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Chapter 37
Birdie Quarters set the copter down on the helipad next to a square of large trailers that housed the maintenance equipment and supplies. She grabbed two cartons of food from the back of the copter and set off in a rush to another large trailer in the middle of a large field. Maddy watched her go. When Birdie came back for another two cartons, Maddy watched her go again. She watched a third time. This time Birdie slammed the hatch at the back of the copter shut before she left. Maddy waited.
When Birdie didn't come back, she undid her seatbelt and climbed into the back of the copter. She looked at the hatch and tried to open it, but she couldn't make the handle work properly. She could open the door next to where she had been sitting and did so. However, she didn't want to go anywhere without her suitcase. There was a small gap between the two seats at the front of the copter but she couldn't squeeze the suitcase through it. She'd have to lift the suitcase over the seat instead. It was too heavy. She sat down on the floor of the copter and looked at it.
Emptying everything out of her suitcase allowed her to lift it over the back of the copilot's seat, however the unpacking and repacking process took time. Extending the suitcase's handle, she set out for the same trailer where Birdie had disappeared. The ground was full of weeds and ruts. The suitcase bumped on the rough ground a lot and it didn't go straight for very long. It was too heavy for Maddy to hold in her arms, so she tried pushing it. That was worse.
When she finally got to the trailer, Maddy heard noises coming from the front of the building. She would have to climb some wooden stairs to get into the trailer and, once again, the suitcase wasn't cooperative. She left it upright on the ground, climbed the stairs, and peeked in. Birdie Quarters was stirring something in a big pot on the stove. Maddy came into the kitchen and watched.
On one of her trips from the fridge to the stove, Birdie saw Maddy standing there. "Took you long enough," she complained. "There are some brats in the yard behind the trailer. Keep them quiet and I'll give you something to eat." Then she turned back to the stove.
# # # # # # # #
"We're ready to give you something to eat now," the voice over the PA system informed the crowd in Maple Loaf Stadium. "Please go down to the floor of the rink and stand in line to have your hand stamped. These stamps will be in four different colours – white, yellow, brown, and black. Once you've received your hand stamp, please return to the seats. We'll call people to eat by stamp colour so that nobody has to stand in line too long. If food delivery is delayed, we'll provide rations here in the rink." Hank was in charge of Wilizy operations inside the Gardens. He was using a PA system that allowed everybody in the stands to hear him. People were hungry. They all trooped down to the rink as requested.
The Wilizy had positioned five tables on the rink floor. A young aboriginal boy was sitting behind the first table where everybody lined up. He'd look at the person standing in front of him, pick a colour, and call it out. That person would then stand in front of one of the other four tables. Each of those tables was clearly marked with a colour. The woman behind the table would stamp the person's hand with the appropriate colour, tell him or her to return to the stands, and then wait for the next person to approach the table. This stamping process took less than half an hour to complete. At that point, the tables and people staffing them disappeared from view.
...
"We'd like to invite all those people with a white food stamp to come down to the rink now. Soldiers will direct you into the eating area. Please be patient while you wait. We are preparing the food as quickly as we can."
As Hank finished his announcement, soldiers came onto the rink floor and formed a line that led to a tunnel into the private area of the rink. Citizens from the police station were asked to sit outside a door marked Visitors. Citizens from the city hall were directed in the opposite direction and they sat outside a door marked Home. People at the front of each line were invited into each dressing room one at a time.
Once inside their respective dressing rooms, the citizens were probably surprised to find that they weren't getting their food right away. Instead, they found eight small tables, each situated so that it had some privacy from the other tables. The citizen would be directed to sit in front of a table that had just become open for new business. There, they'd listen first to a prepared speech.
"You will receive food shortly. But I must tell you that you are under investigation for committing illegal acts while you were employed. The Ontario Supreme Court is conducting this investigation. Soldiers are present in the room to prevent any person who has committed crimes from leaving."
Two armed soldiers were at each of the two exits to the dressing room – the one that led back to the hallway and the other at the emergency exit that led to the parking lot outside of the building.
"I am formally advising you that everything you say in your interview will be recorded by a court stenographer's machine just as it would be if you were giving evidence in a trial. The camera in the machine in front of you will record both your voice and your face. I will take notes as necessary. All of this will be saved on a computer in a remote location. Your statement will be reviewed for accuracy later. But if I believe that you are lying to me during the interview, I have the authority to charge you immediately with the crime of obstructing justice. I will stop the interview and have you placed in a cell. It will take us a couple of days to get around to interviewing you again, and I should warn you that we will interview you thoroughly the second time. I should also tell you that we are good at detecting lies."
"If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear from us or from any of the people you've been working with. Nobody other than the people being employed by your province's Supreme Court will know what you said. During the interview, I will be asking you if you have observed criminal acts being committed while you were working. You should prepare yourself to tell the truth when you answer that question. If you try to shield those criminals, you will be given the same punishment as they receive. Do you understand that you are now under criminal investigation?"
