“Yes, sir, I suspect that’s it. And he’s had a rough day of it. But I think he’s over his shock, aren’t you, Pizlo?”
He stared into Druz’s round face, and relief washed over him. She and the Yak were talking, like they were both ordinary people. How could that be, unless … the galaxy was still whole and the man hadn’t become an abomination yet!
“Yes. I … sorry. I was remembering something scary. I thought it had already happened, but I was wrong. It’s okay.”
She gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “That’s my brave prince. Now let me introduce you more properly. This is Senator Bish, chair of the Alliance’s Committee of Information.”
Druz stood up, and a moment later Senator Bish came closer until he loomed above Pizlo. Despite his odd appearance, he looked friendly and wise. Pizlo took a deep breath and released his grip on the Sloth’s sleeve. Was this someone else who was going to actually talk to him? He was afraid to get his hopes up, especially if Telko’s warning would come to pass too soon.
“Hello.”
Bish didn’t answer him, glancing to the Brady instead. “So, according to your reports, this little fellow is a precog?”
“His stature is the only thing small about him, sir. His cortical readings are easily a match for the most skilled among the committee’s precognitivists. As he matures, and with proper training, I would expect his abilities to increase beyond the range we currently measure.”
The senator smiled down at him, his expression not unlike the look Tolta sometimes wore when he showed her the newest acquisitions in his bug collection.
“Is that true, young man? Do you see things that the people around you don’t see?”
Pizlo frowned and shook his head. “No, sir. My eyes … they’re not very good. But I hear things that others don’t. I talk to things that they can’t.”
“Really? Why don’t we sit and you can tell me about that. Would you like some cocoa?” The senator gestured to Druz, who slipped away to fetch a tray from a counter. The Fant crossed over to the couch. Though his arm was working again, his hands still weren’t. He had to half-jump half-climb to haul himself up onto the high cushion. By the time he had settled in, the Sloth had placed a tall mug of vanilla cocoa in front of him on the table and the senator stood alongside him. Pizlo leaned forward and dipped the end of his trunk into the mug, filling it with cocoa and transferring it to his mouth.
“That’s a sight the Alliance has been spared for a great many years,” said Bish. With a bob of his head he pointed a horn at Druz. “Your attention is needed in the lab. Come back when you’ve resolved things there. I can entertain our young guest in the meantime.”
“Yes, sir. I will see you again soon, Little Prince.” Her clothing twinkling, his friend left the room.
“How is the cocoa?”
“Good. It’s better than Tolta’s.”
“Who is Tolta? Is that one of the things that speaks to you and not others?”
Pizlo laughed and nearly snorted cocoa. “No! Everyone talks to Tolta and she talks to them right back.”
“I see. Then who are the ones who only talk to you?”
“Lots of things. Like the trees and the water and the clouds. And every once in a while, I get to talk to a moon.” He remembered the circles he’d drawn and slapped his chest with one bandaged hand. “See?”
“You talk to moons?”
“Mostly I listen. They teach me things. Jorl does that, too, but that’s different, ’cause I can’t go to school.”
“Hmm, no, I imagine a precog would not be a good fit among other school children. Not even on Barsk.”
“What’s a precog?”
“Someone who can see pieces of the future. It’s a very special gift.”
“Wow. I wish I could do that.”
“Isn’t that what you do?”
Pizlo frowned. “Things just talk to me.”
The Yak laughed and raised his own mug, smiling as he sipped the cocoa.
“Do you know what a metaphor is, son?”
“Does it have grass?”
“No, it’s when you talk about one thing as if it were something else.”
“Oh. Metaphor.”
“Sometimes we tell ourselves metaphors, to help us comprehend parts of the world that don’t make sense to us. Do you understand?”
Pizlo shook his head, careful not to cause his trunk to spatter any stray drops of cocoa.
“How long have you heard things talking to you that others can’t hear?”
He shrugged. “Forever. At least, as long as I can remember.”
