The Moons of Barsk

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  Pizlo wandered back down the pier toward Jorl’s boat. There was nowhere to go but home now. He had been so confident, armed with knowledge of the meta-story, the awareness that he was the hero of his life. He had identified the call to action, wavered, and then heeded it. He had embraced advice from his mentors. Leaving Keslo, the only home he had ever known surely counted as crossing the threshold into a new world. And he had been tested, pursuing the council, stealing their ink, achieving his goal. But that hadn’t been his quest at all. Or if it was, it didn’t matter. What satisfaction it might have brought him turned to ash when he’d found the abandoned infant.

  He had always been different, always been the Abomination of Keslo. He knew the reasons for this; Tolta had never hidden it from him, and when he’d been old enough Jorl had explained the biology and the cruelty of that part of Fant culture. But even knowing the rhyme of it, he had never stopped to think that other islands might hold other abominations. “One in a million” Jorl had called him, but Barsk’s archipelagos were home to five and a half million Eleph and Lox. Surely that meant that other biological mistakes happened around him. Yes, he was a rarity. Jorl said that in all the history of Barsk, only a handful had lived even a few years. But here he was, Pizlo, a fourteen-year-old, older than any of his kind had any right to be. A fluke among flukes.

  Tracking and finding the council, acquiring the ink to render his moons had been a false quest. What if all along his destiny had been to seek out others like himself? What if his purpose was to arrive at the moment some city abandoned a living abomination to the elements instead of placing the baby in its mother’s arms? Had he reached Fintz two days earlier might he have provided assistance? Was there some medical aid he might have brought to change the outcome? Or even the simple favor of his regard, the warmth of his own body cradling the infant, could that have saved it from its own genetic anomalies?

  The realization that others like him lived and died exploded everything he thought he knew. It meant he didn’t need to be alone. All of the Archetype of Man’s stories of heroes and isolation came to him, and many heroes had found in the course of their own journeys the friend or companion that completed them and gave meaning and purpose. Had he, then, arrived too late? Surely if he had been Sundance then the broken newborn he carried could not be Butch. If he was Gilgamesh, how could Enkidu be dead before they even met?

  But no, Pizlo knew, really understood, that it was futile to wonder such things. His own history notwithstanding, abominations did not survive. The timing of his arrival wouldn’t have made a difference. He was alone, and no quest could change that.

  While a handful of nearby dockworkers studiously didn’t watch him he boarded Jorl’s boat and at last set his burden down. If the people of Fintz didn’t want their child while it lived, they didn’t deserve the corpse. Pizlo ascended to the wheelhouse, accessed the controls, and set a course for Keslo. He wasn’t a hero, and he just wanted to go home.

  * * *

  BARSK had a marine force. Boat theft was uncommon and piracy nonexistent. But plenty of drunken bachelors managed to strand themselves between islands, either running out of fuel if their craft had an engine or more commonly losing their oars or even falling overboard because of foolishness. And accidents happened, particularly given the extremes of the weather. Vessels capsized, or sometimes rammed one another when visibility dwindled and the ocean took matters into its own hands. The marines patrolled and responded quickly and efficiently. Many a Fant had a tale of being fished out of the water and owed their lives to those men and women.

  Charting a direct course to Keslo and traveling at full speed, Pizlo drew the attention of his archipelago’s marines. Repeatedly they flagged him to slow down. He ignored them. They hailed him to stop. He didn’t and simply raced onward. Twice, marines in a smaller, swifter craft pulled alongside him, threatening to grapple their own boats to his with the intention to impound his vessel and arrest him pending trial, but each time he simply glared at them from the wheelhouse and within moments they fell away. Once the marines recognized him for an abomination they couldn’t demand he stop, couldn’t arrest him. Impressively, they followed him, perhaps telling themselves they didn’t so much pursue an abomination but rather a vessel in distress.

  In two days he reached Keslo. As he docked the boat back in Jorl’s slip the marine escort put in at adjacent piers. There would be questions asked, obliquely at best. Pizlo gave no thought to how the harbormaster would explain any of it without talking about the unmentionable. He had other concerns. As he stepped onto the pier, the infant body once more in his arms, he couldn’t bring himself to feel any guilt over the inconvenience his travels might have caused anyone. In the scope of things, it just didn’t rate.

  He ignored the routes that would take him up into the Civilized Wood and instead made his own path ever deeper into the Shadow Dwell. The boles of every meta-tree acknowledged his presence in hushed voices within his mind. Every rock and stream greeted him somberly. The small creatures that lived there in the island’s darkest places scurried and raced around him but never paused and he continued on with determination. He knew every step one could take in the Shadow Dwell, had rambled through the mud and dark of each bit of it from his earliest days. All of it spoke to him, guiding him to his destination. And in time he came to the spot where Jorl had buried Arlo, where he had watched from hiding as his father’s remains had been laid to rest. A cairn lay at the base of one of the city’s meta-trees, Arlo’s name carved into the wood. Pizlo set the tiny unnamed, unloved body down alongside Arlo’s spot. He roamed a while, gathering stones from brooks and riverlets, and when he had enough he covered over the child. Then he raised his head, gazed up as if through the forest and clouds to where Telko would hang in the sky.

