Hank, for his part, would have been incensed that Franklin had sexually molested her. Hank was fiercely protective of Yolanda and his children. In fact he tried to protect anyone who could not stand up to bullies on his own. This ultimately led to the violence that gave him a thoroughly bad reputation in their village. He'd take on a bully with his fists, no matter how much bigger he was, and no matter what risk he personally faced. Throughout his life, Hank embarked on quests to right the wrongs being done to people around him. He was a 14th century knight living in the 21st century.
When Hank learned at that community meeting of all the young women who had been attacked by Franklin, his unhappiness with Yolanda's secrecy would have increased. He would have argued that he could have protected those girls.
Yolanda, for her part, would have pointed out that this would have meant that his plans to fight the bikers would never have been advanced and the Aboriginal Nation may never have been conceived. After all, Hank's bloody message to the bikers had been adopted as the Nation's official motto: The Aboriginal Nation protects its own. We fight to the death. We don't run away. Today, that motto hung proudly in the school gym in the very community where Franklin had abused those girls. In response to Franklin's abuse, that community had established its own justice system – a precursor to what they would be asked to do as a nation.
Would that motto be hanging there now if she had revealed to Hank what she knew about his superior? Think of the good that had been created by the Aboriginal Nation's creation. Before that, the specter of the century old obscenity of the Boarding School Scandal still hung over B.C. Long ago, thousands of aboriginal children had been taken from their homes and forced to live in boarding schools and were punished if they ever spoke their own language. Physical and sexual abuse had been rampant as well. It was only when B.C. actively supported the creation of the Aboriginal Nation that the white man's sins had been forgiven. Did the good that came out of Yolanda's agreement with Franklin not outweigh the bad?
I have no way of knowing how intense that discussion became. Did they scream and shout at each other? Did they storm around waving their arms in the air? I doubt that. Yolanda was quiet by nature; Hank was generally not overly demonstrative with his emotions, although he undoubtedly had strong emotions – a desire to find Franklin and beat him senseless for what he had done to Yolanda a prime example. His beating of the last remaining biker in that West Kelowna bar was another example. But that was in reaction to a threat on Yolanda. Yolanda herself was protective of Hank as well. Her use of the shotgun in that bar had been an automatic reaction to prevent the bikers from killing Hank.
As to the emotions that they themselves felt as they were engaged in the Biker War or in its aftermath, it's difficult to know what they felt. Did Hank experience any remorse for the bikers he killed? Did Yolanda? We'll never know. Neither of them talked about the emotions they felt as they suffered through some very challenging times.
In the end, Hank probably accepted the fact that Yolanda's decision to make a pact with Franklin and keep it a secret for decades was made in a rush and under stress. After all, hadn't he done the very same thing to Yolanda? And wasn't he still hiding that secret from her?
# # # # # # # #
Franklin Franklin's manifesto continued.
The she-devil was good to her word. The next time Hank reported to me, he showed no sign of hostility. The she-devil continued to watch me with her eyes, but I now recognized them for what they were. What could a simple missionary do against the devil herself? I became quite morose until God told me. "A devil cannot be destroyed, but the human body it inhabits can be."
I was patient and prepared my plan ahead of time with help from my Albertan associate. I told him where I would send him a little gift. He reassured me that five bikers would be happy to accept the gift. Believing that this would be the end of my troubles, I thanked my God for the message He had sent me and went to bed content.
You can't imagine how disheartened I was to find Hank and his devil girl friend back in my office with a plan to destroy the bikers. It was brilliant! I could hardly reject their plan as much as I wanted to. The she-devil's eyes followed me everywhere, and if I tried to find fault with his ideas, she'd show me her hand and squeeze it tight.
Hank and the she-devil were very successful at the beginning of their war with the bikers. I was able to bask in their success as well. I was brought back to headquarters to manage Hank's logistical needs. I was also given a position on the government committee tasked with defending the province from Alberta's attacks – the secret of Zzyk's bikers having been revealed by the she-devil. Naturally I was quick to inform my Albertan associate of my promotion. Zzyk was heartened by having inside information on everything B.C. would do and we set up a regular meeting location outside of Surrey for his second-in-command and me.
As Alberta began to lose its bikers, his subordinate pressured me to provide assistance. I explained that I could do nothing. I was not involved in Hank's planning any longer. My only hope of interference was through the supplies that I was ordering for them. I told Zzyk that I'd keep an eye open for an opportunity. Privately, I made a vow to free myself from the she-devil's control by whatever means possible.
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Chapter 29
Wednesday, March 7, day 5 of Will and Izzy's disappearance.
Granny was relieved to hear that the boys were off their diet of peanut butter and jam sandwiches. Lucas had admitted that they were tired of them. Besides they didn't have any peanut butter left. Now they were opening cans of pork & beans and eating them cold. As to why they didn't heat them up first, it took some prying but Lucas finally admitted that there had been a bit of an accident when they had used the stove and it had caught on fire. The ship was fine but they weren't sure about the stove.
