by Terry Fallis
With that, Emily sat down in front of the first computer and keyed in a few log-in strokes.
Grayson suddenly materialized next to us. I hadn’t seen him slip back into the room and was startled. Emily noticed.
“Grayson is here because there must be more than one Borden-Bennett employee in the room when we draw a winning number. It’s just a security protocol,” Emily explained.
Grayson smiled, so I smiled back.
“Are we all ready?” Emily asked.
“Well, I’d kind of like to savour the moment a little longer and reflect on how far we’ve come since we started this little …”
Amanda cut me off.
“We’re ready! Let’s do it!”
“Of course.”
We crowded around Emily as she opened the random number generator program and typed in the lower and upper bound numbers, 1 and 1,723,590. She then clicked a button on the screen helpfully labelled “generate random number,” while my two index fingers offered an arrhythmic drum roll on the edge of the table. We waited only an instant before 541,349 appeared.
“And we have a winner,” I declared.
“Almost. All we really have now is a winning number,” Emily explained. “Stand by for the winner.”
With that, she moved to the second computer and keyed in 541,349. A data base contact card appeared immediately on the screen with the name of the 541,349th person to submit an entry. This was our lucky winner.
“L. Percival, 21 years old, Cigar Lake, British Columbia, V0C 1R0” was all it said in red on the screen.
“That’s all we’ve got on the winner? No phone number or address?” Amanda asked.
“Yes, I’m afraid this is all we have,” Emily confirmed. “It’s in red, so we know it was a mail entry. Let me pull the hard copy to ensure we’ve accurately captured all the information provided, though I’m certain we have.”
She opened the second banker’s box and plunged her fingers into the neatly filed mass of paper and cardstock dividers. It took her a moment to find the one she was seeking but eventually pulled out the 541,349th sheet on which was mounted a small square of paper. There, in handwriting that was just a barely legible blue ink scrawl, was what looked to me like “L. Percival, 21 years old, Cigar Lake, British Columbia, V0C 1R0.”
“But the entry asked for their email, mailing address, and phone number,” Amanda said. “Shouldn’t we consider this an incomplete entry and draw another?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” Emily replied in her accountant and official raffle supervisor voice. “Unless we officially designated certain fields on the entry form as ‘required information,’ you are under the obligation to find this person, based on what we know. We can only draw a second name after we have exhausted what we call ‘best efforts’ to identify and contact L. Percival of Cigar Lake, B.C.”
I spent the afternoon with my old friend Google in search of the elusive L. Percival. There were lots of L. Percivals to be found on the Internet, including a Canadian sports pioneer, Lloyd Percival. But he had died in 1974, having lived his entire life in Ontario. There was a Liza “the lovely” Percival who was a very much alive pole dancer of some repute from Drummondville, Quebec. No, I don’t think so. I found a Leon Percival doing time in the Kingston Penitentiary for settling an argument by dumping 150 gallons of hot tar through the passenger window of his father’s 1977 Plymouth Duster, in Port Perry, Ontario. Nope. Finally, I tracked down a Lorne Percival who had up until 2009 been known as Lori Percival. But even after sex reassignment surgery, Lorne still lived in Montreal, where he had always resided.
Directory assistance was no help either. There was no record of an L. Percival with a phone anywhere in B.C. Great. In the end, I ran down more than twenty-seven L. Percivals across Canada and hit dead ends with each.
I switched tracks and learned what I could about Cigar Lake, B.C. I found it on a map. It was a smallish, yes, cigar-shaped lake in northern B.C. not too far from Fort Nelson. On the ten-point remoteness scale, it registered a twelve. I wasn’t able to find much on the web about the community, so I made a few calls to towns that seemed to be located near Cigar Lake. You’d be surprised how unhelpful people can be when you call them up out of the blue and ask if they know anyone named L. Percival. It wasn’t a fun afternoon.
“Why don’t we just write to the winner? We have an address of sorts and a postal code,” Amanda proposed.
“Yes, that would work were it not for the trifling matter of a national postal strike,” I replied.
