Corvus Read online

  “Lucky you.” Lenore offered him one of her nicer smiles, something to carry him through his morning. But she knew he didn’t need her smile. He had his own joy to keep him buoyant.

  She turned to look once as he walked away, his back straight, an easy stride. She noted that his fingers on the hand that didn’t hold the briefcase were spread and stretched back. George was imagining that he was curling up the wing tips of his ORV. He was flying.

  15

  COURTROOM SEVENTEEN WAS ALMOST FULL. LENORE tilted up the screen at the prosecutor’s desk and skimmed through the docket list. None of the names meant anything to her. The charges were mostly all the same: Unlawful Participation in a Gathering.

  Those who had hired a lawyer were dealt with first. Most wanted an adjournment. She couldn’t help but think that the reason given, that the lawyer needed more time to review the evidence, was a ploy to bill for a second court appearance. But, to be fair, maybe counsel was simply being thorough.

  Those who weren’t represented were dealt with quicker. Most pled guilty and took a fine, some angrily, some with defiant smiles. Others, like this Richard Warner, tried to argue and were told by Judge Ferris to talk to the prosecutor during the break and she would hear them later in the morning.

  “What’s your evidence?” he asked, standing at the prosecutor’s table.

  Lenore got to her feet. She didn’t like having a conversation while she was seated and the other person stood. “You were at a demonstration and you have a recent criminal record.”

  “That’s the charge. What’s the evidence?”

  Lenore ran her finger down the screen, stopped, tapped it lightly once, then again. “February seventeenth you were at a demonstration, and . . . ” she touched the screen once more. “And, you were convicted on January thirty-first of trafficking in marijuana.” She looked up, looked at Richard. He was well-built, lean, nice teeth, his hair was a bit on the long side, thick and dark and a little wavy; a likeable person. He wasn’t the least upset; in fact he had a tiny smile as though he was having some fun with all of this. She checked the screen again, just to make sure. “Other than the trafficking charge, you have no other criminal record.” Then she did something strictly for her own information. She checked his birth date. He was the same age as her.

  When she looked up this time she returned his smile, and a bit more. “The evidence, sir . . . ” she emphasized the sir, used it in mock formality, “is found in the facial recognition software used to analyse the security photographs of that little demonstration you were at on Saturday.”

  Richard had his hands on the table, leaned forward a little. “Do you know what that was about?”

  She admitted, “Not really.”

  “We were trying to stop them from ripping up another RAN.”

  “Ran?” She wasn’t sure what that was.

  “Representative Area Network. They were set up a century ago. Small areas that were never supposed to be developed. Just little pieces of nature for the sake of nature.”

  “Oh.” Her answer was just one word, but she filled the word with meaning. It meant that she understood. She got it, got the importance of the demonstration.

  “Anyway, who recognized me?” Richard was still having fun.

  “Facial recognition software.” She was having a bit of fun too.

  “Really, software can recognize a person. I’m not sure that’s really possible. Isn’t recognition an experience? Only people can experience things, not computers. I recognize you. I met you in front of the courthouse a couple weeks ago. Remember the raven that spoke?”

  She didn’t. She didn’t remember a raven or Richard. But a connection had been made. It softened her. “Listen, Richard, you don’t have much of a criminal record. Tell you what, you enter a guilty plea and I will tell Judge Ferris that prosecutions would be satisfied with a reprimand.”

  “But I didn’t do anything wrong to plead guilty for. I was there, I added my body to the demonstration. That’s it. I wasn’t shouting or causing any sort of disturbance. As far as I am concerned it was a peaceful, legal demonstration.” Despite his obvious seriousness, the tiny smile was still there.

  “It’s not just that you were at a demonstration. It’s that you were at a demonstration and you have a recent conviction.” That was the law and Lenore knew the law. She also knew that as a prosecutor she had considerable discretion and it was his smile more than his words that won the day.

  When Judge Ferris returned, and court was again in session and formality ruled and Richard Warner’s name was called, Lenore stood and spoke to the record. “Prosecutions will enter a stay of proceedings on that, Your Honour.”

  During the lunch break mass exodus from the courthouse, she met up with George again, and again he could only talk about his ORV Raven.

  “Because they’re so unique, I was able to scan it and do a total search. I found its inception date, growth rate, everything, even who designed it. Ethan J. Beeney.”

  She interrupted, “Someone designed a raven? I thought nature designed it.”

  “Well, not the physiological aspect. Ethan designed the microprocessing.”

  “He put the wires to it.”

  “It’s more than just wires.” George sounded a touch defensive. “To connect neurological signals to digital circuitry isn’t so simple. It’s not like driving a motorcycle. Not only are there connections between the control computer and the bird, there are connections between you and the computer. I swear this thing does what I think.”

  “Mind control, that’s expensive. Careful, you know that it can work both ways.”

  Everyone knew that. Everyone knew when they put mind control devices into automobiles that not only did the driver control the vehicle through brainwave function, there was a feedback loop that controlled the driver. Maybe it was urban myth, but Lenore believed it. It was easy for her to accept that there were people out there who would try to manifest mind control. The concept blended itself seamlessly into everything she knew about the society that she lived in.