The Yak nodded and set his mug aside. “Druz tells me you have the ability of a powerful precognitivist. I’ve never seen even an inkling of that talent in anyone prior to adulthood. For one so young, I can imagine it being disorienting, even frightening. But your unconscious came up with a story to make sense of it. The voices you hear aren’t coming from the world around you, they’re the glimpses of the future your own mind has gleaned via your precognitive powers.”
Pizlo shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t want to offend the Yak, not when he’d only just found another person who would talk to him, but the Bos had it completely wrong. Pizlo didn’t understand about metaphors and powers, but he knew himself. All of Keslo spoke to him, every day he was there. They didn’t usually tell him big or important things about the future, just regular, everyday stuff. Sure, the moons taught him oceans of things, and sometimes that included pieces that hadn’t happened yet, but he’d only seen four moons in his whole life, and most of those had been in the current season.
It was only then that he realized with a pang that, except for when he’d seen Telko through that big window, nothing had spoken to him since he’d left Barsk. He’d blamed it on all the metal and plastic around him. Living things could talk, but not the dead walls that people had built to let them live here so high above the world. And yet, here in this dead place, he’d met two new people who talked to him! Was one thing the result of the other, or was it all just a coincidence?
The senator was looking at him like he expected some answer even though he hadn’t asked a question. Pizlo nodded once, and then looked back down at his mug and took another drink. It really was good cocoa.
“I’m sure Jorl has been an excellent teacher, but he has other demands on his time and the resources available on Barsk are somewhat limited. Let me tell you about some of the things you’ll experience when you visit Dawn with me and meet some of the other precognitivists who have come to help me to do the work of the Alliance—”
Senator Bish kept talking, but Pizlo paid him little attention. The man was so obviously wrong with all that stuff about metaphor. Besides, something in the Fant’s head had come loose and more and more of the finer details that Telko had shoved into him were falling into place. Stories and ideas that had just hung in Pizlo’s mind before now had an order and a timeliness to them. Things were speeding up and getting ready to happen, not just the thing that would change this nice old man into an abomination but other pieces, too. He understood the flow of them now, and knew that Jorl’s transformation was coming up fast.
Meanwhile the Yak kept on talking. Pizlo nodded and smiled and offered up the occasional polite agreement when the rhythm of the one-sided conversation seemed to demand it. At some point, his friend the Sloth had come back into the room. She replenished the supply of cocoa and kept refilling both his and the senator’s mugs. Pizlo continued listening to the Yak and kept drinking the cocoa until he thought he would burst or, worse, fall asleep. The old man sure liked to talk. It bothered Pizlo that he could so hunger for more people to talk to him only to have that need met by someone who had nothing to say. He took a deep breath and tried to clear his head, catching the end of some fragment about boat races and shaping the future for all the peoples of the Alliance.
He was about to ask the senator to go back and tell him again the part about the boat races when he felt something click into place. T
he next thing that his last moon had told him had just come to pass. He felt it in his bones, much like when he had known he had reached the equator. It sent a shiver through his body and he sat up and almost slid off the couch.
“Is something wrong, Son? You look troubled.”
“Oh! No, I’m fine it’s just … It’s happened. I knew it would, and it has. But knowing it will isn’t as good as knowing it has.” Pizlo looked up at the senator. “Have you ever felt like that?”
“What are you talking about? Have you had a vision? Druz, are your instruments calibrated to him yet?”
The Brady shrugged with embarrassment. “I believe so, yes. The resonance of it was several times anything I’ve recorded before. I didn’t mention it, as I thought the equipment acting up, but if he confirms—”
“Tell me what you saw, Son.”
“I saw Jorl.”
“Oh really? What about him?”
“Not him. Them.”
