Barsk

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  But it did make the southern continent the perfect place for a secret base.

  Nonyx-Captain Selishta hadn’t bothered to toss Jorl into a cell. Instead, he had followed her to the ship’s bridge, and then settled into a corner when she’d directed him to keep out of the way while she relieved the acting commander who saluted and departed back the way they had come. The Cheetah took the time to speak briefly with the remaining bridge officers. Selishta maintained a rigid discipline on her ship; none of her crew had so much as glanced his way.

  When she advanced on him in his corner, she moved with that same liquid gait, stopping just out of reach of arms or trunk.

  “I am thinking you might be an omen of changing fortune, Ensign-Retired. Certainly you have altered my belief in the tales that suggest all of you Fant are as dumb as rocks. None of the other Fant I’ve acquired on this mission could manage intelligent conversation, though perhaps that was a function of their age and their insistence on being dead.” Her lip curled up in a toothy smirk. “You’re not dead, are you, Ensign-Retired?”

  Jorl whipped his trunk up at a stiff angle, giving the captain a salute as only a Lox or Eleph could, a foolish display he’d used in the Patrol before he’d learned how much it antagonized his superiors. “Not dead, and more than alive enough to know when an officer is obeying illegal orders.”

  The Nonyx had flinched at his salute, but smiled at his reply, her whole mouth gaping wide to reveal small teeth and pairs of larger fangs above and below. “My exemption from your Compact is not illegal. The same senate that crafted it has the power to issue exceptions to it. So spare me further arguments about my presence or interference in your culture.”

  “Even dumb rocks know that a treaty cannot be altered so conveniently. Surely the same is true of Patrol captains.”

  She frowned, her nostrils wrinkling in a sudden whuff of air. “I find your novelty already wearing thin even as your presence thickens the air on my bridge.”

  She darted a hand behind her in a crisp gesture. A blue-clad Jaguar arrived at her side but the captain offered no acknowledgment and continued with Jorl. “Your amusement value notwithstanding, I do not see ship’s discipline served by allowing you to remain here, even for the short span of our return trip. But we have exchanged promises and I will not stain your record with imprisonment. Rismas!”

  The Jaguar responded with an instantaneous “Ma’am!”

  “May I introduce Theraonca-Ensign Rismas. He will escort you down to the secondary hold, taking you there the long way around so by the time you reach your destination, we will have reached ours. Others of my crew will have assembled the rest of our … cargo there. I’m sure you’ll fit right in.”

  The captain turned her head and with a nod caused the ensign to step closer to Jorl.

  “Rismas, while it would be splendid to assume that our guest will be civilized and do as bid, assumptions are not the basis of command. If he deviates or otherwise stalls your well-intentioned efforts to deliver him to the hold, you are authorized to subdue him with such ever means you believe will be most effective.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  She turned her attention back to the Fant. “I think that explains things well enough, don’t you? I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings. It would not surprise me if the Theraonca-ensign resents that you once held the same rank he possesses, so if you give him the slightest provocation, I have no doubt that he will carry out his directive with the utmost zeal. Are we clear?”

  “Where is this ship going? Where are you taking me?” asked Jorl.

  Selishta showed teeth again. “Who knew the Lox could be so comedic? You’ll have your answer when we arrive. I’m sure the officer waiting at our destination will take personal responsibility for you once you’re off my ship. But I believe we are done. The novel experience of chatting with a Lox-ensign-retired, is fleeting at best.”

  She pivoted to regard her ensign long enough to say, “Rismas, you have your orders,” and had crossed the bridge to speak with her other officers before the last word had left her lips.

  “You know,” said Rismas, “I’ve seen images and flims of Fant before, but you’re much uglier in person.”

  Jorl’s reply died in his mouth unspoken as a sensation he’d not had since childhood struck him without warning. A thrumming that resonated in his head, a child’s rhyming game long forgotten. Playing … Straying … Will you be betraying?

  “Did you hear that?”

  “What, can you hear the engines engage with those giant ears of yours?”

