Barsk

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  “And do any of the Fant here self-identify as pharmers?”

  “That’s the second thing. No, not a one. None of them have any information of use to you. You’ve completely wasted your time. This entire operation, abducting the Dying because no one would miss them, has earned you absolutely nothing.”

  Had she pushed too far? She saw the anger in his mind before it bloomed on his face. But no, he was first and foremost a pragmatist. A salutatory trait among the Urs, and one Margda had herself cultivated.

  “And what, then, was your third insight?”

  “Your accidental acquisition, the younger Fant with the silly mark on his head? He has a friend who is a pharmer.”

  “How does that help me? I abducted him, not his friend.”

  “You couldn’t have abducted his friend. He’s dead.”

  “Then what is your point? We have nothing!”

  Margda allowed her body to smile, her satisfaction finding a waiting analog in the muscles of Lirlowil’s face, producing the kind of grin that threatened to push the Bear too far.

  “Have you forgotten the other reason you chose me, Major? I can talk to the dead.”

  “Then why haven’t you done so, Woman? Enough of your games!”

  “Learning these facts for you has left me physically and mentally exhausted. But more to the point, I don’t have any koph here. The supply you provided for my work is back on the station. Without it, I’m no more a Speaker than you are.”

  The brightness of success that shone through the Bear’s mind shattered her fragile connection and Margda didn’t bother to establish another one. Things were moving along as she needed them.

  Krasnoi nodded to the Ailuros who had been studiously ignoring the conversation. “Escort our talented Speaker back through the base. Acquire whatever you need to re-equip your shuttle and return her to her rooms on the station with best speed. The fruition of all our efforts is close at hand.”

  “Yes, Urs-Major.”

  “Lirlowil, I fault myself for not thinking to use you as you have done today. Your timing is inspired, though. I’ve received a transmission from the chair of the Senate’s Committee of Information. He intends to review our progress himself. Take what rest you require on the trip back to the station. Once you have your koph, get to work and acquire the information I need. Failing the senator is not an option. Do you understand me?”

  Margda let her smile dim as the Bear reasserted his power, or thought he did. His beliefs didn’t matter to her, but it did not harm her to allow him the delusion.

  “Of course, Urs-Major.” She cocked her head to the side and arched a brow to get her escort’s attention. “Take me to the shuttle, if you please.”

  * * *

  SHE’D lied, of course. What need had she of koph to summon? She was a nefshon construct herself, one that included the ability to perceive the subatomic particles of personality. She might need Lirlowil’s telepathic ability to exist, but while she did she could Speak whether her host was worn out or not, draining her resources right up to the point where the Lutr’s physiological systems began to collapse in a cascade of organ failure. Though bone weary, she was still a long way from that!

  Over the course of the long day, her remaining Ailuros had transformed from oppressive to intrusive to respectful. Following the Bear major’s obvious appreciation of her he had turned downright subservient. He’d settled her into the shuttle’s private lounge and shown her how to access an assortment of gourmet snacks, chilled juices, and obscure liqueurs, as well as an entertainment screen with thousands of recorded options to distract her from the monotony of ascending out of Barsk’s gravity well. Margda had thanked him curtly, assured him she wanted nothing more than to sleep, and made it clear she was not to be disturbed until they’d arrived back at the station.

  She ate a quick meal and hydrated, less interested in taste than in refueling the body she’d been abusing, and settled comfortably onto the lounge’s main acceleration couch. Then she closed the Lutr’s eyes, and brought forth the memory of having just taken koph. For the first time in her experience, she failed to see the golden cloth of her own particles still connected to one another and clinging stubbornly to her body. The confusion passed into amusement. The body that had produced all her nefshons had returned to dust long ago, further proof that she had died.