THIRTY-FIVE
THE FACE OF GOD
ITS … no, her, eyes darted side to side in obvious confusion. Jorl waited. He’d witnessed a wide range of reactions from first time conversants; disorientation was nothing new. It usually lasted only a few moments, to be followed by apprehension and ultimately fear. Tens of thousands of Speakers existed throughout the galaxy, and while the experience might not be as routine off Barsk as it was for Fant, everyone in the Alliance knew about summoning. But that knowledge only came to mind after the initial disorientation. And yet … the person before him came from a time without Speakers.
She looked like nothing Jorl had ever seen.
If the Archetype of Man hadn’t referred to Dr. Chieko Castleman with feminine pronouns, he wasn’t sure he’d have made that assumption. She wore a lot of clothing—though not as much as Jorl’s colleagues in the Patrol had insisted he wear—a pale blue sleeveless shirt that opened at the neck, black shorts from waist to knee, and durable-looking boots that suggested her race had delicate feet. Most astonishingly, the woman had almost no fur. There was a knotted bundle of night black hair atop her head, and a pair of slender, matching brows on the ridge above each eye, but every other bit of her that wasn’t hidden by clothing appeared hairless. Her skin was light, but not as colorless as Pizlo’s, more like a slightly aging parchment. Despite himself, Jorl stared.
And the odd creature stared right back. She seemed to have gotten over her confusion but had not yet moved on to the next phase. Beads of moisture appeared on her forehead and her chest began to billow as she breathed in and out rapidly. Her eyes widened and Jorl feared the woman would hyperventilate. Then, as quickly as she had begun, she mastered herself and slowed her breathing. She looked around again, and this time appeared to see the room’s simple furnishings. As Jorl watched, she bent at the knee like most people would and sat on the bench. She brought her hands to her face and thrust them upward into her hair, spreading the moisture from her palms and up into her scalp, leaving her eyes closed.
Jorl waited. From the moment he understood he’d be able to Speak to this woman, he’d abandoned any idea of using the establishing rituals. They were a part of time that meant nothing here. Instead he focused on patience and put the real world out of his thoughts.
In time, Dr. Castleman dropped her hands. Her eyes remained closed.
“How … how is it that I am here? And where is here? And … and…”
“What is the last thing you can recall?” Jorl inquired, with a whisper.
The woman’s head came up, her eyes opened and stared into Jorl’s. Castleman’s were green, with small flecks of something, perhaps gold. She had interesting eyes, with more white to them than he’d expected. But not otherwise remarkable. Not the eyes of a being who could create sapient life as the Archetype had insisted.
“It was the weekend. I was going climbing in the canyon. I stopped at the lab first and I did a full download of the main core, backing up onto memory plates. Standard stuff, belt and suspenders because I like that extra security. Morgan came by as I was finishing up. We had a beer, talked, I ate the lunch I’d packed. Then I left to get my climb in while there was still plenty of daylight. And now … here…”
Jorl nodded, and bit back a smile as the woman’s eyes darted to follow the path of his trunk. He brought it back to center and kept it still, hoping to reestablish her gaze.
“And now here. It’s likely you died that day. The Archetype of Man told me you had suffered an accident while recreating. The you that is talking to me now is an amalgam of you as you were up to about that point in time, and there is nothing of you that existed after.”
The creature bolted upright from the bench. Her eyes widened showing still more white. “The Archetype … You talked to it … Then you, you’re really what you appear to be, an anthropomorphic … an RM!” Her voice cracked with emotion, delight, amazement, awe, all these things but also terror.
“Please, relax. We have plenty of time. For your first question—no, I did not talk with the Archetype of Man, not as I suspect you mean. It’s been destroyed. We communicated as you and I are now. I summoned it and with its help I was able to reach back, unimaginably far into the past, and find you.” He paused, and again his smile crept out. “Thank you for coming. My name is Jorl. Jorl ben Tral.”
Silence as the woman brushed her palms against her thighs. She stepped aside and walked around Jorl in a slow circle.
“I’m Castleman. Chieko Castleman … Chieko.” She stared at Jorl. “Ben Tral?”
