Corvus Read online

  CORVUS

  OTHER BOOKS BY HAROLD JOHNSON

  The Cast Stone (Thistledown Press, 2011)

  Charlie Muskrat (Thistledown Press, 2008)

  Back Track (Thistledown Press, 2005)

  Billy Tinker (Thistledown Press, 2001)

  CORVUS

  HAROLD JOHNSON

  ©Harold Johnson, 2015

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Thistledown Press Ltd.

  410 2nd Avenue North

  Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7K 2C3

  www.thistledownpress.com

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Johnson, Harold, 1957-, author

  Corvus / Harold Johnson.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77187-051-1 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-77187-092-4 (html).—

  ISBN 978-1-77187-093-1 (pdf)

  I. Title.

  PS8569.O328C67 2015 C813’.6 C2015-905169-X

  C2015-905170-3

  Cover and book design by Jackie Forrie

  Author photo by William Hamilton

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Thistledown Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, and the Government of Canada for its publishing program.

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  Said Raven

  To my wife Joan.

  To my children Michael, Harmony, Ray, Anangons, Memegwans, Sabrina, and Tasha.

  To my grandchildren, Elizabeth, Hayden, Nevaeh, Geneva, Ethan, Gus, and Patrick.

  To my mother for teaching me stories.

  To my father for teaching me to read and write, especially to write.

  To Leo for the inspiration.

  You are all part of who I am, and therefore part of what I create, hence, you are all part of this novel and I dedicate it to you all.

  The emptiness of the land swallows the raven’s call, absorbs it into the white frozen earth. The bird sends out another, a repeat of the first, a throaty plea of loneliness, out to the forest, to the boreal, to the spindly black spruce and naked tamarack. Again there is no reply. He is the only raven here, and here is nowhere. He throws himself up from the ground, beats hard at the frozen air, black wings over white snow, and seeks the grey sky. Purposefully, deliberately, he flies a straight line, a rhythm of wings and wind, due east toward the pale light of daybreak.

  This forest was once forever upon the earth, but time and warming pushed surviving humans, the world’s greatest invasive species, into it. They came seeking the shade and the cool and bulldozed the trees for their cities. They came for the water, the lakes and rivers and places to bathe and splash and laugh and forget the draught and sand and dust of further south. They came, they thought, as pioneers; at least that’s what they told themselves, and forgot, or never mentioned; that they were refugees.

  Raven banks left where the forest stops, where the earth is torn and the concrete begins. He appears perhaps undecided, whether to return or stay; wavers on outstretched wings, a hint of blue on the black now that there is more light to catch and reflect. He stays, then spirals down from the grey sky and folds his wings before his talons touch the concrete.

  1

  WHEN GOD QUIT ATTACKING POOR PEOPLE who lived in trailer parks with tornadoes and began to pay attention to mansions, those who could afford it took to the sky. At forty thousand feet there are no storms. The Kenilworth, Illinois twister boosted sales in the sky cities, but most people agree that the flattening of Gladwyne, Pennsylvania marked the beginning of the exodus.

  George Taylor needed three more good years and he would have the down payment for his own condo above the clouds. Others argued it wasn’t worth it, that the chance of being killed by a storm was probably less than the risk of living at the end of a tether. But it wasn’t just the storms. George wasn’t all that afraid of those. It was terrestrial people that bothered him. Not that they were terrestrial, earth wanderers; it was that there were so damn many of them and more came from the south every day.

  To George, the sky represented a last chance for freedom and maybe, maybe, it was a bit about prestige, about the symbolism of living above everyone else. A tenancy in Bel Arial would be a real mark of success.

  Of course there were drawbacks, such as the weight restrictions, but he had never been heavy, had always taken care of himself, exercised regularly, and watched his diet. There were those who said that it was all about image, about only beautiful people. But it was probably fat people who said it, people who could never afford the tax. After all, wasn’t the whole idea behind a floating city that it had to be light? Even if everything in the city was built of Heliofoam, foam filled with helium, and needed to be tethered down to keep it from floating to the rim of outer space, if too much weight was added it wouldn’t float anymore, would it?

  Three years wasn’t so long. His next increment was almost here, any day now, the end of January, maybe even today. He expected 12%, maybe even a bit more. He had done well the last five years. Not exceptionally well, but it was hard to be exceptional given the cases he had been assigned. He had never been disciplined, never been brought to the attention of headquarters, and that was a good thing.