# # # # # # # #
This process was used first for the Whites and then later that afternoon for the Yellows. Both these groups were receiving a gentle interview because Reese's assessment of their character was either very positive or mostly positive. The point of interviewing the Whites and the Yellows first was to generate evidence on the Browns and Blacks. Every time that an interviewee mentioned that she had seen so-and-so doing such-and-such, that information was entered into the computer system.
Toronto's regular stenographer's machines were not capable of sending data to a central computer for storage and processing. In Toronto's court system, each trial was recorded on a bot and that bot would be stored centrally. If somebody wanted to review the trial, he'd retrieve the bot. But for these investigations in Maple Loaf Gardens, TG had equipped the recording equipment with a wireless transmitter that could send the data to a powerful computer that he had set up in the referee's changing room. TG's software would automatically transfer any evidence of a criminal act from the interviewer's computer, along with the source of the evidence, into the file of the Black or Brown who had been mentioned. I'll give you more detail later on what was planned for the Browns and Blacks. All you need to know is that Winnie would be participating in their interviews tomorrow, but for today, she was off duty.
The Wilizy managed to finish the interviews for all the Whites and Yellows that Friday afternoon. At the end of the interview, each person was thanked for being honest and one of the soldiers offered them some army rations. They were advised to stay at home until a formal announcement was made for workers to return to their jobs. By nightfall, everybody in Toronto knew that numerous crimes had been committed in the city hall or in the police station. These were being investigated and trials would be coming soon.
That news never did make its way into Maple Loaf Gard
ens. By Friday evening however, the Browns and the Blacks had figured out that something was up. They hadn't been taken for an interview, they were given army rations to eat, and they were free to go to washrooms. But armed soldiers wouldn't let them leave the arena. The Browns and Blacks looked at who was with them under guard and they knew they were in trouble. Some of them collected in groups and talked very quietly among themselves. Nobody thought it unusual that a deserted hockey rink would have a lot of spiders.
# # # # # # # #
Winnie and Marie left the ship early that Friday morning – neither were needed for the preliminary interview process. They were sitting on a gentle slope of a hill overlooking the bunker building where the blonde girl Maddy had been deposited. Winnie was staring at the building; Marie was lying on her back, looking at the sky. "How's it going?" Marie asked.
"I have nothing," Winnie confessed. "I'm trying to force a solution, but these ideas don't work that way. I get them – like bam, all of a sudden there's an answer. Right now I have no idea how to find the escape tunnel out of that bunker."
"What do you want to do then?"
"Why don't we relax and talk. Tell me what it was like living on a slave ranch. You can skip the whipping and raping parts."
So they did. Marie talked about the daily life of a slave in the fields and in the kitchens. The best part? How they all made fun of the slave owners and bosses behind their backs. The worst part? Marie had two worsts. When a child was ripped out of a mother's arms and sent away; and, the never-ending grind of despair, knowing that they'd always be slaves and would die that way. "I tried to give the housekeepers hope," Marie said. "With the voodoo. And some of them would spread that hope to their slaves. Other housekeepers gave up and their slaves did too."
"They believe in voodoo?"
"They believe in putting curses on the bosses and owners and hoping that some day those curses will come true. It makes them into fighters, not quitters."
"What curses would they make?"
[Censor's note: Two paragraphs have been deleted for the sake of maintaining public morality.]
"Whoa. Those are nasty curses. Did everybody put in all those swear words too?"
"Definitely. Plus the more grotesque, painful, and gory they imagined the deaths, the more hope they could take from it. Intestines being ripped out; insects eating their vital organs from the inside out. Those were common."
"You said some swear words that I've never heard before."
"That's not surprising. Voodoo draws on an African background."
"Would you tell me some of your best swear words and what they mean?"
# # # # # # # #
"Where did the 10-year-old slaves go after they were collected from the ranches?"
"I don't know. The girls wouldn't answer that question. But we were all strangers to them, so perhaps they were scared. I do know that none of the girls that they took away from our ranch ever returned to our ranch. Also, we always had more girls leaving than girls coming back as house slaves."
"The boys?"
"Same thing. More boys left than came back. Some boys arrived as cattle hands, but they weren't from our ranch. We learned that they had been given something to drink that changed them."
"How were they changed?"
"Not interested in women, for one thing."
"Oh. Like what farmers do to male cattle."
"Exactly. Some of our own boys came back as bosses, but they were different too. They didn't mind whipping slaves."
"Did the mothers recognize them?"
"Of course."
"Did the mothers find a way to talk to them privately and ask where they had gone?"
"One mother at another ranch tried to ask a boss where her boys would be taken when he was still little."
"What happened?"
"Their big momma found them talking. She made the boss whip the mother to death in front of her boys. Then she made the boss drink something in front of everybody and he was sent to work with the cattle. She sent a video of this to the nearby ranches. Mothers and bosses didn't dare to have private talks after that."
"I'm getting very angry."
"Let's change the subject then. I have a question for you, Winnie."
"OK."
"Where did all those flames come from last night?"