Were they eating the pork and beans out of bowls and were they washing those bowls afterwards? Granny didn't even consider asking those questions. She knew the answer. As to why they were eating so much pork and beans? She didn't ask that question either. She knew the diet was deliberate. She was just glad that she wasn't in the ship at the time.
Lucas mentioned that they were running out of ideas for the pretend battles and could they leave the ship if someone stayed at the sensors? The North Korean ship hadn't arrived at the factory's port yet, so was it OK?
Granny said that they could leave in pairs and Lucas had to be in charge of one pair and Theo the other. Also they had to remain invisible at all times and they couldn't go so far from the ship that they couldn't return quickly. She didn't think about telling them that they couldn't fly at supersonic speeds. Nor was she aware that the boys had been part of Will's experiment to determine how high one had to be to avoid creating a sonic boom that could be heard on the ground. Nor was she aware of the ample supplies of oxygen tanks and breathing masks in the ship.
# # # # # # # #
After the optimism of discovering new leads to follow at the previous night's meeting, a tired and discouraged band of Wilizy Warriors met for debriefing Wednesday night.
Doc and Granny had taken on the task of finding Franklin's church – their previous focus on health records being fruitless. Both reported that they had no idea how to find this church. B.C. had a number of major religious institutions, but it was highly doubtful if they would disclose their membership, as was it highly doubtful that Franklin had been a member. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of single churches throughout the province. Some of them met in buildings, some met in private homes, some were only camps in the woods. Again, they had no way to find a single individual who attended one of those churches.
Doc and Granny gave up their search at mid-day and went back to the compound to recharge their batteries. They had had three days of searching without even a sniff. Granny looked in on Winnie who had been much better that morning after sleeping with her mom and dad. Yolanda didn't want to expose her yet to the stress of being arou
nd people worried about Will and Izzy, so Winnie had been given the day off to play.
"How did she look?" Yolanda asked her mother.
"She wasn't lying in her bed, that's for sure," Granny replied. "I saw some flashes of a tiny girl racing a wolf pup though the woods. When she came down to sub-sonic speeds long enough for me to call her over, Winnie told me that she was using her visible sling to give Patella some exercise, but was letting Patella win most of the races. Both seemed to be enjoying it."
# # # # # # # #
Yollie and TG had re-interviewed the woman who had sensed that FF had thought her inferior. Yes, the woman was aboriginal. They had asked Mac to determine if there was a way to identify how many aboriginal women worked for the government, and if it were a manageable number, could they interview them?
Mac reported that she was told that there were hundreds of them and yes, they could be interviewed, but she hadn't followed up. As she later told Hank: "I wasn't sure that this line of action would prove anything that we didn't already know, so I suggested to Yollie and TG that they could help with the survey of Franklin's neighborhood. I hope I didn't overstep my authority, Hank. But it didn't seem something that you needed to be bothered with. Continued searching for information on his bigotry would have been non-productive given how much time and energy we'd have to put into it."
"I agree," Hank said. "You're in charge of deploying our teams. Structure them as you see fit."
"However I did have a little time in the afternoon to take an electronic look for the information," Mac continued. "Sometimes large organizations have a private file storage area where potentially embarrassing complaints go to die a silent, private, and un-embarrassing death. I found a woman in the records section who pointed me to B.C.'s I wish we didn't know this file. This file contained a number of complaints against a B.C. official who had made remarks to some aboriginal women that one might think were racist in nature if he weren't so important, and so they couldn't be racist but why take a chance. In another report, an aboriginal woman swore up and down that the same official had bumped into her by accident in an elevator and had used that accident to fondle her. These complaints never saw the light of day. The name of the official was censored out. Sure sounds like Franklin though. I still don't see what we gain by trying to confirm he's a bigot and a pervert. We know that. I'd recommend that we close this line of inquiry."
Hank agreed.
# # # # # # # #
Mac had shifted Wolf and Wizard from examining Franklin's financial records to canvassing the neighborhood where Franklin lived. Yollie and TG had joined that group in the afternoon. Wolf reported that Franklin patronized numerous establishments as already revealed in his financial records. With military personnel in tow, they interviewed not only those businesses, but also every business in a two block radius. Many business owners had seen Franklin but they had nothing of value to report. Yollie had flitted from one interview to another and had not sensed anything in the interviews to warrant closer attention. They'd expand the search grid tomorrow but were not optimistic that they'd find anything.
Yolanda started to interview Franklin's neighbours in the condo complex but had aborted the attempt after knocking on one door. "I felt a strong negative reaction to my appearance at the door. The neighbour was polite but asked me how I had entered the building. I knew she was reacting to my skin colour. There could be others with the same thoughts. I'll try again tomorrow but with Winnie in tow."
Yolanda continued: "I spent all of the day searching Franklin's apartment. The military had already ripped everything apart. I redid the search. I handled everything he owned and hoped that I'd get a reading off something that had been deeply personal to him. I felt a little blip on a few things and I will ask Winnie to touch them tomorrow. I threw everything else into a giant pile in what had passed as his office. For the office of a business executive, it was surprisingly empty of anything business-like."
