The Moons of Barsk

by Lawrence M. Schoen

“What about him?”

  “He’s been researching societal patterns on mixed worlds where Fant lived prior to the transportation to Barsk.”

  “And we know this how?”

  “Our field agent put a trace on his terminal. It’s as sophisticated a piece of hardware as exists on Barsk, the same model as in your office both at home and in Ulmazh. And as a member of the Committee of Information he has access to any and all data in the Alliance.”

  Klarce waved the remark away with a sweep of her trunk. “As an an Aleph-Bearer he theoretically has access anyway, but what’s your point?”

  “He’s compiling lists of races which Fant successfully lived among in the past. He published several ‘thought pieces’ in academic journals, hypothesizing ways in which we might find ourselves commingled with various combinations of other races, taking up rational or at least plausible reasons why they might be resistant to the idea and offering up potential solutions. He’s advocating ending our isolation and independence.”

  “He’s been out there, you know.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “He’s left Barsk. It was one of the accomplishments that earned him his aleph. He’s been out there and returned. For more than a full turning of the seasons, Jorl ben Tral lived and worked among several handfuls of other races. No doubt the experience has given him an extremely special perspective on the matter. He might even be right, how would we know?”

  “Ma’am? You can’t be serious. What he’s advocating would constitute a potential risk to the security of everything we’ve built!”

  Klarce nodded. She held up a hand to forestall anything further; this discussion was one that would only escalate her assistant’s concern. “It’s something the Full Council has discussed as well. But tell me, how have his peers responded to these journal articles? Has he garnered any support among the intellectual elite at Zlorka or elsewhere?”

  “Quite the opposite. The most positive reaction has been resistance. At the other extreme, several of his previously close colleagues have denounced him for his reactionary ideas, and a petition had even been circulated demanding the revocation of his tenure on the grounds of moral turpitude.”

  “Moral turpitude? That’s not a justification that gets invoked much.” She smiled briefly. “Did the petition gain much traction?”

  “Not really.” Temmel consulted his notes. “Ah, a past provost—who had published a brief response of his own, strongly hinted Jorl ben Tral would be better served focusing his talents in other avenues of research—invalidated the petition on the grounds that even though the most, and I’m quoting now, ‘bizarre and wrong-headed direction of inquiry might be construed as demonstrating poor judgment, such a thing is qualitatively different from a reflection of morality, but rather an expression of academic freedom, which should be recognized and protected by all scholars.’ That appears to have been the end of the matter.”

  Klarce settled back, lacing her fingers together and bringing her trunk up to rest curled behind one ear. Was Temmel paying attention? It was precisely the things he learned during these conversations that would allow him to grow into a councilor rather than remain a personal assistant. “Here’s the thing about this Jorl ben Tral. He came to our attention when he left the planet, though of course we couldn’t keep a watch on him then. Upon his return—honorable discharge resulting from a personal obligation back on Barsk—he went back under routine passive observation; we labeled him as a special case, someone worth checking up on now and then. His status was later upgraded to active and an agent assigned to him after he’d been marked with an aleph and identified as the Lox whom Margda had mentioned in one of her prophecies. But like most Bearers, his life has been unremarkable, albeit with a few notable exceptions. He returned to his work as a historian and we expected him to remain a quiet academician. The first blip we observed was his decision to associate with and even tutor an abomination. A few years later he was somehow involved with an incident on the space station—which I will note has yielded neither official nor unofficial reports—the upshot of which led to his designation as an Alliance senator.”

  “Ma’am, how does a Fant become a senator? I realize we’re technically a part of the Alliance, but Barsk has never sought nor been offered participation in the government.”

  “If you’re expecting me to make sense of this for you, I can’t. The whole thing is absurd, not least because this historian has never shown any political leanings at all. Someone is hiding something here, but we’ve found no trace of who or what. And in the years since his appointment there’s been nothing unusual to report. And believe me, we’ve expended considerable resources in the investigation but it proved futile. As a senator, Jorl ben Tral is an excellent academic, which surprises no one. This latest thing you’ve brought me is the first hint of anything subversive from him. He’s been completely apolitical till now.”