  “This could have been me here,” he said. “If I had died instead of lived, perhaps Arlo and Tolta would have given me a grave. It would have shocked everyone in Keslo, but surely no more than they did by acknowledging me as theirs. I don’t know if that’s ever happened before. I never thought to ask. Jorl might know. Fintz doesn’t deserve this child. Keslo neither. Probably no island does. But … Arlo does. And so it’s here now. And … and that’s all I have to say. People are all so stupid. Why are we so stupid?”

  Safely hidden, Telko did not reply. And honestly, Pizlo didn’t want an answer anyway.

  SIXTEEN

  A COMMITTEE OF ONE

  JORL’S workspace contained an old desk that he had acquired when a physiologist he’d once met at a faculty mixer had decided to sell off all his belongings and use the resulting cash to travel somewhere far away and start over. He’d told Jorl the desk had been his grandfather’s, an artist of insatiable appetites that ranged from the sweet and savory to the carnal and unsavory. Allegedly, the desk had been an altar of sorts, the physiologist’s grandfather supposedly performing acrobatic acts with both men and women upon its broad surface. Upon taking possession of the desk, Jorl had it disinfected, sanded, and refinished with multiple layers of resin before moving it into his home.

  As he had no intention of using its surface as a sex platform, he commissioned the construction of a matching hutch, a structure of shelves and cubbies and compartments where he could sort and file various projects, keep reams of paper and cups of fresh ink bamboo, hide snacks away for later consumption (the hiding becoming a critical feature with Pizlo in his life), and once upon a time store a supply of koph. He no longer needed koph in order to see nefshons. The drug Arlo had died to protect remained in his system, constantly reactivating the ability far better than an application of koph ever could. Instead of koph that cabinet now contained the latest in Alliance communications technology, a device that connected to a relay in the space station in orbit above Zlorka and from there to every inhabited planet in the galaxy. As the juniormost member of the Committee of Information, he had access to every published book and article, magazine and flim, recording and vid that existed in the Alliance, assuming he cou
ld figure out how to find it in the arcane and necessarily complex filing system that had grown up piecemeal as different administrations attempted upgrades and streamlining of the library.

  It also served as a more mundane method than Speaking for conversing with his fellow senators, would-be petitioners, and Druz. Jorl had been sitting in his hammock, jotting down some thoughts on his aborted attempt to Speak with Fisco, the Speaker from Belp who had sailed off more than two centuries ago. Being summoned hadn’t surprised her, as it had every other Speaker of the past that he’d contacted for his project. Indeed, the old woman had reacted as if she were already in the middle of someone else’s summoning when he’d reached her, giving a lecture of some kind. That made no sense. Nor did the name she’d mentioned and bid him forget. Caudex. Had he misheard or was the elderly Lox attempting to cover a slip? The only other interpretation he could imagine involved Fisco having slipped into senility at the end of her long life and somehow believed herself to be part of the roots and stem of a plant. It made no sense. Jorl’d set the question aside for a time, allowing it to turn over in the back of his mind while he focused his attention on other concerns, but nothing satisfactory had emerged and he was on the verge of summoning her again when the transceiver hidden in his desk called for his attention. Druz was signaling him, and from the pattern of the call’s tone she was in the star system. Except … she wasn’t supposed to be, not for another season.

  “Attend,” he said to the air in front of him, shoving aside the pages of his notes and resting his elbows on his desk and his head in his hands. “Open the incoming circuit and record.” The device behind the cabinet door gave a faint ping in response and implemented his directives.

  “Druz, is everything all right? I didn’t expect you until wind. You’re supposed to be making a circuit of Alliance worlds and scheduling appointments for me.”

  An image of his assistant took shape above his desk. It wasn’t as clear and realistic as he’d expect from even the most inexperienced of Speakers to create from their imaginations and render in nefshon space. Rather it was made of light and sound generated by the Sloth and transmitted from her ship. Silence answered him, but that was to be expected with Druz. He’d long since learned that the Sloth’s carefully prepared speeches needed pauses before and after. Regular conversation, when he could convince her to speak to him as just an ordinary individual and not as the senator she served, ran more casually, but whatever had brought her through the system’s portal wouldn’t be ordinary and he’d just have to endure the delays that were part of her nature.

  Eventually, she spoke. “Greetings, Senator. I apologize for the unscheduled call. Has my intrusion occurred during an acceptable time? I am still several days out from Barsk and can call back at a more convenient moment if you’d prefer.”

  “This is fine. I’m fine. Well, no, actually, I’m curious what you’re doing here.”

  “Yes, sir. Understandably so. As you already surmised, prior to diverting to Barsk ahead of schedule I was following your last directive, traveling among the worlds of the Alliance and screening potential petitioners. As established, I redirected those who could find better support and assistance through other, lesser, governmental channels and assigning priority ratings to the few who remained and scheduling them for you to meet using your, ah, gifts. I trust you’ve been receiving my field notes and reports?”

  “I have. And I’ve been meeting from here with those you’ve scheduled in my offices throughout the Alliance worlds. What’s come up to change that? I’ve had no new report.”

