"Granny scares me."
"She's not scary when you get to know her. Ask her some questions about having sex without becoming pregnant. She'll explain it calmly to you."
# # # # # # # #
Winnie was having a similar experience about another grandmother that Monday.
"Dad, this is scary."
"I agree."
"Why did Rick release Ingrid? She's an evil woman."
"He claimed that she had changed. He also said that he had released her into the care of a democracy. She's helping them to eliminate some sort of genetic disease that is sweeping through the country. She's not working for some evil tyrant like Zzyk."
"But we know differently. Scandinavia is a scary place."
"It is. We've been expecting them to come after us, but so far, nothing."
"We need to find out what Ingrid is doing. We need to go to Scandinavia."
"Agreed. Who do you want to take with you?"
"You're going to let me do this?"
"Sure. You discovered the threat."
"I'll ask TG. He'll want to know what his mother is up to."
"Good choice. Can you leave the Philippines right now?"
"Kashmira is getting better. Granny said that she's gaining weight. It looks like Doc's remedies are working and she may not need new organs. They don't need me to finish the operation against her father. Do you think I should leave for Scandinavia today?"
"Yes, I do. We need to know more about their capabilities. Set up some surveillance drones over their military bases."
"Thanks, Dad. I'll let you tell Mom what I'm doing."
"Thanks a bunch."
# # # # # # # #
The hot chocolate was hot; the marshmallow froth was frothy; the soft chair awaiting her was soft; the footrest was in place – resting on its feet. Granny sank back against the seat cushion, cradled the hot mug in both hands, felt the warmth, and smelled the delicious aroma. As she was about to take the first sip, Kashmira walked into the galley.
"There's hot chocolate on the stove. You're not due to eat anything yet, are you?"
"No, but I'll have some hot chocolate with you."
Granny took the first tentative sip while Kashmira was filling her mug. Perfect temperature.
Kashmira sat on the sofa opposite Granny's chair. She too took a tentative sip. "I like the first sip when there's still froth."
"The second sip is good too. You can fill your mouth with it because you know it's the perfect temperature. I like to swirl it around in my mouth so that all the chocolate flavor reaches all my taste buds." Granny inhaled a big gulp.
"Granny," Kashmira started to ask. "If I wanted to have sex with Mathias but didn't want to get pregnant, how would I do that?"
Some of Granny's taste buds were cheated of their full quota of tasty hot chocolate.
"Are you OK?"
Granny nodded between choking fits.
"I'll find a damp cloth," Kashmira said.
I have to stop drinking hot chocolate when grandchildren are in the house.
# # # # # # # #
Tuesday afternoon. Doc and Kashmira were back in school.
"Did you figure out why some people have more children than others?"
"Yes. The people in two of the churches are wealthy enough to buy the condoms that smugglers bring into the city. The people in my church can't afford the condoms."
"OK. Might there be other reasons why they aren't using condoms besides being too poor to buy them?"
"They may not know about them? I didn't know about condoms."
"That's possible too. Might there be another reason?"
"Yes. Paterfamilias says that preventing a child from being born is a sin. He says that we do not have the right to determine who is born, just like we do not have the right to say when a person dies. People in our church would not be allowed to use condoms even if they knew about them and could buy them."
"How do you feel about that?"
"The church knows best."
"And in the other churches, parents can use condoms?"
"Yes, I guess. But they aren't allowed into our Heaven because of that. They have sinned. Paterfamilias won't pray for them to be accepted."
"How do the women in your church feel about having so many children?"
"I don't know. I guess they like it."
...
"Doc, does having a lot of children make you poor?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Because all of the people in my church have a lot of children. All of the people in my church are also poor."
"What do you think?"
"Both Constanza and Mariangela are stealing food so that they can feed their children. Mariangela's boys are pickpocketing so that they can feed their family. If they didn't have so many children, they'd have enough money to feed themselves."
"You might be right. There's another side to the argument. Some people believe that having a lot of children is good for a family. What about that?"
"Pablo's family. They are able to expand their business because all their children can work for them."
"What do you think, Kashmira? Should the people in your church have less children or not?"
"I think I'm tired of you asking me what I think."
...
"Too many people live in Maasin City. They can't find enough work. We should have fewer babies. Is that the right answer, Doc?"
"That might be an answer. Is there another way for Maasin City citizens to find more work?"
"I don't know."
"What about all the wealthy people having all the money and the poor having none. Doesn't that create poverty too?"
"I don't see how. What else do wealthy people do? They hoard all the money for themselves. That is their way."
"Perhaps they could use their money to create jobs instead of keeping all the money for themselves."
"How?"
"If the ferry still ran between Maasin City and Cebu, visitors could come into the city. The people in the market would have more people to sell to."
"Huh."
"People in Maasin City might make things that could be shipped out of Maasin City on that ferry and then sold in the big cities. They wouldn't have to rely on the few jobs that the wealthy people offer."