  “No, the rhyme … you didn’t feel it?”

  Rismas frowned, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Which is it, hear or feel? Either way, I didn’t. But we’re underway now. So get up. The corridor should be clear and it’s not a far walk down to the secondary hold. And like the captain said, if you give me any trouble it will be the last thing you do.”

  The Jaguar stepped back out of the reach of Jor’s trunk as he got to his feet. Jorl turned slowly, trying to get a better feel for the source, but without alarming Rismas in the process. He rubbed at a spot on his forehead just below his aleph and flexed as he hadn’t since he and Arlo had played Seek Me when they were boys. Free … Free … Tree and me … Free …

  Almost instantly, a response came back. Treeing … Seeing … Will you be agreeing? The phrase every child on Barsk experienced when welcomed into a game. He glanced around at the bridge crew. In addition to the Nonyx-captain and the Theraonca assigned to keep watch on him, he noted an Apolodon-lieutenant sitting at the main navigation board and a pair of Geoms running the secondary and tertiary boards. All seemed oblivious to the infrasonic rhymes, something to be felt rather than heard.

  “This way. Now.”

  Jorl complied, walking calmly, hands open and at his sides. He kept his trunk down and close to his body so that Rismas, walking a step behind and to the right, wouldn’t see it. His remarks hadn’t surprised Jorl, he’d heard it often enough while in the Patrol, usually in response to his trunk or lack of fur, or sometimes both. The instructions were simple enough and he had no doubt about the ensign’s response if he provided any excuse.

  Contrary to his assurances, it seemed that they actually walked quite a ways, passing an interminable number of closed doors on either side, each bearing a numbered control pad. His feet already ached from pounding on the unforgiving and lifeless flooring with every step. Through it all, the rhyming thrum continued around him, echoing in his skull, growing louder, more urgent. To The Tree … To The Tree … All Come Free … Calling all players to the home tree at the end of the day’s sport.

  “Stop.” The Jaguar issued the command as they came up alongside a double-wide doorframe.

  “I take it this is the secondary hold?”

  Rismas ignored the question and tapped at the pad alongside the door. “Captain said you were in the Patrol, so you know how this works. The hold has a standard, two-door airlock. Both sides are under full atmo, so there’ll be no delay. I open this side, you walk in and I close it behind you. Then the inner door parts and you enter the hold. Don’t linger; I can tell. The airlock has security measures and I’ll use them.”

  The door uncoupled with a familiar clunk and rolled open. Without a glance at the ensign, Jorl walked into the airlock, stopping a step shy of the far door. He managed not to flinch as the outer door sealed behind him. Regardless of the nature of Selishta’s cargo, it had to be better than the blind bigotry of the ship’s crew.

  He waited; the thrumming he’d first felt on the bridge throbbed at its strongest here. The inner door clunked, an identical sound as before, and rolled back revealing a scene of unspeakable horror. Facing him from inside the hold had to be twenty, maybe thirty, Eleph and Lox, not simply elderly, but Dying. He saw it at once, something in the eyes that he’d last seen in his father the morning he’d sailed away. As surely all of these had sailed, and never reached their goal. The Nonyx-captain had collected them, just as she’d inte
rcepted Jorl bound for the same destination.

  He stepped from the airlock into the hold and the thrumming fell away.

  One of the Eleph made a gesture with his trunk that was both dismissive and disbelieving. “Oh. You’re not what we expected. Not what we expected at all.” He paused. His mouth worked like he was chewing bitter grass, then he offered his hand. “My name is Rüsul.”

  Jorl fanned his ears and introduced himself. He took the oldster’s hand, grasped it firmly but let it go quicker than might have been polite. His heart raced. He gazed upon a cargo hold full of the Dying, men and women pulled out of time. He’d been in space. He’d Spoken to the dead. Others might find such things bizarre or inconceivable, but he had not flinched at them. But this, the wrongness of it was like knots in his trunk. He’d never felt so clammy.