Jorl nodded, keeping his trunk steady. “My father was Tral. Tral ben Yarva.”
Castleman stared openly now. Her jaw dropped. “But that’s Hebrew.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s a Hebrew patronymic. Hebrew. The language. Hebrew?”
“I don’t understand. Who is Hebrew.”
“Not a who, a what. It’s a language. Or … was. My father used to speak it sometimes, though not often enough around me for me to pick up more than a few words.” She stopped, shook her head as if to set herself back on track. “Why do you have a Hebrew patronymic? For that matter, why are you speaking English?”
Jorl shrugged. “It’s just language. Except for a few words here and there, all sapients speak the same. As you and I are speaking now, though following your pronunciation is a bit tricky.”
Chieko retreated to her bench and sat again. She looked like she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or scream. Jorl had seen the expression before, but only on the faces of old men who had lost themselves in too many mugs of distilled spirits.
“So … If I understand this, I’m dead, right? Dead, and I’m talking to a raised mammal. An uplifted fucking elephant, who’s complaining that I speak with an accent?”
She lowered her head between bent knees and giggled.
Jorl flicked his trunk in the woman’s face, snapping his nubs until she looked up.
“What did you call me? What did you mean by that?”
Castleman cringed, shoving herself away until she backed into the desk. She shook herself and sobered somewhat. When she again met Jorl’s gaze, she held it and would not look away.
“A fucking elephant. Sorry, I just … this is … hell, I’m sorry.”
“No, no, not the pejorative or the prefix.” Jorl shook his head. “What did you mean by ‘raised mammal?’ In what way raised?”
Castleman’s hands trembled. “In your world, your time, there are other creatures? Other species, yes? Warm blooded … live-bearing creatures. Mammals … and other kinds as well, right? Creatures of the air, birds, um, avians … and reptiles and insects. Do you understand these terms? You’re not the only living things, are you?”
Jorl’s nod did nothing to dispel his puzzlement. “Yes, whole taxonomies of animals exist. Some overlap across worlds as well. What of it?”
“Wait, wait … you said ‘worlds’ just now … intelligent life has spread out across multiple worlds.… My god, it worked, it all worked!” Chieko Castleman’s face op
ened up in a grin that threatened to split her face apart. The expression pierced Jorl like the miracle of a beam of sunlight on Barsk.
“Excuse me, I don’t—”
“You, you are a mammal. Warm blooded. Your females suckle your young. Those are the gross characteristics of mammals.” One hand waved vaguely toward her chest.
“We established all of that. I’d hazard the same is true of you. What’s your point?”
With a gesture not unlike the way he’d whip his trunk for attention, Castleman waved him to silence. “You don’t understand. When my parents were born all sapient life looked like me. Human. But then that changed. We began to take species of varying degrees of sentience and searched for ways to raise them to full sapience. The breakthrough came a decade before I was born, one of those accidents resulting from the synthesis of unrelated fields of study. It started when our life scientists had completed genomic maps of several dozen mammalian species on Earth.”
Castleman’s right arm waved as she spoke, describing wild ellipses through the air, her fingers held rigid as she jabbed home each point like a lecturer at the academy.
“Meanwhile, ethologists had teamed up with psychologists and returned to the question of instinct, how to account for the varieties of unlearned knowledge so many species possessed. That quickly brought up the old arguments about what sorts of human behavior could be considered instinctive. The only one they agreed on was a predisposition to acquire language.”
“You’re not making sense,” said Jorl. “People don’t acquire language, they’re born with it.”
His conversant laughed. “Your people, yes, but not mine; that’s my point. Back then there were hundreds of languages being spoken, near to a thousand, really. I remember a professor of mine during grad school telling me that a couple centuries earlier there’d been tens of thousands of them. Anyway, the point they wanted to make was that it didn’t matter what language a community spoke, human beings are hardwired to acquire language so you pick up the one in your environment.”
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