"Huh."
...
"Doc, Paterfamilias is a very bad man, right?"
"Yes, he is."
"Does that mean that his rule that we cannot use condoms to stop children from being born is bad too?"
"Bad men can be found in all religions. Just because a bad man is in your church doesn't mean that what your religion stands for is bad. Some religions discourage birth control. Some religions allow it."
"Which is right?"
"That's for the people in that religion to determine. What do you think your religion should do?"
"That's not for me to decide. Paterfamilias decides."
"Really? What do you think about that?"
"STOP DOING THAT! Just tell me what's right and what's wrong."
"You know why I won't do that, Kashmira."
"Because I have to learn to think for myself. I hate thinking for myself. These questions are too hard!"
# # # # # # # #
Wednesday evening, Kashmira snuck into her church invisibly and surprised Constanza and Mariangela as they divided the food. As always, Doc was nearby checking for threats. He was surprised how long Kashmira and the two women stayed in the church. Doc and Kashmira were now back at the ship. She still didn't know that he had been protecting her whenever she conducted her research.
Doc was ignorant of something that Kashmira had done too. He didn't know that before she sat down to talk with Constanza and Mariangela, Kashmira had snuck into the music room to look at her music table but she couldn't find it. She searched the music room thoroughly, even under the cushions of the love seat, although the music table could hardly have been hidden there.
Kashmira was now back in t
he ship and telling Doc about her conversation with Constanza and Mariangela.
"Were they trying to starve you to death?" Doc asked.
"No. They were only trying to feed their family. They didn't know that my insides would be hurt."
"Do you believe them?"
"Yes, they were very surprised when I told them that they made me so tired that I could hardly do anything."
"Did they hate you?"
"Yes, but not now. I told them that it wasn't my fault and they see that now."
"What wasn't your fault?"
"Them being raped."
"You better explain."
"After I was born, and after my mother was sent back to her village, my father decided that he wouldn't have any more wives. So he had sex with his servants instead of finding more wives. He'd take them up to their bedrooms. They couldn't refuse. He'd kick them out of the house if they did and they needed the money. But they told him that it was against their religion. That didn't stop him."
"Why didn't they hate him? Why hate you?"
"They did hate him. And they hated my mother for having a baby and getting kicked out of the house. And they hated me for being that baby. Every time they saw me, they'd worry about what would happen if they became pregnant with his child. He'd kick them out of the house too. The family would starve."
"You were at the church a long time."
"Yes. I asked them whether they liked having a lot of babies. They said that they didn't. I asked them if they knew about condoms. They didn't. But it wouldn't make any difference because our church will not allow women to prevent babies from being born. They asked me if I knew a secret way to stop a baby from being born."
"They were willing to disobey the church?"
"Yes. They don't like Paterfamilias but they didn't say why."
"What do the other women in the church think? The same?"
"I don't know."
"Constanza and Mariangela might be the only women in the church who think that way."
"I should talk to more?"
"If you want an accurate picture of what women in your church think."
"I'll ask Constanza and Mariangela tomorrow night if they could bring some women to the church to meet with me."
"You're meeting them again tomorrow?"
"Yes. They want to see what these condoms are."
"Do you have one?"
"Yes, Granny gave me some. I don't know why she did that."
# # # # # # # #
Thursday afternoon: Doc and Kashmira were back in school.
"You mentioned that Constanza and Mariangela didn't know anything about condoms. Do you think that would be the case with other women in your church?"
"I don't know. Should I ask the women in my meeting?"
"It wouldn't hurt. We want to know what causes the problem of too many children. Is it because they can't afford condoms, or because they don't know that condoms exist. Do you see that there would be different solutions?"
...
"I don't know what to do if they can't afford condoms. If they don't know that condoms exist, somebody could tell them."
"That's true. If they couldn't afford them, perhaps condoms could be given out for free?"
"The church would never allow that. Even if the women knew about condoms, it wouldn't do any good. A woman has to have sex if her husband wants it. Even the church tells us that we must obey our husbands. If the church says that we can't use condoms, we can't use condoms."
"Why don't you ask the women what they think about that?”
"I don't see how that will help."
"Ask anyway. A researcher searches for information. She doesn't decide ahead of time what she's going to find."
"Am I a researcher?"
"Yup."
# # # # # # # #
Friday morning, Granny brought Kashmira's two suitcases of clothes back to the ship. Kashmira would need them when she showed herself going into the three churches before their services this weekend. That wasn't Doc's idea; it was Melissa's.
Back to the Table of Contents
Chapter 41
An important pre-trial meeting was being held on the top floor of Chicago's Justice Building. Attending this meeting was the judge who would hear the trial, the attorney who would prosecute the case, and the Chicago police detective who had captured the criminal and was accumulating the evidence that would convict her.
