Where is she going now? Gabriel cleared his throat and revved his engines. “I don’t disagree with anything that you’ve said, but I think it is worth mentioning that it took a great deal of time to adjust to living in the Malls. It was extremely difficult in the beginning to direct violence to appropriate and acceptable venues and it was years before the Stages of Childhood program was implemented. You, Ferria, are one who has benefitted immeasurably from our hard work.”
“Why Gabriel, are you fishing for a compliment?”
“Is the history lesson over?”
“Oh, it’s not over. Mayor Dickie found a way to control just about everything for the benefit of the citizens in the Malls, but history has never been under the control of the Grief Team or anyone else. In the Malls, it just seems like it is.”
Gabriel made no effort to hide his anger. “What’s your point?”
Ferria laid her cards on the table, aces high. “The Grief Team refused to send out a sweep for his Gordon Latimer’s daughter. They reported that she had been eaten by Wildkids.”
“Tragic,” said Gabriel, unmoved. “What’s your point?”
“My point, Gabriel, is that Gordon Latimer, your ex-Director of Crematoria, had stumbled across a mistake, a horrendous mistake made by the Grief Team. A mistake so terrible that Latimer didn’t know who to tell or what to do about it. And then his life took a terrible but convenient turn for the worse at a Rhonda show.”
“Go on.”
“Gordon was thinking about checking into his own ovens because of something he’d stumbled across, something that he knew was going to make him a marked man and ruin the life he had built for his family but, before he did, he sent a request to my office for an appointment with Elias.”
“Which he never attended,” Gabriel said, his teeth clenched.
“That’s right,” Ferria agreed. “By the way, did you know that one of Gordon Latimer’s hobbies was handwriting? The old-fashioned kind?”
Gabriel flinched perceptibly.
“I suggested that he send any documents in immediately before the interview so that Elias might familiarize himself with them.”
“I’ll bet you did,” he growled, uncomfortably.
“Standard procedure when you exercise power, wouldn’t you agree?” Ferria retorted. “Gordon Latimer made very disturbing allegations and he sent proof to back them up.”
“Proof of what?” challenged Gabriel, but he already knew what the answer would be.
Ferria did not disappoint him. “Proof that the entire stockpile of Toronto Nation embryos are dead.”
SIXTEEN
Emmett Strachan was killing time in Joey’s, a Celt-style bar near the west exit in Vegas, the sprawling inner-sinner-lower-level of Square One Mall. Joey had inherited the place ten years or so before, when the owner, a beefy, red-faced Glaswegian, reckoned he had a blood-yearning for the storm-blasted coast around Lindisfarne where the Celtic Nation had re-established itself, and had caught the last flight out of Pearson Airport. Joey had simply walked in from the mall, placed himself behind the bar, and started serving beers. Since that time, there had been no more flights except when the Grief Team, which controlled the two 767’s still airworthy—patchworks of other similar aircraft rendered useless in their cocoons of virus-laden rad-fallout—responded to the whims of the Exchange. When and where and why they flew these days was up to those who could pay the freight for Toronto Nation babies and/or functionalized Wildkids.
Emmett had been congratulating himself on a successful clash with the Director of the Grief Team, one in which good old Gordon Latimer’s handwritten diary had achieved for Emmett in one fell swoop what ten years of toil in the Crematoria as Gordon’s assistant had not. Emmett’s promotion as the new Director of Crematoria had been announced early the next day after his meeting with Gabriel Kraft and his Ration (as well as Elise’s and Marcus’) credit had been adjusted upward three positions. The Apartment Adjustor for Scarborough Mall had called his office to say that a newly-refurbished unit on the classier third floor level of the mall was awaiting Emmett’s inspection. The Adjustor, Dorothy Domenici—“Call me Dottie!”—said that the convenient location of the west end Up escalator made it a-most-sought-after-apartment. “Location, location, location!” Dottie gurgled.
