More than half of the senators showed signs of panic, but like Bish, some clearly recognized a human being. They glanced among themselves, whispering urgently.
“Senators, if you will allow, may I present Dr. Chieko Castleman, engineer, programmer, and archivist. A female human from Before.”
“No,” insisted T’Minah, a Geom senator Jorl particularly recognized from his past study of the committee; her office had final approval on historical research. “Bish is right. There must be a trick. There are no humans. There haven’t been since before the Expansion. This is a lie.”
“It’s not a lie,” Jorl assured them. “Like yourselves, the woman you see here has been summoned. Unlike you, she died tens of thousands of years ago. She comes from a time before most of our races even existed.”
“What does that mean?” This from one of the junior senators, a Feln. She’d clearly never seen a human before. “What does he mean before our races existed?”
Jorl gestured encouragingly to Castleman with his trunk.
“Well, as I explained to Jorl … we, that is, my species, the humans of my time, um, we made you. Built you up from other animals.”
“That is insane,” yowled the Feln senator. “Built us? Built us how?”
Castleman looked toward Jorl, a mix of nerves and confusion writ upon her face. Jorl nodded for her to continue.
“We wired language into you, encoded you for intelligence so you could develop reason. We altered your physiology to make you tool users. We educated you in science and art. We made you self-aware as never before.”
T’Minah had moved during Castleman’s explanation and now stood alongside Bish. “Do you really expect us to believe what you’re saying? Are we supposed to think you’re some kind of god?”
“What? Good Lord, no! I mean, of course not. I didn’t personally do any of that. My work was in a completely different area. But, uh, other members of my species did, yes. From what I’ve seen, and what Jorl has explained to me, you are all descendants of the raised mammals that humans created back in your Before epoch.”
Several of the younger senators gaped openly at Castleman. A few trembled. “A god. A furless god,” one muttered, which sent a shudder running through the rest of them. Jorl twitched his nubs at the succinct phrase.
“I see now what you’re attempting,” said Bish. He’d leashed his anger and his voice held some of its former power again. The thunder of his authority drowned out the other senators’ whines and whispers. “You brought this committee together so you could present this ‘information’ to us, but we are not all shocked or overwhelmed by your news. Some of us already knew this history, knew about humans, and of our true origins. The senate elite has always known. It’s in part why the Committee of Information was originally formed.”
Jorl nodded to himself. He watched the faces of the senators who’d clearly been ignorant, not only of humans but also of the existence of such an elite in their midst.
“I suspected as much. It explains the unofficial policy regarding artifacts from Before.” He turned to Castleman who looked as confused as the junior senators. “The ones who knew about you, knew what your artifacts represented. Bish has all but admitted that. Any time one turns up, it gets quietly destroyed so the rest of the Alliance can’t learn about your people or that you created us. They’re deliberately keeping everyone ignorant.”
“But why?” Castleman took a step toward Bish. “That all happened tens of thousands of years ago. None of it should matter now. Your species, your races, have existed for longer than mine had at the time we raised the first mammals. And, if what Jorl tells me is true, you’ve outlived us as well. Why keep any of this secret?”
Bish glared at the human, but Castleman met his gaze and in the end it was the senator who turned away. When he spoke, his voice had lost the power he’d briefly regained.
“You don’t understand. Neither you nor the Lox understand. You don’t know.” Bish seethed.
“You’re the Committee of Information,” said Jorl. “Share what you know.”
“We cannot,” said T’Minah. Several of the other members of the committee nodded her way, deferring to the Gopher’s expertise. “We only know what is written in our most ancient records, an accounting of the centuries before the Expansion, and all who have read it are sworn never to speak of it.”
Bish waved the other senator to silence. “All of this is less than a dream, and nothing revealed here violates any oaths.”
“Then tell us,” insisted Jorl.
The Geom closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Here is your truth. We did not outlive your kind, Chieko Castleman. We destroyed you.”
The human turned to look at Jorl, who in turn stared at T’Minah.
“What are you saying?”
“You heard her,” shouted Bish. His jaw tightened as he spat the words, his eyes focused on the Fant with more raw hatred than Jorl had ever imagined. “We destroyed them! That is the account we have. Our ancestors could not live among the gods that had made them. They could not bear the knowledge that they were so little different from beasts, could not accept that there was nothing of the divine in themselves that was not placed there by humans. Humanity had used up its homeworld and left it behind, spreading to several star systems. They took their creations with them. On each of these worlds our ancestors rose up against their makers and killed every last man, woman, and child among them.
“And when all the creators were dead—and many of our ancestors with them—the survivors gathered on a planet they named Dawn, wrote their account and locked it away. Then they spent years expunging all reference to humans from their cities, their worlds, and their lives. In time, a new generation came forth and they grew up ignorant of their parents’ origins. And no one spoke of the truth. Over and over for generations until all those who had taken part in the destruction of their creators had themselves died, and all their children, and their children’s children’s children, too, lest some whispered tale be passed down. And only then, when all memory of our creators had been expunged, only then did we leave Dawn and begin the great Expansion.
