Barsk

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  To the chagrin of the Cans leading him, Rüsul’s body went limp. Head and trunk down, he began to wail, as mournful a sound as any living being could manage. The Dogs dropped him. They clutched at their heads and kicked him until pain silenced him.

  “Why do they all do that?” said one of the Cans, over the sound of the Fant’s moans. “I think my ears are bleeding.”

  “Shut up and grab an end,” said another. “I just want to get him into a cell before he catches his breath and starts in again.”

  “Why do I get the smelly end?”

  “The whole thing stinks. All the more reason to hurry up and dump his ass where he won’t be polluting our air.”

  One took Rüsul’s arms, the other his legs. Neither Dog came anywhere near touching his trunk or ears.

  “How can something that’s been sitting out in the rain for days smell this bad?”

  “Yeah, every time we grab another one, I worry the ship’s recycler is going to break down and then we’re all screwed.”

  They hauled him ever further away from his death.

  TWO

  POSSIBILITIES AND MYTHS

  JORL slipped the pellet of koph under his tongue, closing his eyes as the drug dissolved and began to take hold. His left ear tingled as it always did, and he flapped it once, twice, and then settled back, resting his head against the wall. The darkness behind his eyelids lasted only a moment, replaced by a roiling curtain of golden light, the gold of his own nefshons.

  The first perception granted by the drug induced panic for many novice Speakers. One moment you were alone in the darkness of your own head, and in the next you saw yourself swaddled by shimmering subatomic particles of memory. Those layers of golden fabric could suffocate a beginner. A successful Speaker imprinted on it, learned to identify the unique tang that permeated every gleaming particle. Then it only required an act of will for the Speaker to blind herself to it and move on.

  Jorl had been Speaking less than a year, but he had disciplined his mind in academia. At the first glimpse of his own nefshons he banished them from his perception.

  He filled the resulting darkness with images from his own memory, imagining a familiar room in a house on the island of Keslo. The dimensions and materials, the colors and textures and scents formed around him. That easily, he sat in a small alcove that lay just off of the kitchen of the home maintained by his friend’s widow. The walls were beech, yellow, bright in their own right and polished to a high sheen. A hand-braided rug covered the floor from the kitchen’s threshold to the hidden door in the back wall that provided a less obvious entrance to the house. A tapestry woven of wild flowers hung on that wall, filling the air with light, sweet fragrance. Two comfortably curved benches faced one another, set far back against opposite sides such that their occupants would be unseen by anyone passing the opening. Jorl saw it all in his mind, just as he had seen it before taking the koph and settling into that very spot after dinner.

  While his best friend’s widow busied herself with after-dinner tasks, he muttered a name aloud, “Arlo,” and began summoning particles, luring them with memories: sitting in a classroom in his grandmother’s hall learning to cipher … sampling their first efforts at distillation … introducing him to Tolta, the daughter of a friend of his mother … laughing in the rain as they took a raft to Gerd for the first time … embracing him, trunks wrapped around one another’s ears, the day he left Barsk …

  When he had a sufficient number, he willed the particles to coalesce into his friend’s form, occupying the bench opposite him, visible to anyone who possessed the Speaker’s gift.

  “Your wife made the most amazing dinner tonight,” said Jorl, the mental construct of himself smacking his lips with satisfaction while in the real world his head pressed back against the wall, his trunk draping languidly down his chest, a trickle of drool starting at the corner of his flaccid mouth.

  Arlo smiled. It started at his eyes and spread with exaggerated slowness across his face, until his ears gave a little flap of merriment. “Did she? You say that like you’re surprised. Tolta’s always been a great cook. You know that.”

  “Of regional dishes, sure. The safe and same traditional meals that everyone’s aunt knows how to make. I’m talking about recipes from other worlds, places where no Fant has been in centuries.”

  “Now you’re just being foolish. No one is going to bother venturing into space just for dinner. Not even you.”

