The Back of the Turtle (29 page)

“YOU’VE KNOWN.” GABRIEL TURNED TO CRISP.
“
YOU’VE
known all along.”

“Guessed,” said Crisp. “With a small certainty here and there for good measure.”

Gabriel ran a hand along Soldier’s flank. “Nicholas Crisp,” he said, “Finder-Minder.”

“Aye,” said Crisp. “That be me, all right.”

“Little asked you to try to find me.”

Crisp sat down next to Soldier. “She did, for she loved ye desperately.”

“And my mother?”

“She was sick by then. ‘Dementia’ is the name they gave the thing in her brain. And soon there weren’t a shim thin enough to slip between truth and fiction.”

“I didn’t know she was sick.”

“Lilly told me how ye didn’t come home after your father died, how they lost track of ye and ye of them. Is that what happened?”

Gabriel shrugged. “What does it matter?”

“No juice in half a story,” said Crisp. “No matter how hard ye squeezes.”

Gabriel kicked at a loose rock and sent it clattering over the edge. “It was you.”

“Blamed for much.” Crisp lowered his eyes. “And guilty of some.”

“You sent the photograph.”

Crisp nodded. “I only found your scent on the eve of The Ruin. After that unbearable day, there weren’t much left to offer but the image of her and the boy.”

“I was in India.” Gabriel stood on the rim of the canyon and looked down. Below he could hear the sound of rushing water. “Kali Creek?”

“Aye,” said Crisp. “This be the place.”

Riel, she had named her son Riel.

“Is there a way down?”

Soldier scrambled to his feet, the fur at the back of his neck fanned forward.

“No profit in seeing what can’t be changed.”

“Is there a way down?”

Crisp took a breath. “Aye,” he said. “There be such a thing. A trail starts just there by that dead tree. A narrow snake it is, steep and dark, full of twists and slips.

“Where does it go?”

“Creek follows the canyon till they both find the Smoke,” said Crisp. “Master Dog knows of such things and can show you the way.”

Gabriel walked to the tree and put his hand on it. The trunk felt dry and hollowed out. “No,” he said, “I want to go alone.”

Crisp nodded.

Gabriel looked back at the truck. “The groceries are for Mara.”

“Master Dog and I can see that they arrive in good order.”

“She knows who I am,” said Gabriel. “You might as well tell her the rest.”

Crisp returned to the truck, Soldier at his heels. “Mind the first drop,” he shouted back. “Ye slips there, and ye rides the shale to the bottom.”

THE
trail was wet. The ground curled and slid under his feet, and he had to grab the vines and roots and drive his heels against the rocks to keep his balance. Here the earth was dark brown and alive, but as he sank into the canyon itself, the colour shrank away and died.

The creek was running clean and cold. He set his hand in the water, let it run past his fingers, and watched for a time, hoping to catch a glimpse of something moving below the surface. Once, he thought he saw a shadow, a fish, perhaps, or a turtle.

Or wishful thinking.

He hadn’t expected the bones. Almost everywhere he looked, everywhere he walked, there were bones. He hadn’t thought about that. There had been the turtle bones on the beach and bleached shells stuck to the Apostles, but these bones were different. They hadn’t been buried in the sand or crushed by the waves. They lay out on the ground where the creatures had died, one minute alive, the next minute dead, the fall of the creek drowning out the weeping.

Gabriel moved quickly along the trail, stumbling, falling at times, his pants and shoes damp and muddied. Once he came upon a cluster of bones that might have been a family of rabbits.
Another time he found what looked to be a deer and a fawn lying at the water’s edge.

But he couldn’t be sure. In the end, the only thing that the bones resembled were bones. If there was a memory of an animal hidden in the skeletons, Gabriel couldn’t find it.

Much of the time was spent in half-shadows. At moments, too few to mark, the sun would find its way to the bottom of the canyon and form pools of light. In one of the pools, he found two tiny skulls. Twins perhaps.

He hadn’t intended this.

Yet this is what he had done.

HE
had come home. Once he had come home.

