Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  9

  A raven wings away in the backyard,

  ringing the rim of a metal fence post.

  Its caws betray the cacophony of a cracked bell.

  10

  An osprey wings away in the backyard,

  ringing the rim of a metal fence post.

  Across the sandbar, the ocean`s dark savannah.

  11

  A mountain bluebird wings away in the backyard,

  ringing the rim of a metal fence post.

  Its bright wings fray into the cobalt sky.

  12

  A rosefinch wings away in the backyard,

  ringing the rim of a metal fence post.

  Amidst the garden bric-a-brac, a pink flamingo tilts.

  13

  A great blue heron wings away in the backyard,

  ringing the rim of a metal fence post.

  Like the dream of my father, escaping.

  * * *

  “But there are only thirteen birds!” I protested.

  My mother smiled. “No, dear, there are fourteen,” she said. “Let me read it to you again. Let’s see if you can find it.”

  She would, and I did.

  * * *

  One particularly cold February morning, after we had scattered a supply of almonds, I was sitting having my milk at the granite island and Mom was making breakfast, when she realized that there was something peering at us from the edge of the Cawthra woodlot. She called me over to the patio door, her finger on her lips.

  As we watched, a deer emerged from the trees, and then another. The two of them made their way across the snow in our backyard, to where the jays were flying at the edge of our patio. We could see their footprints in the snow, padding down the white in soft impressions.

  Briefly, the deer glanced at us through the double panes of the patio door, absently sniffed the air, then dipped down their heads, their tongues flicking out for almonds.

  * * *

  On a chilly weekend in September about two years later, when I had moved on to high school at Holy Name of Mary College School, my folks were planning to go to a farmers’ market in Burlington.

  I usually ran through the hay mazes with my brother Paul, but he was away at Pioneer camp, so I asked if I could spend the afternoon by myself, biking along Bronte Creek, and if I could catch them on their way back. They said yes, but to be sure I wore something warm. So I put on my eiderdown coat, threw the bike in the back of the truck and they let me off at Burloak Drive, which was a few kilometers from the creek.

  It was the perfect time, a crisp chill in the air, but sunny, a Canadian autumn with reds and oranges only just beginning to appear alongside the yellows of the leaves. There had been a bit of frost earlier in the morning, and some of the leaves had already fallen. Luckily, I was prepared, and I zipped up my slate-gray eiderdown jacket against the cold.

  I’d been down and up the trail several times and was headed back to Burloak Drive, when I saw something move in a clutch of bushes. I got off the bike and moved closer on foot, to take a look.

  There was a rustle, and something in bushes stood up, a horse. Except it wasn’t a horse, it was a small horse with black and white stripes. A zebra.

  It sat down again, and picked at the dry leaves on one of the bushes. It looked like it was in rough shape, shivering and half-covered in leaves and frost.

  There we were, a forlorn young zebra and an eleven-year-old girl. I wasn’t sure what it was doing here, but I guessed it didn’t like the cold and had wandered far from wherever it was it originally came from. Definitely not from around here.

  I inched closer, and made what I thought were soothing noises. It didn’t bolt, just shook its head and ears.

  I needed something to lead the zebra with, so I took off my long wool scarf and tied a makeshift collar around its neck.

  “Come on,” I coaxed.

  The zebra tried to get up. She was a little wobbly, and no taller than my shoulders, but made it to her feet. Oh, I thought, a she.

  “Come on, Leia,” I said.

  When my folks came back down Burloak Drive, they found me waiting on my bike by the side of the road, my new friend beside me, wearing my scarf.

  “Look who I found,” I said, when my parents arrived. “She’s cold, and she’s lost. Can we take her home?”

  They looked at me, and then looked at the zebra, perplexed.

  Dad went down the trail to see if there was anyone there who might be looking for a missing zebra, while my Mom stayed with me and Leia. In a few minutes, Dad came back just as perplexed.

  There was no choice—we couldn’t leave her out on Burloak Drive to fend for herself—so we took her home. That’s how I came to have an zebra as a pet, if only for a short while.

