The Moons of Barsk

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  The two states combined in an emotion he’d seen in the eyes of past assistants, particularly in the early days of his career. Both were fantasizing about seducing him, as if sex would somehow make them better physicists. Ryne did his best to ignore it, much as he’d ignored his own libido for years. And while yes, Gari was attractive and bright, he’d never cared to frolic with any women of her race. What if such a one turned out to be the person he wanted to have a child with? Biology assured that Lox and Eleph could not reproduce. A lifetime of habit—even at this point in his life where offspring weren’t an issue—meant he couldn’t imagine looking at her that way. And as for Krokel, while Ryne had enjoyed the pleasures of other males now and then as he wandered the islands, he’d never felt fully satisfied by those liaisons. No point pursuing one now. Better for both of them if he ignored the signals and focused on the work. That’s why he was here. The math called to him with an allure that no bedmate had ever come close to matching.

  At the beginning and end of each day his assistants took turns photographing and transcribing his walls with equipment that Ryne had known existed but not bothered to obtain. That first day, they had demonstrated what they called a “smart wall” in an adjacent room. He’d dismissed it. Three separate times they implored him to try it, and when he finally relented he found himself too self-conscious using the wall’s stylus to relax into the mindset that freed his best thinking. He didn’t need technology to express himself. Chalk and slate had always served him in the classroom and the lab, or a stick and a stretch of sand when he had over the years felt a need for greater solitude than the Civilized Wood afforded and strolled along one beach or another working through the math of an equation. Computers could do the blunt work of calculation and simulation far faster than his trunk could write, but the underlying ideas required a living mind, and he’d not suffered over the limited availability of technology during his long academic career.

  His new hosts had scrambled to provide him with blackboards and chalk, showing genuine surprise in response to his stated preference for such crude tools. In fact, Ryne had even eschewed the simple digital tablets they’d offered after showing him his lab. “Chalk and slate,” he’d said. “Keep your world simple and save the complex things for the math.” He knew he’d been heard when the next morning a crate of chalk had been delivered to supplement the initial supply. The fresh clean smell when he’d opened the lid had brought him a memory of the best years of his life and left him with a smile of ease.

  After those first restorative nights, they’d also supplied him with an elaborate apartment, better quarters he suspected than the provost on Zlorka enjoyed. It included the same kind of bed he’d once enjoyed at a resort on Kemtal, a traditional mattress and frame fashioned of local wood with a loosely woven tick that kept bundles of sartha leaves from escaping but allowed their soporific fragrance to be released when he lay upon it. That first night, body weary from days at sea and mind numb from so many revelations, it had been like being embraced by paradise. Still not dead, he’d slept like one who had no intention of ever waking. The rest of the apartment was just as splendid, but also far more than he either needed or wanted, especially when his lab turned out to be part of a suite of rooms larger than the apartment, with separate living spaces for the assistants, an eating area, group shower and sanitary facilities, and several other rooms not yet designated. It all seemed too much, but Gari assured him all of the space was his to use as he saw fit, waiting to be equipped with whatsoever he requisitioned.

  Disbelief gave way to acceptance and Ryne requested a small cot for the empty room nearest his lab. As wondrous as that bed was, he needed to work not sleep. He had no intention of dreaming away this opportunity. To the distress of his assistants, he sent a note to Bernath thanking her for the apartment but declining its use. From that point on he slept in the lab—for that brief span of each day that he needed to close his eyes and rest. To be fair, he spent a portion of each day in meditative trance, running thought experiments the way normal people mused on what to have for lunch. On Taylr, his graduate students would often find him wandering the boardways of the Civilized Wood, oblivious to his surroundings or the passage of others around him, though some part of his mind kept track of the mundane details and his feet had always carried him back to the university’s cafeteria in time for the evening meal.

  By the fifth day after his arrival on this nameless island, Ryne could be seen meandering throughout their Wood, always followed by either Krokel or Gari and always from a discreet distance. And again a portion of his awareness noted what he saw, cataloged the frequency of other labs and libraries and manufacturing facilities, the profusion of metal and plastic, the ready availability of technology both complex and ordinary. Most amazing and unexpected of all were the others like himself, Eleph and Lox of extreme age who wandered deep in thought. When Ryne met such a one on his first stroll it jolted him from his reverie, a glimmer of recognition of a pharmer several years his junior whom he’d met decades before at a conference on Myer. Her name surfaced in his mind along with the recollection that he’d read in a journal of her presumed death, having sailed off more than a year ago. She nodded his way, not slowing her own step but treating him to smiling eyes and a slight nod of her head before passing him and soon after vanishing around a curve in the boardway, leaving him to wonder if Bernath had been the one to greet her on a beach when she’d arrived.

  His walks took him past many others, young and middle-aged adults who had clearly been born to this island, whose lives had apparently not been tainted nor their souls corrupted despite ready access to the kind of plentiful technology the rest of the Alliance enjoyed. Occasionally he passed herds of school children stampeding noisily, laughing and pointing and tumbling as children do, on their way to some destination, chaperones and teachers meeting his glance with sheepish expressions of apology or animated trunks of amusement as they passed. In addition to the oddities, he also saw traditional and familiar shops, much like he’d known on Taylr, fewer perhaps, but that could be a consequence of a smaller population—he hadn’t thought to ask about their last census and neither Bernath nor any of the others he’d spoken to had offered the information—or an efficient side effect of the technology they enjoyed.