  “I didn’t say we left Barsk, only that the recipes, the spices, were from offworld. Pay attention.”

  “Or what? You’ll banish me? Spread the glowing bits of me far and wide?”

  “I’d never—don’t even joke about that!”

  “I’m dead, Jorl. You can’t tell me what to do. More importantly, you shouldn’t be trying to tell me anything. This is what, the thirtieth time you’ve summoned me? It’s not healthy.”

  “I’m a Speaker. It’s a rare gift, even on Barsk. Why shouldn’t I use it?”

  “Just because a thing can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. I’m not telling you not to use your gift. You’re a historian, and I imagine it must be a powerful tool in your work, talking directly to the people who made history. That’s incredible. Do more of that. But you shouldn’t keep talking to me. Let me go. Even a historian can’t keep living in the past.”

  “I don’t want to have this argument with you.”

  Arlo spread his hands, his trunk lifting in an ironic gesture. “Stop summoning me and you won’t.”

  “I needed to talk to you. Something’s going on and I don’t understand it. I thought discussing it with you might help.”

  The smile fell away from Arlo’s face. “Something more than Tolta’s cooking?”

  “I’ve been studying the prophecies of the Matriarch since our school days.” He grew still, head bowed, hands clasping the nubs of his trunk and one another in his lap. Even his ears had stopped moving. “I think one of the dire ones is coming to pass.”

  “I’ve long since forgotten the details of her warnings. Of all the areas of history to study, I never understood why you made her life your focus. Most of her writings bored me, and the prophecies were so weird they made little sense, at least at the time we covered them in class. Which one are you going on about here?”

  “The Silence.”

  Arlo scrunched up his trunk and spat. “I hate that one. You remember how my mam told us stories about it when we were small, years before we got to that section in school? Scared the leaves out of us.”

  “I remember. I had nightmares. Sometimes I think I grew up to study them as a reaction. You know, so that I could really understand what scared me.”

  “Yeah? Well, be sure and thank her for your livelihood next time you see her.”

  Jorl looked down, finding a sudden interest in the cuticles of one hand.

  “What?” said Arlo.

  “Your mom is part of the problem. I wasn’t going to bother you with the knowledge, but she sailed off a season ago. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh.”

  “Kembü had a full life, Ar. It didn’t have anything to do with your own passing. It was just her time.”

  “What do you mean, she’s ‘part of the problem’?”

  “Do you remember when we were eight and crazy for insects? We spent the summer collecting every bug we could find? I got to thinking about it, and I found myself wanting the specimen jar you used. Just a sentimental reminder. And you know how your mother never threw anything away … So I tried to ask her if she knew where it was.”

  “What do you mean, you tried?”

  “I couldn’t summon her.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Weeks. More than enough time for her to finish her last voyage and be summonable. Something set me off, thinking about that long ago summer. I snatched up a pellet of koph and reached out to pull your mother’s nefshons together, only … I couldn’t.”

  “What does that mean? Why couldn’t you?” />
  “Because there weren’t any, at least, not any that would come when I called for them.”

  “How can that be? We’re constantly producing particles, storing them up until death sets them free.” He gestured at his own chest with his trunk. “That’s how I’m here now. So how can my mam not have any?”

  “I don’t know the how of it. I’m telling you what happened. A Speaker can only summon the nefshons of someone he knows. I know your mother as well as my own, but when I tried to find any sense of her, well, I think I felt something, but it wouldn’t respond. They were there, I’m sure, but it was like something was holding on to them. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

  “You are kind of new at it,” said Arlo.

  “Don’t insult me. I’ve done more than a hundred summonings, spoken with dozens of different people, including some I had to research because I didn’t know them personally. I should have been able to Speak to your mother. But I couldn’t attract so much as a single one of her nefshons.”

  They sat quietly a few minutes, until Arlo finally asked, “So then what happened?”