“Shit,” was all she said.
After conferring with Crawford Blake and Diane Martineau, and arguing with the stickler queen herself, Emily Hatch, it was decided that the only way to honour our “best efforts” legal obligations in the matter was to send yours truly out to Cigar Lake to track down the elusive L. Percival, whoever he – or she – was. I’d have to vet the winner anyway to make sure we had a viable choice to put forward to NASA, but I was optimistic. Given our tight timelines, I was really hoping to avoid having to spin the drum again, draw a second name, and go through the vetting procedure again. So the plan was for me to inform L. Percival personally of his – or her – win and at the same time qualify him – or her – as our official Canadian citizen astronaut. We wouldn’t be announcing and introducing the winner until later on anyway. Mindful of Crawford’s rather pointed directive to find the right candidate, I was hopeful I’d be meeting a strong, chiselled, classic lumberjack type, with all of his hair and teeth, and no police record or weird hobbies. A long shot perhaps, but it was possible. I was headed for logging country, after all.
I was a confirmed big city boy being sent on an important mission to the wilds of B.C. It left me a tad uneasy. Amanda Burke’s last words to me before I headed out were “Go west, young man – and bring back the great Canadian astronaut.”
CHAPTER 6
The world headquarters of Wilderness Charters was not much more than a Quonset hut perched up on the hill overlooking Williston Lake. I arrived fifteen minutes before I was scheduled to take off in the float plane I’d chartered for the final leg of my journey to Cigar Lake. It was only 5:00 in the afternoon but I was already wiped. My packed morning Air Canada flight to Calgary had been uneventful, if you didn’t count the flight attendants dumping a glass of orange juice on my chest. As well, my so-called personal video screen nestled in the back of the headrest of the seat in front of me yielded a stunning crystal-clear picture. Unfortunately, the audio jack in my armrest was broken and could not be fixed by any of the five crew members who tried in turn, one by one. I’d already ordered up a movie so I just sat there and watched it as a modern-day silent movie. Halfway into the film I decided, based on the video, that not having the audio may well have been a blessing.
In Calgary, I hopped aboard a Rocky Mountain Airways connecting flight bound for Prince George in northern British Columbia. I’m not even sure what kind of plane it was, but I had thought that open cockpits and canvas-covered wings were long-gone relics from the early days of aviation. Apparently not. Okay, I exaggerate, but not much. In the twenty-first century, one does not expect to look around the interior of a commercial aircraft and see wood. Nine of us braved the flight to Prince George. I sat very still the entire time with my fingers in my ears, wishing I could turn back the clock to earlier in the day when my principal in-flight concern had been the malfunctioning entertainment system. Of course on Rocky Mountain Airways there was no in-flight entertainment, no in-flight magazines, no in-flight snacks, no in-flight beverages. As far as I was concerned, it was a miracle we were in-flight at all. We landed safely in Prince George. When the plane finally came to a stop and the ear-splitting engine died away, I was as relieved as Charles Lindbergh must have been upon touchdown in Paris. But Prince George was not my final destination.
My rental car was smaller than any automobile ought to be. I was trying to save NASA some money by opting for the subcompact. I won’t be doing that again. I had to use a bungee-cor
d to secure the hatchback because my rather small suitcase just wouldn’t fit in the back. What kind of car can’t accommodate a single small suitcase? As for the driving, well, my rental wasn’t exactly a speed merchant. As I headed up the Alaska Highway, the engine sounded like a sewing machine but lacked the power. The speed limit was ninety kilometres an hour but I could really only get it going up to about eighty kilometres an hour before the vibrations threatened to rearrange my internal organs. It took me nearly three hours to drive the 185 kilometres to Mackenzie.
Named for the famous explorer Alexander Mackenzie, the town was a lumber and logging centre built on the shores of Williston Lake. In fact, the world’s largest tree crusher (and no, I really don’t know what that is) sat on display at the entrance to the town as a symbol of Mackenzie’s roots in logging. Seeing it didn’t really help me understand its precise purpose. I parked in front of Wilderness Charters and headed inside.