Also attending the meeting were the two agents of Save the USA who had ensured that the criminal had offered a sampling of her blood without incident. Although some laws prohibit compulsory blood tests without a court order, this particular blood test would go in the books as voluntarily offered.
[Narrator: From here on, I'll refer to "Save the USA" as "STUSA."]
STUSA was an organization with characteristics that were similar to the Homeland Security Agency that had existed before The Troubles. It was considerably smaller now because The Troubles had destroyed the country. With no homeland, there was no need to have any homeland security. Nonetheless, STUSA operated in all of the former American major cities that still existed whether those cities wanted them to or not. The organization kept a close watch on foreigners since experience had taught them that every foreigner was either a terrorist intent on destroying more of the USA or every foreigner was a sleeper terrorist who could be activated without warning and would then destroy more of the USA. The early 21st century laws that gave Homeland Security overwhelming powers to investigate terrorist acts and to compel local officials to cooperate still existed but the organizational name found in those sweeping laws read Save the USA instead. In the case of the upcoming trial, every person in the current meeting was considered STUSA personnel and was bound by secrecy restrictions. Refusal to cooperate fully in the trial could lead to charges of treason.
The judge had called the meeting to check on their readiness to proceed. His name was Judge Ambrose and his name would have figured prominently in the records of all of the court cases that had been initiated by the two STUSA agents. Had any records been kept, that is. Judge Ambrose liked presiding over these cases because the verdict was never in doubt. Thus he didn't have to spend time looking up precedents or performing any of the other judge-like duties that were the bane of judges who didn't know ahead of time how the court case would turn out. Judge Ambrose was gradually inching his way up the ladder to a position on Chicago's supreme court. The STUSA agents had promised that he would receive such a promotion provided that he made the correct findings on the cases they brought to him. Demotion was also mentioned as a possible alternative result.
The conversation that follows was between the judge and the detective who was in charge of investigating the crime that would be arriving soon in Judge Ambrose's courtroom. STUSA used Detective Bertoia to investigate most of their cases. A satisfactory result in these cases meant that disturbing information about certain of her activities would not see the light of day. As with the judge, a second option was also present.
"Did that blood test help?" Judge Ambrose asked Detective Bertoia.
"Yes, we have confirmed she's a foreigner."
"From where?"
"The Scandinavia region as well as from an Islamic area of eastern Europe."
"Any help from the body in Lake Michigan?"
"Very little. We couldn't find any DNA, of course. All that remained was the skeleton. We know that a man was killed and as part of that death, a bone in his throat had been broken."
"The search of her apartment?"
"That was useful. She had a dangerous switchblade knife. It would have been very deadly. Also we will be able to use her selection of university course materials to our advantage."
"She's a university student?"
"No. She was planning to enroll in the fall but had not registered yet, nor had she paid any fees. She was practicing with two university sports teams."
"Does that help our case?"
"Probably, but we won'
t be able to ask for the death penalty that STUSA wants. We have three possible charges that carry serious consequences. I'm developing cases for all three right now. All we have to do is prove one of them and STUSA can take her away."
"Where is she now?"
"In a cell with a sadist who is about twice her weight."
"How is she coping?"
"The sadist is recovering slowly. Their fight lasted about fifteen seconds and ten of those seconds consisted of the sadist screaming in pain."
"This Bean person is dangerous then. And skilled enough to attack a man and kill him with her bare hands?"
"Definitely. She could be ex-military."
"Are we likely to learn anything more from confining her with the general population? Any chance of our snitch in the next cell hearing anything? Striking up a conversation?"
"No. She hasn't said a word yet, not even when she was attacking her cell mate."
One of the STUSA agents sitting quietly at the end of the table coughed.
"Agent Dingle. Do you have a suggestion?"
"Put her in solitary," Agent Dingle said.
"Give us a chance to bug the place first," Agent Dangle added.
You're probably wondering about the Dingle/Dangle names. STUSA agents were allowed to make up their own fake names. Actually, they were allowed to do anything they wanted to.
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Chapter 42
Monday, October 14. Once again, the paterfamilias had arrived with another carton of money and had left without getting caught in a lie. He was happy about that. The mood in the garage after he left was decidedly bleak.
"One more week, Patrón and she'll have her music box. Perhaps two weeks if we can disrupt her business."
"She'll have won."
Ramón wisely said nothing.
"She is attending three churches now," El Patrón continued.
"That is what I have heard. I did not see her personally. But nobody wears the same kind of skirts and she was tiny as always. People saw her face. They agreed it was her."
"Why was she in three churches?"
"I do not know, Patrón."
"She attended service on three different days?"
"Yes, Patrón."
"Nobody saw her come out of the churches?"
"Not that I have heard."
...
"She's using the churches to hide in," El Patrón concluded. "She comes out during the day to whore in the bedroom that our acquaintances have given her, but leaves at night to hide in a church."