  George was a plodder, deliberate and always prepared. He never took a risk that wasn’t calculated in his favour and of course that was no risk at all. Defence counsel always knew where they stood with George. If you want to know George’s position on sentencing, read the sentencing digests — George had. He negotiated plea bargains mathematically and only withdrew those charges that would result in concurrent sentences in any event.

  He checked his mail again on the way to the courthouse, hoping — and there it was, from Deb at headquarters. He opened it, not paying any attention to the image on the screen. It probably wasn’t an image o
f Deb anyway, it was more likely generated. No one used their own image for messaging.

  “Good morning, George. Congratulations on your fifth anniversary with the department of Justice, Prosecutions Division.”

  The voice was flat and George wondered if it wasn’t generated along with the image. He was tempted to command Forward, but didn’t want to miss anything. He didn’t have to. Deb came directly to the point.

  “Your assessment was mostly positive, with a score of seventy-two. Good job, George. A score of seventy-two corresponds with a 5.5% pay increment . . . ”

  George closed the message, shoved the cover down on Deb’s face.

  2

  “WHATEVER THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING?” Richard Warner stopped on the sidewalk in front of the building, and looked up at the large black bird. He’d heard ravens make many strange sounds in his lifetime in northern Saskatchewan, but never this, never this close to speech.

  Raven repeated the phrases, repeated vocalizations in a rhythm that sounded like speech, as though he urgently wanted to tell someone something. He sidestepped to the left along the ridge of the metal roof and spoke his words again, with the same urgency, the same pleading.

  “Check this out.” Richard held out one arm to get the attention of the woman about to walk past, and with the other pointed upwards. “It’s like he’s talking.”

  She pulled her hood back to hear better, stood in the frigid morning and listened, two good steps away from the man who stopped her: safety space. “Yeah, it does sound like that.”

  It was nice to have a little amazement to start a day. Richard watched her relax and pay close attention to the bird. It was alone up there. That was different. Ravens usually appear in assemblies, often around garbage containers.

  Richard was captivated by the sound, convinced the bird was trying to speak. “I wonder what he’s saying.”

  “Maybe we should try a translator.” She brought an N19 platform out of her coat pocket, a woman’s platform with a panic button, took her thumb off the red button, slid the cover back, and held it up in front of her. “Translate.” She was of course joking, making light of it.

  “Language,” the platform replied seriously with its programmed Sean Connery voice.

  “I don’t know.” She spoke with careful enunciation, then held the platform up toward the bird, smiling.

  The bird continued its speech, never stopping, a throaty rattle of words, clear in the cold air.

  “Unable to identify language,” the platform interrupted.

  “That’s too bad.” Richard was disappointed. “Would’ve been something if it worked.”

  “Oh well.” She slid the cover back, pocketed the device.

  3

  AS SHE WALKED INTO THE COURT building Lenore realized that she had been hoping that it would work, that her actions were more than a joke. “Oh well.”

  “Hey George, hold up.” She quickened her pace at the sight of George Taylor, caught up to him just before he turned down the east wing hallway. “What do you have this morning?”

  “Courtroom two.” George kept walking, shifted his briefcase to his left hand because she was walking on his right. “You?”

  “Oh, I have a quick application in front of Fraser in three.”

  “There’s such a thing as a quick application in front of Fraser?”

  “I know, eh.” She wanted to tell George about the raven, would have worked it in somehow, but the conversation took its own direction and ended when they arrived at the door to courtroom two.

  “You have yourself a good day, Lenore.” His smile was only half there as he reached for the door.

  “You too.”

  She checked her messages before she reached courtroom three, half hoped there would be a delayed translation waiting. There wasn’t. But there was a new message from Uppsalla University, Hildi Abrahamson, Registrar, with a class offering An Examination of Privacy in the Age of Loneliness. Looked interesting. She stood at the door to the courtroom and read. In the late twentieth century, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, better known as Mother Teresa, hypothesized that “the greatest sickness on earth is loneliness.” This class will examine privacy law and its concomitant social isolation. If privacy is really a concern, why do people share so much personal information in online forums?

  No time to read further, she spoke to the platform. “Interesting. I’ll call you later, Hildi. Hold a spot for me.” And then a clear command, “Reply,” before she slid the cover over, put the device back in her pocket, and with the other hand opened the door to the courtroom.

  4

  DAYBREAK BLOOMED ACROSS THE EASTERN SKY, spread petals of red and orange and peach above the horizon, prepared the earth for the coming sun. The tall buildings along the shore of Lac La Ronge reflected the sunrise, refracted it, shattered it with glass and concrete until the light that fell to the street below held none of its former magic.