What Gabriel Kraft had been able to achieve less than eight hours after Emmett had deliberately eaten the last of the Director’s donut had impressed Emmett immensely and, as a significant by-product, made him more than a little anxious. He had chosen to play the fool, the nervous wretch, the-put-upon-assistant-toady for the Director of the Grief Team. The Director had to be convinced that not only was it possible to purchase Emmett Strachan’s silence about Gordon’s diary, but also that the few crumbs of what used to be called upward mobility, which Emmett presented as his ‘desires for compensation’, were truly indicative of a man too greedy to ask for less, too scared to ask for more; a man who lacked foresight, feared authority, and despised his neighbours; a man whose instinctive sense of self-preservation was rooted in his own miserliness.
In his own eyes, Emmett had played his part perfectly. Intellectually, he had gone to great lengths to assess the considerable dangers inherent in having attracted the interest of the Grief Team. Approaching Gabriel Kraft with the diary in person could have been foolhardy had Emmett not been forewarned and forearmed by his keen sense of the logical development of power and personality. Or, at least, in his own estimation. After twenty years at Crematoria there was little about the pitiful lives of human beings that Emmett had not learned; in particular, the curious attitude that the powerful cultivated toward the weak. When one is weak, one understands.
Finding Gordon’s diary had not been a problem. Emmett, who had worked side-by-side with Gordon, had been aware of its supposedly secret existence for years, just as he knew that Gordon also kept pictures of naked Mulls in his locker outside the Cleansing Room. He had read it too; all sixty pages a boring homily to his daughter Cathy, with the exception of the last two wherein Gordon detailed his suspicions about the Embryos. After reading this, it had only taken Emmett twenty minutes to assemble the data from the Stream to corroborate it…but then he knew what to look for, Gordon hadn’t. The final piece of the puzzle lay in a bill of lading from the depot at Yorkdown Mall.
Someone had mistakenly sent thirty-two tanks of Virus-Killer X to the Crematoria storage site in the basement of the E.C., where they remained even now. They should have been pumped into the air-circulation pipes in the Embryo-Chambers in Cedarbrae as disinfectant prior to human occupancy. Something else—Crematoria Liquidating Fuel?—had been pumped into the system instead…with disastrous results.
The fact that Gabriel Kraft had managed to keep a lid on this debacle this long had not escaped Emmett, who didn’t give a shit about the Embryos anyway. He was far more interested in the human aspects of death not life. It was no skin off his nose if the Exchange market for Toronto Nation babies dried up although, if he had cultivated any interest at all in the Exchange, he would have noticed immediately that babies were still being exported in their usual quantities. A non sequitur if ever there was one.
Vegas was a haven for Mulls-of-all-kinds and lately at Joey’s that sad fact had often meant suffering Rhonda’s Fan Club. These days in Vegas, it seemed that everywhere you went some freak-Mull was hanging around, lolling his Rhonda-nose—which in Emmett’s opinion looked just like a big dick —or singing that fucking Rhonda Song. Rhonda’s Fan Club apparently numbered in the hundreds now and bar-talk in Joey’s had it that the Club had begun requiring new members to take a vow of silence in the Stream until they had their Rhonda-noses surgically created.
“It’s to stop them fuckin’ freaks from blabbing about all those Wildkids they’re cookin’ upstairs if you ask me!” said Joey to Emmett three drinks ago, when the bar was still pleasantly free-of-freaks. “Whole fuckin’ mall smells like a Texas barb’que. That’s where I was born. Texas. All right, Texas!”
; Emmett thought Joey told it like it was and he told him so. But some of the cowfreaks wound up barging into Joey’s soon after that and now here he was being forced to listen to that fucking Rhonda Song again as the freaks got drunker and louder. Emmett was disgusted by them and ached to stand and confront them, to tell them to shut up! and fuck off! and getoutofmyfuckingspace!…but they were eight and he was one. He knew that they would kick the shit out him, probably kill him.
Emmett left the bar and decided to drop a few coins in one of the one-armed bandits Joey kept by the door. He knew he was just delaying the moment when he would have to go home and face his wife and son, but it was easier when he knew Marcus would be asleep in his bed, and there would only be Elise’s tears to deal with. Lately, he hadn’t been able to get close to her…Little Arthur Connors kept getting in the way.