  We put her in the garage for shelter, and Dad put out a bucket with some of romaine lettuce, spinach, and other greens from the farmers’ market, that Mom had been planning to used for our dinner salad. It took to the tender vegetables voraciously.

  Mom thought it must have come from one of the zoos or wildlife sanctuaries close by, so she did a search.

  “Don’t worry,” Mom said to me. “When we find where she lives, you’ll get to visit her anytime you want. Promise.”

  I did want to find out where she came from, so that evening, between her and myself, we called every single place in the Greater Toronto Area that might possibly have lost a zebra, or might possibly want one. No one reported missing any animal, and no one wanted to take her in—until finally we got through to the Glen Eden Zoological Park and Wildlife Sanctuary in Milton, Ontario.

  * * *

  I know—some will say that zoos are an anachronism, that they should all have been closed decades ago. Why are many of them still operating?

  In the past, arguments of zoo opponents were based on human insensitivity towards animals—but this has changed with modern zoos.

  Captive-breeding and advanced conservation programs at many modern zoos have literally rescued hundreds of animals from the brink of extinction. Alas, mainly because of habitat destruction, many of these species cannot be re-introduced back into the wild, and so the zoo becomes the only place that the animal can survive.

  My time working in wildlife preserves and with people who run zoos has also shown me that many take great pains and spend considerable resources to recreate natural habitats.

  In addition, people now understand that a significant majority of those who manage these wildlife preserves do care deeply for the animals. This is especially true for a handful of wildlife preserves whose owners don’t operate them as profit centers.

  The Glen Eden Zoo and Wildlife Preserve was one such non-profit institution. Endowed with an annual infusion of funds from the Weston Foundation, it embodied its founders’ belief that zoos and wildlife preserves increased our appreciation and empathy for the natural world around us, making the global natural world more vital, real and accessible to more people than ever before.

  Consequently, these institutions believed, more people would undertake to value and preserve not just human life, but all life.

  Personally, I felt that this was one of the few ways humanity could make amends for the wrongs that it continued to inflict on this world.

  * * *

  I’d been to the Toronto Zoo before, and to African Lion Safari near St. Jacob’s, Ontario, but never to Glen Eden Zoo. When Dad and I brought the zebra there to stay, it was my first time to visit.

  Glen Eden Zoo was set in over forty acres of natural conservation area just outside Milton, Ontario, less than an hour’s drive from where we lived. Later on, when I worked there, I and the other staff got used to just calling it Glen Eden, and sometimes simply the Zoo.

  Dad and I arrived at the Zoo just before opening time. The main road into Glen Eden was already lined with ground spinners, and other vehicles, lined up for the visitors’ entrance. We bypassed that entrance, took a side road further down, and then turned into a service road, as we’d been directed to
over the phone.

  A woman was standing at the back gate, about the same age as my folks, dressed in khakis, boots, and beaming.

  “Hello, I’m Judith Weston,” she said, offering her hand when we got down. “I’m the director here at Glen Eden.”

  “John Harbridge. This is my daughter Zara. She’s the one who found the zebra,” my dad said, motioning toward me.

  “And that’s Leia,” I said, nodding toward the zebra.

  “Leia she is, then,” said Judith, peering in the back of the truck. “So, Leia, what fast legs you have. We’ve been looking high and low for you. And good on you, Zara, to have found her,” she added. “It’s getting cold, and zebras don’t really take to the winters here in Canada very well.”

  “Me, neither,” I said. Leia stared at us from the back of the truck, her tail flicking.

  Judith jumped in the back, making soothing noises, and started feeling Leia’s muscles. “What’s she been feeding on?”

  “We’ve been giving her spinach and lettuce,” Dad said. “But before that, grass and leaves?”

  “You did great. We’ll get her back up and running before you can say ‘member of the horse family’,” said Judith, jumping off the truck bed.

  “Equine,” I said.