  “No, no, not like that. The connection I’m talking about isn’t in the circuitry. It’s more of an intuitive connection, like the connection that people have with each other, or a person and a pet, more like the connection you might have with a best friend, where you know what they are going to say before they say it.”

  She wondered whether George ever had that sort of connection with another person; he had been in a long term relationship after all. What would it be like to be connected like that with George? It was a thought she’d had many times, imagining her and George together, a team, a partnership. Since she’d found out that Rita had left him, she’d even imagined sharing a bedroom with him, a larger bedroom, one with a different sort of intimacy than her cubby-hole, a different sort of snugness. They’d come close a few times, when their conversation became personal, moments when it seemed like . . . well, it seemed possible.

  This wasn’t one of those moments. If George were experiencing any sort of connection it wasn’t with her. It was with his Raven.

  16

  LENORE ATE LUNCH ALONE AT THE Blackwater Café, a sandwich and a coffee. The coffee was good, as could be expected in a place that grew its own. Climate control: the plants took as much space as the tables. It was a not-so-subtle guarantee of freshness when a customer could reach out and pick a coffee bean, or pluck a leaf of green tea. She came here often, maybe because the air was better, maybe because the tables were small and the place was cramped and she felt safe in its closeness.

  While she ate, she ran a search on her platform for Richard Warner. She’d been right, not only was he the same age as her, he’d served. And not only had he served, he’d served in the seventh. So he’d been there, the same as her — she in the fifth regiment, he in the seventh.

  She’d been right to stay the charge against him this morning. Servicemen deserved a break.

  Oh, this was interesting — his present address. She didn’t even kno
w that there was an Ashram at Rabbit Creek. That was sweet. This guy seemed to have got it together. Good for him, she thought, good that he was able to find peace after all of that.

  Coincidence, fate, chance, whatever; as she was leaving the Blackwater Café on her way back to the courthouse and a busy afternoon, there he was, sitting at a table at the front of the café, tucked into a nook with only a pane of glass between him and the street. She had to — not just because she had just searched him and knew his history, but because he was reading a book, a book made of paper.

  He looked up when she asked, “What is that?”

  “Oh, this.” He turned it to show the red cover of a thin, worn paperback. Virgil’s Little Book on Virginity.

  “Virginity? Really. What’s it about?”

  “Oh, a little of everything.” He smiled easily. Maybe he enjoyed the content of the book, or maybe he liked it that a woman would approach him, or maybe he even liked her.

  “Tell me.” She didn’t ask if it was all right or seek his permission first. She just slid into the chair across from him and waited for him to tell her what the book was about, not because she found the subject so fascinating, but primarily because it was made out of paper. If he had been reading it on a platform she might not have cared.

  “We don’t know much about Virgil, who he was, where he came from. All we have is this little treatise that we assume was written around the turn of the last century. The premise of it is simple: perpetual virginity. Here, let me read something to you.” Richard flipped pages, back toward the beginning, and began to read:

  “Everything you have ever done, and everything that you ever will do, you once did for the very first time. It is this state of perpetual virginity and the surrender of it that allows you to grow. Only a mind in constant virginity can learn.”

  Richard flipped pages, couldn’t find what he was looking for. He closed the book and used his memory. “Virgil says if you want a long and happy life don’t worry about the beginning and the end, stretch out each and every moment. It’s like a bead necklace. If each bead is as long and full as you can make it, the whole necklace will be longer.”

  She wasn’t convinced. “That’s a bit simplistic, don’t you think?”

  “But that’s his whole point. It is simple. It’s us who make it complicated.”

  She looked more closely at him, at the clothes that he wore. There was nothing obviously plastic. Of course you could never know for certain whether a fabric was really 100% cotton, or if cashmere was really cashmere. They could make plastic look and feel like whatever they wanted. But Richard looked real enough, the shirt looked flannel, his coat looked wool. The pack that she’d not noticed before, maybe because it seemed so much part of him, was now on the floor by his foot.

  She would like to have stayed, spent the afternoon with Richard in the café, had another coffee and maybe even a pastry, and more conversation. She imagined it would be easy because Richard was easy to be with. But she knew she had court in three minutes because her platform in her pocket had just vibrated.

  Even though she knew she’d have to rush to get back in time, she avoided leaving the table. She looked outside at the sun and the wind and the people.

  She found herself wondering what people might think, what her supervisors might say if they found out that she was seeing someone with a criminal record, even if it was just a single count of trafficking.

  But didn’t everyone have a criminal record, something? Even her — insubordination, behaviour unbecoming. She’d even been court-martialled for refusal.

  17

  HE’D THOUGHT ABOUT TAKING THE RAVEN for a little ride during lunch. But he had court at 1:30 and it would have taken too long to drive home and back. Maybe he should fly to work and keep the ORV on the roof of the building. It would be safe there. If he could get permission — probably not, security would never allow it, not even for a prosecutor.

