THINGS FALL APART THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD

"You know, Mark, I used to have money. I had it before they froze my fucking accounts," Moira said.

"Moira," Tuello said, "I cannot be long with you. You see the jam in the waiting room. There's just as many outside on the street, being kept off-site by Marines."

"You'll take the fucking time I need," Moira snapped.

Even though there simply was no time for silence, Tuello had known Strand long enough to know that she could not be steered.

Eventually, he summarized, "Okay, I get it. You have no access to your money in Boston. You're losing the house here in Toronto - esp. now that June is headed out West."

"That's not the problem, Mark. It's not Luke or June. Even from his detention, Luke has access to his Canadian money."

Tuello said, "what's the issue then?" He sighed heavily, these days knowing just how far he could show frustration with her before setting her off.

"The Canadians, they've slashed our refugee payments. When I came here, I was the flavour of the week. Now, I'm an irritant," Moira said.

"Not just you, Moira, not just you."

She pointed at him, a short accusative finger-point, "and you people, the Consulate here, you're doing nothing. No intervention with the Canadians. What are we supposed to do, Mark?"

"We don't run Canada, Ms. Strand. You know that."

Moira accused, "you know what I was told last time I met with my case worker? American subsidies to their relief programs have been slashed. That's you, Mark. That's my money now getting cut off to the Canadians. I quote from my worker, 'Anchorage may be running out of money, and you refugees are at the top of their list of cuts.' Is that true, Mark? Huh!?"

Tuello rubbed his face with an open palm and took a long sigh. "Moira," he said finding one last reserve of force to his voice, "the Consulate itself is being cut. See those people out there?"

Moira said, "you mean the people your Marines are keeping at bay?"

"No," Tuello said, "I mean the workers, the staff. From Rachel Tapping on down. When you arrived in Toronto, this office had a staff of more than 100. Canadian NGOs, they had staffs of 1000s. Now? Even Canadian churches are pulling back. Here, Anchorage has pulled funding to our Canadian diplomatic service. Soon there's going to be just 20 people on staff here, administering 100x the desperate people that there were when you arrived, people like you."

Moira shot back, "there's always money for Marines, Mark, there's just as many of them to keep us well behaved."

Tuello said, "that's a different budget."

"Oh Jesus," Moira spat. "The United Bureaucracy of America."

"Ms. Strand," Tuello said leaning towards her, "the United States, it is is dying. It wasn't even when Washington and New York fell, it wasn't even when 75% of our vaunted military defected to Gilead. It's now the international community. Gilead at this late date is now looking more permanent that it did when this started."

Moira said with surprise, "what on earth could Gilead do to compare with the USA?"

"I don't know," Tuello said, "but whatever it is they're doing, they're winning."

THE LONG RIDE HOME

Toronto had to do something about their railed, streetcar system. Their streetcars - the backbone of public transit in the city, they ran down the inside lanes of the busiest 4-lane streets in all of Canada. Torontonians themselves, they were well practised in dodging the traffic in the outer lanes, so as to board the streetcar. Motorists as well, they were well-behaved, polite Canadians in allowing streetcars to be boarded without incident.

Except in this new climate. Like foreign pedestrians in London failing to 'look right' before crossing the street, or not 'minding the gap' in the 'tube…..

….. there in Toronto, the ugly combination of rising numbers of American refugees, along with Canadians now more unsympathetic to them to the point of hostility…..

….. well, you do not need a picture drawn for you.

Moira had long since sold the car, Luke's car. He was using the proceeds for his legal defence. His involuntary manslaughter charge, as well as his pre-trial detention as a flight risk had come at a financial cost. Only rich people, apparently, could afford to be arrested, even in Canada.

"Just like the good old days back in Detroit," Moira mused. There in Toronto at one time, an initial well-staffed Consulate combined with liberal-minded Canadians had sheltered people like her from the full cost of liberty.

"Jesus, there's another one," Moira said out-loud, as just that second a prospective streetcar-rider had almost been mowed down on the inside lane. The dear-in-the-headlights look that the pedestrian gave the car as it sped away meant that the lady had to have been an American. Moira heard other pedestrians chide the lady, 'go back to Dixie, you moron!'

Two more stops, and then Rita's. Rita's was where Moira had crashed for the night. Three weeks ago.

The same night that Luke had been arrested and that June and Nichole had boarded the train on the long road to freedom.

Moira got out of the elevator on Rita's floor - now having a key, she didn't bother knocking. Moira did not know how long this arrangement would last.

Rita, sitting at her table with her Chinese-food lunch, looked up and smiled. "Hey Moira, how'd it go?"

Moira took off her coat and crashed on the couch which doubled as her bed. "America, it's going out of business. The Consulate, it may be having a foreclosure sale." Moira ran her open palm down her face, exactly as Tuello had done the hour previous. She said, "Gilead, it's winning." She gave a little chuckle, meant only for herself. "I never thought I'd say this, but I'm going to miss him. Tuello. He's a dick, he really is. He's a white-Southerner at heart, but one of the good ones."

Rita asked, "I've got some bad news and some good news. Which do you want to hear?"

"Jesus, not you!" Moira said. "Okay, what's the bad news."

"My refugee payments, they're cut-off at the end of the month. You should go online, check yours."

"Oh God," Moira said. "It's not a surprise. You know, I used to have my Gavin-money? A lot of it."