  “Whoa, you should come and work with us,” Judith grinned. “Okay, let’s bring Leia home. Follow me, I’ll take you on a bit of the scenic route.”

  She slid into a ground spinner just beyond the gate, and our truck followed her down the service road into the Zoo.

  * * *

  Glen Eden Zoo was enormous.

  Or at least it seemed so to me. Dad said it was ten times smaller than the Toronto Zoo. Even so, it was still huge.

  “Mati,” Dad said. “Can you give us the skinny on this place?”

  Mati, our nickname for the truck’s Maps and Travel Information computer, began reading out the information in her database, in a melodic voice:

  “Glen Eden Zoological Park and Wildlife Preserve in Southwestern Ontario was founded twelve years ago by Drs. Judith and Louis Weston, co-founders of Weston Analytics. Louis Weston, an aerospace pioneer who founded Weston Aerolite, passed away two years ago, from bone cancer.”

  Not having travelled far from the service entrance yet, we were in rugged terrain, winding down gravel roads that traced the shoreline of Kelso Lake, surrounded by fields with overgrown grass, trees with a glorious overhang of autumn, marked occasionally with what looked like small construction sites.

  “Glen Eden is home to a number of varied animal species, including currently viable, endangered and previously extinct mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and invertebrates.”

  Suddenly, the vista opened and, while Mati’s voice continued in the background, Judith’s spinner began to lead us through an extravagant safari.

  “While the list varies over the years, mammalian species at Glen Eden Zoo include: African lion, Amur tiger, jaguar, panther, Masai giraffe, river hippopotamus, tapir, capybara, Yemen and Saudi gazelles, scimitar oryx, African pygmy goat, Carpathian lynx, grey and Iberian wolves, Asian short-clawed otter, vervet monkey, marmoset, ring-tailed coati, Bennett's and Parma wallabies, New Zealand greater short-tailed and Christmas Island pipistrelle bats, reindeer, Pere David’s deer, and Grant’s, Burchell’s, and Grevy’s zebras.”

  Later on, I would find out that this was what Leia was, a Grevy’s zebra who had somehow gotten loose, and wandered further out than anyone had expected.

  Beyond a clutch of tall grasses, a river hippopotamus stomped and grunted. Further down the path, two giraffes scissored their necks against the morning sky.

  “Reptilian species at the Zoo include: Western hog nose snake, royal python, red-tailed boa constrictor, Round Island burrowing boa, bearded dragon, crested gecko, blue-tongued and Cape Verde giant skinks, blue spiky lizard, and the yellow-headed and electric-blue gecko. Amphibians at Glen Eden include: axolotl, African bullfrog, harlequin and golden toads, Sri Lanka shrub, Australian torrent, golden mantella, and poison dart frogs, and the Yunnan Lake newt.”

  Down in a shallow valley where the road branched away from us, we saw glass-walled buildings, enormous terraria, and an aviary that towered like a cathedral in the landscape.

  “Glen Eden Zoo’s collection of birds include: ostrich, American white, straw-necked and Jamaican ibis, cassowary, emu, helmeted guinea fowl, great grey, great horned and burrowing owls, white-naped crane, greater rhea, avocets, crested and red-throated caracara, Himalayan monal, avocet, and bar-winged and New Caledonian rail.”

  In a brief span of time in travelling from the service gate to where we were, our path had circumnavigated the world in all its splendor and majesty—African savanna, Siberian tundra, Malaysian jungle, forests and grasslands, jungles and wetlands, rainforest and coast.

  “Invertebrates at the Zoo include: leaf insects, Brazilian, Chilean and Indian tarantula, whip and deathstalker scorpion, spined dwarf mantis, giant thorny stick insect, Kona giant looper and American chestnut moths, giant thorny stick insect, and the Mbashe river buff, Morant’s blue and Xerces blue butterflies.”

  I remember wondering if Mati would ever run out of bits of data on Glen Eden.

  “Thanks, Mati,” Dad said, and she stopped.

