Barsk

by Lawrence M. Schoen

Although the most civil and benign of her Fant conversants, he was nonetheless still a large and ugly monster. She concluded yet another useless summoning and sent the man away.

  Lirlowil filed this fourth report as she had the preceding three. Appended to it was, once again, her insistence that such haphazard summoning of Fant was almost sure to be unproductive. She had a response the next day. They thanked her for her continued struggles, as they had three times before, and encouraged her to resume her efforts immediately. Lirlowil put this latest document, covered with the signatures of unrecognizable names, in her desk with the others.

  Beyond melancholy, she also knew that no display of melodrama would accomplish anything. Krasnoi and the Patrollers who held her captive only cared for results. She was nothing more than a tool to them. Lirlowil didn’t need to probe their minds to understand they would leave her there to succeed or die trying. She had no intention of dying in a converted warehouse in orbit above a world of misshapen freaks. The past four attempts had convinced her of the worthlessness of her research materials.

  If she was to have any hope of finding a summonable Fant with the information her captors wanted, she had to reshape the problem and see it in a new way. She’d been pairing the traditional methods of Speaking with the radical technique of her telepathy. What would it mean to approach things from a novel stance? There were rules, set in place by the very first Speaker—a Fant, naturally. A glimmering of an idea began to form in Lirlowil’s mind. She was certainly no stranger to breaking rules …

  FIVE

  RECIPROCAL REFERENCE

  THE first diffusion of dawn’s light through the Civilized Wood had reached Jorl’s home and begun to warm the buds of sartha that a well-meaning friend had planted beneath the window of his sleeping room. All too often the heavy fragrance wafting in would cause him to fall back asleep. As a result, he often missed his early appointments. But not today. He’d awakened in the night, following the fragment of some dream and moved to the writing table in his study. For hours he’d been lost in his revision of a troublesome section of text, a comparative analysis of the significance of the Compact from the point of view of the first generation members of the Archipelagos’ Council.

  He’d started the project in the last days of the dark season, when the constant cloud cover of the sky thickened in a layer that removed the distinction between day and night. The seasons turned as they always did, dark giving way to storm. The rain increased eightfold. Continuous thunder and ubiquitous lightning made long stretches of indoor work more desirable. Jorl had fled the fury of the season and performed day after day of Speaking, summoning and interviewing each council member.

  He’d completed that portion yesterday and celebrated by visiting the little bookshop down the boardway from his home. He’d allowed himself to be distracted by the pretty clerk who always flirted with him, and if he came away with a few more volumes than he’d intended, well, where was the harm?

  Then he’d set to work writing it all up. It should have been an inspiring document, but the minutia of those days, all the pointless details from the perspective of history that had seemed so critical to the men and women living them moment by moment, dragged it down. Jorl frowned and started again. After the third rewrite of the opening pages it still felt dull as mud. With a grimace and a nervous fan of his ears Jorl pushed away from his work table.

  He sighed and then inhaled deeply. The scent of the sartha came to him from his sleeping chamber and he toyed with the notion of returning to bed, if only for a short nap. The resounding crash as his study’s shutters burst open chased the thought from his head. He leapt from his chair to see Pizlo landing in a blurred tumble, all arms and legs and trunk, in the center of the room. The boy wobbled and rolled a bit, finally coming to rest almost at Jorl’s feet. He shook his head once, seemingly none the worse for wear, and smiled up at Jorl.

  “Have you had breakfast?”

  Jorl attempted his sternest look while secretly welcoming an excuse to ignore his revisions. “No, I have not. But you should know, I only share breakfast with guests who present themselves properly, and request permission before entering my home.” He studied the child. Pizlo’s pale white flesh bore any number of scratches and minor wounds, but none of them were fresh or in need of attention. The only thing out of place in this out of place child was a greenish blob of paint on his forehead.

  Pizlo grinned, “I don’t need permission. All doors are open to me. I have an aleph,” and he pointed at the paint.

