The Back of the Turtle (2 page)

DORIAN ASHER RELAXED IN THE QUIET COMFORT OF THE
limousine and watched the world glide by. Ice continued to form near the breakwaters, but the remaining trees along Toronto’s lakeshore had finally begun to come green. Winters in Toronto were never as cold as they had been in Ottawa nor as long as they had been in Edmonton.

Or at least, that’s the way they used to be. Before the influx of fresh water from the melting Arctic ice cap had begun to slow the ocean’s thermohaline conveyor, and global weather patterns had begun to shift.

It wasn’t a surprise.

It had been predicted, the matter studied until the public had gotten tired of being told what was going to happen. Yet now that it was happening, everyone was indignant and annoyed, as though the longer, colder winters, the lost springs, and the tentative summers were somehow an unexpected personal affront.

Still, spring had finally arrived. A dark, cold spring, to be sure, but spring nonetheless.

And wet.

That’s what Dorian noticed the most. The chilling dampness.
Even from the warmth of the back seat, he could feel the cold tumble over the car, like a glacial stream flowing across bedrock.

A glacial stream flowing across bedrock?

Where had that come from? Of late, Dorian found his imagination running away from his intellect, turning the ordinary and the mundane into vivid metaphor. He had always been a calm, organized man. Not like Winter, of course.

No one was like Winter.

It was probably the damn drugs. Lately, the nausea had been more of a problem, the ringing in his ears more pronounced. In the last little while, he had noticed a slight loss of concentration as well, coupled with a propensity to see catastrophes in canaries. It could be the pain, of course. Or maybe these breezes of melodrama had come from simple exhaustion.

There it was again. Catastrophes in canaries. Breezes of melodrama. Before long he would be standing at the corner of Yonge and Dundas, predicting the end of the world.

Dorian pulled the new issue of
Luxury Home Magazine
from the seat pocket and thumbed through the offerings. There was a pleasant-looking Florida property at Cape Harbour for a little under five million and a larger house in Port Royal for just under eight.

He dog-eared the page so he could find it later.

Last month, there had been a lovely six-bedroom home in Hualalai on the Kona-Kohala coast. He had shown the listing to Olivia.

“Twelve million?”

“Hawaiian oceanfront.”

“We already have two homes.”

“One home,” Dorian had corrected. “One condo.”

“And we don’t need the condo.”

He and Olivia had had this conversation any number of times. Yes, the condo was an expense, he would always concede, but it was a business expense, so it really wasn’t an expense at all.

“There are times when I have to stay in the city overnight.”

“Get a hotel room,” Olivia would tell him. “No maintenance fees and you can still write it off your taxes.”

“I need a kitchen.”

“You don’t cook.”

“I don’t want to be checking in and checking out all the time.”

“You just like the status of having a condo in the city.”

“I like the view.”

Yes, Olivia would agree, the views past Toronto Island and across Lake Ontario were splendid.

“You can’t just make money,” Dorian would tell her softly, as though it were a secret. “You have to spend it.”

Of course, Olivia was right about Hawaii. Twelve million dollars was really too steep for a third house. Still, knowing that he could buy any of these if he really wanted to was comforting. His only regret in terms of luxury homes and properties was not buying lot number six at Rosie Bay, near Tofino on Vancouver Island.

Four acres set on the side of a cliff, with a flat, one-acre building site perched above a private beach, a sea cave, and a 180-degree view of the western Pacific.

The day that he and Olivia had walked the boundaries, a black bear sow and two cubs had appeared out of the fog and
then slipped away, primordial ghosts come back to see what had happened to their forest.

Dorian had seen the bears as a good omen, a ceremonial passing by the old order to the new. Olivia saw them as a potential nuisance.

“They’ll get into the garbage,” she had said. “There’ll be no end of bother.”

DORIAN
closed the magazine and began counting the barren trees along the lake, trees that would never come green again. It was our own damn fault, he reminded himself, not that finding blame in the obvious was of any value.

Or consolation.