  “So you’re recommending the council take some action?”

  She brought her trunk down and waggled it at her assistant. “These essays of his, they aren’t a concern yet. But they do justify why we assigned a field agent to keep him under observation. Margda singled him out for a purpose, and not knowing why is reason enough for us to watch him. But seriously, do you imagine his idea of reuniting us with even one other race of the Alliance is going to gain any traction?”

  Temmel had the good sense to blush. “No, ma’am.”

  “Right. What’s next on the list?”

  SEVEN

  KNOWLEDGE, QUESTIONS, AND CHOICE

  FOR the past several seasons, Pizlo had pondered the flaw in his devotion to Jorl as his mentor. To be sure, there wasn’t a living soul in the galaxy who cared more for him, had been more generous with time and teaching, and believed in his potential. But for all that, no matter how he tried not to, Pizlo had at last come to the understanding that he could never do what Jorl did. Yes, he had followed him along one path, becoming a Speaker, but that was biology not intention. The choices Jorl had made were choices he wanted for himself. Pizlo, on the other hand, had no interest in history, nor could he envision a future in which he was either a husband or a father. And the thought of serving in the Alliance senate recalled to mind the nightmares he still had of Bish and how Jorl had caused everyone in the galaxy to forget him.

  If Pizlo’s studies with the Archetype of Man meant anything, then Jorl had already fulfilled his responsibilities as mentor. Today, Pizlo stood on the edge of acknowledging—and thereby moving past—his own reluctance to take the next step. He’d grown up, mostly, which meant he had to reassign Jorl to a new role, that of friend and advisor.

  It was part of a larger picture. Change was coming. Events that others would see as random held intention and meaning for him. The connections did more than talk to him, they suggested a call to action that he couldn’t resist much longer. The individual pieces had been building for nearly a year, little more than dust motes of possibilities in the beginning, but they’d since grown into solider forms. Leaves spoke to him of it, stones in the Shadow Dwell called to him. The signs made themselves known in the most routine of things. Portents fell like rain.

  An outsider to Fant society, Pizlo nonetheless hungered for it, to know it vicariously if not directly. From earliest childhood he had built himself blinds that allowed him to observe people going about their day, hidden forts tucked into public walls of foliage that looked out upon busy boardways, camouflaged nooks providing access to parks and amphitheaters. From these spots he had watched and listened and witnessed the public lives of the citizens of Keslo, coming to know the names and ways and details of many in a city where everyone knew of him but never spoke his name. In recent years, he’d sometimes take koph while watching them, to see each of them cloaked all around in the golden fabric of their nefshons, burning their gleaming images into his brain to keep when the drug wore off. They were all so special, wondrous in ways he could never be, freely chatting and laughing and joking with so many others. He had so few.
And yet, numbered among his handful was a person unlike any the people of Keslo would ever know, someone who was neither Eleph nor Lox, someone from another world.

  The fourth person in all the galaxy ever to speak to Pizlo had been a Brady. She’d introduced herself as Druz, and in a time that no longer existed she’d been the personal assistant to Senator Bish. When Jorl took the Yak’s place her loyalties and responsibilities transferred to him. Under the terms of the Compact, Druz could not set foot upon the planet, she visited twice each year. She’d pilot her employer’s personal spacecraft to a water landing not far from Keslo’s shore, pretending the vessel was simply a ship for traversing the ocean. Jorl would sail out to meet her—sometimes allowing Pizlo to come along—and when they finished their business she would travel off to another world of the Alliance on some senatorial mission.

  Pizlo had last seen Druz two seasons ago. While she spoke with Jorl and completed whatever errands had brought her to Barsk, he’d taken the opportunity to explore the ship that years before he’d actually piloted for a short time. Sitting at the control boards again, he found them a better fit at fourteen than they’d been at six. He reviewed the protocols and procedures for flight, hands moving across the locked-down helm as if at a simulator. The pilot’s seat seemed to whisper approval to him; soon, soon he’d fly this vessel again. He didn’t know why or when, but that didn’t change the certainty of it. Soon.