Hank put the final downer on the meeting. "We have found no evidence that a Bertram Franklin ever worked in B.C. The RCMP files in his detachment were destroyed, but there's no file on him even in the central RCMP archives in Surrey. He might have been registered under a different first name. Or Franklin got to the records before we did."
# # # # # # # #
Franklin Franklin's manifesto continued.
My chance to kill the she-devil's host body came as the war with the biker gangs was reaching a critical stage. She had asked me to send some birth control protection and had emphasized that it had to reach her by a certain date. I looked in the records and saw that this date would be the day on which her host body would reach 18. It surprised me that she would want the birth control protection when she hadn't been using it before. I had no doubt that she was engaged in her profession with Hank the whole time, but without charging him. Perhaps Hank was now demanding the protection, but for the life of me I couldn't see why.
Then it struck me. She had become diseased and Hank didn't want to catch what her promiscuity had earned her. What she was had been using was probably ineffective – a common problem for ignorant savages and one of the reasons why there were so many of them. That gave me a delicious idea. I contacted my Albertan associate who promised that he could deliver what I wanted. In return I would deliver what the she-devil wanted.
Of course nothing about the she-devil's sexual cravings ever made its way into the reports that Hank submitted. But I was able to review those reports, and when you know what you're looking for, the information was there. The devil's host body became pregnant and left the battle zone in what was probably her third month of pregnancy, which was coincidentally also the third month after her host body had attained legal age. I had thought that the bikers would take control of the battles in 2063. They were operating more intelligently as a single group by that point, and had managed with my help to murder all the spotters in the towns. Ten bikers were left with only Hank to oppose them, and he had to do that without the help of a spotter.
For several weeks, there were no battles – Hank was probably trying to keep out of sight. Then he started slowly gaining ground on his enemies. At one point, he was severely injured – I knew because I filled his request for arm splints. Somehow he still managed to kill the bikers. Only one at a time, but their numbers were decreasing. He was also able to continue to send his message of defiance – the arrow through the throat. I knew this because his reports documented such details. When I saw that, I knew that he was healthy again. I had seen his bow; it was far too big for anyone with an injured arm to pull.
The war ended with a decisive battle. I knew that five bikers were left; I also knew that they had boxed Hank into a tight corner. Somehow he managed to kill all five. All with the bow. It was possible that he had attacked at night when the bow would have been a very effective weapon. Only five arrows used; all kill shots. We sent in a team to clean up the area. Even after two weeks, blood was everywhere. Not only in the area where the bikers had camped, but also where Hank had lain.
For a while, I hoped that he had been mortally wounded and took comfort from the idea of his slow death. I took much more comfort from the probability that Zzyk's plan for the she-devil was working.
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Chapter 30
Thursday, March 8, day 6.
At 10 a.m., in a system-wide message to all the Warriors, Yolanda reported that Patella had sniffed out a hiding place behind the baseboards in Franklin's second bedroom. From the cobwebs and dust on the contents, it appeared that the hiding place hadn't been accessed for years. Franklin may have forgotten all about it.
Yolanda found a hand-bound book that had seen a lot of use at one time. Titled The Good Book, it was a rambling set of thoughts on religion, God, and the evils of breaking bread with the savages, to name only one of the sins that were forbidden by the author. "This is a very sick book," Yolanda said. "I was happy to be able to stop after the second page, it was so vile."
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An old picture of what she assumed was Franklin's family was inserted at that second page. Franklin may have been in the picture but it was hard to know which child he was. About fifty of them were standing in front of a big wooden structure that could have served as a church. One big portly man with a long white beard, bald head, and heavy black eye brows was in the center of the picture. Ten women were in the picture standing behind the children. Off in the distance was a mountain peak. It was distinctive but nothing that Yolanda had ever seen before. She digitized the picture and sent it out to everyone. "Does anyone recognize that mountain?" she asked the Wilizy.
At 10:15, Doc replied that the mountain was in the north-eastern corner of Vancouver Island. This huge island was a big chunk of mostly mountainous land that had become inaccessible immediately after the earthquake of '48. He didn't know what had become of the area afterwards. But he remembered seeing this mountain from a distance when his family had left Haida Gwaii. "It's south of Port McNeill, I believe. I remember camping on the beach there and seeing the mountain the day after that."
At 10:16, Wolf reported that he'd return to the Wilizy and bring the ship over the area. "If the church is still there, we'll want to use the ship as a base. Can someone fly over that mountain and report?"
Hank agreed to do that. He was already on the island and it wouldn't take much time to reach the area. The capital of the province had been in Victoria before the quake and a small government office was still in the city. He had been looking for the name Bertram Franklin in their personnel archives.
At about 11:30, Hank reported. "This mountain is in a very isolated area. The village of Port McNeill still exists but there's nothing but wilderness between it and the next town at Campbell River. I saw a few wisps of smoke near the end of a long lake, but I wouldn't get my hopes up, folks. If a church were there, it's probably been deserted for a long time. The mountain is named Bonanza Peak, if anyone is interested."