“That is the secret the senate has guarded, Chieko Castleman. That is the shame of all our races, Jorl ben Tral. And if perhaps at some level, the Eleph and the Lox with their lack of fur, their naked skin, have touched some racial memory and reminded us of our crime, perhaps now you better understand the reasons you are loathed and despised by the rest of the galaxy.”
Sighing, Bish pivoted left then right, surveying his fellow senators. Some looked away, their faces reflecting the shame of their knowledge. Others stared back, aghast at what they’d just learned. “So my young historian, you see now that this revelation of yours is not news. It cannot be used to affect your release or preserve your precious Compact. It does not matter and makes no difference. The senate has kept this secret from our earliest beginnings. The Committee of Information will not spread it further. That one, self-important Fant has learned of it changes nothing. But you have made one thing simpler for me. You’ve demonstrated that you’re too well informed to survive. We are done, Jorl. This ends now.”
Jorl crossed his arms and lowered his head. He spread his ears wide and allowed his trunk to hang down and curl up at the end, nubs closed tight like a third fist.
“On that we agree, Senator, but you’ve gotten everything else wrong. You’ve been interpreting dozens of different prophecies that all converge on this moment in time. You’ve correctly identified it as a turning point, and you’ve acted on that knowledge. But no one, not your precognitivists nor Barsk’s own Matriarch, has been able to scry just what will occur. A decision will be made, some action taken, yes, but no one knows what form any of that takes. You’ve decided it has to be either shattering the Compact or destroying my people and planet. But I believe it’s something else. Margda started all of this with her own prophecies a generation after every Lox and Eleph on an Alliance world were rounded up and moved to a single pla
net. She foretold something she called the Silence, and warned that all of Barsk would be at risk when it came. You’re the obvious source of the danger she saw, and now I understand that the Silence was the secret you’ve kept hidden. This will end, but not by killing me or anyone else. It stops by sharing the truth with the rest of the Alliance!”
Bish chuckled. “I give you full points for arrogance, but there’s only bluster and no bite to your words. You’re out of tricks. The tableau you’ve created is impressive, but it accomplishes nothing. Regardless of the illusion you’ve crafted here, I know where you really are, locked in a room on the station where my personal ship is docked. In the time you’ve had us here I could have walked there. The only reason I haven’t is because you’re keeping me here. But how long can you manage this trick? Soon you will grow tired and this mass summoning will come to an end. And when it does, I will make my way to your room, relieve the guard on duty outside your door, and step inside to wring the life from your worthless body with my own hands.”
Castleman stepped in front of Jorl and didn’t stop until she was nose to nose with Bish. “Is that your only answer? To commit murder rather than face your own truth?”
The senator took a step back, not because the human had startled him, as Jorl first thought, but to give him room to raise an arm the better to backhand Castleman across her face and send the woman stumbling. Blood trickled from her mouth and as she righted herself, the human spit out a tooth.
“You are already dead, and by your own testimony you’ve been so for longer than my own race has existed. I won’t be instructed by someone who is less than the memory of dust. When the Speaker here is gone, you will be as well.”
“You’re wrong,” said Jorl. “I am like no other Speaker. I can summon the living from across the vast expanse of the Alliance and bring them together in one place. You’ve seen that there can be as many of me as I choose to create. But you haven’t thought it through. Chieko Castleman has already been summoned. The particles that define her construct have already been gathered together from millennia of dispersion. Even if you kill me, any Speaker with knowledge of her could summon her back with ease.”
“How fortunate for us all then that no others know about her.”
“Give me a little credit for being a historian. While I was sending out constructs of myself to gather the members of this committee, still other versions of me went out and visited Speakers, both on Barsk and throughout the worlds of the Alliance. The experience gave them all quite a shock, as it violated two of the rules of our order. But when I told them about a summoning I’d performed, reaching all the way back to the Before, I captured their imagination. I told them of Chieko Castleman, and I promised I’d return within a day to share what I had learned. You can kill me, but when they don’t hear from me, those other Speakers will give in to temptation and attempt to summon her. And they’ll succeed. One way or another, the Silence comes to an end. And so do you.”
“Do you think I care what a handful of Speakers does or doesn’t know? This committee knows the precise location of every Speaker in the Alliance, and we control their access to koph. All you’ve done is create some extra work for my staff, tracking down the ones you’ve contacted and eliminating them as well. But Speakers on Barsk are another matter. They’re too plentiful and unregulated, but I planned ahead in case of more drastic need. The moment I wake from this dream of yours, I will have Druz open a communications channel to the Resolute Purpose. It’s already en route to clean up Krasnoi’s mess, but that no longer matters. Nonyx-Captain Selishta is utterly loyal to me and will not hesitate to follow the orders in the contingency plan I left her. She will utilize the full firepower at her disposal to begin destroying all life on Barsk, one miserable and sodden island at a time.”
Castleman turned to the other senators, screaming. “Is this how it happened before? One madman choosing to wipe out an entire race? Are you going to just stand by and let it happen again?”
“There’s nothing they can do to stop me,” said Bish. “By the time they act, it will already have begun. They can’t even censure me, without admitting to their own part in everything that has come before. This entire event will become just one more thing that no one talks about. Now, wake up, Jorl. It’s time to end the game.”
