Granny whipped the ball towards the other end of the court where it bounced high and kept on going until it bounced gently a few times and stopped. "Invisible electronic walls," she said. "No critters can get in. No loose basketballs can get out. But any Wilizy with a sling can walk through the wall. When no sling is detected inside the gym, the computer shuts the place down completely and turns on the weather protection. All we ask you to do is come on the floor with soft-soled shoes. We have two large crates of basketball/running shoes in the community hall. Find a pair that fits you properly. When it wears out, take a new pair. We will always have a supply of soft-soled shoes handy."
"That's the good news," Granny said. "Now the bad."
# # # # # # # #
Doc came onto the floor in his moccasins and Granny took a seat. "Granny and I have noticed that the general fitness of the Wilizy has been deteriorating badly. Look at the habits we've developed in the last year. We sling everywhere except perhaps for crossing the meadow. When we hunt, we do so by sling and laser. Few of us actually hunt now. Most of us don't even pull a bowstring. We sit on our duffs in front of a computer almost all day long. In the evening, we usually rest comfortably on our duffs with a bot playing in our minds."
"Two years ago, this family went to bed exhausted. The children were exhausted from all the chores they had to do plus whatever play they could fit in. The adults stayed up late because they had chores that had to be done before the morning. They woke up refreshed, full of energy, and ready to go. We were physically fit."
"Are any of you ever exhausted now? I know some of you were this week because I saw you becoming tired after only a few hours of work in the sun. Now, with our sad fitness, if we ever had to fight an enemy without our slings, we'd lose."
"So Granny and I, as the Wilizy medical staff, are imposing some rules. Starting this week, everybody in the home compound will create a personal fitness plan. That includes Granny and me. We're just as unfit as you. That fitness plan might involve learning to play basketball, either individually or in small teams. If that's what you choose, Granny will teach you. That's how she plans to become fit again. By playing basketball here in this gym either by herself or with you."
"Perhaps you'd like to learn another sport? This gym can be modified so that you probably can do that. Want to run in the woods? Fine. Set a goal and follow a schedule. Personally, I will be going on overnight fishing trips. No sling allowed. No food from the compound allowed. Join me if you wish. Or find something you like doing and offer to do it with another family member. Hank, for example, will teach you to box. Momaka will teach you judo. Your goal is to take a break from Wilizy work for at least an hour during the day. Get away from the computer. Eat a proper lunch."
"Each Wilizy member at the home compound has to submit a fitness plan to me before the end of the week. Your fitness goals will be posted in the community hall along with whether or not you met those goals that week. That includes you, Dreamer. I want to see you back at work this week."
"On the matter of work, I have raised concerns with Wizard that this family is being exposed to undue physical and mental stress because we are trying to build a new provincial economy all by ourselves. Wizard will unveil new jobs for all of us tomorrow. For the rest of today, let's enjoy being together as a family. Don't forget to pick out some sports shoes. Stu and Momaka can use some help preparing today's meals. The Raging Gardeners will have a meeting in the community hall tonight after the toddlers are asleep. The Wilizy/America is anchored right above us for sleeping purposes. Men, we have dish duty after lunch and supper. Afterwards there'll be a meeting of the Rampaging Goalies here in this gym. Only males are allowed. You'll find out what a real sport is like."
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Chapter 5
All of the Raging Gardeners were sitting in a giant circle of chairs in the community hall. I was hiding behind the sofa and peeking out every now and then. At one point, we heard a big roar coming from the gym where the men were playing something. Granny was running our meeting. She had started by summarizing what had happened with some guy named Yanker when he tried to kidnap a girl named Dee-Dee. Then she moved on.
"We've proven that removing a small piece of a victim's life will stop the victims from having any exposure to the kidnapping. Dee-Dee came out of the kidnapping attempt with some scrapes, but that was all. Grabbing the pervert before he took off worked like a charm and Bob's presence at the snatch and then later in the trial loosened his tongue. When we have all the information we want on this Safe Haven group, we won't have to do that kind of interrogation. Bob will capture the pervert and bring him to a clearing. We'll show visual evidence of his crimes in a formal trial and he'll receive justice. Meanwhile another Gardener will protect and care for the victim and dispose of his copter. We gave Yanker's copter to the Wilizy Foundation for the Treatment of Abused Women and Children. Are there any questions on this operation?"
Mac asked if letting Bob loose for this kind of operation was helping Momaka or hurting her. Momaka answered that previously, Bob would escape when Momaka's anger built up and she couldn't keep him penned up. By releasing him when she was in full control, she could let go of that anger and put him back in his cage more easily. "It helps me," she said quite firmly to the group.
Wanda asked what should happen with the pervert's possessions after the trial. "Should we look for other assets to donate to the Foundation besides the pervert's copter? Yanker kidnapped for profit. He was bound to have money stashed away somewhere."
They reached a group decision quickly. Their job was to take perverts off the streets. Not to find their money. Taking Yanker's copter was to prevent anybody finding out how and when he disappeared, investigating, and perhaps seeing an aboriginal woman helping a young girl. They were taking the copter to keep their operations a secret. The Gardeners wouldn't be trying to make money from their operations. But if it fell into their hands, they'd take it just to ensure that no awkward questions could arise.
