The Darkening Archipelago (25 page)

“Webber.”

“Nancy, it's Cole.”

She paused a moment. “Cole, hi. How are things in Port Lost-coast? How is Archie's family?”

“They're fine, Nancy. Things are fine. Well, not exactly fine. Nancy, I have a problem and I need some help.”

“What is it, Cole?”

“Where are you?”

There was a pause. “Near Calgary. On a story. What is it? You sound awful.”

“Nancy, I need you to come to Port Lostcoast.”

“What's going on, Cole?”

“I think Archie Ravenwing was murdered.”

18

Another year around the sun, Archie Ravenwing was thinking, walking along Government Street in Victoria. He was headed south, toward James Bay and the provincial legislature. He wore his best town clothes. Clean blue jeans, a pressed white shirt with bolo tie, and a grey tweed sports coat. His hair was combed neatly, in contrast to its usual disarray.

As he crossed the street at the tourism centre, the Capitol rotunda hove into view. He had always loved the legislature buildings, though many of his people did not. They had been built on land claimed by the Esquimalt First Nation, which had caused its share of consternation, but the province was in the process of settling up on that old account. Many of the decisions that came forth from the erratic provincial governments in bc regarding First Nations people had created a deep distrust of nearly all of the province's institutions among many of his people.

But Archie simply loved the architecture of the bc Legislature. He loved the symmetrical elegance of the andesite stone structure. He passed the Empress Hotel's ivy ensconced walls, feeling the hot sun on his face. For more than a month the entire coast had been socked in with rain, sleet, and fog, but this morning the sun had appeared through a crack in the grey canopy overhead, and now, close to noon, the sun burned through the implacable dome of heaven.

Another year around the sun. It had been a raven, the trickster, who had stolen the sun and placed it in the sky to bring light to the earth. He smiled at the children's tale. Today, he thought,
this
raven is going to shed some light on another growing darkness. His marine charts were tucked under an arm, and in a worn and weather-beaten leather shoulder bag he carried reports and printouts that he and Cassandra Petrel had compiled over the winter.

Another year. Today was Archie Ravenwing's sixty-first birthday. Rather than celebrating it on the water, he was in Victoria, pecking away at the conundrum of Jeopardy Rock and the Broughton Archipelago. Pecking, as a raven would, on the barnacled shell of a clam it had dropped from the sky.

All spring he'd been sampling up Knight Inlet, sometimes sleeping on his boat, sometimes arriving home late at night only to turn around and head back out at first light. He'd added dozens of blue Xs to his map, and the picture they painted was bleak.

He waited for the light at Superior, then crossed onto the Legislature grounds.

Before he left, his daughter had told him that she was worried about him.

“You're not sleeping, Dad,” she said, sitting with him at the kitchen table early one morning. The sun wasn't painting the eastern horizon yet.

Archie had smiled up at her, his face bright. “There's nothing to worry about, Gracie. Everything is just fine,” he said, sipping his coffee and reaching for his toast.

“You're gone up the inlet nearly every day. You look exhausted.”

“I'm just fine, really, darling. But thank you for worrying about me. Since your mother passed on, it's good to know I'm making somebody worried sick.” He grinned.

Grace looked down.

“I'm sorry. All I meant was that it's nice that you're looking out for your old man, that's all.”

“People are talking, Dad.”

“So? Let them talk,” he said, biting his toast. “They can talk all they like. I'm onto something, something big, and I intend to find out what the hell is going on around here.”

Grace smiled. “I love it when you get all fired up, Dad, but I'm just worried. Whatever you and Cassandra are doing seems to have all the folks around here pretty riled up. You know that most of the band doesn't want salmon farming any more than you do, but they have their futures to think of. Greg White Eagle won the election saying he would take the case for more salmon farming to the band council, and that's what he's doing.”

“Greg White Eagle is a crook. He's on the take.”

Grace was silent. Archie stood and looked out the window at the sheets of rain falling across the harbour below. Finally Grace said, “Do you have proof?”

“Yeah.”

“In writing?”

“Yeah. I've got an email. It's enough.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing. Not yet.”

Grace stood and cleared the dishes from the table. Then she walked over and looked at him.

“What has he got on you, Dad?”

Archie smiled. “What makes you think he's got anything?”

“You're not the type to sit on your hands.”

Archie's smile faded. “I just need to build my case against him. I don't want White Eagle and his pals at Stoboltz and in the minister's office to get spooked. Not yet.”

“What are you looking for?”

“That's the trouble. I don't know. Stoboltz is up to something, something big. They've been sending samples of sea lice to Victoria for analysis, and what they are finding is way worse than what Cassandra and I are turning up. We keep trying to duplicate their samples — that's why I've been all over Knight Inlet and Tribune Channel this spring, as the smolts start to move, trying to figure out why Stoboltz is coming up with such virulent sea lice samples. More lice, bigger wounds on the fish. But I can't duplicate it. It's driving me crazy.”

She hadn't pressed him on what Greg White Eagle held over his own guilty head. He hated to lie to her, but he needed to understand more about the Stoboltz sea lice before he could decide what to do with his information on the band councillor.

He walked up the steps of the Legislature and through the heavy wooden doors. He felt a new mixture of emotions as he passed through the portal: delight that he once again was walking the halls of power, doing his part to influence their direction for his people, and sadness that he no longer held the ear of anybody in this building. He signed in with security, affixed his visitor's pass to the lapel of his sports coat, and proceeded down the hall toward the rotunda. There he turned left and followed the maze of corridors to the familiar office of the minister of agriculture. He climbed a flight of stairs, turned right at the top, and found the wooden door to the office open.