There were regular intrusions of noise-and-riotous-behaviour from pleasure-seekers in Vegas as the door to Joey’s opened and closed and finally Emmett gave up on the spinning tumblers and went through it and onto the strip. It was a busy night and Emmett was tense, wired really. He knew it. It was all that shit about the Fan Club that had started it, that awful urge pumping away inside of him again. The violence of his thoughts was a narcotic, seeping into his veins and joining the rhythm of his heart, pumping and pumping, keeping that rhythm going.
He wished he could lead all of the freaks into the Crematoria and fry their freak-asses, he wished that he’d pulled out the razorblade that he carried for protection and lopped off one of those penis-things while those Mull-abominations were singing that fucking song in Joey’s…but part of him wished that he didn’t have that hunger, that need to hurt someone really bad again. Like he had hurt Little Arthur Connors, whose head had split right down the middle when he landed, reminding Emmett of a boyhood memory when he had seen a watermelon broken in half across a man’s knee.
Emmett’s grip on the razorblade inside his jacket pocket relaxed a little. The mental image of the watermelon-memory had a decidedly cooling effect on his rage, made colder still by remorse, soon a deeply-felt icicle of agony which poked away at his conscience for some time. Certainly time enough tonight to lead his steps out of Square One and onto a CleanBus to take him home…where he could not bring himself to tell Elise about the beast he was harbouring, nor could he look into his beautiful son’s eyes for more than a moment, the innocence which he saw there searing his heart. It was the worst pain of all.
What good had he accomplished by bearding the lion in his den only to give in to this limitless urge to hurt?
Emmett’s journey to Scarborough Mall from Square One was uneventful seeing as there were only three other citizens-of-the-malls on board. The three were male, maybe three or four years each past Stage Five, and expensively-dressed. Emmett eavesdropped long enough to know that they were within a year of being on their way to Parenthood and all the rewards of life-in-the-malls. They spent the forty minute ride laughing about the adventures they had had in Vegas that evening where, judging from the wide smiles on their faces, they had all had an opportunity to exercise their libidos.
Their laughter was interrupted from time to time by loud pings against one side and then the other of the CleanBus, whose armour plating always proved more than a match for anything the Wildkids had access to in weaponry. Grief Team weapons meltdown enforcement had virtually stripped the little bastards of anything heavier than a Mac-10 and even one of those death-dealers was a rarity. The one that the WK’s had used in their attack on the Children’s Mall a while ago had been recently auctioned off on Mall TV for two-and-a-half credits—practically a month’s Rations!
As they passed uptown toward the shambles of what had once been called ‘Scarberia,’ more loud thumps were heard as rocks and other projectiles bounced off the metal and rubber skin of the CleanBus. No one paid much attention; there hadn’t been an accident involving a CleanBus for years, not since the Grief Team had authorized drivers to employ their fleschette dispensers at will. Used by the Canadian miltary during the riots in Toronto after the bombing of the C.N. Tower, the ‘Shredder’, as it was denoted under the icon on the dashboard of every CleanBus, was capable of dispensing quarter-ounce aluminum zigzags in a 360º circle-of-death that left nothing standing for four hundred yards. Wildkids had learned to keep their distance.
Emmett leaned back into the padded foam head rest and closed his eyes.
He was coming out of the E.C. Crematoria, the main branch, and he was on his way to pick up Marcus who was about to arrive by CleanBus downstairs at the Dundas entrance. He was walking along the second floor of the Centre, holding a copy of the Chronicle in his left hand, walking next to the metal railing which kept mallshoppers from falling onto the floors below. He had told Marcus never to climb on the railings. Climbing on the railings meant Daddy would have to apply to the Grief Team for a punishment for Marcus and Marcus didn’t want Daddy to punish him, did he? Never climb on the railings, and now, just ahead, there was a boy doing just that right in front of him. It was that Connors boy…the boy who had told lies to Marcus about his Daddy…and he was lollygagging on the railing, no one stopping him…and Emmett knew that he’d better get Little Arthur Connors down from there before he fell…
Little Arthur Connors screamed until his little head hit the cold marble floor with no more sound than if you’d cracked an egg…and Emmett ran down those stairs…ran to help that boy, even though he knew he was dead…could see right inside his skull. He was dead…and Emmett looked right at him and was glad that he was…glad that he had protected Marcus from Little Arthur Connors’ filthy rotten mouth…
The CleanBus arrived at Scarborough Mall, the three friends politely waiting as Emmett disembarked, shouting goodbyes at each other as they then hurried on their separate ways. Emmett waited until the CleanBus pulled out and then he slowly made his way to the escalator and home. Location, location, location, he was thinking.