  Instead he went across the street to the Blackwater Café for a sandwich, a quick bite and then review the files again before court.

  She didn’t see him. She was sitting with some odd-looking guy at a booth at the very front of the café, caught up in quiet conversation.

  It shouldn’t bother him. But for some reason it did. Lenore with another man. He purposely kept out of sight, wondering who the man was, and what they were talking about. The man had a book and he was showing it to her, which was okay, a little odd, but okay. What stirred George wasn’t the man, it was Lenore; Lenore leaning forward, paying attention, her hands flat on the table, reaching out, as though reaching for him.

  It was a bit uncomfortable. It felt like he was hiding, spying. He wasn’t. He was just sitting there at a table at a public place that he had a right to be at, eating a sandwich, having lunch, perfectly normal. If they couldn’t see him — well, that was because they were only looking at each other.

  It was none of his business. The sandwich in his hand was nicely toasted and warm and the cheese lightly melted, but it couldn’t keep his attention. What were they talking about? Who was he to her?

  Hey, it’s none of your business, he reminded himself and took a bite from the sandwich, an overlarge bite that filled his mouth and forced him to concentrate on chewing. But it didn’t satisfy. Oh, the bread was nice, the tomato fresh and the meats were of good quality, but the taste just wasn’t there.

  He looked up again as she was about to leave, standing there beside the table, obviously reluctant, saying a few more words in a conversation cut short because she had to go back to work. It was clear she didn’t want to leave. But she did. And when she did, he felt a bit of relief — just a bit, enough to allow him to enjoy his sandwich and cranberry juice.

  18

  THERE WILL BE NO CURIOSITY, NO enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.

  Lenore stopped reading. George Orwell’s famous paragraph from his novel 1984 had punch to it. It took her breath. Karen Kwiatkowski had cited him in her article “If war is the Health of the State, What is Peace?” It made Lenore think. She wasn’t supposed to think. She was supposed to be studying, filling her evenings with something worthwhile and earning another degree.

  She thought of both the boot and the face, couldn’t help but think sympathetically of the face as hers. She knew the boot. She had been the boot.

  She closed the platform, shut away the words on the screen, but could not close her mind. Had there ever been peace? Or was war all there was? Weren’t they always at war of some sort or another? There’d been the war on poverty. Everyone agreed it failed, had become a war on poor people with forced labour camps that created more suffering and ended when the costs — not the costs in lives, but the financial costs — became too great.

  They had gone to war to fight for peace, she and nearly everyone else her age. Then it had become perpetual war for perpetual peace, until it couldn’t be stomached anymore. Even though the mass killing had subsided and the big machines of war were silent for now, were they really at peace? Could this state of existence be called peaceful? Or was it just a lull?

  She poured herself a glass of cold tea. She needed something to wash her mouth with, to rinse that tiny taste of bile that was rising.

  Maybe Richard was right, maybe the answer was in nature. Maybe everything was interconnected and interrelated and peace was its normal state of being and humanity as a violent species could never learn to co-exist with itself or with the planet until it could accept that it too was part of nature. But wasn’t nature cruel and violent as well? Kill or be killed, survival of the fittest. Maybe, but nature had never designed killing machines, and if wolves killed deer, they didn
’t kill them because they were the wrong colour or spoke the wrong language or prayed the wrong way.

  But those were just excuses. Race and colour and language and religion weren’t the reason. The only reason that she could imagine for her three years in Guatemala was because they could.

  But she didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to remember. She didn’t want to drag herself back through it all again. She didn’t want to open the pot and look in. She should never have lifted that lid. She should have walked out.

  19

  “I AM NOT GOING INTO REGIS, and I am not going to send one of my men in there.” The sergeant moved his hands from his hips, away from his belt, his holstered pistol, baton, and pepper spray, and crossed his arms across his chest. He stood just inside the doorway.

  “I need that witness.” George had already said that. He didn’t know what else to say.

  “If we go in there, we go with a dozen armoured vehicles and fifty men, and I am not authorizing spending that much money to serve a subpoena. Forget it. You’ll have to figure out some other way.”

  “Let me just explain what I’ve got.” He ran a finger down the screen. He didn’t need the file. He knew the details of it well enough. He turned back to Sergeant Williams. “Susan McLeod says she was walking home from the neighbourhood pub at night, alone. Someone comes up from behind her and pulls a bag over her head. She never sees him. All she can say is that he had her on the ground and he’s trying to tear her clothes off. Then someone comes along and she hears him yelling at her attacker. By the time she gets the bag off her head, they’re both gone . . . Then we have an officer who can testify that she was driving down Brad Wall Avenue and saw a man being beaten by another man.” George looks back at the screen, he’d forgot the officer’s name. “Constable Harten arrests Kevin Starr for assaulting Philip Charles. If we don’t have Kevin to tie it together — that he came across an attempted rape, he chased the guy and was indulging in some street justice when the officer came along — we can’t prove that it was Philip who attacked Susan.”