Momaka asked for feedback on the ritualized cleansing ceremony. Mac, Wanda, and Dreamer all spoke positively about it. They generally agreed that inviting a male to the ceremony hadn't worked, but they didn't say anything more and I didn't know what they were talking about. I asked Winnie about it the next day; she said that she couldn't say anything about it.
# # # # # # # #
Later in the meeting, Granny began a discussion about the information that Yanker had revealed. "We now know about two Safe Haven kidnappers operating out of B.C. Yanker told us where they were working and how they snatched their victims. We should be able to get visual evidence of their crimes reasonably easily. Are there any volunteers for some time-travel excursions?"
Wanda and Momaka raised their hands immediately. Yolanda put her hand partly up. "I need to be partnered with somebody first, I think."
"Setting up partners is a good idea," Granny said. "Wanda and Momaka, do you want to look into the guy operating out of the Fraser Valley? Yolanda and I will research the pervert in the Okanagan."
"What happens after we put those two away?" Melissa asked. "More kidnappers are bound to be operating in Washington State. Perhaps even neighbouring states. Does Bob just snatch them and bring them up here for a trial?"
"That's the main reason why we're having this meeting," Granny said. "We can't put Washington State perverts on trial in B.C. because they wouldn't have committed any of their crimes in B.C. I can't judge them in the U.S. because I have no legal jurisdiction there. We need some ideas."
If any useful ideas came out of the discussion that followed, I didn't hear them. I don't think anybody else did either. They all looked sad when Granny said that they should move on to other business. Mac asked a question that made them even sadder. "Say that we find a way to shut down Safe Haven's snatchers. That still leaves the people running Safe Haven untouched. They'll just find more kidnappers. At some point, we have to destroy their head office. When are we going to do
that?"
"We chose this approach because shutting down these individual kidnappers will give us more information on the organization itself," Granny said. "We now know that their kidnappers are controlled by a personnel officer who picks up the abducted girls. Yanker told us how he'd contact him when he had a girl to deliver and where they'd meet. I've TiTr'd this man and I've seen where he delivered some of the girls. He put them into some innocent looking buildings that remind me of our home compound. Each appeared to be just a small building above the ground, but I believe there's a bigger building underneath. They're probably bunkers with secret entrances and exits. We need more information on these bunkers. Where they are. What security they have."
"So once we know where all these bunkers are, we come in force and shut down each bunker one at a time. We have the weaponry. We can send in drones first to protect the innocent."
"Militarily, that might work," Granny said. "But Mac, we have no legal jurisdiction to do that. We would be attacking Washington citizens. Washington State could consider our attacks as an act of war."
As I said, the meeting ended with everybody unhappy.
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Chapter 6
Washington State, Saturday evening. While the Raging Gardeners were having their meeting, two men and one woman were watching a blonde, blue-eyed little girl placing plates and cutlery on a dinner table. She was perhaps six years old. She had not advanced in her training far enough for her temporary parents to trust her to be in the kitchen by herself. Too many sharp knives were stored there. The temporary daddy didn't believe that she was the type to hurt herself, but then another temporary daddy had been wrong one time before.
In response to that earlier incident, Safe Haven had warned that, in future, both temporary parents would face consequences if a little blonde girl hurt herself deliberately while under their care. Scraping a knee from a fall during a supervised walk would be considered an accident; running the edge of a sharp knife down a flawless white cheek while the parents ate dinner would not. That's why the Washington State woman had her index finger poised over a large button on an electronic wand the whole time the little girl was setting the table. Exercising caution was better than being assigned to dog-collared labour at one of Safe Haven's ranches, especially when Safe Haven's personnel officer was sitting right at the dinner table.
Safe Haven had implemented severe consequences for temporary parents who failed in their duty for a reason. Raising pristine, blonde, blue-eyed young girls was expensive. First, Safe Haven had to pay their staff of contracted kidnappers to find and abduct them. Since this was considered a high-risk activity, their compensation had to be at the top of the contract worker pay scale. They then had to hide the little girls for years while they received their training. Washington State had some wonderful high-security facilities that Safe Haven had been able to acquire at low cost. Their training facilities elsewhere had been much more expensive to develop.
Effective temporary parents were hard to find. They needed the patience and caring attitude of good parents; they also had to teach their temporary daughter the skills and knowledge that she would need in her new destination. But parenting and teaching skills were difficult to find within the criminal class of workers that were available to them. Psychological testing was fairly effective in eliminating the sexual perverts from consideration, but that testing often failed to identify other deeply flawed individuals. That had been why Safe Haven had been reluctant to take on this project when the opportunity had arisen years ago. In the end, they had agreed because the profit margins were so compelling. The reader might consider Safe Haven's managers to be deeply flawed individuals themselves. Assuming that you object to the business of buying and selling little girls for profit, that is. As to that little white girl who had run the knife down her cheek? Safe Haven's managers had sold her in a closed auction to a Safe Haven rancher. They had even managed to earn a handsome profit.