  Jorl fought back a smile. He’d been expecting this conversation for some time. “Oh really?” he inquired. “And what three achievements of yours entitle you to such a distinction?”

  The boy’s delight in himself withered a bit. He rubbed at the paint and glanced at his hand. Nothing had come off. He bit his lip as if in thought and then took a bold stance, arms akimbo, and stared up into Jorl’s eyes.

  “Three things? Why … you know, the usual three, the same way that all of us do it. Same as you.”

  Jorl went to the adjacent kitchen’s small cupboard and took out an assortment of fruits and nuts before returning to Arlo’s son. He beckoned Pizlo over to the table, setting the bowl down while he took his seat again, and helping himself to a large plel. Pizlo took hold of the wastebasket by the desk, upended it, and used it for a stool as he settled in and began working his way through the bowl of food.

  “The thing is, it’s never the same three. At least, it never has been. No two Aleph-Bearers have ever been marked for the same reasons.” Jorl finished the plel, and looked for the wastebasket to spit out the seeds, recalled its recent transformation, and spat them out the newly opened window instead.

  Pizlo seemed thoughtful, or perhaps it was just that he was busy eating. Jorl had never known a child with so much energy, or one who could eat so voraciously. Already the bowl was all but empty. Even so, he suspected Pizlo had already eaten breakfast this morning. At least once.

  Amidst mouthfuls he said, “I got mine because of my insect collection. It’s the best one in Keslo!”

  “No doubt,” agreed Jorl. Pizlo spent most of his days and nights out of doors, making his own trails in the spaces that surrounded the Civilized Wood and doubtless venturing down to the Shadow Dwell far below. Tolta had set aside an entire room to house his collection of several thousand specimens; it was one of the ways she lured him to come for an occasional dinner or spend an infrequent night sleeping in an actual bed. “But that is just one accomplishment. You need to have two more.”

  Pizlo took in this new information, digesting it slowly while he chewed on the remaining plel. Only after he had finished the fruit did he cock his head. “I … I can swing real good. On vines. That’s how I flew in through your window!” He beamed at Jorl and waved back at the window as evidence of his qualifications.

  “Fair enough, but that’s still only two. Perhaps you should wash that paint off and go back to asking permission to come in, at least until you manage a third appropriate accomplishment.” Jorl took the boy by the hand and led him to his utility closet in search of a rag and some solvent.

  After they’d removed the paint, Pizlo asked Jorl to take a walk with him. He agreed, but only after insisting that the child exit by the door and not back through the window. They strolled along the boardways, the morning warming around them. The reactions of the other Fant they passed varied depending on whether they saw Jorl or Pizlo first. Friendly greetings trailed off to silence. Smiling faces turned cold and looked away. Some just stopped in their tracks, jaws slack, trunks limp, as they tried to make sense of a prestigious Aleph-Bearer out for a stroll with a non-person. Pizlo didn’t appear to notice; they were no more a part of his world than he belonged to theirs.

  The pair made their way along one of the less traveled routes and paused at a balcony that looked out on a hollow bowl in the green of the forest surrounding them, an open space that sometimes housed a suspended stage where students put on plays during the seasons of
wind and mist. Pizlo leaned far out over the railing, glancing at other balconies above and below theirs. Jorl resisted the urge to grab hold of the boy and protect him from falling. He’d seen him climb before, and the likelihood was that Pizlo was as comfortable hanging there as Jorl would have been in his own bathtub.

  “I may have a third.”

  “A third?”

  Pizlo scowled, pulled himself back onto the balcony and sat at Jorl’s feet. “A third thing. Only it’s not the word you used before. Not an accomplishment.”

  “No? But it’s something you’ve done?”

  “Kind of. It’s something I’ve always been able to do. I guess. I don’t know why other people don’t do it, but they don’t.”

  Jorl settled onto the polished wood of the balcony floor opposite the boy. “Okay, tell me about it. What is it you do?”

  “I talk to…” He stopped. It was an odd thing to put into words when none of the things that spoke to him actually used words. He tried again. “Sometimes I know stuff … stuff that other people can’t know, or won’t know, or don’t know yet.”

