“What are you saying?”
“The Alliance is dependent upon your world for a great many drugs besides koph. But if most of them vanished tomorrow, we’d all manage. It might prove difficult, but also bearable. There are other materials manufactured on other planets that could serve. And we did just fine prior to the discovery of koph; back before we gave Barsk to the Fant. Losing the advantages of Speaking would be unfortunate, but not a true hardship in the grand scheme of things. Certainly it would be superior to some of the scenarios my precognitivists have envisioned. Are you following what I’m saying, Jorl?”
He nodded, his trunk falling to his lap, arms limp at his sides. “You’re prepared to give up koph.”
“Not simply give it up, that would never do. For example, blockading your planet would just make the stuff more valuable to radical elements, create a black market, invite offworld smugglers with no regard for your Compact. No, I’m talking about ending its production entirely.”
“You want the Fant to pledge to stop making it? Even for our own use?”
“If it’s being made, then the enhanced version my team has foreseen would likely still come to pass, and never mind the absurdity of expecting me to trust any member of your race with such a promise.”
“Then—”
“I’m talking about ending your world, Jorl. Destroying every one of your island forests where the drug is grown and refined. I’m talking about taking the life of every person on Barsk to ensure that not so much as a single pellet of koph ever rises up to this station again.”
The Otter gasped even as Jorl trumpeted his disbelief. “That’s impossible! No matter how strong your bigotry toward Eleph and Lox, the senate would never sanction the extermination of an entire race!”
“Quite correct. But I haven’t shared the insights of my precognitivists with them, and I don’t have the time to do so now, let alone try to convince them of the seriousness before us. Fortunately, I don’t have to. You’ve served in the Patrol. How many vessels do you imagine I would need to raze your archipelagos? I’m a senior senator, Jorl, do you have any idea how many ship captains I’ve gathered to my side? Even if I sent them illegal orders, they’d only take the time to contact me personally for confirmation. Then they’d carry them out, on my say so. I have only to give the word.”
“But you haven’t done that.”
“No, I haven’t. Not yet. But understand, this is a zero-sum game. There can be only a single winner here, and if it’s not to be the Alliance, then I will ensure there is no game at all, even if I have to overturn the game board and smash every piece. I share your grief over the Urs-major’s slaughter of your people. Such a thing should be unthinkable. Learn from it. Understand that in our current situation, the wrong outcome would mean the end of your entire race. I know you don’t want that, no sane individual could, so I’m inviting you to embrace the alternative. Accept the larger compromise and help the Alliance to win.”
Jorl hesitated. Nothing could justify Krasnoi’s crime, but was it possible to retrieve some good from it? “How am I supposed to do that?”
“Your dead friend, Arlo, is the key. That much is abundantly clear. And here you are, his best friend, and a Speaker, too. Summon him. Explain the reality of the situation to him. I have a fully equipped lab aboard my ship and this station’s warehouses have every possible substance Barsk has to offer available at your request. Persuade your friend to give me the new drug that has all my precognitivists in such a panic, and perhaps we can avoid the need to destroy your world and your people.”
“You don’t understand. Arlo’s a pragmatist, always was. He killed himself to prevent his secret from getting out. He won’t necessarily believe or be swayed by abstract threats.”
“Then offer him a real one,” said Bish, and the grandfatherly façade fell away. “I have his son. And while you say the boy does not feel pain, I’m sure that Druz is so intrigued by your statement that she wants nothing more than to test it to the fullest extent of her abilities. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps she would be able to peel away his skin, break each and every one of his bones, wrench his tusks from his face, tear off his ears and trunk, cut out his eyes and tongue, and he’ll not feel any of it. But whether or not I allow her to test such a hypothesis rests with you and Arlo.”
The Bos’s speed leaping from rational explanation to deadly threat did not surprise Jorl. Outrageous as it was, it still paled alongside the searing memory of the Dying’s execution. He was nearly numb to Bish’s threats, and wished he could disconnect entirely. Was this a bluff? The Brady had struck him as compassionate, but then, too, she’d swiftly killed Krasnoi. Bluff or not, the ease with which the senator imagined each detail was more cruelty than Jorl could subject Arlo to. “I won’t summon him. I won’t ask him to make such a choice again.”
The Yak turned and reached out to the Otter, waving her to come and stand in front of him. “One way or another, he will have to choose. This woman is not just a telepath, but also a Speaker. She’s quite adept at combining the two skills to allow her to summon even those she’s never met. Whether he is instructed by her or by you, one way or another, Arlo will learn that if he does not give me what I want, I will destroy all of Barsk, but not until after I have his son tortured to death.”
To Jorl’s surprise, the Lutr Speaker scowled. Bish regarded her.
“You have an opinion to express? You think anything in your silly, pleasure-seeking head has any bearing on these events? The needs of the citizens of the Alliance will not be defeated by the members of a lesser race, nor the confused emotionality of a foolish girl who has forgotten that she is a resource now and no longer a person.”
Her scowl deepened, and a moment later was replaced by a look of surprise. A hum rippled from the senator’s robes, too faint for anyone but Jorl to hear. The Yak looked down upon the Otter and sneered.