  Soon enough that trickled through to his awareness. Technology was what they desired. Advances in science and engineering and mathematics sought with a gusto unmatched on any island of either archipelago. Concentrated in this one spot, somehow having access to all the gifts of the Alliance and building on those designs, questioning those theories, thought experiments enfleshed, hypotheses challenged every day. And for those experts and academics with enough flexibility to their thinking to embrace rather than resist dramatic shifts in paradigms, a new life at an age when death should otherwise have claimed them. Or at least, a reprieve for a brief while.

  In the afternoon of the eighth day in his lab, Krokel had shyly begged Jorl’s pardon and asked his presence in an adjacent room. Following him there he found a physician, a female Lox half his age garbed in the traditional spotless lab coat that was all form and no part function of the profession. So intent was she on unpacking an assortment of medical diagnostic devices that she failed to notice their arrival until Krokel coughed softly, tip of his trunk in his mouth.

  “Ryne, please allow me to introduce Lolte, one of the finest systems biologists we have and, with your consent, your new doctor.”

  “Doctor?” he’d said. “I’m an old man and I’m still recovering from the rigors of my journey here, but I’m not otherwise ill. Why do I need a doctor?”

  Lolte finished laying out her equipment and regarded him with a smile. “In part, that’s what I’m here to determine. Please, have a seat on the desk and we’ll begin.”

  The rest of the day involved so many tests that Ryne found himself nearly as exhausted as the day he’d arrived. Through it all, as was his nature, he asked questions about every bit of technology and each procedure.
In response, Lolte maintained a running commentary, explaining the provenance of her devices and their diagnostic purpose, but always stopped short of mentioning the results she obtained as she moved through the examination.

  She had almost reached Ryne’s limit, when the physician declared the exam portion of her visit complete. In response to the question of what other portion remained, she had escorted him out of the lab and walked him to one of the better restaurants the physicist had ever experienced. Their arrival had been expected and a maître d’ led them to a private booth and provided menus. Ryne found half of the items available unfamiliar. When the server arrived he’d simply asked the young man to bring him whatever he himself liked best. As he surrendered the menu, he wondered how he would pay for the meal. The question must have shone on his face and his dinner companion laughed.

  “The Dying who join us take a while to adjust,” she said, her eyes shining with amusement though perhaps not completely at his expense. “You were told that your old life has indeed ended. That includes thinking of yourself as someone who has accepted his death. Here, not only are you reborn, you’re an honored guest. Anything you need or want will be provided.”

  Ryne had laughed. “Easy for you to say, with your whole life ahead of you. I may not be dead as I expected to be, but how many years do you think I have left?”

  The merriment faded from her eyes. “That depends on whether you follow your doctor’s advice.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There are three kinds of Dying, Ryne. Only two that reach the shores of this island. Most are simply old, their lives having reached the natural limits of their bodies. We make them welcome, document their lives, ease their passing. Others, like yourself, are summoned a few years prior to when we estimate natural death would occur. They get another life, a chance to make a difference, to contribute to what we’re building here.”

  “Doctor, I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue my work, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m an old man.”

  She smiled again. “Indeed not, but we can do a thing or two to convince your body from further aging. And perhaps even reverse some of the effects of time.” From a pocket of her lab coat she drew a vial, popping its stopper with her trunk and offering it to him. “Drink this, please.”

  “What is it?” he asked, holding the glass up to the light. The liquid was a pale blue but that told him nothing. It could have been colored water or cleaning fluid or a miracle drug for all he knew.

  “A suspension of biological machines that begin to arrest your body’s aging process. This is a crude version, just to get you started. It will begin removing unwanted plaque from blood vessels, lessen the traditional inflammations of aging, and curate the flora in your gut. You’ll likely start to notice some positive changes to flexibility and general movement within a few days, as well as some improvement to your vision and digestion.”

  “I’ve heard of this technology. It’s nothing new. The Alliance has had it for more than a thousand years and banned the use long since. It’s a temporary fix at best. A body knows how old it is, and even if you clean it up its tendency is to go back to what it is.”

  “That’s true enough, but as I said it’s just to get you started. I’ll brew a more precise batch once I’ve had time to work with the biological samples I took from you today. And that dose will be unlike anything the Alliance has ever seen. Just one of the discoveries we’ve made here, and available only to Fant.”

  He frowned, a part of him doing the math. “Youth in a vial? What next, will you tell me you’ve discovered immortality?”

  “Hardly. As you say, Ryne, you’re an old man. You’ve enjoyed more than eighty years, and kept yourself in good health through them all. You have a good constitution, your parents were of good stock and passed that along to you.” She gestured to the vial he held and still hadn’t consumed. “That and the treatments that follow it won’t make you young again, but conservatively should allow you another twenty to fifty years of continued good health.”