  “I shrugged it off. Blamed it on not enough sleep, or some bad fruit from breakfast. I put it out of my mind. But a few days later I needed to check on a reference with another historian, a woman I’d fallen out of correspondence with, only she’d sailed away sometime before your mom. I couldn’t reach her either. Same problem. But that time I wasn’t tired and I hadn’t eaten any bad fruit. Once I could dismiss as a fluke, but twice?”

  “Flukes can come in pairs. Unlikely, statistically improbable even, but not impossible.”

  “I knew you’d say that. So I asked around, both here at home and among a couple of the nearer islands. I compiled a list of five other elders who had all sailed off on their last journeys this past season with ample time to arrive at that last shore. I couldn’t summon any of them.

  “I expanded my search, going back a bit further, built up a list of a dozen names. Those who had left two or more seasons ago responded to my call. Anyone who took to sea more recently than that I couldn’t reach. Like your mother.”

  “And you think that’s the Silence from Margda’s prophecy?”

  Jorl’s ears flapped as his shoulders rose in a shrug. “What else could it be? I mean, sure, like all prophecy the wording is vague, but I don’t know of any other event that fits her description of When the dead will not answer, the Silence is at hand, and the fate of all Barsk will soon hang in the balance.”

  “You left off a piece,” said Arlo. “Just like you’ve left off your tattoo.”

  Jorl’s entire face reddened, making his vestigial tusks seem to brighten by contrast. “I leave the tattoo off because I didn’t have it when you were alive; I want you to see me the way you knew me. I thought it would be more comfortable for you.” He mentally updated his own image and the glimmering glyph appeared.

  “Okay, point one: that’s a load of crap. When I knew you, you weren’t a Speaker, so the fact that we’re having this conversation means I already know you’ve been through some changes since I died. Point two: you’re deflecting the real issue here, the bit of the prophecy you don’t want to talk about. What’s the rest?”

  “Each of Margda’s prophecies goes on and on for pages in that meandering double-talk of hers—”

  Arlo interrupted, “And yet, there’s a bit that you’re deliberately not mentioning. Jorl, you said you needed to talk to me about this, so talk.”

  Jorl gestured at his forehead with one hand, moving his trunk in parallel for emphasis. “The next line says, The newest Aleph must do what has never been done though it is almost always done. Whatever that means. It’s nonsense.”

  “Nonsense that bothers you. Because there are what, only three Fant now living who’ve been awarded the aleph? And you’re the most recent person to bear the mark. You think she’s talking about you!”

  “Maybe. But only if the Silence is really happening. For all I know, I’m misreading the signs, and the Silence is something totally different that won’t come to pass for another hundred years, by which time I’ll be dead and some other guy will be the latest person with a glowing tattoo on his head. I’m probably worrying about nothing.”

  “I can see how it might stress you,” said Arlo. “Have you tried talking about it with any other historians? Other experts in the Matriarch and her prophecies?”

  “Oh yeah, and what a mistake that was! Mickl accused me of ‘conveniently’ interpreting the data to enhance my own position. He claimed I was trying to write myself into history.”

  “Which one is Mickl?”

  “He’s the head of the department at the university on Zlorka. He got the job because no one else wanted it. His scholarship sucks—everyone knows it—so he hides behind his title and generates bureaucracy instead of anything remotely publishable. And now he’s poisoning the rest of our community against me!”

  “I remember you talking about him. He always sounded like an ass and a blowhard. If everyone already knows that, then his opinion isn’t going to carry much weight. So that’s not what’s really bothering you. Tell me what is!”

  Jorl leaned over, elbows resting on knees, dropping his face into his hands and covering his eyes. His ears flapped forward, further shrouding him. After a moment he whispered, “I don’t want to be a part of history.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Arlo pushed off from the wall, rising and crossing the gap between the two benches in one step to settle alongside his friend, one arm reaching across his shoulders to pull him close. “I know what that’s like,” he said.

  “You do?”

  “Sure. I don’t want to be dead. But it’s like complaining about the rain. We don’t get the weather we want.”