  The construct she’d made for herself was her body as she’d last appeared before sailing away, not the fragile, furry thing of twig-like bones and minimal flesh that she’d suborned to house her. With long practice and firm memory she applied her attention to invoking a space to work. Her home in the Civilized Wood of Yargo opened all around her and she felt the familiar ache in her left knee as she lumbered from her visitors’ parlor to her kitchen. She opened a cupboard and smiled as she caused a box of Lirlowil’s preferred tea to appear, with a blister-pack of koph pellets alongside it. She went through the motions of heating water, adding the koph, and steeping the tea. She didn’t need it, but the ritual grounded her and she wanted every advantage for what came next. The fragrance of spiralmint filled the room of her imagination.

  Margda moved back to her parlor and settled into a hammock seat by the window, glancing out at the still city she alone inhabited. She sipped her tea, closed her eyes, and sipped again. Her discovery of nefshons had come to her during a vision, the first of many that started when her body began rejecting her seizure medication. She’d understood the power implicit in transcending death, and seen a need to reserve some aspects of it for her own use, to ensure certain futures and prevent others. The three laws of the Speaker’s Edict had covered most of that. Lirlowil had broken the first law, as Margda had foreseen, making it possible for what she planned now, the violation of the second law: summoning the living.

  She set her cup of tea on the floor and leaned back, letting the strands of the hammock support and gently rock her. She reached out, calling the nefshons to her and immediately discovered her influence weaker than it had been in life. She was a cheat, and it cost her, made her control more precarious. Dwelling on the possibility of failure would only summon failure, an ironic outcome instead of the summoning she wanted. She banished the possibility from her mind and focused on her impressions of the one she wanted. Jorl ben Tral. The flavor of him. Young and naive, adventurous and foolish. She had recognized him the instant she met him. In life and flesh he was just as she’d envisioned him centuries before. But he was only a means to an end. It was the other whom she needed. A name, a face, a life that had never come to her in visions, only the knowledge that his closest companion would stupidly leave Barsk, crossing the emptiness of space instead of being at his friend’s side when he chose to die.

  In her mind, nested in the mind of another, she conceived a golden string of her desire. Plucking it sounded the music of Jorl’s life, vibrating all the way back to him in the living world where its far end anchored in the golden cloth of his living nefshons. Whatever he was doing back at the polar base, he would have just felt her touch on his soul. It all but guaranteed his full attention. She gripped the string tightly with her trunk and both hands and yanked, willing some portions of his nefshons to flow along the string to her. His construct formed as easily as any dead conversant’s would. He took form before her, shattering the second law of the edict as her vision from long ago had promised. The future she’d foreseen so many centuries ago opened before her.

  TWENTY-ONE

  CONTACT

  BETWEEN one chew and a swallow, Jorl twitched, as an itch ran all the way up his spine and radiated out through the pores of his skin. It resolved into a sensation like being watched; it came from all around.

  He lifted his head and fanned his ears once, spat out the half-eaten vegetable cluster, and the yard fell away. With no sense of transition the snowy ground beneath him had become a wooden floor. His next breath did not create a visible puff in front of his face, and he inhaled air that was warm and moist and smelled of growing things. No barracks w
all lay behind him, but rather the comforting intimacy of a parlor in some home of some island’s Civilized Wood. In front of him, seated in a frayed hammock, an old woman swayed and studied him.

  He returned the favor. She had a familiar look, not as some once-met aunt of a distant friend, but rather in a way that suggested secondhand experience, not direct knowledge. He’d never seen a more ancient Eleph before, even among the Dying Fant, and the myriad wrinkles around her eyes showed someone who had spent years laughing as well as years in pain. On her forehead the mark of an aleph, dim and faded, exuded a faint glow.

  Impossible as a dream, he recognized her. He was sitting across from Margda, the Matriarch of Barsk, discoverer of nefshons, architect of the Compact, creator of the aleph. He had finally lost his mind.

  “Close your mouth, Jorl, you look like an oaf with it hanging like that.”