“You have got to be David Stewart,” exclaimed the man sitting at a cluttered desk behind the counter. “Welcome to northern B.C. I’m Chatter Haney.”
“Um, yes. You’re right, I am David Stewart. Hello.”
“Well, Mr. Stewart, I’ve got good news and bad news,” he said. “The bad news is we blew an oil pump on our Cessna the day before yesterday and it won’t be fixed until next week.”
“Hmmm, the oil pump sounds like it plays an important role in the safe operation of the plane,” I said.
“That it does. But have no fear, there is good news, too,” Chatter assured me. “I mean, beyond the fact that you’ve chosen to visit one of the most beautiful untouched, unspoiled parts of this vast country of ours. The mountains and glacial lakes have this almost unearthly and spiritual restorative effect on people – especially those who come from the city. And if you happen to hail from Toronto, well then, son, you are in for the experience of a lifetime.”
This was a man who wore his name proudly. He stopped talking just long enough to take a breath before continuing to enumerate the wonders of Williston Lake and the surrounding region. When he paused again a few minutes later, I leapt back in, fearing I might never get another chance.
“So,” I interjected, “I think you were about to mention the good news part of the equation, weren’t you?”
“Right! I knew I was going somewhere with that.” He turned and looked out the window, down the hill to the dock, and then pointed. “You see that beaver down there?”
I followed his outstretched finger but could only see a red float plane. Ahh, capital B Beaver.
“That’s Doc’s plane. She owes us a favour and will get you out to Cigar Lake, and back when you want,” he explained.
“Um, okay. Is it safe?”
“A whole pile safer than a Cessna with a busted oil pump. You’ll be fine. She’s been flying these parts for most of her life.” He grabbed the mike attached to what looked like an old CB radio and squeezed the button on the side. “Hey Doc, he’s here. I’m sending him down.”
I watched out the window as the door of the Beaver opened and an arm waved back to us. I didn’t really have a choice. Besides, the Beaver looked at lot safer than the rickety bucket of bolts that had flown me to Prince George.
“Is it okay if I leave my finely tuned pocket rocket in your parking lot for a day or two?” I asked, pointing to the rickety bucket of bolts that had driven me to Mackenzie.
“Done.”
“I assume it’ll be safe enough in the parking lot. Car theft isn’t a problem around here, is it?” I inquired.
He looked out the window again at my car.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure it’ll be safe enough.”
“All right. Thanks for making alternative arrangements for me,” I said.
“Sorry for the inconvenience, but you’re in good hands with Doc.”
I darted out the door before he could renew his regional tourism patter. I walked back to the car, grabbed my wheelie suitcase, and pulled it behind me along the gravel path. On the polished floors of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport it had rolled quite smoothly. But it was not what you would describe as an allterrain suitcase. Halfway down to the dock, I picked it up and carried it.
A wiry and grizzled old woman climbed out of the cockpit of the Beaver wearing grey, grease-stained coveralls and well-worn hiking boots. At least I thought she was a woman. Her hair was also wiry and grizzled. She was all business.
“Hi, I’m David Stewart.” I extended my hand.
She offered her hand and we shook. It felt like one gigantic hand-shaped callous.
“Doc Lanny,” she replied, sounding older than she looked. And she looked old. Her voice tipped the balance in favour of her being a woman. But it didn’t tip it very far.
“Thanks so much for taking me.”
“No problem. Are you staying for a while?” she asked, gesturing to my suitcase.
“Um, no. I just wasn’t sure what to bring with me,” I explained.
“So you brought it all.”
She grabbed the bag. On instinct, I reached out to reclaim it, worried about her snapping a wrist or breaking a hip trying to wrestle it into the plane.
“Here, let me. I can put my own bag in,” I said, genuinely concerned.
She said nothing, but the look she gave me had me stepping back with my hands up in surrender. She swung the suitcase up as if it were a bag of marshmallows and pushed it through a small side hatch in the plane behind the cabin.