  “That’s not funny!”

  “Probably why neither of us is laughing.”

  Jorl pulled away and rose to his feet, his desire to pace frustrated by the size of the alcove he’d imagined for their conversation. “This is your fault, you know, all of it.”

  “Now how do you figure that?”

  He spun around and jabbed at Arlo with a finger. “Because you died!”

  “Jorl, we’ve been over this before. Everyone dies.”

  “Don’t give me that. You didn’t sail away at the end of a long life. You killed yourself.”

  Arlo’s held his friend’s gaze for a long moment before looking away. “You told me that Tolta believes it was an accident.”

  “Yeah, right. That’s the story that appeared in the professional journals and what they told your mother and the aunts at the funeral. An accident testing a new drug. But it doesn’t wash, Arlo.”

  “It’s plausible.”

  “Your lab had been completely stripped!”

  “Perhaps by a jealous competitor.”

  “And all your records? Even the second set that I know you always kept in Tolta’s house? Never mind the absurd notion that you were doing a field test of a brand new substance atop the canopy at dawn. No assistants. No safeguards. Nothing but a carboy of photo-sensitive accelerant which you just happened to splash all over yourself moments before first light?”

  “An unhappy combination of coincidences.”

  “You blazed a fucking hole all the way through the rain forest! From the top of the canopy, through the Civilized Wood, and down to the mud and water of the Shadow Dwell. And nowhere along the path did you strike any occupied spaces or dwellings. I know you, Ar, you’ve been my best friend since we learned to cipher and distill. You’re meticulous to a fault, it’s what made you such an amazing pharmer. There was no accident. No coincidence. You planned every piece of it and made sure no one else would be harmed. You took your own life!”

  During all of Jorl’s rant, Arlo hadn’t looked up. He lifted his head now, saw the pain in his friend’s face, the tears in his eyes. Sighing, he stood as well, hugging Jorl with both of his arms and curling his trunk around his friend’s ear, like a parent would
to comfort a child. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? The thirty summonings? It took you this long to get to it?”

  “I just don’t understand how you could do it.” Jorl’s voice cracked, ending in a sob.

  “I know it doesn’t help to hear this, but I struggled with the decision for weeks. More than once I cursed you for being away in the Patrol; I so needed someone to talk with about it. It wasn’t something I did lightly.”

  Jorl broke the embrace, stumbling back and dropping onto the bench where Arlo had begun. “I had to come back because of your death. The Alliance never wanted a Fant serving in the Patrol, and they used the excuse of my being your Second to discharge me. They shuttled me back to Barsk by fast courier. I helped plant your remains in the Shadow Dwell and I wrote some words that someone else had to read for me.”

  “I’d like to hear them, sometime.”

  Jorl glared at him, but Arlo shrugged and settled onto the opposite bench.

  “I went back to my old post in the history department, and days later a routine physical showed I’d developed the sensitivity to manipulate nefshons. They made me a Speaker, and soon after gave me the aleph. All of that happened because you died.”

  “Oh, so it’s my fault you’re becoming a part of history? You’re still the same self-centered ass you’ve been since childhood.”

  “You’re calling me selfish? Did you give any thought what your death would mean to Tolta or Pizlo?”

  Arlo rolled his trunk between his palms. “I did. It’s why I didn’t say goodbye. I knew I’d lose my nerve. And though you seem to think otherwise, I thought about its effect on you, too. I didn’t know you’d become a Speaker. I never expected to see any of you again, most especially not my wife or son.”

  Jorl winced, and the words left him before he could bite them back. “He’s not your son.”

  Arlo’s mouth became a thin hard line. His normal grayish pallor purpled and his hands bunched into fists. He slashed his trunk in a wide arc that only just missed striking Jorl. “He is my son. Tolta’s family may have forced her to abandon him at birth, but we’ve both acknowledged him as ours, even if the rest of this fucking, narrow-minded planet doesn’t.”