  Another pause and then, “No, sir. The circumstances have been peculiar, and I’m still writing it up. I’ll have it for you before we reach Barsk.”

  “We?” Jorl’s ears fanned with a trace of concern.

  “Yes, sir. One of the petitioners I met with presented a peculiar observation along with her request to meet with you.”

  “Peculiar in what way, Druz. I’m not following.”

  “Yes, well, your special techniques notwithstanding, sir, this individual—a Procy by the name of Abenaki—had deduced that you would not actually be present at your scheduled meeting with her. I reviewed the facts of her arguments and they were quite convincing, though I’m sure you’ll want to hear it from her yourself. In any case, as her petition did meet the criteria for your hearing, and as it didn’t seem prudent to turn her loose with the results of her deductions, and as she’d actually brought up the matter of your lack of genuine presence as an argument for allowing her to meet with you directly … well, it seemed best to depart from my schedule and transport her to you at once.”

  Jorl’s ears dropped flat against the sides of his head in disbelief. “You’re bringing a petitioner to Barsk? Are you mad?”

  The silence that followed went on long enough that he wasn’t sure if it was one of his Sloth’s legendary pauses or if he’d offended her to the point of breaking off the call, but then he thought he could hear her clearing her throat as if to start again. When she spoke, her tone was different, anxious. And she’d replaced her usual diffidence with excitement. “Senator … Jorl … I’m quite sane and this Raccoon’s petition is truly something you’ll want to hear face to face. If I have acted in error, well, then I can depart without awakening her and the meeting need not take place. You’ll decide the proper course once you’ve had the opportunity to review my report. In the meantime, I’m transmitting all the backup documents to your location now.”

  “Wait, what do you mean awaken?”

  “It did not seem prudent to allow her free access to your ship in the event I’d misjudged things and she intended some mischief or sabotage. I placed her in the medical suspension chamber in the ship’s infirmary for the duration of the trip. From her perspective it will be as if she’d only gone to sleep the night before.”

  “Druz, that gear is for medical emergencies, not for transporting inconvenient passengers as if they were cargo.”

  “Yes, sir. But it seemed the best course, as I hope you’ll agree once you’ve reviewed all the facts. In three days’ time, it’s my intention to set down in the waters a short distance from Keslo as I have in the past.”

  She stopped and Jorl waited, counting to himself, moving his trunk like a metronome to distract himself and give his assistant the time she needed. Something extraordinary was happening and, right or wrong, he’d have to deal with it in three days.

  “Please review the documentation, sir. I’ll leave a channel open in case you have any questions you wish me to address prior to touchdown. I should tell you, though, the Procy has said she won’t answer any queries until she stands in front of you. I apologize for her rudeness. We’ll be there soon, sir.”

  Which left him with no real answers and questions that wouldn’t or couldn’t be satisfied now.

  “In three days then. Jorl out.”

  The image of Druz winked from existence. Jorl pulled a fresh sheet from a bin in the hutch and spoke aloud. “Attend,” he said again, getting the device’s attention. “Begin display of incoming reports. Normal scroll.” Immediately the air above his desk filled with the first page of the information his assistant had started sending. He snatched up a piece of ink bamboo in his trunk and began taking notes as he read.

  * * *

  THE senators of the Alliance maintained a rotating constituency. It tended to limit political decision-making and legislation that favored particular planets over others. This was even more true for the Committee of Information. Its twenty-five members had to represent all the worlds of the Alliance. Of necessity, these senators constantly moved from planet to planet, local offices where they could meet with constituents, hear petitioners, receive lobbyists. Vessels and assistants like Jorl had inherited came with the job and his colleagues spent a significant portion of their lives simply traveling from one senatorial suite to another.

  Jorl’s ability allowed him to do the job without leaving his home and in a fraction of the time. Unlike any other Speake
r, he could perform multiple summonings at once, dividing his consciousness into as many separate pieces as needed.

  In a typical day at the office, he might maintain multiple independent aspects of his awareness—just yesterday his agenda had required him to create eight of himself. And, much as he’d met with Welv in a mindspace replica of the Cynomy’s office, so too had he spun images of the offices he kept for interviews on different worlds. In eight separate rooms, behind eight desks, he by turns listened, discussed, and even argued with a succession of petitioners—who to their credit had overcome both their personal philosophies and the labyrinthine requirements necessary to land a meeting with him. None of them were Fant, none had previously met a Fant, nor likely ever imagined doing so. Ambition trumped racial prejudice and he was the newest, most recent member of the senate’s Committee of Information.

  Not traveling from world to world and conducting several meetings at the same time had allowed Jorl to complete most of his senatorial obligations at one go every tenday. Druz handled the particulars of his schedule, screening petitioners and providing background details sufficient for him to summon them into his mindscape. After each of these marathon sessions Jorl typically slept most of the following day. He didn’t find the manipulation of all the nefshons or the juxtaposition of multiple versions of himself tiring. Rather, it was the concentrated punch of so many pleading, cajoling, desperate individuals who saw him as their immediate salvation that drained him.

  And now, for reasons that were annoyingly absent from her reports, Druz was bringing one of them directly to him.