“You can climb in and sit in the front right-hand seat,” she directed.
I did as I was told, only bumping my head twice in the process. She followed, after casting off the line securing the pontoon to the dock and latching the door behind her. She slipped into the pilot’s seat and strapped in with the smooth and precise movements of someone who’d done it a thousand times before.
“Buckle up, Mr. Stewart,” she said, pointing to the seat belt hanging over the armrest. “And put those on. It gets pretty loud in here.”
I did as I was told, latching the lap and shoulder belt and pulling on the headset.
I figured that was the end of the safety demonstration. I knew where the exits were.
Doc Lanny seemed a bit preoccupied and sent a few quick glances my way as she went through her pre-flight checklist. She pushed various buttons on the instrument panel and punched the starter. The single engine sputtered to life and the propeller started its circular journey. We taxied out onto Williston Lake against a light breeze and small waves. Then when we were out from the shore a ways, she opened the throttle and the plane picked up speed. I could see one pontoon below me out the window and I watched as the water around it turned white. I’d never been in a float plane and was surprised by how rough the ride was until we lifted from the water. We climbed gently and she turned to the west, aiming the nose toward a pass between two lines of mountains. The scenery was breathtaking. According to the map, we were flying near the Rocky Mountain Trench that separated the Rocky Mountains to the east from the Omineca Mountains to the west. There were snow-capped peaks on either side of our flight path, with the sun slowly dropping in the west. It was stunning.
“So there aren’t many more than a dozen folks living on Cigar Lake,” she observed. “Where are you headed?”
I jumped when her voice crackled in my ears. I’d forgotten my headset was more than hearing protection. For the first time I noticed the small microphone that swung down from my left headphone. Right.
“I work at a big PR agency in Toronto, and I’m trying to track down the elusive winner of a contest we helped to run. We haven’t been able to reach him. He doesn’t seem to have a phone, and with the postal strike, well, it was easier and faster just to send me out to find him. The guy lives on Cigar Lake.”
When I looked over, she was staring at me. When she just kept her eyes fixed on me for what seemed like an unduly long time, I eventually pointed out the windscreen as a kind of subtle reminder that she was in fact flying a plane. She took the hint.
>
“What contest?” she asked.
“Well, I can’t really say, but the guy has truly won the trip of a lifetime. It’ll be out of this world,” I said.
She was staring at me again, for too long. This time her mouth was open. I pointed ahead, again.
“What’s the name?” she asked softly.
I really wasn’t supposed to reveal the winner’s name, particularly when the vetting process had not even begun. On the other hand, how was I going to be delivered to his place without giving up the name?
“All we’ve got is L. Percival.”
The plane violently tipped over on its right wing and nose-dived. I grabbed the seat and hung on. As we shot down, my lunch shot up. An instant later, she righted the plane and brought us back onto an even keel a few hundred feet lower than we’d been. I managed to push my lunch back down where it belonged. I’d already been feeling some nausea from the ups and downs of flying in a float plane. So the manoeuvre she’d just pulled certainly didn’t help settle my stomach.
“What the hell just happened!” I shouted into the mike. “What was that?!”
I could hear her breathing hard in my headphones.
“Sorry about that. We caught an air pocket. It happens. I’ve got her now.”
“Well, I hope so. I thought we were going down.” I was hyperventilating, too.
She looked flushed, and shaken, but said nothing more. We flew on and she kept her eyes front. A couple of times I noticed her shaking her head slowly, probably reliving the ride through the air pocket. About half an hour later, I realized we were turning and descending. Below us I saw the familiar long cigar-shaped lake I had seen before, but just as a map on the Internet.
“I can certainly see why it’s called Cigar Lake,” I noted as we swung down to start our approach.
She seemed to have regained her composure after the stomach-turning barrel roll and nose-dive we’d executed a half hour before.
“Well, it’s probably a better name than Test Tube Lake, or Lake Howitzer, or what some folks call it around here, Phallic Lake,” she replied.
