The Grief Team (4 page)

Satisfied, Gabriel sent his chair smoothly back to his original station with one well-placed foot. Strange about Gordon Latimer really, he thought, drumming his fingertips along the desktop. Something had happened in the course of the man’s work in the Crematoria which had caused him to suspect a problem with the embryos.
What was it?

Latimer’s files had revealed that the Director had been a survivor of the ‘04+2 Parisian Virus, the one that took up where the Tallahassee ‘04 left off. The final stats, Gabriel remembered, were something like 21.5 million dead, which was moderate but significant. Tallahassee was marked in most citizens’ minds as the World Series of viruses, ironically because it had ended the fourth game of the Fall Classic in the sixth inning. Jose Melino collapsed at the plate with the bases loaded, his hands tearing holes in his chest in his mania and, an hour later, no more baseball, no more World Series, no more fans. 
              Gabriel sat, adrift in a sea of monitors, some six dozen of them, each offering instantaneous views of the Seven Malls which, collectively, functioned as Toronto Nation. SkyDome, off-limits to all citizens and operated by the Grief Team, appeared on screen like the soot-black canker it was, planted in the midst of the wreckage of the old C.N. Tower. Each of several hundred vidkams was hooked into the Stream, each monitor receiving information feeds simultaneously, accessing realtime images throughout all Malls at all levels. Other vidkams, situated atop abandoned highrises Outside in the virus-laden air, delivered crystal-clear pictures of what was taking place among the Wildkids.   

Gabriel was micro-managing the Mull situation as well as the latest sweep outside the malls for Wildkids. He planted his right foot on the floor and propelled his chair once again, this time fifteen monitors along to VK-214, the terminal monitoring the vidkams in a sector where a clutch of Wildkids had been spotted two hours earlier. With his left hand punching up each cam in sequence, his right moving the togglestick in a well-practised manner, Gabriel searched an expanse of demolished buildings languishing on a site once known as the home of the Canadian National Exhibition, now notorious for infiltrations by the radburned little bastards. Once again, he noted, the vidkam on the lakeside of SkyDome was out of order. Once again, he would order its repair and hope that it stayed functional long enough to record the face of the little bastard who kept knocking it out of commission.
              Although he was aware of the illustrious history of the C.N.E., Gabriel Kraft was far too young to have ever experienced the annual celebrations which took place there; rather, he knew it only as a squalid gathering place for knots and tangles of Wildkids who set fires and tortured their own for lack of anything better to do. Only a week ago, Gabriel had watched in mute fascination as a pack of jabbering Kids harassed a malnourished boy, beating him with sticks and metal bars until he fell. Although he was watching a scene which he knew full well repeated itself many times each week, Gabriel was sickened by the ritual of stinkgas poured over the victim and the soundless writhing as a match was thrown. He hadn’t waited for the feast that inevitably followed the barbeque. It was enough to make anyone sick.

Gabriel completed his sweep of 214, finding nothing, and then turned his attention to the latest  problem with the Mulls. His thoughts quickly reviewed the historical aspects of their unique situation. The rise in the population of Mulls in the Malls had been a concern of the Grief Team for some time. These milky-dark descendants of African slaves were now propogating themselves to a worrisome degree and a plan to deal with such an overabundance had yet to be agreed upon by Elias. A program for action, designated as Mull Watch, had been on the Mayor’s desk for weeks and constituted the largest program of castration ever considered, far larger that what had been done with the Crones. His father, Gabriel well knew, was avoiding the issue and that was a problem.

Gabriel himself was well-aware of the Mull origins in the wastelands of Desertregion, once known as Africa, and how greedy English and American traders had parlayed the dreams of plantation owners for free slave labour into hundreds of thousands of dollars of profits dumped into their own coffers. It was a get-rich-quick scheme which had authored—when, in the end, you took the long view—the downfall of the United States during the riots almost 300 years later in 2003/4, when Los Angeles and a hundred other cities had fallen into race chaos, driven by plague death. He knew about the first extermination squads, rising out of their bunkers in the mid-West, the much-vaunted White Knights who now controlled what was left of Salt Lake City. Toronto Nation had nothing to do with them; they were fanatics and had nothing of value to trade anyway. 