In his second year at Stanford, he had flown to Calgary, and, on the bus ride to Lethbridge, Gabriel had tried to think what he was going to say. He hadn’t spoken to his mother since his father’s death, hadn’t seen Little since the day he and Joe had left for Minneapolis. He wanted to see his sister, wanted to surprise her, wanted to tell her that she had not been forgotten.

He was sure she would be thrilled to see him, too.

He wasn’t sure what he would say to his mother.

It was evening when he stepped off the bus. He could have taken a cab. Instead, he had started walking. He and Lilly had been born to this place. It was home. At least that’s what it said on their birth certificates. But, as he walked through town, Gabriel hadn’t found any sense of belonging. Even as he stood at the top of Whoop-Up Drive and looked across at the lights of the west side, he hadn’t found any reason to be here.

The walk down to the river bottom, across the bridge, and up again was longer than he had remembered. At one point, he stepped off the path to stand in the stiff prairie grass. They had played here as kids, had chased each other up and down the coulees. There in the distance was the High Level Bridge. Off to the left was the stand of cottonwoods and the bend in the river where they had seen the pelicans.

There had been a moment when he thought that there might be a bond in the blood, that he would remember the land, and the land would remember him.

So he had waited.

But there was just the sky and the wind rising out of the west.

Their house had been on Princeton Crescent, a grand name of a street for an ordinary run of small homes on narrow lots. The place looked even smaller now. His father had planted a Russian olive in the front yard. The tree was still there, looking as fatally thin and grey as it had the day Joe had dug the hole.

Gabriel stood on the sidewalk in front of the house, hoping that Lilly would see him and come rushing out. That was how he had imagined the reunion. Lilly running out of the house and throwing her arms around him.

He had bought a stuffed dog with floppy ears at the Calgary airport, before he remembered that Lilly would almost be a teenager by now. And he had found a box of chocolates for his mother, the same brand his father had bought Rose for special occasions.

Lilly didn’t come running out, and Gabriel finally went to the door and rang the bell. A young woman he didn’t recognize answered it. The woman did not look happy to see him, and he was clumsy in his explanation.

I used to live here.

My family used to live here.

I thought my mother and sister still lived here.

I’ve been gone, but now I’m back.

My father planted that tree.

The woman watched him closely, her left hand on the door. No, she didn’t know a Rose Quinn. “I’m cooking dinner,” she told him. “Check with the neighbours.”

He did.

Up and down the street he went, knocking on doors, hoping to recognize a familiar face, asking the same questions, getting the same answers. Until evening turned to night, and a police car came along and angled up on the sidewalk beside him.

GABRIEL
picked up the skulls and turned them over in his hand. He had missed all of it. His mother’s funeral. Lilly’s marriage. The birth of her child.

He placed the skulls on the ground where he had found them. Now he was cold, and he wanted to be rid of this place. But the path forced him deeper into the canyon. The walls rose far above his head, until the sky was a jagged sliver of light in the tops of the trees. The only sounds were the creek and the silence of the land, and they followed him as he made his way through the desolation.

THE
police constable was a woman, and she was understanding. A concerned neighbour had called in. A man was in the area,
knocking on doors, trying to find lost relatives. Or so he said.

Gabriel showed her his driver’s licence and his Stanford ID.

The officer was smiling by then, and Gabriel had to admit that the situation had a certain comic aspect.

“The caller thought you might be a criminal.”

“No,” Gabriel said, by way of a joke, “just a university student.”

He took his time walking back down to the river and up the other side, and every time a car flashed by, Gabriel tried to catch a glimpse of the driver. He got a room at the Lethbridge Lodge, overlooking the courtyard and the pool. He had a light meal, ate the chocolates while he watched television, and went to bed.

In the morning, he caught the bus back to Calgary.

On the plane to San Francisco, he looked around for a child who might like the dog, but in the end, he propped it under his head, leaned against the window, and went to sleep.

THE
path left the creek and began to rise. The Smoke was farther on, but Gabriel had seen enough. He began the climb, hiking along in his wet pants and ruined shoes, as the trail made its way out of the canyon and found the light. When he reached flat ground, he picked up the pace, weaving his way around the trees, crossing small creeks on the wood planking. And then the path turned to asphalt, and the asphalt ran into a small parking lot.