  As a mental exercise, he ran through the checklist for shutdown, arriving at the configuration that the boards were actually in, then hopped off his chair, suddenly possessed of the knowledge that Jorl and Druz had concluded their business. Any moment now they’d call for him. He went to them instead, finding them in the cargo hold. The ship’s outer hatch stood open, water flooding the space. Jorl’s boat lay tied to a gantry, right where they’d left it after sailing into the spacecraft. Jorl, having finished his senatorial business, was in the midst of carrying some small crates onto the boat. He waved his trunk in a combination of greeting and summoning, but as Pizlo went to join him, Druz pulled him aside. She bowed to him and placed a small package in his hands.

  “The senator informs me you have a birthday coming soon, Little Prince.”

  She’d named him that on their first meeting and though it made him blush now that he was no longer a boy, he endured it as a sign of her affection. And, too, because Jorl had said it was so striking to see him blush given his albinism.

  “It’s nearly a season away,” he’d responded. Birthdays weren’t something he tended to think about. Nor the passage of time in general. The future didn’t flow out before him as it did other people.

  The Sloth had continued. “My research suggests that our people share a custom of bestowing gifts at such a time. As I will be far away on the actual day, please accept this token in advance.”

  He’d taken the gift, hugged and thanked her, leaving unspoken the fact that he’d received few such presents. Though the people in his life loved him, he’d only had cause to learn about birthday gifts a few years ago when Rina began receiving them. Fant society didn’t acknowledge the birth of abominations like him, and it simply hadn’t occurred to anyone to celebrate the anniversary of his entrance into the world, let alone mark it with a gift. Druz, not being raised to Fant custom, had seen him initially only as a precocious child, then later as a boy who enjoyed the kind regard of her employer, and finally as a young friend. What need of birthday presents when she already gave him so much?

  As he stepped from the gantry and onto the powered boat floating as if at dock, he’d slipped the present into a pocket on his bandolier and forgot it amidst waving farewell and watching as Druz convinced the vessel to slip away from them on the water before rising up through the rain and vanishing in the cloud cover. Then he and Jorl had guided their own craft back to shore. It had been a short journey; Druz had “parked” her craft just beyond the island’s shallows and thus they’d returned quickly to the dock where Jorl maintained a slip. Pizlo knew the harbor well and frequently visited the boat while Jorl was busy elsewhere, raiding the craft’s galley or just enjoying the gentle rocking motion of being on the water.

  Under the carefully averted gaze of the harbormaster they’d returned through the Shadow Dwell and back up to the Civilized Wood, chatting all the while about Pizlo’s studies, his conversations with the Archetype of Man, and what bits of senate business Jorl could share. After they parted, Pizlo slipped from the regular boardways used by other Fant and settled into one of the wild spaces he’d created for himself over the years, just another niche that he could find but which to the uninvited appeared to be a solid and uninhabitable space within the forest that defined the city. Only once he’d settled in did he remove the gift from his pocket and examine it.

  At first Pizlo mistook the present for the box it came in. Druz had wrapped it in paper decorated with a colorful fractal pattern of shades of green. He appreciated the gesture; anything wrapped in such paper blended in instantly and vanished within his nook. That would have been present enough, but there was more. The box under the paper was a dark, burnished grey metal. It fit in the palm of his hand, a third as tall as it was wide or deep. Druz knew of the Barsk-wide aversion to polymers, machined items, and obvious signs of technology, but the simplicity of the metal box slipped past such prejudice and was a thing of beauty on its own. He didn’t know what he could use such a box for, but he had no doubt he’d keep it.

  The issue was resolved upon opening it, discovering it had its own purpose as a home for its contents. Nestled snuggly in a bit of black cloth lay a circular amulet made up of inlaid woods in a swirling design, the whole thing hanging from a chain of tiny links of metal as pale as ash that nearly blended in with his own skin color. Pizlo fiddled with the chain until with a twist a magnetic clasp clicked apart and he was able to refasten it around his neck. The amulet itself rested at the base of his throat.