Ultimately, it was the Tallahassee Virus of ‘04 which proved to be the deciding factor, wiping out millions and millions of blacks and whites alike, leaving, in one of numerous resultant ironies, only the mullatoes, the sons and daughters of slaves and slave owners whose mixed blood had proved to be immune from the airborne killers. Several thousand of these Mulls had already gravitated to New York where, amid the lifeless streets and deserted architectural canyons of Manhattan, they had raised a new flag over a nation they called New Freedom.
              Gabriel had never seen New Freedom because of the travel restrictions which every surviving nation wisely and firmly kept in place, but he knew from the Stream that they were adept players in the World Trade Zone, offering cheap manufactured goods in return for quantities of raw materials and foodstuffs. He was aware of rumours that the Council of New Freedom had been authorizing mechanized forays across the wastelands of old New England, searching for colonies of whites, blacks, yellows, whatever, and wiping them out as soon as they were discovered.  It was genocide based more in the stink of righteous revenge than anything else. Toronto remained unaffected and, officially, aloof but Gabriel knew that Elias had a healthy interest in the data which the Grief Team accumulated on the issue. Lately, Elias had also expressed interest in the development of the Hispanic peoples in NewMiami, seeing in them the possibility of expanded trade.

Historically, Toronto had its own clutch of Hispanic peoples and some of them had survived the viruses, saved by the same statistical fates which governed the entire planet during the plagues. Eighteen months before, the Grief Team had prepared twelve dozen sets of Hispanic babies in a newly-reclaimed wing of the Birth Centre at Cedarbrae and the prospects of a steady birth rate had been good. Production estimates had forecast that inside five years there would be sufficient quantities to assist Miamitown in its repopulation, offering prime heritage units to replace the chromosome-decayed inhabitant
s who were unable to propagate. Without Cedarbrae babies, Miamitown was doomed.

But there will be no more Cedarbrae babies!
 

Gabriel’s immediate problem was to persuade Elias to accept his Team’s solution to the ever-increasing population of Mulls in the Square One Mall, where they had been assigned residency in 2006 by Mayor Dickie.  The mall, serviced by the Mall Planning Council, was losing revenue as the population increased. Too many Mulls. Too little cash flow. And, Gabriel knew, no chance of employing the special resources of SkyDome to fix the problem as long as Elias remained in control. His father’s compassion for the Mulls was as well-known as it was incomprehensible. 

The initial feelers on the market to ascertain whether or not there was any interest in forced migration to New Freedom proved to be short-lived. The Council of New Freedom had let it be known that there was no home for Mulls there and that was that. Struggling to look after their own, Manhattan showed little interest even when the rates offered were rock-bottom. As for offering free population to the Celts, the Deutsches, or the tiny Papal State, Gabriel didn’t even bother to think about it.  All three had run effective extermination programs against Mulls and would regard fresh stocks as anathema. 

As for the Cossack Region, they had yet to even join the Zone.  Little was known about these handsome, swashbuckling descendants of the Khan who had, centuries before, swept through peasant villages, impaling screaming infants on their bright spears and lopping off the heads of the terrified peasants. Cossack distrust of outside peoples was notorious and legendary even in Gabriel’s time. Who did not remember the bulging, dripping, red sack tossed with arrogant disdain on the cracked pavement outside the E.C. by the Cossack ambassador?  The bag had split, allowing six of its contents, the Toronto Nation Special Ambassadorial Team, to roll and bounce along the walkway until they stopped, eyeless and bloody in the weeds, dark bruised noses ripped and flared like blackbirds’ wings. The Cossack ambassador, black-eyed and erect, his message delivered, had calmly removed a gun from his belt and blown his own brains out. 

The problem with the Mulls remained. It seemed insurmountable and, as time passed and the cramped Mull-designated areas within Square One bulged at the seams, it was inevitable that something had to give. Already, foraging parties of Mulls were beginning to interfere with the itinerant population of Wildkids, daring to transgress Rule 9
(see endnote 3)
, as they searched for supplements to their meagre food allowances. If Rule 9—Outside is Death— could not stop them, what would? These renegade Mulls searched for easy pickings of pre-teen WildKid stragglers who were quickly captured with the offer of food, only to reappear several hours later as someone’s grotesquely-barbequed evening meal in the Mall. It was becoming a problem and Grief Team bands were already reporting losses around the Area 300 along the weed-infested highway known as Number 10. How much longer, Gabriel wondered, before a foraging party of Mulls felt brave enough to probe the main depot at SkyDome and the shit really hit the fan? He felt a shudder run down his neck and along his spine as he sent his chair reeling backwards, along the bank of monitors to those which accessed SkyDome. 