# # # # # # # #
Back we go now to that dinner table and the three adults sitting around it. The little girl had just finished delivering her Welcome to our home speech to Safe Haven's personnel officer. He praised her for how well she had pronounced some difficult words. He knew that young children could be quite adept at learning how to speak a foreign language, so he wasn't overly surprised at her progress. He was pleased because her proficiency meant that he wouldn't have to supervise her education as closely as he had to for some other girls. Safe Haven had offered him this position because he himself was fluent in that second language. He could predict which little girls would struggle with pronunciation and would need more attention as a result. This little girl wouldn't be a problem.
When dinner was over, the little girl cleared the table without being reminded and then left the room. Renfrew, her temporary mommy, watched as the girl descended to the basement, walked down the hall to her bedroom, entered, and closed the door. Renfrew pushed a button on the wand and the door locked itself tight.
"She's locked in," she said when she returned to the table. "She'll play with some colouring books for now."
"Is she still weeping and whining?" The personnel officer was here not only to check on the little blonde girl's language fluency but also to assess her behaviour. She was expected to obey Renfrew and Jenkins without hesitation and to present the image of a contented little girl who loved her parents. If she didn't, the personnel officer would unlock the safety seals on the electronic wand and increase the intensity of the shocks that the dog collar around her neck could deliver.
"No. Not in front of us. She still cries herself to sleep. We're ignoring it for now. It's only been three months." Renfrew was in charge of this part of her education. Jenkins, the temporary dad, was responsible for teaching her the new language.
"The girl is doing fine," the personnel officer announced his findings. "However, we may have a problem."
Renfrew and Jenkins looked up at that.
"One of my recruiters has disappeared. I know where he was supposed to be working, but there's been no news of any kind coming out of that community. I have heard no news of a thwarted kidnap attempt, of girls complaining about strangers, or of male bodies floating to the surface of a lake."
"In some of these rural areas, a kidnapper caught in the act by a parent can disappear into the woods and never come out again." Jenkins reacted. "Some people would do that instead of reporting the incident to the police or to the military."
"I'm aware of that. My man had a long history of being very careful. I have a bad feeling about this. I think he's dead; I don't know if he was questioned first."
"Do we start packing?"
"No. Not yet. He often took long copter trips; perhaps he had an accident in a remote area. However, you should activate all outside surveillance equipment. Be alert for anybody trying to follow you home from the village."
"And if someone finds us here and tries to enter?"
"Arm the explosives. Use the escape tunnel. After you're clear of the area, kill the girl and bury her body deep in the woods. You know the escape drill."
"I'd hate to lose all of our progress." Unlike Jenkins who would slit the little girl's throat without a second thought, Renfrew would have some reservations.
"If anybody sees that girl with the two of you, they'll know that you aren't her parents. There are lots of blonde, blue-eyed girls in the world; we can kidnap more. People like you are hard to find. Save yourself first."
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Chapter 7
At breakfast Sunday, Reese told me that the men had learned how to play a game called Floor Hockey that was played with a flat rubber disc that had a big hole in its middle. Each player had a stick with a rubber plug on the end. When a player stuck his stick into the center of the hole, he could shoot the rubber disc or pass it to a teammate who could shoot it. They practiced shooting and passing the hollow circle that Doc called a floor hockey puck. William and Lucas
learned to shoot it so hard that it actually flew through the air.
Doc created two cages and they practiced shooting the puck into the cages. To make it harder, Stu and Wizard put some rolled up sweaters under their clothes as padding, stood in a cage, and tried to stop the puck. Doc called them goalies but Reese didn't know where the name came from.
At the end of the practice, they formed two teams and had a contest to see which team could put the most pucks past the goalie. Often the shooter flubbed the shot. But it became exciting when the teams were tied and the next person to score would make his team the winner. Lucas won one game for his team and Theo did the same for his team.
Doc didn't play. He said it wouldn't be fair. But the boys teased him about that. So Doc widened one of the cages and had both Stu and Wizard be goalies at the same time. He ran toward the cage moving the puck from one side of his body to the other side. As he neared the cage, he pretended that he was going to shoot into the lower right corner of the net. Wizard dove on the floor to stop it, and Doc lifted the puck over his body and into the top part of the net. He scored two more times with those kinds of fakes. On his last goal, he faked that he was going to shoot to his left, but turned sideways and shot the puck from behind his back towards the right side. Stu hadn't been expecting that at all and the puck went in. That was the big cheer that we heard in the community hall. Everybody crowded around Doc, slapping him on his back, or punching him in his chest and tummy. Doc looked very happy. Reese didn't believe the tummy punches were real.
# # # # # # # #
After breakfast, it was Wizard's turn to have a meeting. We sat in a big circle in the community hall. I counted twenty people older than I was. The kiddies were on blankets behind the chairs and some adult was always there keeping them entertained. Yolanda spent the most time babysitting. She even flopped on the blanket and made herself into a mountain that the babies could crawl over.
Wizard spoke for a long time. I taped it, so what you're going to read now is exactly what he said.