Pearl Girls Brochures
The Pearl Girls Brochures are the printed missionary materials of Gilead, designed and printed by the small press located in the cellars of Ardua Hall. They are the official publications of the Pearl Girls, the female missionary order created by Aunt Lydia and credited to Commander Judd. The brochures are central to Gilead's propaganda efforts abroad, particularly in Canada, where the Pearl Girls distribute them to recruit converts and spread the regime's ideology.
Appearance and Content
The brochures are visually appealing, featuring pictures of tidy streets, happy children, and sunrises, with titles such as "Fallen? God Can Still Forgive You!" and "Homeless? There Is a Home for You in Gilead." Every brochure includes a picture of Baby Nicole, the infant smuggled out of Gilead by her Handmaid mother, who has become a saint-like icon for the regime. The brochures bear slogans like "Give Back Baby Nicole!" and "Baby Nicole Belongs in Gilead!" They are printed in full color and designed to lure vulnerable women and girls, especially those who are homeless or in crisis, into converting and moving to Gilead.
Distribution and Use in Canada
Pearl Girls always travel in pairs and work the downtown areas of Canadian cities, going into shops and talking to street people. They are persistent and often considered pests by locals. Melanie, the owner of The Clothes Hound, accepts the brochures from them to avoid confrontation, promising to keep a pile at the point of sale. Sometimes she returns old brochures to the Pearl Girls, who collect leftover ones for use in other countries. The Pearl Girls target young girls like Daisy (Nicole), attempting to con them into going to Gilead by appealing to their idealism. Melanie warns Daisy against talking to them, knowing their methods.
Role in the Mayday Intelligence Operation
The brochures are the linchpin of a covert intelligence operation between Mayday and an unknown source inside Gilead. The source photographs classified documents using a microdot camera, reducing them to microscopic size, and prints them on minute plastic dots. These dots are then glued onto the Baby Nicole brochures. The Pearl Girls, following orders, visit The Clothes Hound regularly because Melanie is on their list of possible converts. Melanie accepts the brochures, and Neil, her husband, reads the microdots with a viewer fitted inside a fountain pen. He then glues return messages from Mayday onto the same brochures, which Melanie returns to the Pearl Girls. The Pearl Girls are instructed to take any extra brochures back to Gilead for use in other countries, thus completing the courier circuit. This system is considered foolproof for a time because the technology is so old that Gilead does not think to look for it.
Discovery and Aftermath
The operation is compromised when the Eyes raid The Clothes Hound, recovering the microdot camera during a burglary. Later, Commander Judd orders a raid on the Ardua Hall print shop, confiscating all the Pearl Girls brochures. An inspection of brochures recently returned from Canada yields several dots containing maps and other items appended by Mayday. The source inside Gilead, realizing the pathway is obsolete, ceases to use the brochures for classified information. The raid on the print shop and the arrest of Aunt Wendy, the printer, signal the end of this particular intelligence channel, forcing the source to devise a new plan involving the physical transport of a microdot by Nicole herself.