  He blinked and, as an afterthought, closed his mouth. Somehow, he had expected a more polite apparition. He had never heard of anyone experiencing belligerent insanity. He blinked again and faintly, if he concentrated, he could still see the yard and the other abducted Fant, like translucent afterimages. Was the real world available to his other senses? He tried to listen for the sound of shuffling feet on packed snow, but the Matriarch’s words drowned out the attempt.

  “So, you are the end result of my life’s plan. You are the consequence of my visions and predictions. You owe me for the aleph on your head, Child, and I’ve come to collect on that debt.”

  He stared into her eyes, dark and cold and demanding his full attention. The dim image of the other reality faded away.

  “Um, your pardon, Matriarch. This is certainly an interesting bit of delusion my mind has conjured, and I would love to play along, I assure you, but even if I actually felt I owed you anything, it would be quite the trick to repay you. You’re dead.”

  Jorl rose from the floor, finding his feet and moving about the room. It felt good to be warm again. The Matriarch remained in her hammock, sitting, regarding him.

  “Delusion? Child, you disappoint me. I had hoped for more insight from you, depended on it in fact. Did your time away from this world fail to open your eyes? Fine. So be it. The traditional methods are tradition because they work. In this instance, they require only minor alteration. Attend!”

  She released a deep sigh, closing her eyes for a moment as if remembering or composing what she wanted to say. She began speaking again before opening them. “You are Jorl ben Tral, historian, Speaker, and most recently, captive. Your time in life has not yet ended; you are now as you are in life, in this, a world of my own making. I bid you welcome. Understand?”

  He froze. The words differed in some particulars, but he knew the rest well enough. He knew their cadence and he knew their context, and the impossibility of them filled him with confusion. Margda had used the ritual of establishing; he’d done it himself often enough, grounding a newly summoned conversant. Was she implying that she had summoned him? But only the dead could be summoned, and only those who were not Speakers could be summoned. And in any case, certainly not by a Speaker who herself had died centuries ago.

  “I can see you have questions, but I don’t have the luxury of time to answer them for you. Accept what you see as true. I am Margda, you know me. And yes, I am Speaking to you, despite my being dead, despite you being alive, and despite your own status as a Speaker. I made the rules of the Speaker’s Edict specifically so I could come back and break them. I saw it in a vision, without the rules the future I sought wasn’t possible. I made them only to ensure that I could do what I saw needed to be done. I’m sneaky that way.”

  Jorl walked back to her, unsure how to respond. He stopped in front of the hammock that raised her to standing height. He met her gaze and the words came.

  “How can you break any rules? You’re dead!”

  She glared back at him, her ears rippling with the Eleph idiom of irritation that spoke more eloquently than speech. Her eyes narrowed with obvious disgust.

  “Don’t be an imbecile. You and I both know that death is hardly an impediment. I was summoned myself, days ago, by a young Speaker who also possessed a telepathic talent. A nefshon construct has the knowledge and experience its source possessed in life, and mine includes Speaking. That’s the danger in summoning any of our kind; such a conversant can still Speak.”

  Jorl nodded, following the logic and obviousness of it. No Speaker had ever realized it because even considering the idea had been forbidden. By Margda.

  “But … the nefshons of the living can’t be summoned—”

  “Of course they can. You see the bundle of your own nefshons every time the koph takes hold. Summoning the living just takes more effort, wrenching the particles from the nefshon fabric of the conversant’s life.”

  He gestured around him, “And the rest of this?”

  “You’re the historian. This was my home, gone now but vivid to me as I saw it only days ago.”

  “What happened days ago?”

  “In my timeline? That’s when I sailed away.”

  “So … other than the fact you’ve broken the first two rules of the Edict in Speaking to me, everything else about this summoning works like any other? And from your point of view, you’re at the far end of your life, but still alive.”

  Margda’s eyes remained locked on his, and Jorl couldn’t look away.

