so why not ours?—but, being no fool or at least not that kind of fool, I’d let Commander Judd take credit for the plan. Officially, the Pearl Girls report only to me, as it would be unseemly for the Commander to involve himself in the details of what is essentially women’s work; though of course I must pass along to him anything I deem either necessary or unavoidable. Too much and I’d lose control, too little and I’d fall under suspicion. Their attractive brochures are composed by us, and designed and printed by the small Ardua Hall press located in one of our cellars.
My Pearl Girls initiative came at a crucial moment for him, just as the folly of his National Homelands fiasco was becoming undeniable. The genocide charges levied by international human rights organizations had become an embarrassment, the flow of refugee Homelanders from North Dakota across the Canadian border was an unstoppable flood, and Judd’s ridiculous Certificate of Whiteness scheme had collapsed in a welter of forgeries and bribery. The launch of the Pearl Girls saved his bacon, though I have since wondered whether it was politic of me to have saved it. He owes me, but that could prove a liability. Some people do not enjoy being indebted.
Right then, however, Commander Judd was all smiles. “Indeed, they are Pearls of Great Price. And with those two Mayday operatives out of commission, there will be less trouble for you, it is to be hoped—fewer Handmaids escaping.”
“Praise be.”
“Our feat of surgical demolition and cleansing won’t be announced by us publicly, of course.”
“We’ll be blamed for it anyway,” I said. “By the Canadian and international media. Naturally.”
“And we will deny it,” he said. “Naturally.”
There was a moment of silence as we regarded each other across his desk, like two chess players, possibly; or like two old comrades—for both of us had survived three waves of purges. That fact alone had created a bond of sorts.
“There is something that has been puzzling me, however,” he said. “Those two Mayday terrorists must have had a counterpart here in Gilead.”
“Really? Surely not!” I exclaimed.
“We’ve made an analysis of all known escapes: their high success rate cannot be explained without an element of leakage. Someone in Gilead—someone with access to our security personnel deployments—must have been informing the Underground Femaleroad. Which routes are watched, which are likely to be clear, that sort of thing. As you know, the war has meant that manpower, especially in Vermont and Maine, is thin on the ground. We’ve needed the bodies elsewhere.”
“Who in Gilead would be so treacherous?” I asked. “Betraying our future!”
“We’re working on it,” he said. “Meanwhile, if any ideas should occur to you…”
“Of course,” I said.
“There’s one other thing,” he said. “Aunt Adrianna. The Pearl Girl found dead in Toronto.”
“Yes. Devastating,” I said. “Is there any further information?”
“We’re expecting an update from the Consulate,” he said. “I’ll let you know.”
“Anything I can do,” I said. “You know you can count on me.”
“In so many ways, dear Aunt Lydia,” he said. “Your price is above rubies, praise be.”
I like a compliment as well as anyone. “Thank you,” I said.
* * *
—
My life might have been very different. If only I’d looked around me, taken in the wider view. If only I’d packed up early enough, as some did, and left the country—the country that I still foolishly thought was the same as the country to which I had for so many years belonged.
Such regrets are of no practical use. I made choices, and then, having made them, I had fewer choices. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one most travelled by. It was littered with corpses, as such roads are. But as you will have noticed, my own corpse is not among them.
In that vanished country of mine, things had been on a downward spiral for years. The floods, the fires, the tornadoes, the hurricanes, the droughts, the water shortages, the earthquakes. Too much of this, too little of that. The decaying infrastructure—why hadn’t someone decommissioned those atomic reactors before it was too late? The tanking economy, the joblessness, the falling birth rate.
People became frightened. Then they became angry.
The absence of viable remedies. The search for someone to blame.
Why did I think it would nonetheless be business as usual? Because we’d been hearing these things for so long, I suppose. You don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.
* * *
—
My arrest came