As he surveyed the pens, he checked his watch. In ten minutes, the Exchange would close and the day’s bidding in the World Trade Zone would end. The Swedes would likely get their price for the contingent of reconstituted blond WK’s, Gabriel thought. It was time to think about slipping down to the grand concourse of the E.C. to do justice to a cup of coffee and a donut. That would suffice until he figured out how to persuade Elias that the Mull situation was rapidly running out of control.

The Assistant Director of Crematoria, Emmett Strachan, was recalculating the odds for the umpteenth time that he was but a hair’sbreadth away from being in deep shit with the Grief Team. The examination of Gordon Latimer’s files by the Team had been quite thorough. Emmett had never seen anything like it...Gordon’s entire office was gone. Everything! All files purged from his connection to the Stream. Even Gordon’s apartment in F Complex, where Emmett was presently hanging his sorry head in disbelief, was bare. Stripped to the carpet underlay. All appliances, furnishings, fixtures, televisions…everything gone. The round hole in the floor in the small bathroom partition indicated clearly that even the toilet had been deemed worthy of removal. Emmett had cocked an eyebrow at that.

“Dogs’breath, Gordon, it’s like you never existed!”                   

Nonetheless, the Grief Team’s reputation for total response was a thing of beauty observed and, to Emmett’s ordered mind, quite impressive. And scary as hell. The apartment was a statement devoid of emotion, full of the weight of absolutely nothing; it amazed him, made him feel claustrophobic, as if the air was suddenly palpable and able to cushion him if he but leaned against it.

The sudden thought that the spirits of the departed members of the Latimer family were at this moment infusing the fifteen by ten metres of their former living space rocked Emmett momentarily, but was swiftly rejected as so much hokum. It was, he quickly told himself, a lingering autonomic response, a remnant in the human psyche of the way things used to be.

A sudden religious urge to consider the transmogrification of the human soul as something more than ashes was silly and not the kind of thought which the Assistant Director—soon to be elevated to the Directorship?—of the modern ovens in Toronto Nation’s Crematoria was expected to have. Such thoughts were nothing more than sympathetic magic, a throwback to other centuries when faith in God or Allah or Buddha or Koresh or Moon or a thousand others vied with various degrees of success for the minds and hearts of the population on Earth.  Whatever those deities, or demi-deities, or outright phonies had once  represented, they were now so much historical rubbish. Religion had not been popular in the world since Jeffrey Meilgaard had chugged his cocktail of contagion down in the old U.S. more than twenty years ago and everyone’s God had stood by silently and watched him do it.

Emmett, trained to be responsive to people’s needs in time of death, frequently impressed on his staff and local affiliates that sympathy and compassion should be allowed to flow like sweet champagne within the confines of the Crematoria’s Goodbye Rooms. Family members were encouraged to weep before they were presented with the bill and an invitation to return to the realities of modern Mall-life.

Yet, the regret which he was now feeling was a stone in his gut.  Leigh and Gordon had been his friends and he allowed himself several moments of mourning on their behalf. Cathy, that sweet little girl, was as good as dead, now that she was lost to the Outside. Surely, Emmett reasoned, if there was a God or Supreme Being then it was more likely the Lord of Misrule or, better yet, the Lord of Chaos. Either would be, in his opinion, more appropriate to the history of human civilization. 
 

Emmett considered the unnerving possibility that the Grief Team would also be paying him a visit. As everyone knew, such an event could presage the termination of parental rights for any shadow of suspicion which fell across a husband or wife charged with raising a child through Stage Two would be bad news delivered abruptly with no chance of reprieve.