The car left the lakeshore and turned onto the access road to Tecumseh Plaza, world headquarters of Domidion. At ground level, there wasn’t much to see, just a bunkered arrangement of concrete low-rises that was supposed to resemble a circle of Native longhouses.

Unlike the other corporate monuments that dominated the skyline of the reclaimed waterfront, Domidion had been built down, ten storeys into the earth, accessible only through a series of long, angled tunnels that led to the underground parking levels.

All part of the new world protocol.

If you were supposed to be in Tecumseh Plaza, you knew where to go. Otherwise, you had no business being there at all.

The limousine dropped into the tunnel reserved for upper management. Dorian took the pass out of his jacket. Even the head of Domidion had to run the gauntlet of security checks and
retractable crash barriers. On occasion, he would time the process and was always reassured by the delays. It was an illusion, of course. Fear had made us cautious, even paranoid, Dorian acknowledged, and it had made us vigilant.

It just hadn’t made us safe.

Aristotle had said that we make war so we may live in peace. Dorian wondered if the old Greek had ever realized just how wrong he had been. We make war so that we may destroy our enemies. We make war so that we may control resources and markets, and make money.

WINTER
Lee was waiting for him when Dorian stepped off the elevator. Winter was the perfect corporate executive. Educated. Constrained. Precise. Youthful. No matter what time Dorian arrived at the office, Winter was there, ready to go to work.

“A new outfit?”

“Yes, sir.”

Dorian appreciated Winter’s attention to style. Today she was wearing a white cotton blouse, a black wool and raw silk skirt, and matching jacket. On her lapel was a jet brooch with thin alabaster diagonals.

Winter’s psychological profiles continued to be mildly disturbing, but Dorian knew that, while successful people and the insane often wandered off into dark areas, the Winters of the world could always find their way home.

“What do you know about Tecumseh?”

“Shawnee. Late eighteenth, early nineteenth century,” said Winter, without breaking stride. “Organized an Indian
confederation to oppose European expansion. He was killed in the War of 1812, when the British deserted him on the battlefield.”

“And the plaza is named after him.”

“It is,” said Winter.

“Ironic, don’t you think?”

“There’s a peace prize named after Alfred Nobel,” said Winter.

“Touché,” said Dorian.

“Dr. Toshi’s office called,” said Winter. “They want you to ring them back at your earliest convenience.”

“The market?”

“Down,” said Winter. “New York, Toronto, London, Tokyo. Oil has dropped to ninety-six.”

“Good news would be appreciated.”

“Noted,” said Winter.

THE
fourth subfloor of Domidion was a geometric arrangement of heavy glass partitions. There were no windows to the outside, because at over fifty feet below grade, there was no outside. But neither were there interior walls, at least not in the conventional way. All the offices were glass boxes. You could see everyone and everyone could see you. The only rooms that had any privacy were the bathrooms, and even here, strategically placed cameras recorded who came and went, though not what they did.

At least that was what everyone was told.

DORIAN
sat down at his desk and brought up
The Globe and Mail, The New York Times,
and
The London Times
on separate monitors.

“The Zebras? Again?”

“Yes, sir,” said Winter.

Dorian scrolled down the lead story in the
Globe.
“They’re circulating personal and corporate credit card numbers on the Internet?”

“Along with names.”

“Are we affected?”

“We’re looking into that.”

“This Zebra thing is getting out of hand.” Dorian entered his password into the computer. “I need a PAM environment.”

“PAM is running,” said a compliant, female voice. “Please confirm.”

“Confirmed.” Dorian turned away from his computer and faced Winter. “So, aside from anarchists in stripes, what else do we have?”

“Three items.” Winter touched her tablet. “An American army recon unit found a ‘Chinese laundry’ near Chaman.”

“Another one?” Dorian took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What the hell did the French do, give away franchises?”

“Anthrax. Botulism,” said Winter. “Several nasty flu cultures.”

“Don’t suppose it was a Class A lab? Just a plastic tent with a sink and a microwave?” Dorian could feel the beginnings of a cramp in his left leg. “Maybe we should give these assholes the proper equipment, so they can do the job right.”