  He shook his head. “And you give this to all the Dying?”

  “No, as I said, there are three kinds. The first never make it to our shores. Some significant number perish in the journey, having reached the end of their lives in their attempt to arrive here. I’ve told you what becomes of the second kind. That just leaves the third group.”

  “The ones you’ve summoned.”

  “Just so. But only a small subset of the last group receive this drug. It’s still fiendishly expensive to produce. Some day perhaps it will be as plentiful as the rain, but for now its distribution is limited.”

  “Then why me?”

  “Before I answer that, I need to explain something else. As a scientist, Ryne, you possess an analytical view of the world. Surely the questions must have begun pouring down on you from the moment you stepped ashore, not least of them being why you hadn’t thought them before then.”

  Speechless, he nodded, uncertain if she was somehow reading his mind or acting out a part she’d played many times in the past with other new arrivals. Summoned arrivals.

  “You’re familiar with Speakers,” she said.

  “Of course, what of them?”

  “Ours are not like the ones found throughout the rest of Barsk. Ours do more than reconstruct and converse with the dead. They create … memes.”

  “Memes?”

  “Concepts. Simple ideas that over time take root and grow, shaped by Speakers who monitor their development and others who, working in tandem can stimulate them, stir them such that they transform from thoughts to behaviors. We have Speakers on every island and beyond, and one of the memes they foster is the understanding that near the end of each Fant’s life an awareness will bloom in the mind. A time and place to be. A certainty. You’ve felt it or you wouldn’t be here now.”

  “The compulsion to sail away … that’s artificial?”

  She spread her hands. “It’s a lot to accept, I know. Take as long as you need.”

  Memes. Ideas placed in the heads of millions of people. Driving them to their deaths. For centuries. The math sang to him with grim outcomes of cruel manipulation.

  “You’ve taken the lives of untold generations.”

  “No, Ryne. I can tell you precisely how many generations and so could you if you think it through. But more importantly, we’ve taken no lives. The meme is placed in every one of us in childhood but in most cases it’s not triggered until natural death is close at hand. That way, instead of a heart attack or a brain aneurysm or simply passing in one’s sleep, the sudden awareness that there is a destination awaiting every Fant creates a sense of purpose, a clean and satisfying end to life.”

  “But … why? What’s the point of it all?”

  “To save us.”

  “Save us from what? What could possibly justify the manipulation of a planetary population? Let alone the expenditure of the resources necessary to accomplish it for all this time?”

  “Save us from the Alliance. You’re not the only one who runs simulations, Ryne. The Alliance is made up of eighty-seven distinct races spread out across more than four thousand inhabited planets. The Fant are just two of those races. A millennium ago we had communities on eighty worlds, living and working and creating right alongside the other members of the Alliance. Complex beings of different cultures and physiologies called us friend and neighbor, mingled their lives with ours. Two centuries later and all of that vanished. Suddenly those eighty planets were reduced to only this one. And for the past eighty-three tenyears the Alliance has been systematically imposing more and more restrictions on us.”

  “But the Compact guarantees that our—”

  “The Compact cannot last forever. The Alliance didn’t bargain with us in good faith, they allowed us to do all of their work and keep only the smallest result of our efforts. And there are factions within the Alliance rumbling that even that tiny piece is too much.”

  Ryne waved her arguments awa
y with his trunk. “Even if all of that is true, what does it have to do with these memes?”

  “The memes made this island possible. It gave the Caudex a place to begin and a home where we could build. Our founders were among the first generation born on Barsk and they sacrificed everything they had to create a dream of future prosperity for all Fant. Each generation that followed has worked tirelessly in pursuit of turning the impossible into the possible. This island? It was just the very beginning. A range of miracles has sprung forth from it. That vial in your hand is one example; there are thousands of others. Literally thousands. And if the Alliance knew about any of them it would be sufficient cause for them to shred the Compact that has kept them away from us for more than eight hundred years. But there will come a time—possibly in our lifetime—when they come back to this world they promised was ours and ours alone, and take it for themselves. And then where will we be?”

  Lolte paused, propped her elbows on the table of their booth, and lowered her head into her hands. Her trunk flailed listlessly at the vial Ryne had restoppered but still held.

  “I’m not convinced,” he said. “You haven’t explained what purpose all of this serves.”

  “The Caudex’s ultimate purpose is to preserve us, our race and ways, our identity, in a galaxy of billions of people who experienced no moral dilemma taking us from our homes and dropping us here, locked away from the rest of space, from art and culture and science.”

  “But we have all of that.”

  “Barely. Only because the dispirited Eleph and Lox that first arrived here stumbled upon secrets in the rain forests that provided riches in such profusion, substances not available elsewhere. That’s the Compact that you hang all your hopes on. It bought us some concessions, little enough for what we gave—what we continue to give—away. But how long can that last, Ryne? Did you know that two thirds of what once could be obtained only on Barsk is now grown on other Alliance worlds, or has been replaced by other goods from more reliable and readily accessible sources than Barsk?”