“Stupid. I am a ranking member of the senate; I’ve assembled the most powerful team of precognitivists and specialized talents in history. Do you imagine I would share breath with a telepathic resource and not have myself protected? I won’t punish the attempt. Truly, I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t tried. Taste the futility of your actions and focus on being useful. Tend to the Fant. If he won’t Speak to his dead friend then pull what you need from his mind so you can. That new drug unlocks everything, and I will have that key!”
Jorl rose from the bunk, hand and trunk both reaching out, but the senator had already turned. A handful of strides took him out the door. He vanished into the corridor leaving the Fant alone with the Otter. He couldn’t tell which of them was more stunned.
“What will you do, Jorl ben Tral?”
“Do?”
“Will you Speak once more with your friend?”
“No. He made his choice. I’ve asked him to explain his reasons more than a few times. Whatever he discovered he’s adamant that the secret end with him. So, what now? Is that why you talked with me at the polar camp? Will you pull details about Arlo from my mind? Try to summon him yourself?”
Lirlowil took a seat on the sleeping platform. She reached up and slipped one hand around the back of Jorl’s ear and pulled him down. The familiarity of the gesture surprised him so much he didn’t resist and sat beside her.
“He’s already refused me.”
“You Spoke to him?”
“I did. Of my own accord, earlier today, and not at the senator’s behest. I only just met that pathetic excuse for a public servant. He reminds me of the head of the delegation that came to Barsk to negotiate the last details of the Compact. A slippery, two-faced Aplodon who could chew rancid butterleaf and still breathe sweetness in your face with his words. Bish would doubtless have embraced him as a brother.”
“The Compact? You’re—”
“Yes, and you’re welcome. No need to thank me.”
“How are you here? How are you wearing the body of a Lutr telepath? Why doesn’t the senator know? And why by every tree in t
he world would I thank you?”
“Don’t whine like a petulant child, Jorl. You owe me for the course your life has taken, for the aleph I had placed upon your brow.”
Indignation rose and he barely restrained himself from lashing out at her with his trunk. He jumped up instead and glared down at her, trumpeting in frustration.
“You’ve manipulated my entire life like a piece in some game, all so you could get to Arlo!”
“In part, that’s true. I never knew why I couldn’t see your friend’s part directly. It never occurred to me that others would be scrying our people’s future. The group that Bish has had looking stirred things up, blinding us all to the details. So yes, I set events in motion because what I was able to see revealed a round-about path that would bring me close to the goal. But it wasn’t enough. I could not persuade Arlo. I shared the threat of the destruction of our race with him, and he countered with an argument of a potentially greater horror.”
“What are you talking about now?”
The Matriarch inside the Otter shook her head. “It’s not mine to tell if he hasn’t shared it with you. You’re right, Jorl, I have used you like a piece in a game. But no more. We’ve passed the limit of my sight and the cruel truth is that I am blind to the endgame. But you heard Bish. If our people are to survive you must Speak with Arlo, get him to give up his secret.”
“Why? You already put the question to him. Nothing has changed.”
“You’re wrong. Everything has changed. The threatened destruction of a world and its people is vast and abstract. It’s far enough removed that a man like Arlo can cling to his beliefs. But the brutal murder of his own son hanging in the balance, that danger may yet save us all.”
Jorl shook his head, stomped halfway across the room feeling like the ghosts of the Dying rushed after him, looming, haunting his every decision. He turned back to her, seeing through the phantoms of his imagination as well as the false face Margda wore. “I can’t ask him to make that choice. It’s not right.”
“It’s not right for you to deny him the choice. But you won’t have to do it alone. I’ll come with you. Here, take this.”
She held out a hand. Resting on her upturned palm was a pellet of koph. He stared at her. Stared at the pellet. Once, he had been excited at learning he could perceive nefshons, to gain access to figures from history and interview them personally. When had it all become something else, something heavy and dark? His feet carried him back and he snatched the pellet from her hand with the nubs of his trunk, bringing it to his mouth and swallowing it all with the same gesture.
Jorl sat, closed his eyes, surrounding himself in darkness as he waited for his perceptions to open. His left ear tingled and he smelled spiralmint. The roiling gold that was his own nefshons appeared to him first, and he willed away his awareness of them. Rather than create the setting of his study where he usually met with Fant and others, he had a sudden urge to move the venue to a re-creation of the polar base, complete with smoldering ash pit. Instead he crafted a duplicate of the simple cabin that contained his physical form. The sleeping platform appeared with him seated upon it. A desk and bench took shape against an adjacent wall. Doors formed where they needed to be but wouldn’t open to anything. Satisfied with the setting, he leaned back and cast his awareness out, grasping for the familiar feel of his friend’s nefshons. He found them nearer than ever before. As he pulled them closer still, Jorl saw another figure also coalesce. An elderly Eleph, Margda, the first Speaker of all, sat next to him in the same position where in the real world the Lutr whose body she had somehow suborned also sat.
Before he could say a word to her, Arlo began to take form directly in front of them.