  He crossed the few steps that separated him from the others, Rüsul’s words reflected on their faces. “Not what we expected at all.” Part of him recoiled from so much as breathing the same air. Their very presence was unthinkable. And yet … they were not to blame. He had to hold it together, help them somehow. And who better? Perhaps accepting the presence of Arlo’s son into his life, teaching a boy whom society insisted was a pariah, maybe that and not the aleph was the reason he was here.

  Beyond the end of their years, they had reached out to him with the voices of children. He had to speak to them now as adults, if for no other reason than to show them that he could.

  “I know you,” he said. “Margda knew you, knew of you, centuries ago. You’re the source of the Silence.”

  “Don’t talk to us,” said an elderly Lox. “It’s not right. You shouldn’t be speaking to any of us.”

  His shoulders dropped, his ears stilled their movement, and in a whisper that the cavernous hold made loud enough to hear, Jorl said, “You called to me. I’ve felt you calling to me almost since I came aboard.”

  “We thought you were one of us,” said the Eleph who had first voiced disappointment. “That you’d sailed off as the rest of us had. That your final journey had been interrupted.”

  “It was. Well, not my final journey, but I was bound for the last island same as the rest of you.”

  “But you’re not Dying?” asked Rüsul. “How could you know where to go?”

  “I didn’t, actually. I had some help. It’s, uh, complicated.”

  The Lox who’d wanted him quiet advanced upon the Eleph, her trunk swiping at him even as she shook a finger in his face. “Stop talking to him. It only makes him talk back. He shouldn’t even be looking at us. He’s alive and we’re done with all that. You know that. It’s how it should be. How it’s always been.”

  A slow rumble of murmurs, hoots, and trumpets swept through the Dying.

  Rüsul batted at the old woman’s trunk and stomped his feet in place. “None of this is like it’s always been. None of us should be together. None of us should be in this place. The Cheetah and her Dogs plucked each of us from the ocean, and nothing of tradition fits now.”

  “He’s right,” said Jorl. “This is what the Matriarch foresaw. This is part of what she called the Silence.”

  “I read the prophecies,” said a new voice, another female Lox, even older than the first who’d spoken. “Back when I was in school. I remember them. And you have an aleph. Are you then the ‘newest Aleph’? Is that why you’re here?”

  “I think maybe I am. Like the Matriarch, I’m a Speaker. I set out to reach the last island, hoping to solve the riddle of the Silence. I never imagined it would bring me here, or that I’d be talking to all of you.”

  “You shouldn’t be. I don’t care what that one says, it’s unnatural and wrong.”

  “You all need to stop talking and pay attention,” said an amplified voice, thundering through the hold. All the Fant turned toward it. Some gasped, others flinched, but all reacted to the sight of a Bear standing on a tiny balcony above a gate in the far wall. “Use those miserable ears you’re all so proud of and hear me well; I won’t be repeating myself. I am Urs-Major Krasnoi, and I command the internment facilities which are your new home. In a moment, the external gate of this hold will open. When it does, you are to exit in an orderly line. My staff will process you and see you settled. There’ll be a meal waiting for you in the yard. Likewise, barracks and a bed for each of you. Eat well, sleep well. Tomorrow we will begin the interrogations and learn if any of you are of use to me.”

  Chaos erupted from the Dying Fant in the form of stomping and trumpeting with no sign of stopping. Some few began to shout their confusion.

  “Interrogations?”

  “The Compact!”

  “Internment?”

  “Don’t talk to us!”

  The major shifted, rearing back and raising one hand high and behind his head. In the next moment the hand leapt forward as he hurtled a tiny ball with the fury of an accomplished athlete. It struck one of the hollering Dying squarely in her forehead, bounced halfway back toward the balcony, and fell among the crowd. The target Fant’s voice cut off and she crumpled to the floor. Everyone else fell silent, though a pair of Fant nearest Krasnoi’s target helped her to stand and nodded to the others around that she was all right.

  “I told you to stop talking and pay attention. I don’t care about your Compact or your customs. You’re here because I’ve gleaned from studying your culture that none of you will be missed. You can all get back to killing yourselves after I have what I need.”