The Yak launched himself at Jorl, tucking his chin to his chest and turning at the last moment so that he struck the Fant with the tip of one horn, goring him through the chest. Jorl fell to the floor and the senator pulled his head back, grinning as blood dripped into his shaggy fur and dark robe.
“Very realistic. I would never have thought it would work if I hadn’t seen the effect when I struck your human friend. That’s a mortal wound I’ve given you, Jorl. There must be so many questions that have never been asked because of your Speaker’s Edict. Can the nefshon construct of a living Speaker die in his own summoning dream? Better you should wake up than find out.”
Gasping, Jorl put a hand to the hole in his chest. An instant later he had healed it.
“Nefshons are particles of memory. That’s what all of this is. All I have to do is bring to mind the memory of being whole.”
“Impressive. Obviously you weren’t out of tricks. But you felt the pain of it, and that’s a memory now, too. You may have repaired the damage, but look at you. This make-believe body of yours is reeling. You’re about to go into shock. I wonder how it will work if I tear off your head.”
Castleman tried to intercede but the Bos hit her again, a pair of blows that sent the human sprawling. The other committee members hung back, useless.
Bish smiled and took a step closer. Jorl shook his head and scrabbled backward. He tried to unravel the Bos’s construct and failed. This wasn’t like ending a traditional summoning. He hadn’t simply gathered the particles of a dead conversant, he’d tethered the nefshons of a living person to himself. He needed time and focus to untie that connection, and he had neither.
The Yak grabbed at him, hauling him up, his powerful hands closing on Jorl’s head, bracing the Fant against his own body. In a panic, Jorl gave up on the tether and instead pushed at Bish’s nefshons. His awareness sharpened, blocking out every particle that didn’t come from the Bos. He reached out for them, shoved at them with the full force of his mind, trillions and trillions of particles, far more than could be part of the construct. They would not budge.
“This is a great moment. You will be the first person to die in a summoning. A pity no one will ever Speak to you and learn of this event.”
As Bish began to twist, Jorl stopped pushing the Yak’s nefshons and instead began to pull them.
All of them.
Many were part of the strand that trailed back to the blanket of particles surrounding the senator’s physical body and the resistance on these was the same as he’d felt when he’d first summoned him. But others stretched across space and lay embedded in the experiences of tens of thousands of individuals spread throughout the galaxy. These offered less resistance, and as the first came loose and sped toward him others followed. A faint drizzle at first, almost hesitant, then a heavy rain of nefshons which expanded into a storm, then a downpour, a flood, and finally a deluge as even the particles racing back along the strand to Bish himself gave way.
Jorl’s vision had grown black around the edges. Knowing that the construct of himself wasn’t actually real didn’t matter. He crafted it with the constraints and logic of the real world’s physicality and Bish had taken full advantage. In seconds, the senator would succeed in twisting his head off and everything would end.
Instead, the man was gone. He hadn’t stopped, he’d completely vanished. The Fant crashed to the ground, gasping for breath.
Castleman staggered to Jorl’s side. “Are you all right?”
He looked up at the human, and shook his head. “Something’s … wrong. Different. What have I done? Oh, Arlo, why didn’t you tell me?”
THIRTY-SEVEN
FORGOTTEN SINS
&n
bsp; PIZLO’S new friend had fussed with him for a bit, draping her long sleeves down both sides of his head and causing tiny bits of glass in her clothes to light up and change colors. Both she and the senator had acted like this was important, and then he had sent her out of the room to check something.
The Yak, meanwhile, kept talking to him. It was overwhelming really, to have someone he’d only just met go on and on, sounding so friendly like he and Pizlo had traveled all over the Shadow Dwell together and knew all of each other’s secret places. Only none of it was true. Nothing the man said meant what he intended, or nothing he intended came out in his words. Maybe it was just that Senator Bish didn’t know how to say what he meant. Or maybe it was part of being an abomination-in-waiting and not knowing it.
Some of it was hard to follow, over and above none of it being true. A lot of it was what Jorl would have called “abstract,” all about duty and responsibility and the greater good. Pizlo listened hard. He could focus his attention better than most, but it didn’t help much.
Senator Bish just stopped talking in the middle of a sentence, the last words mumbling from his lips with little air pushing them out. He’d drawn Pizlo to him and held him in place with one hand on the boy’s shoulder as if delivering a benediction. His right arm had been raised in the midst of a dramatic gesture that it never completed and instead it swung slowly down like a flutter of leaves letting go of a common branch all at once. The other hand had fallen from Pizlo’s shoulder, fingers spreading limply. He’d been in the midst of a lecture about the importance of reporting clearly and without embellishment the precise details of a precognitive event, stopping just short of accusing Pizlo of making up nonsense. Then all at once he wasn’t.
Pizlo scrambled away from the Yak when the grip on him had changed, aiming toward the door. He slammed against it with both of his bandaged hands, but didn’t dare to look away from the senator. The door wouldn’t open. The room was big but had no other exits. Pizlo hammered against the door, his small hands striking it to the rhythm of his pounding heart.
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