(At this point, Winnie tried to explain about explosive devices and flammable liquids, but Winnie didn't know all that much herself so we'll skip that part of the discussion.)
"If I set myself on fire with a burning liquid, would I be able to sneak up on the owners or would they know that I'm coming?"
"They'd probably know you were coming because the burning gives off a smell. Last night, I could smell the fumes of the exploded liquor even though we were up in the ship."
"I'd want to sneak up, I think it..."
"Wait, Marie."
"I won't change my mind about burning myself up, Winnie."
"No, it's not that. Just don't talk for a minute. Please."
...
"Got it!"
"Got what?"
"A way to find the escape tunnel."
# # # # # # # #
William managed to construct what Winnie wanted within an hour and then he shipped it to her at high-speed express because she wanted to try it out before dark. William reminded her that there were lots of Safe Haven sensors in the woods around the bunkers, but so long as Winnie and Marie remained invisible, those sensors would remain inactive. The equipment and materials he had sent would remain inside an invisible pouch. William used mind-messages to help Winnie install the equipment.
Do you have your sling's laser focused on a wooden wall?
Yes.
Good. Fire the laser through the wall now with as little power as possible.
I have a hole.
Good. Put one end of the tubing that's in the pouch through the hole. I've given you more than enough tubing so push a lot of it in so that it won't accidentally come out. That tubing is connected to a pressure pump in the pouch that will take normal air and push it into the house in a strong concentrated stream.
I see the pump. It's a big square thing, right?
Yeah. Make sure that you're not blocking the air from entering the pump. The pump sucks in air from the outside and pushes the air through a tube that goes into a little brown box. Then the air comes out of that brown box and goes into the house through the hole you drilled. Is that what you see?
Yes. What's in the brown box?
Some chemicals that will turn the clean air into red air. That air will have a distinctive smell, like the fumes you smelled from the exploding liquor storage tanks.
After the air passes the brown box, we'll be pumping red smelly air into the house at high pressure?
Got it.
And if we pump enough of that red smelly air into the house, some of it will leak out of the house, like through windows and doors.
And through emergency tunnels, just like you thought it would, Winnie. Great idea!
It'll work?
It should. The bunker's motion activated systems won't react. Nor will their carbon dioxide activated systems react because we're not changing the levels of carbon dioxide. It will take some time to find the tunnel because we have to push that air through the entire bunker. Be patient. Start up the pump and then you and Marie can go looking for red smelly air.
Green button to start?
And red button to stop.
# # # # # # # #
It worked, William. The tunnel took a sharp turn south after it left the bunker, so that's why we couldn't find it with a physical search. That was quite the smell you used.
Nothing smells worse than the fertilizer that farmers make from their pigs. When you leave, take our drone with you. We don't need to watch that bunker any longer.
OK. Marie wants me to tell you that the smell reminded her of her days at Ranch #2.
They raised pigs?
Yeah. Marie doesn't hav
e happy memories of those days on the ranch, William.
What are you trying to say?
She says that I should tell you that she's coming to git you.
Really?
She's looking for a spell to change people into pigs as we speak.
Winnie!
Relax. I'm pretty sure that she's kidding.
Define "pretty sure."
I don't know. There's a 20% chance that you'll be snorting through your nose within the hour?
I'll be in a Wilizy meeting. There's some sort of serious problem.
What's it about?
I have no idea. Are you coming in?
Marie and I will TiTr this little girl for a bit. Don't "hog" up all the conversation in the meeting, William.
Good one. You're kidding about Marie, right. She's one scary woman.
She's nice, William, but with a crazy sense of humour. Marie, where are you? Marie? Marie?
I'll be in a meeting, Winnie. With witnesses.
# # # # # # # #
"We have no idea how to catch them yet," Hank admitted to the Wilizy at the meeting.
"We can't convict the judge or the prosecutor?" Yolanda asked incredulously.
"We don't have enough to even put them on trial," Jock said. "Not one White or Yellow has said anything incriminating about them. William's drones are picking up some chatter in the arena that will incriminate some of the Blacks, but we have nothing on the judge or the head prosecutor."
"But they killed all those people in the jail cell!" Yolanda was steaming. She'd remain steaming if she didn't hear better news soon.
"We have no proof that we can use. The bodies have been incinerated. We can't even prove that those people are dead, let alone murdered."
"Hank is right," Jock stepped in. "Both Judge Lewis and Prosecutor Lee have kept themselves insulated. I doubt that we'll find anybody who can say that the judge or the prosecutor spoke directly to them and ordered them to commit a crime. Any communications would have been by anonymous texts."
"Dr. Sandman? Could we threaten him enough to turn on the judge?"
"We don't have much on him. Besides, Reese says that he's mostly innocent. Even if Sandman accused the judge of anything – like instructing his people to try to kill Lucas – it would still boil down to the doctor accusing and the judge denying. We have NO proof." Hank was now exasperated. Yolanda's voice was now raised. Nobody tries to kill one of her babies and gets away with it.