  Jorl pushed his way through throng of subdued Dying until he stood directly below Krasnoi. “Which is what? What do you want to know?”

  “Koph,” said the Bear. “When we know about koph, we’ll know what comes next.”

  SIXTEEN

  UNEXAMINED CORNERS

  PIZLO had always moved about freely, whether along the boardways used by other Fant in the Civilized Wood, or more commonly crashing his way through the surrounding foliage. He clambered branch to branch and tree to tree, swung by vines, or simply dropped from one perch to another. Arlo and Tolta had ignored custom and morality by acknowledging him as their true child, but that hadn’t been enough to make him a part of the mainstream. He lived wild and free, sleeping when he felt the need in shelters he built for himself, or more rarely in the room Tolta maintained for him. He ate when he remembered to, grazing on the fruit, nuts, seeds, and leaves growing plentifully throughout the forest, or stocking up on cooked victuals when taking lessons from Jorl or visiting Tolta. In his six years, he had explored every bit of space on the island of Keslo, from the highest point of the canopy to the wet darkness of the Shadow Dwell. Keslo was his home, but much as Jorl had, Pizlo knew he had to leave. He didn’t need to go out, not into space and beyond like his mentor, but he would be going up. And he couldn’t do that from Keslo.

  The question of how to travel to a neighboring island had never come up before. In his own way, and all unknowing, he’d been bound by the same cultural restrictions that kept the Fant of his home from interacting with him. The Mistakes of Nature almost never lasted through infancy. Those few that had, did not survive to adulthood, and so the need to wander from home had never occurred among his kind. Abominations always belonged to their neighborhoods, abandoned in the public meeting space soon after birth and reared grudgingly and at arm’s length by committee, without any warmth or love. It was no more possible for one to board a boat or raft and cross the water to visit another island than it was for a Fant to fly. And yet, every child of Barsk had heard the story of Pholo, however apocryphal it might be. Whether real or simply metaphorical, a Fant had flown. Pizlo couldn’t fly, but Pholo’s story offered precedent enough for him to defy both custom and propriety. He set out for Zlorka, two islands’ distance north of Keslo.

  The main university in the western archipelago had been built on Zlorka, and to hear Jorl speak of it, it was the most cosmopolitan spot on the planet. Its northern edge touched the equator, and a harbor there housed the anchoring end of the planet’s sole space elevator.
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  Pizlo’s mesh bags made it difficult to travel by a direct route, so he walked and ran by turns along the vast maze of boardways that snaked through the Civilized Wood until he reached a balcony on its northern most point. From there he hugged his bags tightly to his body and hurtled into trees. With the ease of endless practice he began to climb down and drop. Even so, he descended much more slowly than his normal pell-mell method, exercising more care so his supplies didn’t snag on anything along the way. The extra time allowed him the luxury of grabbing handfuls of tasty leaves and nuts as he traveled, stuffing his mouth and filling his daypouch for later. By late afternoon he stood upon a narrow beach, little more than a strip of sand and gravel that marked the space between the ocean and the beginning of the forest. A light rain fell, but the wind whipped nearly sidewise. He felt the impacts like a myriad of tiny stones striking him without pause, but as ever Pizlo took no pain from any of it.

  He sat on the sand and unpacked all of his “purchases,” setting aside the emergency item—a self-inflating survival boat—and redistributing the rest into his bags and daypouch. He spent a while working out how to activate his prize, but soon enough he had it open and with a twist of a knob it expanded into a shallow disk of bright yellow fabric. Pizlo piled his bags into the craft and dragged it the few steps to the water’s edge. The tide lapped at his feet, beckoning, but he paused and did not enter the boat.

  “I’m going now,” he said, turning back to the forest, but actually addressing the entire island. Pizlo cocked his head, waiting for something that never arrived, and then shrugged. He glanced up at the clouded sky, shielding his sensitive eyes from the rain, and repeated, “I’m leaving, Keslo. This is new. It feels bad, but I’m doing it anyway. Just so you know.”