He stepped into the waiting room and was greeted by a receptionist. “May I help you?” the young man asked.

“It's Archie Ravenwing. I'm here to see the minister.”

The young man looked down at a calendar. “Hold on just one minute, Mr. Ravenwing.” He picked up the phone and punched in some numbers. “Lance Grey will be right out.”

Archie stood a moment, regarding the prints on the wall, looking at the portrait of the premier behind the head of the receptionist.

“Hi, Archie,” came a voice from behind him. “Please, step into my office.”

Archie turned and saw Lance Grey. He was dressed casually, an orange shirt and black slacks and no coat or tie. He gestured for Archie to follow him.

When they were in Lance's office, he closed the door and asked Archie to sit in one of the leather club chairs across from his desk. “The minister has been called away on business this morning, Archie. I'm sorry. You won't be able to see him today.”

Archie felt his heart beating in his chest.

“There has been a case of bird flu discovered on a farm near Port Coquitlam on the mainland. He's gone over to see to the situation himself. I'm sorry, I know we should have called you this morning. He's going to be tied up with this file for a few days. I don't think we'll be able to reschedule,” said Grey, his hands folded neatly on his empty desk.

Archie forced a smile. “I understand.”

“I spoke with him this morning, and he asked me to meet with you and bring forward anything that you wanted to pass on. I'm happy to do that, Archie.”

“Well,” said Ravenwing, looking down at this own hands resting on his knees. “Well, I don't know if that will do much good.”

“You were here to talk with the minister about salmon farming. He's pretty aware of your concerns, Archie.”

Archie took a breath. “Hasn't seemed to help matters.”

“Depends on your point of view. We're putting people to work. I thought you would be happy about that. You've got unemployment rates that are in the high fifties, low sixties in some bands along the coast.”

“You don't have to tell me, Lance. I know the numbers. I was on council for a decade. I know the situation.”

“So we're putting people to work. Good jobs. Jobs that pay a good wage. It's going to lift people out of poverty.”

“My argument with you isn't on job creation. It's the type of job. The North Salish First Nation has been making its living off the sea for thousands of years before Captain Vancouver first laid eyes on this coast.”

“Still are, Archie. That's my point.”

“But not the way we used to. Not in a way that respects the ecosystem, that is sustainable.”

“Times change. Progress, Archie. You're out of step. You're behind the times.”

Archie looked down again. “Sure, times change. You see me resisting it? Hell, I've even got a cellphone. I've got email. I've got a gps on my boat. I'm happy to go along with progress when it's helping me and my people live in a way that respects the nature of things. But the salmon farms are going to put an end to the wild salmon stocks. Slowly, but surely, they will kill off the wild salmon.”

Lance Grey sat back in his chair. “That's alarmist talk, Archie. You sound like a raving environmentalist when you talk that way.”

“The numbers don't lie, Lance. Less than one hundred thousand pinks in the run in the Broughton last year. There used to be millions. How do you explain that?”

“There's lots of reasons for that. Changes in ocean temperatures, changing currents. And I won't deny that logging has taken a toll on the salmon-spawning streams. But you're trying to blame all of this on salmon farming and I just don't buy it.”

“Sea lice will be the death of the wild stocks. The juveniles can't handle the stress it puts on them. And you and your minister and your pals at Stoboltz are sitting on research that confirms our worst fears.”

“We're back to this again,” said Lance, twisting in his chair to look out the window. Archie couldn't see his eyes.

“I came here to ask the minister for an explanation.”

“You're not going to get one from
him
, Archie.”

“He won't tell me, or he doesn't know?”

“The minister has the big picture to think about. He leaves the details to his staff, and to his department. We don't trouble him with the minutiae of these matters,” said Lance, his gaze focused on Victoria's inner harbour.

“I think it's time you understood something, Lance,” said Archie. “What you seem to be treating as a game of cat and mouse is deadly serious. We're talking about the future of a species. A creature that has, for tens of thousands of years, been at the centre of my people's way of life. A creature that is the backbone of an entire ecosystem. No salmon, no bears. No salmon, no eagles. No salmon, no ecosystem. This is deadly serious.” Archie started to unfold his marine chart with its red and blue Xs.

“Don't lecture me, Archie, on how serious this is.” Lance Grey swivelled in his chair. “I know exactly how serious this is. You're in over your head. Way over your head.”

Archie stared at the man. He was less than half his age. He felt a wave of revulsion wash over him, and he choked down the words he wanted to yell. He felt his fingers tremble on the map, and he tried to calm himself. “I've been sampling up Tribune Channel and in the inlet for the last month. We're seeing massive numbers of sea lice on the early migrating juveniles. But nothing like what I saw when I looked at Stoboltz's numbers last fall. How do you explain that, Lance?”

“I don't need to see your props, Archie. Like I said —” Lance Grey smiled thinly, his mouth turning up slightly at one corner — “you're in way over your head.”

Archie rolled up the marine chart. “I got your email,” Archie Ravenwing finally said.

Lance just looked at him.

“The one that Greg White Eagle sent you and the Stoboltz people after the August meeting. I got a copy of it.”

“So what, Archie?”

“Somebody is paying Greg White Eagle to make nice with the salmon farmers. Someone is paying him to push the band council to let more salmon farms into the Broughton.”