, whose generosity knew no bounds; and whose wrath was legend.
Until that morning, Ferria had never seen this incarnation, for Father was unknown in the malls. That he existed was common knowledge to the assembly and Gabriel made no secret of it, but it had been a stroke of luck that one of the vidkam tapes about Mutt the WildKid’s movements had been recorded on top of one of Father’s sermons in SkyDome. Mutt had exited the screen abruptly after twenty minutes, replaced by the image of Father Gabriel. Ferria had immediately felt the pull of his visualization, enhanced as it was by TV, and had recognized the danger behind its attraction. She recognized it now and felt a frisson of danger, but she decided that she would talk to him in this guise if he wished.
“After Revelation Night, I will be reassigned elsewhere in the Malls, no longer the Mayor’s executive assistant. Since I don’t want this to happen, I propose to announce my candidacy on Revelation Night and insist on an election.”
Father purred. “Got a sip at the trough and decided you like the taste, did you? Well I’m sure we can find something for you to do around here...”
“I intend to become Mayor. Anything less and you’ll be able to ensure that I don’t receive the kind of access to the Stream that I require. I’m actually looking forward to working with...”
“...you seem terribly confident in
your approach, my child. I’m not sure what it is that you want from me however.” Father’s smile had thinned considerably. “I am merely a conduit for the Rules of the Malls. I operate the software, run the programmes, set the nets. It is the nature of my work to ensure the peace and safety of all.”
Ferria decided to take a chance and light a match under this incarnation. “You don’t take me seriously, do you? Because I’m seventeen and you’re an asshole?” Surprisingly, her tone was jocular.
Father Gabriel blinked.
“If you don’t mind an answer in kind, my sweet Ferria, I don’t take you seriously because if you had anything half-fucking-decent that might constitute a problem of some sort for me, you’d have fucking told me in the first three fucking minutes. You didn’t. You have nothing. Fuck off and die by a Virus!”
Ferria clapped her hands in glee, shocking him.
“Grief Team manual. Rules of Intimidation. You wrote it and we studied it at the academy.”
For the third time in ten minutes, Gabriel found himself re-evaluating this child all over again. Why had he never suspected that this child had such capabilities? She was beginning to interest his crotch once again and this time he let his eyes wander for a few long, lingering moments as he assessed the curves of her breasts in her wrap of blue silk. Perhaps she was familiar with his own sexual preferences on his List in the Stream. The mask that had been Father Gabriel of SkyDome slipped away as he began to see a possibility of a damn good fuck before this meeting came to an end.
For her part, Ferria enjoyed Gabriel’s appreciation but right now, beyond any enticements offered by the image of Gabriel Kraft’s rigid member inside her, she was going for her target’s jugular, a strike that would bring everything she desired...or ruin.
“Mayor Dickie said that happiness in our society is to be derived from our collective acceptance of guilt and shame in the desires which both sustain us as human beings and promise our future.” (see endnote 8). Ferria paused. “Mayor Dickie taught us to see ourselves as we really are. The Grief Team frees us from guilt.”
The Grief Team Page 13