  “Good. You’re working it out. That should save us some time. Yes, I was summoned by another Speaker, one who tossed aside the first rule of my Edict. And, as a result, I in turn summoned you. Long ago, shortly after I stumbled upon the ability to manipulate nefshons, I had a vision of a young pharmer discovering a new drug, one with the potential to keep Barsk safe for centuries, or to completely overturn the balance the Compact had achieved with the Alliance. In my vision, the pharmer had a similar intuition and chose to end his own life rather than risk anyone else gaining knowledge of his creation.”

  “How could one drug be responsible for so much?”

  “Since my time, koph has allowed some sapients to Speak. Because the drug is plentiful at home, a diluted portion is part of annual celebrations that even children partake in. An immunity to the toxic effects builds up, and as a consequence Fant are orders of magnitude more likely to be discovered to be Speakers than all the other races combined. At the time of the Compact, this made the Alliance uncomfortable, and their attitude has only worsened since.”

  “And the new drug? How does that change anything?”

  “It changes everything! I believe he uncovered a koph agonist. Imagine a Speaker’s power to reveal information that vanished with the death of its keeper, expanding more than a thousandfold for the duration of a summoning. Every important person’s private indiscretion could be dug out from whatever pit it had been buried in. Industrial secrets would be discovered and stolen. Familial offenses that died with their principles would endure for endless generations. The potential blackmail and extortion would lead to draconian measures that would rewrite society at every level.”

  Jorl gasped, the pieces falling into place. Margda continued to talk.

  “The Bear major and the people he works for are desperate to learn how to refine koph for themselves, presumably to establish some parity by increasing the population of their own Speakers. They’re bumbling fools, the lot of them, and they’ll fail at their task. The methodology and their strategy make no sense. They haven’t yet even deduced that it’s derived from taww sap. Somehow they’ve gone off on a misperception that it’s distillation from a type of leaf though they’ve no clue which one in the entire forest it might be.”

  “That’s why they’ve abducted the Dying?”

  “Perhaps. Not everything is clear to me. I foresaw the new drug, but not its discoverer. Instead, I glimpsed the Lox who eulogized him, his Second who would be a Speaker. That was you, Jorl, eight hundred years in your past I saw you. I knew I would return, and I needed you to be at hand when I did. I arranged for you to have
the aleph because our people need the secret your friend died to protect.”

  Jorl’s face fell into his upraised hands. Tears streamed from eyes he hadn’t known were crying. “That’s why Arlo died. To protect us all.”

  “Arlo?”

  Sniffling, Jorl nodded. “My best friend. The pharmer you foresaw. He killed himself but would never tell me why.”

  * * *

  TO her surprise, Jorl’s simple remark was like turning her face up to fresh rain. She’d been lightly probing him all through their conversation, turning over this memory and that. The organization of his past surged in a myriad ways as she wandered through it, uncountable nodes of ideas and concepts, each connecting hundreds of thousands of others with bridges of different weights and saliencies, organized by sound and color and meaning and experience. Most of them looped back upon themselves over and over, each time subtly different than its previous incarnation. Untold individuals existed in Jorl’s mind and memory, some still living, others now dead, whom he had known in life, as well as people he had met only after their own deaths. He held too many for her to ever find by happenstance the one she sought.

  Until he’d spoken a name and given her the key. Arlo. She pushed deeper into his mind, finding the node that defined all things bearing that name. A lifetime of detail so rich that even the weakest and stupidest of Speakers could have summoned him. But it meant nothing if she couldn’t hold on to it. In the midst of her probe, Margda felt her overtaxed telepathy fade away, taking the full sense of who and what Arlo was with it. Mere drabs remained, and even those threatened to slip away.

  “Yes, that’s the person I’ve been seeking. Thank you, Jorl.”

  Without ritual or patterns, invoking nothing of the conclusion from traditional summoning, she held up a hand with a single golden thread between thumb and finger. She let it fall, and their connection severed in that instant. She had what she’d come for.