There, on the far side of the lot, in the shadow of a large cedar, was an old truck. Next to the truck was a bald man with a flaming beard, and standing beside him was a scruffy dog with an honest face.

“THE WOMAN WHO FELL FROM THE SKY.”

It was a rather prosaic title, borderline romantic, but Q’s notes and the documents he had compiled made for disturbing reading. How in hell had the man been able to put the pieces together?

Winter had had sandwiches and fruit brought up, along with coffee. Dorian hadn’t touched any of the food. Neither had Winter. She had quietly taken up a position in one of the wing-backs and waited while Dorian made his way through the papers.

“Several years ago, we looked at the possibility of genetically modifying the SDF 20 variation of
Klebsiella planticola
for use as a commercial defoliant.”

“GreenSweep.”

“Yes,” said Dorian. “GreenSweep. Dr. Quinn and Dr. Thicke split the project between them. Dr. Thicke’s team was tasked with increasing the virulence of SDF 20, while at the same time limiting its life cycle. Dr. Quinn’s team was responsible for extending the bacterium’s environmental range, while preventing horizontal gene transfer.”

Dorian could hear the energy seep out of his body. A tire with a slow leak. What he needed was a patch and a nap. The Lucror
didn’t seem to be doing much, which probably meant that Toshi was running out of options.

Or didn’t know what he was doing.

“The two teams were able to increase the bacterium’s virulence, and they were able to extend its environmental range by splicing in genetic material from thermophiles and psychrophiles.”

“Very ambitious.”

“However,” Dorian continued, “they were only partially successful in limiting the bacterium’s life cycle, and neither team was able to eliminate the risk of genetic transfer.”

“Chaos theory.”

“At the time, Dr. Quinn recommended that we terminate the project. He was concerned that GreenSweep had the potential to become an event horizon.”

Winter blinked once. “An environmental black hole.”

“That assessment was considered excessive,” said Dorian. “It was felt that if we could find a way to control life cycle and horizontal transfer, we would have a potent and commercially valuable defoliant.”

The watermelon looked particularly good, and Dorian helped himself to several pieces. The coffee was still hot.

“GreenSweep was not supposed to leave our facilities.”

“Kali Creek.”

Dorian sipped at the coffee. “Mistake on mistake on mistake. In the end, we shut the project down and disposed of the remaining stock.”

Winter cocked her head. “But?”

Dorian pulled several pages from the folder and handed them to Winter. He waited patiently while she read.

“It’s probably not an issue,” he said, “but I’d like you to verify that the proper protocols were followed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Winter,” said Dorian, “do it quietly.”

DORIAN
spent the rest of the afternoon reviewing the Athabasca spill. Domidion had acted swiftly enough. The ponds had been drained, the breaks repaired, collection booms had been strung across the river at various points, and the surface effluents had been sucked up into storage tankers that the corporation had rushed into service.

Dorian knew that the equipment and the trucks were mostly for show, knew that the dioxins and the heavy metals were already on the bottom of the river, where neither the booms nor the vacuums could reach them. Still, it was a good show, and Public Relations had sent footage of the cleanup operation to CBC, insisting that
En Garde
give the corporation equal time to tell their side of the story.

Dorian looked at the clock. He’d have to eat and clean up a bit before the show. He thought about calling Olivia to tell her that Toshi wanted him hospitalized. It sounded rather dramatic, “hospitalized,” though it might be more effective if Winter made the call.

Your husband has been hospitalized.

Of course, there was no reason to suppose that Olivia would rush to his side. And there was no telling how the Board would react if they discovered that their CEO was sick. Best to leave that dog lie.

“Nothing serious,” he could tell Olivia. “Nothing to worry about.”

And suddenly he was angry. Angry about the divorce. Angry about Florida. Angry that they had bought the condo on Queen’s Quay. Angry with Toshi.

Angry that he had settled for the Rolex instead of getting the Jaeger as well.

Dorian looked at the clock. Time enough for a steam. Perhaps even a massage. Relax. Gather his strength. Tonight he’d settle with Manisha Khan.

Tomorrow he’d go shopping.