(This is nearly twice my target length but I couldn’t find a place to break the narrative.)
CHAPTER 2 FINIAN
After using the corner of his spatula to break up the clumps, Finian raked and smoothed his fried potatoes with a fork until the bottom of the frying pan was evenly covered. In anyone else this would have been obsessive-compulsive behavior, but it was normal for Finian, not a symptom of impairment. Such deliberate action where others move by reflex was often the first sign of a data oracle. When one of them began to speak – short sentences, rarely slang, never ambiguous – with an accent that perfectly matched those in his company, you had no further doubt. Skilled as they were at avoiding notice, such habits marked them.
Like all data oracles (there were not many), Finian was born with his abilities. His mother saw it first when she discovered him talking to his dog, Gizmo. Children and dogs are natural companions so Finian’s affection and Gizmo’s fierce loyalty were not thought remarkable. It was just cute, the kind of delight a first-time mother is anxious to share with friends. But Finian vocalized with Gizmo's timbre and rhythm, complete with head-lifting and whining. The give and take between a canine and this tiny crawling human not yet familiar with spoken language resembled a private conversation between friends. His mother had sensed that from then on she would be more spectator than teacher. Finian was already beyond her.
For the task ahead of him and the delicate diplomacy required Lucan had specifically requested Finian be on his team. He thought it best that Finian, a credentialed agent for M, make initial contact with representatives of the First Nations. His ability to recognize the dialects he would hear, sprinkled with vestiges of old Québecois French, would reassure everyone. It was especially important that Finian play the trusted host for the certain tense introduction to Gilles Gaillard, the former plant manager for ProMine/Canada.
The crushing and reduction plant, now empty and crumbling, had during its working life poisoned the immediate surroundings with acidic fly ash and noxious fumes. Nothing grew to a radius of a quarter mile. At the outer edges of the blight where the pH was barely tolerable a band of plants tolerant of acid soils were slowly winning a struggle to survive: aggressive Lily-of-the Valley, stunted but stubborn, with clumps of bunchberry behind. And fading into the tree line a sprinkling of stunted spruce and Canadian Hemlock. The hesitant growth was a reminder that the site was unredeemed and likely to remain so, a barren ecological disaster likely to persist for centuries.
To the First Nations residents still in-country, whose feet could feel the very nap of the earth, it was a wasting disease of the soul made more painful by the remoteness of the wound. Like a rare affliction no one understands, it had been difficult for them to voice to others this affront to their land, this sacrilege in a landscape as precious to them as a parent.
Finished with his breakfast as the fire burned low, Finian waited, poking the fire until the trees cast shorter, clearer shadows. Sensing the time flow, he began to feed the fire until it could support signaling. On the hot bed of coals he laid fresh-cut green foliage with which to lift a column of smoke above the trees. Then repeat. Feed the fire. Quench it with green. They would come, and he was content to fly his smoke flag until they found him.
Finian reached into the bottom of his backpack and fingered the gold-plated designator. It was ready. Only his part remained for the rite of Terra-Forming. The metal plaque was small and heavy, 6 X 12 X 1 cm, a powerful permanent magnet cast from a rare earth alloy with the following inscription deeply engraved in its face under the thick gold plating:
AT 298/276 — 82
Gilles Gaillard was the first to arrive. He appeared out of the trees, silent as a wraith, head forward and down measuring every foot of the distance he must yet travel back to this place of condensed greed and permanent wound. After 35 years seclusion before BT,1 and even after one reviv at AT 210, shreds of memory not cleansed, that he could not shake, still hung on his tall spare frame.
“Am I late?” The question was more hope than query.
“No,” said Finian. “You are first and you are welcome. Being first is fitting since you are necessary to the changes we came to see.”
“The invite letter from the EcoCenter was startling. They had reviewed my entire résumé, academic work included! The weight of all my history made it feel more like an order than an invitation.”
“Gilles, retrieving the data's no challenge. You know M controls light. It's a simple matter to capture reflected light. You do remember copy-and-paste from the old PC days, right? They do the same thing now with light. And 350 light years away, give or take, from the events you thought were forgotten is the cosmic near neighborhood.
“Here,” said Finian, lifting a trenching tool from the big loop on his backpack and handing it over. “Find the center of this barren patch and dig a hole for the designator while I watch for the other two guests.”
When the hole was eighteen inches deep Finian motioned to Gaillard. “Ça suffit” [That's enough]. He was so confident of success that he had stashed a few rhododendron seeds in his pocket. He placed the designator in the bottom of the hole, covered it with most of the fill dirt, and then dropped in a few seeds before pushing the remaining dirt over them and gently tamping it down.