  He ran a finger over both its sides at the same time, feeling a faint depression in the back. And then it talked.

  “Happy birthday, Little Prince,” the amulet spoke in Druz’s voice, buzzing against his neck. “I hope you like your gift. It’s a personal recording device that will respond to your touch. Pressing against the spot in the middle of its back will let it know you want to use it. At the same time, tap the top front once to record and again to stop. Tap twice to begin recording a new item. Tap the bottom front to play back, and the sides to move from item to item. It’s easier than it sounds and you’ll learn the knack of it readily I have no doubt. You’re very special, Pizlo, and you witness things others do not. I thought you might find it helpful to be able to keep a record. If you ever wish to transfer the recordings to another device or other media, Jorl can show you how. Enjoy.”

  Pizlo removed the amulet and stared at it a long while, agog at a message recorded just for him, at having Druz’s voice available at any time. He studied the gift, cataloging the look and shape and weight of the thing in his hand. He put it back in its box, wrapped the paper back around it and tucked it away in a nook. Making a record of his own observations in turn confused and excited him. But who would listen to him? Surely no one, if they realized the source was an abomination. Had Druz realized what a complicated gift she’d given him?

  He drew a wafer of koph from his bandolier and slipped it under his tongue as he set off to another wild space higher up, midway between the Civilized Wood and the canopy. It was one thing to sit in a nook where he could watch the nefshons of Keslo’s inhabitants, but for actual summoning he preferred less accessible spaces. He had an urge to chat with the Archetype of Man, to include his new amulet as part of the nefshon construct of himself, and discuss with the long dead storyteller how he might make best use of it. Plenty of stories he’d heard had no witnesses other than the hero, which suggested that the hero had to be responsible for either writing down the tale or telling it to someone who did. Perhaps it was time for Pizlo to consider telling his own story, or at least recording some
of its pieces.

  * * *

  AS a general rule, Pizlo liked abstract things. While concrete objects had the advantage that you could touch them or taste them, hold them in your hand or hide them under a stone or in a stream deep in the Shadow Dwell, they contained within themselves a lie. A book he borrowed from Jorl existed not only on the shelf in his advisor’s home, but also as a memory, a recollection of the emotions and thoughts it had sparked in him. The memory of a thing was different. An image in his mind owed nothing to the physical world, and presumably could exist within him even if the concrete source of it was lost or destroyed. Jorl had called this the “permanence of idea” and at first Pizlo thought his friend had it wrong. How could ideas be permanent when every time he rolled one around in his thoughts it changed? That was before he’d come up with the idea of building a catalog of his insect collection in his mindspace. The bugs in that memory were static. Yes, each specimen led to a more elaborate memory of how and when and where he’d acquired it, but they didn’t roil in his brain like abstractions did.

  So, maybe Jorl was half right, at least when it came to ideas about things. But thinking ideas about ideas still felt like an endless cycle of rain that was always the same but always different. It made his ears twitch, as if holding such a thought in his head meant he knew something that not even the moons above had realized yet. That didn’t happen very often. After talking with the Archetype, he’d spent the next day and night and most of another day wandering through interstitial spaces of the Civilized Wood, ostensibly restocking his various hideaways, but really using the physical motion as an analog of profound cogitation. By the end of it, he had things to share with the moons.

  He sought out the deepest darkness that existed only in the Shadow Dwell. Any artificial light from the inhabitants of the Civilized Wood lay far above and behind him, blocked by impenetrable layers of branch and leaf. Pizlo nestled amid the roots of a massive meta-tree, sorting out what he wanted to say and waiting for the right time to say it. There was life all around him, the tiny bugs and animals that made their home in the rocks and muck and soil of the place. Parasites and symbionts lived in bark and leaves, spores and pollens and things too minuscule to see floated on the air with opportunistic hope, fungi grew in colors that no one ever saw, molds rippled with alkaloids that would produce visions to rival anything imagined while under koph.