  This city had been a village, with a church and a residential school and the James Roberts Indian Band. Then it became the Town of La Ronge and a regional headquarters and resource extraction point, and there it might have stayed if not for the southern exodus, the surge in search of the Promised Land.

  James Lovelock had been right when he warned at the turn of the century: “There is nothing you can do about global warming. Move north and when you get there build nuclear power plants because the people will want electricity.” The man who conceived the Gaia hypothesis was old when he made that statement, too old to act on his own advice, and like when he’d told the world that the biosphere was a single complex entity, Gaia — no one listened. Populations did not begin to shift until the south became too uncomfortable, until the Great Plains began to become the great desert.

  There were still people who lived in places like San Diego but they didn’t come out in the summer, stayed huddled in air-conditioned spaces and waited for a cool breeze off the Pacific. But places like Phoenix and Houston were completely empty. The determined ones tried to stay, tried to keep their cities alive, but nothing lives without water and when the reservoirs dried and the aquifers drained, the people left. Those with portable wealth left first, those with land tried to stay, but when heatstroke became the leading cause of death, they too followed the exodus north until only the very poor remained, and the sand and dust from the desert came on the hot wind and buried them. By the time Arizona got its solar power projects up and running, it was too late. Even with power for their air conditioning, people couldn’t live without water.

  La Ronge became a city, small at first, manageable, mostly a tourist centre, a place where people came to get out of the heat, and resorts ringed the lake. There had been political and legal battles, some hard fought, mostly over energy and resources that the corporations won easily — won the land on the shore, won hotels and spas, won fishing concessions and water rights.

  More people came, people who couldn’t afford to indulge in the resorts, people who came to stay, brought their families with them, wanted homes and schools and hospitals, and with their mass of numbers crowded out the resorts and reclaimed the buildings as condominiums.

  And more people came and filled the spaces between the buildings, and spread into the forest. The trees they didn’t take to build their homes fell in the storm winds. Sometimes a tree didn’t fall, come crashing to the ground, sometimes the winds plucked it up — twisted and spun it across the sky.

  5

  “HEY BOB, GOT A MINUTE?”

  “Anytime.” Robert Lane turned away from the screen, toward the door. “What’s up, George?”

  George found a chair on the other side of Robert’s cluttered desk. “I wanted your opinion on my assessment.”

  “What’d you get?” Robert smiled, anticipating good news.

  “Five point five.”

  “Oh.” Robert’s smile faded. “That’s not so bad. There’s some in this office who got less.”

  “I was expecting more.”

  “Honestly, I think you
should have got more. I gave you a good assessment.” Robert leaned back into his chair. “What I like about you, George, is you never complain. No matter what files I assign to you, you just smile and get it done. That, and I can count on you. I don’t have to follow up.”

  “I’ve got good results. My conviction rate is over 70%.”

  “What’s the penalty rate?”

  “I’m not sure, it should be good. I don’t go easy on them. When someone deserves it, I push for longer sentences. Not extreme, like some of the guys here, but definitely fair.”

  “That’s what we have to keep in mind. We have to be fair. That’s what this job is about. But you know headquarters, they’re all about statistics. Let me just check here.” Robert turned back to the screen, pointed a finger at it, flicked, made a motion with thumb and forefinger to open a new page, flicked, flicked again. He stopped to read. “Well that’s not so bad. Pretty good in places. Your conviction rate is definitely up there. Your penalty rate is right on average. It’s not low by any means.” He turned back to George, gave a little shrug. “I agree, you should have got the full increment.”

  “Then what was it? Did I piss someone off?”

  Robert paused, thought about it. “Not likely. You’re not the kind of guy to piss people off.” He leaned over and shut off his computer, flipped the lens cover on the camera. George understood this to mean that this was going to be a private conversation. You never knew who might be watching through a camera. He watched Robert open a bottom drawer to the desk and bring out a small bottle of single malt and two glasses.

  Soon George’s belly was warm from the whisky, and the tension was gone. They were just two friends in an office and Robert wasn’t the regional manager anymore, at least not for the next few minutes until the glasses were empty.

  “You might consider going to church more,” Robert offered.

  “Church?” George wasn’t sure what this was about.

  “Yeah, all those guys from headquarters are there; just show up, let them see you, stand around afterwards and shake hands, that sort of thing. It really goes a long ways.”