Every citizen in the Malls was aware that the Grief Team was empowered to do whatever it wished, short of breaking the moral code upon which all citizens’ rights were based. The days of police brutality were memories which only a handful of citizens now close to termination themselves might still harbour from the early-00’s, before viruses made law enforcement on the streets virtually unnecessary. The Grief Team’s methodology more than adequately allowed for the humane and lawful treatment of parents and one home visit was always enough to ensure compliance with whatever the Bluebands had in mind. Rumours, chiefly emanating out of Square One, spoke of other, more sinister methods but these were surely unfounded, spread as they undoubtedly were by discontented Mulls. After all, who had ever been dragged away and shot? No one he knew. Any disappearance would be noted in the Stream somewhere and thus answerable to the Mayor. At least that was how he perceived his rights: this was not 2002 and cops were no longer using citizens on the streets for target practice
.

Would they search his home?
              Would they find that all-important package?              
              Had someone changed the rules without his being aware?

A family of three had ceased to exist and someone had decided that all traces of their existence had to be removed. Emmett would have cursed had he known any curses, but non-aggressive language training in preparation for Stage Two parental rights had cleared his mind of that particular ability. About the most he was able to string together was “Deuce, darn and drat,” words he recalled characters speaking in a reconstituted novel by Stephen King. He rolled them around in his mouth as he closed the apartment door, heading for the elevator to E Complex where he lived with his wife and son. He was still shaking his head about the Latimers when the doors opened and the tear-stained face of a small boy appeared.

“Daddy, Little Arthur says that the Grief Team is coming to lickadate us!”               

Emmett opened his arms wide.  “Honour the child!  Honour to you, my child Marcus!  My love and service to you are beyond measure!”

Marcus rubbed a small fist across his eyes, trying to smile, not objecting as Emmett pulled him close for a kiss and a hug.  Marcus was still in his homeschool uniform, a clean white shirt, pressed dark pants and black sandals. He pressed against Emmett’s waist, his wide-eyed, innocent features dimming suddenly.               

“Why is the Grief team coming, Daddy? What did you do?”

Emmett forced a smile. “Nothing, Marcus. Little Arthur is just teasing you. And it’s bad teasing.”

“What does ‘lickadate’ mean?” Marcus raised his bright blue eyes to examine his father’s reaction.  He did not fully understand what he saw there but he was old enough and aware enough to sense that his father was afraid. Afraid of the Grief Team? The Grief Team was everybody’s friend. Rhonda, the Udderly Fantastic Cow, said so on her show every day at four o’clock.  

Emmett smiled again, mustered a stronger level of self-confidence, and ruffled his son’s abundance of blond hair, a feature which he and Elise had selected together. “’Liquidate’ is a word which you don’t need to know and Little Arthur will be have to be cautioned for his silly comments.  I am certainly going to speak with his father.”

“But why is the Grief Team coming, Daddy?  Are you afraid?”

“Now, now, it’s not absolutely certain that they are coming. I am expecting them but it’s nothing to be worried about. One of Daddy’s friends at work has died suddenly and the Team wants to ask me some questions to see if I can help them understand why. It’s very simple.”  He cupped Marcus’ face in his warm hands and tickled his nose with his thumbs. Instantly there were delighted giggles. 

Emmett fought the icy prickles of panic which were forming in his gut. Of nervous disposition in times of stress, Emmett took great care to preserve an outward appearance of normality. He blamed his parents for his slippery-slidy grasp of even temperament and, in darker moments of reflection, was convinced that an errant gene would eventually provide the impetus for his descent into madness.

You have the package! You have the ticket to a better future! Don’t blow it, Emmett!

“I want to visit Cathy,” demanded Marcus suddenly.

Emmett tweaked his son’s nose lightly. “O.K., we’ll do that very soon.” How he was going to break the news to his son about his playmate, little Cathy, was something he needed help deciding. He held his son tightly, assuring him while pushing his own feelings of panic out of the way.
              “Are you content with the manner in which the Mayor operates our malls, Mr. Strachan?”

Emmett nodded quickly.  “Yes, yes I am. I have always been supportive of Mayor Elias. It has always been my pleasure to acknowledge what he has done for me and my family. As you know, my wife and I have been parents for two years, one month, and twenty-seven days. Marcus is our pride and joy. We honour the child in our home, Mr. Scott.”  Emmett began to lick the dryness out of his top lip, realized what he was doing, and stopped. The Greenband was looking at him sharply. Emmett quickly decided that a question of his own was in order. “Surely no one doubts our sincerity or suitability? I am the Assistant Director of Crematoria, you know. I am not without responsibilities.”