"What's 'Gavin-money'?" Rita inquired.

"Never mind," Moira said. "What's the good news?"

"You'd better sit down," Rita said, immediately feeling a little stupid because Moira was, indeed, sitting.

"I heard from June."

At that Moira sat up straighter, the two women, they just looked at each other.

"That bitch," Moira said smiling. "She always said she was going to beat me to those Hawai'ian beaches! She's the beach bitch now!"

"I wish," Rita said. "She 's stuck in Vancouver, at some sort of military base on the west side of the city. With a fence around it, they're in internment, just like the Japanese Americans had been during world war two. They're interned, but with a great view of downtown Vancouver!"

"Canadians are doing that!? You mean there are Canadian George Takei's?"

"Canadians did it during the war, too!" Rita said. "Interned their own citizens. They're just dusting off an old play-book for us Americans."

Then Rita leveled the broadside. "You'll never guess who is with June, in internment with her, someone also with a young baby….. I talked to her."

NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES

Kyle Mackenzie sat opposite Nick Blaine in the prison cell. Since it was a cell intended for Commanders, it was metallic and clean, all the tables, stools and even the cot made of immaculate metal, all attached solidly to the floor.

Kyle said to Nick, "I wondered what it would take to put a divide between you and High Commander Wharton. It turned out, you did it for me! I'd been wracking my brain for nothing!"

Rose, Nick's wife, she was now in Washington D.C. with her parents. For the duration of her pregnancy.

Nick's belt and shoelaces had been taken from him - probably more for annoyance and humiliation than for safety. Nick had been on the opposite side of these little prison tête-à-têtes many times, and had never fully appreciated how those little things - belts and shoelaces - had tipped the playing field in one's interrogator's favour.

As such, Nick said, "what do you want, Kyle?"

"Me!?" Kyle said with a hint of sarcasm. "Me, I'm a man of simple tastes. To know me is to know how straightforward I am." He paused and then looked like he was thinking of possible answers to a tough question, a real poser.

Kyle continued, "Me, I was thinking about Ernst Röhm. He'd been a loyal Nazi in the '30s, but by 1934 Hitler decided he had to go. He, like you, ended up in prison - a lot worse prison than this one, I should say." Mackenzie looked straight at Nick, "the guardians here, they wouldn't let me bring a pistol in here. Imagine that, a Commander of the Faithful of Gilead being told that by grunt guardians."

Kyle finished, "it's what they'd done as a concession to Röhm. They brought him a pistol with one round in it, left it with him in his cell. Gave him 10 minutes, or they'd do it for him." Mackenzie sighed, "alas, you have a longer shelf-life than most, Nick." Mackenzie then stood and shouted to a Guardian that he was leaving.

"So Nick," he said, "if you need anything, just give me a call. Wharton just may be done with you. If we can get Lawrence to do the same, to see reason…. well, let's just say that he's still in newly-wed mode. No sense of immediacy."

At that the cell door opened and Mackenzie left. The clang of the door as it shut was the reminder to Nick where he was. As if he needed reminding.

THE FEMALEROAD

The Quaker woman who was driving was boyish, indeed, her boyish looks were what qualified her for this job. With her hair piled up into her hat, and her baritone-ish voice, she had sailed through Guardian check-points as if she owned the place.

This trip, though, needed more strict attention to Mayday protocol. The cargo in the back was high-value. More dangerously, the origin of this 'exfiltration' as they called it, it had to be kept secret. So said the Aunt riding beside her. So secret that the Quaker herself, she did not know who had set this up. Or even what the Aunt knew. The Aunt had said, "don't ask."

She was driving on trust, as well as her faith in God. "Christ has come to teach his people of himself," is what the woman recited. Indeed, the Quaker belief in spirituality through silence, that alone had got her through many jams with snarly Guardians, Eyes, and Angels.

The Aunt beside her in the cab of the truck, that Aunt could have been a Quaker. Since loading the Aunt's cargo into the back, and since heading out on Gilead's deteriorating highway system - the Aunt had barely said a word.

No matter, the hand-off point was just up ahead, at the old-abandoned Swanton Diner, on the old Interstate-89. The Missisquoi indigenous folk, they would handle the cargo the final 10 miles to the Canadian border.

Seeing the Missisquoi trucks up ahead, the Quaker driver flashed her lights with the proper cadence. No slips on that, because those people up ahead had rifles, with snipers in the hills close by.

The Quaker, she asked the Aunt, "are you sure you don't want to go, too. There's never any problem from this point." The Quaker, half-valuing the silence, added, "you're welcome to come back with me, that's no problem. But that's Canada up ahead! Not that you'll get a friendly reception these days…"

There had been no answer.

When the Quaker-van stopped, the Aunt got out and went immediately to the back. She opened it up, and the handmaid and Martha inside squealed.

The Aunt helped them both out, the Martha immediately ran towards the Missisquoi trucks.

The handmaid ran to the Aunt, hugging her tightly, "Emily, you have to come with us!"

"No," Emily said to Janine. "I'm nothing but trouble up there. I'm an infection."

Janine said, "I'm not going to let you go back to Gilead! Why would you?"

Emily said through a strangely blank look, "tell Syl I love her."

Janine asked, "Who?" Emily said to add 'Oliver' to that love.