SEVENTEEN
Mutt the WildKid could barely keep his eyes open. He’d been standing naked inside this cylindrical metal cubicle for some time and in that time Mutt had experienced a gamut of escalating emotions from anger to repentance, terror to despair, horror to abject disbelief…he had a mouthful of stomach bile which tasted of no-more-Mutt-ever! and he wildly rejected it.
He was beside himself with rage at the Yellowbands who had forced him inside this soundless, sightless cocoon, attaching and/or inserting plastic tubes into/onto his body orifices, then sealing, locking, leaving him…hardened Citizens returning to their duties in the Dome, leaving the computer-controlled Gasterminate pod to complete its fifteen minute cycle…
…and Mutt could barely keep his eyes open, his body going limp inside the straps which kept him standing erect. He was losing the feeling in his limbs. Inside his brain, a picture show of people, places, and events in his short hard life moved across a TV screen in spontaneous, colour-drenched microflashes; pictures which gradually became recognizable for their individuality and importance…Cathy Latimer with her whine and fat-pouting-lower-lip appeared…his pride of homeplace…Mutt-hand-fish and the taste of goodfuknsam’on…Jason-Mutt-healer…
…and then Jason-Mutt-healer’s mouth opened in his mind and began to cough and cough until the dark-eyed boy, the strain etched across his gaunt features, pulled in enough breath to say, “Believe…Mutt” before his lungs revolted again, and then his image folded into itself and disappeared from Mutt’s head…
…and Mutt heard, from the distance of the red sun, the sharp hiss of pressurized air as the central seal on his pod was released and fresh-mall-air flooded in.
Three minutes later, Mutt’s brain had cleared sufficiently to be struck by the sledgehammer-realization that Grey Kitty, presently purring outside the pod, waiting for Mutt to pull the tube out of his ass and get going, had saved me-Mutt-I! This was quickly followed by a second sledgehammer which told him that Mutt-‘scape! was now possible.
From a standing position, Peter Heckbert studie
d the sunburned face of the little girl. With luck she might escape with only a light pink sheen, but it would mean at least two sessions in a quality peeling parlour. That was perfectly acceptable in today’s fashions in the Malls he knew; nobody was into ivory white anymore in skin or in clothes. Heckbert liked to follow the trends. You got to fuck more women that way, if you were tuned in, if you were pushing thirty-five and had a check-out date with the Crematoria at thirty-nine. He would be lucky again tonight he knew because Barbara had finally answered his ad in the Chronicle. It promised to be an evening of surpassing ecstasy because Barbara had also slipped something else into the ‘Stream—into his private trap no less!—an image of a pair of thigh-high-red-leather-boots, boots which promised to hug her like skin, that would practically ooze with her sexsweat…Heckbert suddenly realized that he was still staring at the little girl in front of him and he immediately became flustered as he realized the incompatibility of his thoughts with the presence of one so young. Honour the Child! he thought to himself, using it as penance even though one technically didn’t have to.
Cathy Latimer was curled into the furthest uncomfortable reaches of the metal bed in the containment room. Two hours before, when he had first seen her and her feral-’Kid companion, she had been impossibly filthy and smelled like dairydung. Now that she was bathed, disinfected, immunized, and clothed in a fashion more befitting a Child-of-the-Malls, he was surprised to see that she was still presenting an uncooperative attitude.
“Not more about this Mutt-no-last-name, is it?” he said sharply, as his surprise gave way to displeasure. He enjoyed watching her jump at the sound of his voice. “I’m sure this was explained to you, Cathy. Mutt-no-last-name is the property of the Grief Team. He is a feral-’Kid and as such he was available for our export programme. I think that you should be happy for him; after all, he’s got a lovely life in the Papal State ahead of him as a very important young man.”
The Grief Team Page 14