  “Other people?”

  “Yeah, like you and Tolta, and Arlo back before he died.”

  Jorl winced. He’d never once heard Pizlo refer to either of his parents as mother or father, only by their proper names. “What kind of stuff?”

  “Stuff. A lot of it doesn’t make any sense. Like, which way up a skipping stone will land if I pitch it into the waves. Or how many bowls of cereal I’m going to eat between now and the solstice. Or the best route and time of year to travel from Keslo to Emmt and avoid the crowds of wandering bachelors. Or how one day, you’re going to circle the entire island. You know, stuff.”

  Jorl laughed. He took out his daypouch and withdrew several pieces of tart fruit, giving Pizlo his choice. The child grabbed one in each hand and greedily resumed eating. “What do you mean ‘circle the island’?”

  The boy tilted his head to one side, and tried again. “You know. You. Keslo. Circling it.”

  “Ah,” said Jorl, still lacking any understanding. “Maybe it’s something you dreamed?”

  “Maybe. For some things. But not all of it. Not even most of it. Sometimes it’s like something I read in one of the books you loan me, where the words tell me one thing but later, maybe days later, something else that the book didn’t come right out and say, makes sense, but it still came from the book. Only it didn’t. It came from me from having read the book. Only sometimes, for some of the things I know, there wasn’t any book that started it, and I just know them. Like knowing how to get to places I’ve never been, and feeling as familiar as sitting here. Like, a couple days ago, I knew where I had to go to find a kind of bug that I’d never seen before. It was a place I’d never ever been, but when I went there, there was the bug. Stuff like that. Would that count toward getting an aleph?”

  Jorl had been peeling a piece of citrus while listening. He popped a couple wedges into his mouth and shrugged. “It might, I really can’t say. There’s a council that travels from island to island and makes those decisions for everyone in both archipelagos. Maybe next time they come to Keslo you can ask them.”

  “They won’t talk to me. They’ll look right at me, but they won’t see me. No one does.”

  Sighing, Jorl admitted that was probably true. Instead of replying, he offered Pizlo a few fruit wedges, which the boy took without pause.

  They sat a while in silence, enjoying the tart, juicy flavor released as they chewed.

  “What did you do?”

  “To get the aleph? I didn’t really do anything. I just went ahead with my life. When the council gave it to me I was as surprised as anyone.”

  “But what did you do?” Pizlo insisted, he squinted and stared at Jorl with obvious concentration.

  “I was in the Patrol,” said Jorl, pausing to lick the juice from his sticky fingers. “I joined when you were only a couple years old.”

  Pizlo glanced at his own fingers and mimicked Jorl, speaking around them as he dipped them one by one into his mouth. “It’s more than six hundred years since anyone from Barsk served in the Patrol.”

  “Why do you say that? Is that one of the things you just know?”

  The boy gave Jorl a hurt look. “No. I read it. In a book. One of your books.”

  “When was this? I don’t remember you borrowing a book like that.”

  “You were out. Don’t be mad, it wasn’t one that you were using, I found it on one of your shelves and I put it back when I was done. You didn’t even notice.” Pizlo had the good grace to murmur this last bit in an apologetic tone.

  Jorl hrumphed. “Fair enough. And you’re right. It’s a provision of the Compact; Fant are exempt from conscription.”

  “And the council marked you for that? On account it had been so long?”

  “Not quite.” Jorl paused to find the right words. “I came back because your father had died. Soon after, I discovered I was a Speaker. That’s when the council gave me the aleph.”

  “But there are a lot of Speakers in the world. More than a dozen here on Keslo alone.”

  “You’re right; we’ve had thousands since Margda, though I’m only the second Speaker to come after that got an aleph. Even so, the council counted that as one of their requirements for marking me.”

  “But that’s only two!”

  “Well, there was a third, but it’s not really something I did.” He leaned back against the railing, closing his eyes, the memory still very fresh.