TWENTY-EIGHT
LEVELS OF DIFFERENCE
PIZLO’S eyes had stopped working right. Everything kept fading in and out of focus and had a shimmering nimbus to it. Also, his head wouldn’t stop pounding, like the drum he’d once made from a hollow log he’d found in the Shadow Dwell—which didn’t make sense because no one was beating on it, were they? His stomach felt funny, not like when he hadn’t eaten in too long, worse than that.
He remembered falling, startled off his perch in the closet when that tall man with the horns and musical voice had said Arlo’s name. Had he hit his head? Somehow he was back in the corridor, floating down the length of it, the lights in the ceiling turning on and welcoming him as he passed.
A raspy voice breathed on his ears from above. “Do not squirm, Little Prince. You might make me drop you, and I’ve no wish to see you injure yourself any further.”
He craned his head around and saw a sleek furred face over him, part of a rounded head that vanished into layers of dark cloth.
“Prince? Are you talking to me?”
The face smiled. Words followed. “Do you see anyone else for me to talk to?”
Pizlo swung his head around the other way. Despite his vision problems, he scanned up and down the corridor before realizing the woman hadn’t expected him to answer. It was one of those kinds of questions.
“Sorry. Nobody but Jorl and Tolta ever talk to me. And most new people who see me pretend they don’t.” Despite the earlier admonition, he squirmed a bit, and discovered he wasn’t floating down the corridor—and thus neither was the woman. Rather, she was carrying him in her arms like he was a parcel too big to pack in a bag or carry on your back, which he had to admit he was. The woman didn’t seem like she was going to say anything else, but before he could ask why she was carrying him she breathed out another question.
“If the Fant treat their children this way, it is a wonder any of you grow up to produce another generation.”
Pizlo shrugged, “It’s not all kids. Just me. They don’t like me cuz I’m so different.”
The woman carrying him laughed. “That’s why most people don’t like Fant.”
The corridor came to a tee, branching off with paths to either side and a gate different, but similar, to the ones he had seen before, with a tiny room with a second gate on the other side, and then more corridors. The Sloth moved with an increased confidence and Pizlo wondered if they were still on the station or had crossed over to some other place that made her feel more at home. She stopped at a set of double-doors, but unlike those he’d found at the observation room they did not open at a touch. Instead she shifted him around and raised a hand and made several passes just above the surface of the door. It made him smile, and he imagined her holding an inkstick and writing a request to go inside.
When the doors opened, Pizlo saw a very different space, one that had multiple work stations and desks like he’d seen in Arlo’s old lab, with screens and panels, armatures and lights. There was a smaller room made entirely of glass in one corner, with several work tables and stools and holographic images floating just inside the walls. Off in another corner of the main room lay a pair of beds, raised very high off the floor, with queer-looking diagnostic tools hanging down from above. The woman took her time but eventually brought him to one of these and laid him down. It was surprisingly soft and he yawned.
“None of that, Little Prince. I need to make sure that the bump to your head is the worst of it before you can sleep. Tell me about yourself. What’s your name?”
Now that she wasn’t carrying him, Pizlo could see that she wore robes of dark cloth that shone with bits of glass or crystal here and there. She glittered like her clothes had tens of eyes that watched him from within the folds.
“My name is Pizlo,” he said. “No one’s ever asked me that before. You’re the first person I’ve gotten to tell. What’s yours?”
“I am called Druz. Your people call mine Brady.” One hand moved to a nearby console and with the other she gingerly pressed his trunk down so it did not block her instruments. As Pizlo watched, his face appeared on a display above her console, several times larger than life. A flurry of thin lines in red and green raced across the screen. Some made circles around his eyes, while others turned into strings of gly
phs that he couldn’t read.
“Oh. You’re a Lox. I didn’t realize there were two kinds of Fant.”
“Sure. How many kinds of your people are there, Druz?”
“Two, actually, but we’re much more closely related than you and your kin. Ah, your pupils are fine, but according to my database your eyes shouldn’t be red like that.”
“That’s normal for me. I’m the only one on all of Keslo like this. I heard a man from Kelpry once who said it was the mark of evil.” He sniffled once and chewed his lip, then continued. “It … bothered that he was judging me like that, just on account of my eyes, and hadn’t even talked to me or gotten to know me at all.”
Druz continued adjusting the settings on her controls, letting her words drag out as she focused. “You are quite precocious, Little Prince, to be concerned about evaluations of morality at such a young age.”
“I’m six,” he said, his tone making it clear that he wasn’t that young.
She pushed away from the workstation and hovered over him again. “The concussion is minor, and there’s no reason to fear if you lose consciousness. You’ve dislocated your shoulder, and that’s an easy fix. I’d like to treat your hands, but I need to proceed carefully. Your friend, the other Fant, mentioned you had unusual physiology, and I’m seeing that. I need to run some tests. Can you lie here quietly while I work? Maybe you’ll even go to sleep.”
“I guess. I have a lot of stuff to sort through and I haven’t had a chance to do any of that yet.”
“Oh? What sort of stuff?”
“Things Telko told me earlier today.”
Barsk Page 22