“Not at all, Mr. Strachan,” assured his interrogator deftly, managing to produce the words in such a tone of perfect neutrality that Emmett felt no wiser for having asked.

Elise squeezed his left hand in support and he was grateful. Thus far, the questions posed by this single representative of the power of the malls had been disarmingly pleasant, even banal. A relieved Emmett had begun to regard the visit as perfunctory, a mopping-up of the details surrounding the terrible events which had overtaken his colleague and his family. He answered every question concerning Gordon’s activities and interests with complete honesty; moreover, he did so willingly given the fact that he didn’t know that much about Gordon anyway. They had often shared a drink and their wives and children knew each other quite well, but the substance of his own relationship with Gordon rested in their mutual concern in handling the Crematoria properly. Surely this Blueband was aware of that?

But the questions had suddenly detoured into an examination of Emmett and his own particular views...about the Mayor, about Mall operations, shopping choices, and his extra-curricular affiliations. Emmett dutifully recorded his favourite stores in the mall, his prejudice towards Mulls, and his ongoing problem with shoes that were too tight. 

His interlocutor was a Greenband, a fact that had offered some initial relief when he appeared on the Strachan’s doorstep a scant twenty minutes after Marcus’ worry about imminent ‘lickadation’ had been resolved. Greenbands meant a low-key investigation: interview only, no injections, no removals. When Elise, returning from the mall cooking centre several floors below in the E.C., joined her husband a few minutes later, she sat protectively by his side on the small sofa in the living room. Emmett had experienced an enormous sense of relief when Elise joined him. They were a team and would face this intrusion by the Mall into their lives together. Ultimately, he told himself, whatever Gordon had done—what did you do, Gordon? How much did you know?—it should be obvious to the Greenband that Emmett had not been involved. 

The Greenband had introduced himself as John-Roger Scott and seemed to be following a prepared list of questions, although he kept them just outside Gordon’s view. He hinted that a number of Latimer’s colleagues, associates, and friends were also receiving brief visits. Everything seemed quite straight-forward, but Emmett was aware that a subtle shift in focus had taken place toward the end of the interview and that now his own personal views were being carefully weighed. He took care to speak clearly and concisely, employing language which bespoke his fervent admiration for the Mayor and the Malls. He aimed his voice directly toward the microphone in front of him and spoke with all the confidence he could muster.

John-Roger Scott placed a neat tick beside the twenty-fourth of the twenty-five questions on his list. Possessed of enormous black eyebrows—and more than a little vain in his cultivation of them—the two overfed, succulent caterpillars began to slowly undulate. Aside from the standard Grief Team tattoo on his glans, Scott considered them his most redeeming feature and he employed them liberally in his assignments, allowing them to express at different times incredulity, humour, suspicion, or fury. With his stylus poised above the final question, Scott’s fuzzy appendages assumed the arched position of twin Doubting Thomases.

“Mr. Strachan, are you aware that Gordon Latimer may have been a spy for the Papal State?”

Emmett’s jaw, rescued abruptly by his right hand, did not quite hit the floor. When he finally found his voice, it had the pubescent sque
ak of a thirteen-year-old boy. “No-o, I...I had no idea. That is, Gordon never said...he never...I had no idea that he was a recidivist Catholic!”

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Elise said sharply, unamused by the ugly little black caterpillars crawling across the man’s forehead.

John-Roger Scott made the appropriate tick in the appropriate column and smiled. “No one ever does really. These religious types are very good at disguising themselves.”  John-Roger Scott stood, clipping his stylus neatly onto his shirt pocket. “Thank you very much for your cooperation, Mr. and Mrs. Strachan. I believe that I have everything I need.”

Emmett offered a wan smile of gratitude, somehow masking the tidal wave of disbelief which swept over him. Gordon Latimer?  A spy for the Papal State? What had he been doing in the Crematoria that Emmett did not know about?  There was barely room in his astonishment for the possibility that this Greenband was lying, but it squeezed its way in regardless. It had to be a red herring, designed to keep him off-balance. Gordon and the Pope? Ridiculous!