Winter stood in front of Dorian’s desk, her skin glowing like soft wax in the low light. Her lampblack hair, pale-blue almond eyes, and wire glasses made her look like a university student.

Or a sociopath.

And not for the first time, Dorian had the curious feeling that he was looking in a mirror.

“Are you telling me that the cultures were ours?”

Of course, there was really no way Domidion could keep track of every virus and bacterium that the corporation shipped around the world. Cultures sold to the Japanese for research might be resold to the Italians, who might trade them to the Saudis for oil, and from there no one knew where they went. Not the corporation’s fault that product occasionally fell into the hands of madmen.

Certainly not the corporation’s responsibility.

“The second item?”

“Yes,” said Winter. “That would be the
Anguis.
”

Dorian had only seen pictures of the
Anguis.
It was one of a dozen heavy-capacity barges that Domidion ran under a Bolivian registry and flag. Six months ago, the ship had left Montreal on a routine run to dump a mountain of toxic waste and incinerated biohazards into the ocean.

But before the
Anguis
could drop its load, the bright lights in Ottawa passed a law that prohibited the disposal of hazardous waste in this manner. So the barge turned around and came chugging back to Montreal.

Where provincial officials refused to let it land.

Quebec, as it turned out, had no objection to garbage leaving the province, but had strict laws prohibiting it from coming in, and the
Anguis
was ordered to vacate the St. Lawrence Seaway and find another port of call.

“The ship’s been found?”

“No.”

“I thought we had decided to stop looking for it.”

“Yes, sir,” said Winter. “At the January meeting of the Board.”

By the time the barge cleared the headlands at Gaspé, the newspapers and networks had picked up the story. In a media minute, there wasn’t an anchorage on the Eastern Seaboard that would give the ship safe haven, and the
Anguis
became a ship without a country.

It should have been a relatively easy matter to find someone who would take the waste. In the past, the corporation had always been able to find poor countries and desperate governments who needed money.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The crew,” said Winter. “There’s the question of a compensation package.”

“Filipinos? Russians?”

“Taiwanese.”

Domidion had initially struck a deal with Haiti. But by the end of the first week, the barge had become such a powerful symbol of what was wrong with North American culture that not even the Haitians were willing to take it. Up and down the coast the
Anguis
went, an orphan looking for a home.

The barge had been off the coast of Brazil when a rare subtropical cyclone punched its way out of the Caribbean. Subtropical Storm Nora did only minor damage to the coastline, but when the storm finally settled down into a series of cranky squalls and tropical depressions, the
Anguis
had vanished.

“I suppose we could announce some kind of package.”

Winter looked at her tablet. “Shall I have accounting put the figures together?”

“Let’s start with the announcement,” said Dorian. “We can revisit compensation itself at a later date.”

“Yes, sir,” said Winter. “Revisit at a later date.”

The only thing that had really mattered was that, when the barge broke apart and sank with her load of biologicals, she be as far away from Canada and the U.S. as possible. Off the coast of Cuba, though that was a little too close to Florida and the Gulf. Argentina or Chile perhaps. Or any of the other Central and South American countries that had not supported North America’s trade and peace initiatives.

An accidental sinking was the best possible outcome. The
Anguis
was insured, and its mountain of waste would wind up at the bottom of the ocean, where it belonged.

“And the last matter?”

Winter shifted slightly. “Dr. Quinn.”

“Quinn?”

“Dr. Gabriel Quinn,” said Winter. “Head of Biological Oversight.”

“Ah, you mean Q.” Dorian waited to see if Winter recognized the reference. “From
Star Trek
? The television show? There was a character named Q, who knew everything there was to know about the universe. In Biological Oversight, they call him Q.”

“I see,” said Winter.

“Man’s a genius with bacteria and viruses.”

“He’s gone.”

Winter was precise. Dorian liked that about her. No frills. No adornments. No sound bites. No platitudes. No half answers.
No guesses. In many ways, Dorian imagined that Winter could well be the prototype for artificial intelligence.