  We stopped too, finally, at two-story building made of brick and glass. Over the entryway, a sign proclaimed:

  Wildlife Health Centre

  Right beside this building was a tract of land dotted with construction equipment and heavy machinery. I would learn later on that this was the site was being developed for a new animal health centre and research and development institute, CIRCE, the Canadian Institute for Research in Conservation Ecology.

  Judith was on her phone, and presently a young man in khakis came out of the building to take Leia away.

  “The Force is with you,” I said, as I gave Leia a hug and let her go. My Dad didn’t even try to hide his sigh of relief.

  Judith smiled. “You may have saved a life today,” she said to me. She knelt down to my eye level, and fished a business card from her pocket. On the back of it, she wrote, in a fine print:

  To Zara Harbridge –

  Free entry to Glen Eden Zoo forever.

  Life is beyond value, beyond measure.

  Judith Weston

  She signed it with a flourish and presented it to me.

  “Welcome,” she said. “Welcome to the Zoo.”

  3

  Last of the Dinosaurs

  We returned Leia to Glen Eden just over eight-and-a-half years ago.

  I’ve held on to that business card ever since, used it to bypass the lines on many occasions when I was a simply a visitor to Glen Eden. I still carried it in my wallet, later when I was officially on staff at the Zoo. I’ve written that singular phrase about the immeasurable value of life in diaries and journals, on calendars for myself and in cards to friends, a mantra of strength.

  The Chinese say that the main attribute of a dragon is strength. They also say that strength without the ability to bend with fortune leads to destruction.

  Three years after my first visit to Glen Eden came the first announcement that a new, bright object had been discovered in the Kuiper belt. A minor asteroid, an unnamed comet, a chunk of ice and rock, a piece of news that appeared, if at all, as the science filler in newscasts, to be missed by a world busy with the Colonial War or with its daily routine of surviving, or ignored.

  Besides, at that time, Gabriel’s Comet was one of thousands of comets and asteroids in the sky around us, with nothing remarkable to set it apart from the rest. No one yet knew the one thing that made it different from all the rest—that it was headed in a huge, heavenly arc straight for us. That providence had already engineered a collision course with the Earth.

  But I didn’t ignore it. As with the star in the sky of Bethlehem, I took the appearance of the Comet as an omen, a sign from the heavens that nothing would be the same—because simultaneously with the appearance of that, alas,
ominous new star, the same misfortune brought to us my father’s death.

  Aunts and uncles and cousins that lived on the west coast, five hours away, in British Columbia, came only to attend the graveside service.

  When my brother left us for the United Earth Force—his new family, I smirked at him—to fight in the Colonial War, my mother was all that I had left to keep me strong, for a time. Although she constantly talked to Paul by deep space messaging, I, in turn, was essentially all she had here on Earth.

  Two dragons, trying to bend with fortune.

  * * *

  Somehow, I made it through high school without giving Mom a heart attack. Eventually I outgrew hanging around with boys, the Maui wowie and Acapulco gold vaping, and the occasional late-night partying. Despite my shenanigans, my grades were decent, and I eked out an acceptance letter from the University of Guelph.

  With an imposing reference letter from Judith Weston—director at Glen Eden, but signing as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Weston Analytics, and Managing Director of CIRCE—I had an offer for financial support that came with an undergraduate research and study program at the Gosling Research Institute for Biodiversity.

  For once, my mother was happy.

  * * *

  The parents of Jacqui and Eliza, red-headed twins who were both in my high-school graduating class, were members of the Boulevard Club, a private sports and social club along the shore of Lake Ontario, where we held our graduation party.

  “Mrs. Harbridge,” they said, when we arrived. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Call me Anne,” said my mother, beaming in her batik gown.

  I got Paul’s message as hors d'oeuvres were being served:

  Sic itur ad astra

  Such is the pathway to the stars. It was Paul’s personal motto, shared with the Royal Canadian Air Force, one of the peacekeeping units attached to the UEF, the United Earth Force. Dad’s personal motto was Per ardua ad astra, an earlier RCAF motto that I still held on to: Through adversity to the stars.