Preoccupied, the two had not noticed the approach of the two First Nations leaders. Having been fully briefed, Finian didn't miss a beat. “Chief Kitchi, thank you for representing the Algonquin families. Chief Dekanawida, thank you for representing the Iroquois families. This is Gilles Gaillard.”
The two leaders managed a weak smile as they nodded to Gaillard. There was no eye contact.
“As the manager of the plant when it was allowed to operate without regulation his voluntary presence today is a gift and the link that binds us together on this occasion. Men, please arrange yourselves evenly around the spot where we've buried the memorial plaque marking what we do today. Lean forward while you step back slightly until you must grasp the shoulders of the men on either side to keep from falling.”
Awkward, but dependent on each other for balance, the symbolism of their posture began to affect them. Light laughter, nervous but genuine, was overcome by song as Kitchi and Dekanawida began to ululate softly. Both rhythm and melody intertwined, each song line different but complementary. Finian remembered once long ago having heard a guitar genius play Dixie and Yankee Doodle at the same time. He couldn’t tell, then, if the mere symbolism of marching songs from two warring parties played together was more or less powerful than the jaunty braided melody lines were. It was like that now.
Gilles Gaillard joined, halting, humming, stumbling in mid-phrase, finding a higher song line that danced around the perimeter of the music. The deep tones of the two chiefs were as the sighs and groans of the earth itself. Instead of stamping their feet as normally accompanied native celebratory dancing, the three began to caress the ground with their feet, a motion so much like soft-shoe dancing Finian had to suppress a grin.
Unobserved in their concentration, the three men were startled by the growth of pressure within the circle they had formed. As if the air had become thicker and swollen, they were now alarmed, holding tightly to each other against an irresistible force. Finian approached, raised both arms and shouted. “DONE!”
The stunned circle of three were blown back, flopping to the ground and erupting in gales of laughter. Finian was standing, breathless, doubled over and holding his sides. They were all like children in a playground, enjoying a harmless practical joke.
But then, they froze. Released by an unseen trigger, a low rumble in the ground galloped toward them. With the sound of a freight train, a primal force rushed through the forest in a spasm. It paused briefly beneath them in a stutter, shook the entire site in heaves and waves, then trailed off as quickly as it had come. As it passed, a large section of the ruined plant’s wall crashed to the ground.
The earth was laughing with them. Earlier tensions in the group vanished. Shaking hands and embracing, the three guests, chuckling and weaving, walked away leaving Finian in the barren circle beside the freshly filled hole.
His backpack organized and his signal fire doused, Finian met the 6X6 as it crested a low rise. “Did we miss it?” shouted Mikal out the window.
“There's no encore, guys. Turn the beast around. I've got the rack.”
The following May, Lucan was given the use of the hybrid tri-motor for an overflight. Montreal's Mirabel airfield no longer functioned as a skyport for jets so the few light aircraft still on the field used the medians between the cracked, weed-infested runways. The pilots preferred grass under their wheels, anyway. And with no movement of aircraft having more than ten seats, no flights after dark and none in marginal weather, there was no longer need for pavement. In any case, the paved runways would one day be recycled whenever the EcoCenter got around to clearing non-polluted zones to let the ground breathe.
Lucan was enchanted to be aloft on such a glorious spring morning. Conditions were 'severe clear.’ The air was still, as smooth as oil on silk, that happy condition when cooler earth tempers the sun’s warmth. The wings were fat with lift. He had full power from the photo-voltaic arrays on the upper surfaces of the wings. The two high-mounted electric motors were happily swinging their big wooden and graphene propellers near the design limit of 1,000 rpm. The alcohol-fueled engine in the nose was loafing along, pulling up their cruising speed to 160 km/h.
While still 15 kilometers from the old plant the direction finder began to wiggle. In a few moments it stabilized on a course to the buried designator. Lucan was thrilled. Never on his prior missions for the EcoCenter had he used such a powerful magnet in a designator and its performance went beyond his expectations. Site 82 could now be used as the standard for marking future missions. Men get promoted for such things.
He banked over the site. He expected what he saw, but he was still amazed. The outer ring of spruce and Canadian Hemlock were filled out and healthy. The bunchberry and Lily-of-the-Valley were thick. The former barren circle around the plant ruins was a prairie of grasses rippling in the light breeze. Plant walls still standing were covered with ivy. And in the very center he saw new stalks of young rhodies reaching for the sky.
“BT”= Before the Great Transition. “AT”= After the Great Transition