  Pizlo interrupted the reverie. “Who then? What was the third?”

  “The third was something I’d studied back at university, from the writings of the Matriarch. At the time I never imagined it was about me. She’s the one who invented the idea of giving people the aleph in the first place.”

  “A prophecy!” shouted Pizlo, causing Jorl to flinch.

  “More like a footnote. The Matriarch had written a letter to tell future councils to expect someone, and to give him an aleph when they found him.”

  “How would they know who to give it to?” Pizlo’s voice had grown quiet and dry, like a storyteller building tension.

  “She wrote that there would be one who had gone out and come back, and who though of the present would look into the past. The council took that to mean leaving Barsk and returning, and being a Speaker.”

  “But that’s still only two!”

  “Yep, and here’s the weird part. The Matriarch told them that those were the first and second reasons to bestow the aleph, and that the third reason was finding the person she wrote about. Kind of circular, but there you have it.”

  “So it really was a vision? Not just a letter she wrote and mailed into the future.”

  Jorl smiled. The life and times of the Matriarch had been the focus of his study back at university and occupied much of his professional life. “Technically, though it’s not viewed as one of her more serious or bigger prophecies.” He paused, his thoughts returning to his conversation with Arlo from days earlier.

  “So, she knew things. Things other people didn’t know. Did she write them all down, or did she keep some just to herself?”

  “She wrote some of them down. She wrote a whole book about the visions that came to her when she had her seizures, and notes about what she thought each of them meant,” said Jorl. “But was it everything she saw? How would we know? Maybe she kept some to herself.”

  “Can you ask her? You know, cuz you’re a Speaker and all. Maybe she’s got other stuff she wants to talk about now that she’s dead and all.”

  “That would be something, wouldn’t it? To actually sit down and have a chat with the Matriarch? But I can’t do that. No one can. It’s against the rules for a Speaker to summon anyone who was ever a Speaker.”

  Pizlo scowled again. “That’s stupid. Who gave you that kind of rule?”

  “Ah, well, that would be the Matriarch again. Maybe that’s why she wrote down her visions, because she knew no one would be able
to talk to her about them.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I should write down the stuff that I know. Just in case I ever become a Speaker, too. It could happen. Yeah, I’m going to do that. I’m going to start right now!”

  With no further warning, Pizlo jumped up and pulled himself through a gap in the railing. He grabbed an underside support, balanced for an instant, and then dropped. Jorl rushed to his feet and leaned out, looking for the boy. He caught a glimpse of him, already far below, crashing through the leaves and branches at the bottom of the bowl, making his own paths, heedless of the damage he did to either his surroundings or himself.

  SIX

  ORDERS AND CHOICES

  UNLIKE most officers in the Patrol, Krasnoi had achieved his rank through merit rather than favoritism, nepotism, or outright commerce. If he had acquired a reputation for following his superiors’ orders without question—which he knew some saw as evidence of a lack of initiative—he was also known for efficiency that his detractors described as frugality. Neither evaluation bothered him. The Urs-major saw himself as having a job to do and the responsibility to do it well. Everything else became secondary.

  Which is not to say that he didn’t find some of the actions required by his assignments distasteful.

  When Bish, a high-ranking senator, had informed him that he would establish a base on Barsk’s uninhabited south polar continent, he had done so. As support personnel poured in, so, too, did documentation, including an annotated version of the Fant’s cherished Compact. The Alliance spanned thousands of worlds, each with vast histories of treaties and documents, and as a rule Krasnoi left knowledge and facility of them to the politicians. But in situations where he expected to spend extended time on a planet, he took the time to brief himself on local policies and regulations.

  He’d had a brief moment of conscience, wondering if his superiors had sent him unlawfully, and having ignorantly followed such orders if anything could be accomplished by crying foul now. But no, distasteful as it might be, that path offered no gain and only led to waste. It would not erase the illegal trespass, nor accomplish any good. Better to complete the mission with efficiency and move on. Having reached a decision, Krasnoi had put the matter out of his mind.