The Moons of Barsk

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  “Once he enters the forest, he’ll realize it’s truly a Shadow Dwell, and find signs of and access to the Civilized Wood above. He has to be stopped before that.”

  Soosh disagreed. “Would you have us throw away centuries of tradition?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He has an aleph. By tradition, none may bar the path of a Bearer. He is free to go where he will.”

  “The aleph was created by Margda,” said Sind. “The only reason he has one is because she foretold he would. Perhaps this is why she chose him, perhaps she foresaw his arrival here and she wanted to tie our hands in the matter.”

  Genz trumpeted with disgust. “Impossible! If such a future were fixed, there’d be no point to this council even existing.”

  “There have been few precognitivists since Margda,” said Klarce. “It’s far too late to lament we haven’t made a proper study of the phenomenon, and it’s moot besides. We don’t know for certain if he’s coming to us as a scholar or a senator. We don’t know what he knows or what he intends. Moreover, he—” She broke off mid-sentence as someone tugged on her sleeve back in the physical world. She shifted her attention and there was Temmel handing her a note. She read, nodded, and shifted her attention back to the council’s shared mindspace.

  “Further argument is going to have to wait. I’ve been informed that the senator’s yacht has landed just off a strip of beach on the north side of the island. He’s on foot, wading to shore even now and he’s alone.”

  “Alone?” asked Kissel, uttering his first words of this session and drawing all eyes to him.

  “Yes. Just him. No Sloth. No Raccoon.”

  “But we haven’t reached a decision.” Marsh’s trunk slashed from side to side. “We don’t have consensus.”

  “No, said Klarce, pushing back from the circular table of the mindspace. “But what we do have is a visitor to our shores, one who strongly suspects there’s more to this island than the rest of the world believes. He’s coming. You can keep arguing what you’ll do but he’ll be walking down our boardways before you’ve reached agreement. As for me, I’m going to go meet him.”

  “You can’t do that,” said Marsh.

  Klarce silently looked around the table, pausing to lock eyes with each of her fellow councilors. “I don’t imagine any of you are going to actually attempt to stop me. Chastise, perhaps even sanction me after the fact, but not stop me. I’m fine with that. But one way or another, we need closure on him, and I’m going to get it.”

  * * *

  KLARCE opened her eyes to the real world, dipped her trunk into the water pitcher on the table, and rinsed the taste of koph from her mouth. She’d have liked to take a moment, splash some water on her face and ears, but there wasn’t time. She left the council room to find both Temmel and Regina waiting for her outside.

  “How quickly can you get me down to the northern edge of the Shadow Dwell?”

  Regina shook her head. “Not quickly enough. Even if he takes his time, the senator will easily have climbed the beach and reached the forest before we can stop him.”

  “I don’t want to ‘stop’ him. I want to greet him. Likely he has only wild conjectures as to what he’ll find here. The last thing we want is to put him on the defensive. He mustn’t begin his visit here in a foreboding manner. We need to welcome him.”

  “There’s no way to get there in time,” said Temmel. Regina nodded beside him.

  “Go,” said Klarce.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Get to him, the both of you. Clear a path back, use my name, invoke the council if you have to. You’re his honored escort, the personal assistants of a member of the council.”

  “How will we find him? By the time we reach the Shadow Dwell he could be anywhere.”

  “No, he won’t. He’ll be waiting just inside the forest for you to come and guide him to the Civilized Wood.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Klarce smiled. “Because he’ll be busy chatting with me.”

  * * *

  SHE rushed down the hall to her office, fumbling with yet more koph as soon as she was through the door. Another dose, so soon after the last, and not the abbreviated mixture used in council. She’d pay for this later, possibly when she most lacked the resources but there was no other way. She dropped to a couch, calling up the index as soon as she had perception of nefshons, and swiftly singled out Jorl’s thread. She let the rest of the index fade and yanked on that single strand.

  “Jorl ben Tral!” She hailed him, spinning the scene to match the one he actually stood in, there on a rainswept beach, the bulk of his vessel in the water a short distance behind him, himself but a moment’s walk from the forest’s edge. “I bid you welcome. I am Klarce, my mother’s name was Kolleen.”

  He stopped, the construct she’d spun of him reflecting his self-image, moving as he imagined he should move. And then he smiled, an expression that spoke volumes, revealing that he understood what had just happened and that he had experienced nefshon-based conversations with other living beings before. The realization rocked her more than she dared reveal; Margda’s chosen one had violated more than just one piece of her precious edict.

  “A pleasure to meet you. Klarce? Perhaps our mothers knew one another.”

  And that simply she set aside half her fears. However tainted this fool might be, whether from Margda’s influence or some Alliance contagion, he was civilized. He was Fant. And so he must surely understand that the Caudex’s work was as much for him as for anyone on Barsk. It was a place to start.

  She returned his smile. “I suspect we both have seen far stranger things than that possibility. I hope we can compare notes.”

  He nodded. “I’d like that. But, and pardon this next question, I intend no disrespect, but I don’t want to proceed from false assumption. Klarce, I know where we are in this moment, but before you spoke to me I stood on the last island. I am not of the Dying though. Are you? Are you here as well?”

  “Yes, to the second, and no, to the first. The Dying do indeed come to these shores, though perhaps not to the particular beach you’ve selected. But those that proceed further are no longer Dying. They join us, high above your head in the Civilized Wood as full citizens and participants in our endeavors.”

  His ears rose and spread with obvious delight. “An entire Civilized Wood? Here? How large?”

  “Not so small as you’d find on the smallest island of your archipelago, but near enough. I’m sure I can arrange a tour.”

  “Like this?”

  “Oh no, that would never do. You need to appreciate it with your own senses. This, this was just so I could be here personally to welcome you. Your arrival took us by surprise.”

  “Not completely though.”

  “No. But we’ll talk more of that soon. I’ve arranged a simple, home-cooked meal for you, if you’re agreeable to dining with my partner and me.”

  “That sounds very agreeable. How am I to find my way there?”

  “I’ve sent my assistants down to escort you. They should reach you shortly. Pardon their appearance if they are out of breath or otherwise disheveled. I emphasized speed in reaching you. I assure you they will take a more leisurely return.”

  He looked at her strangely. What did he see? Could he read her fatigue?

  “Very well. Then I will abide here until they arrive. I look forward to seeing you and your spouse soon.”

  “Soon,” she said, and broke the connection.

  * * *

  KLARCE’S assistants delivered Jorl to her on the front porch of Adolo’s family home and then departed. Adolo had met them at the side door to the small parlor. Traditionally, it was a place for would-be suitors to some daughter of the house to meet without the pressure and attention of unwanted siblings and cousins—to say nothing of meddling aunts and grandmothers—and it served the need for a private welcoming of an unexpected visitor. From the look on his face and the posture of his ears, Jorl had n
ot expected such a homey reception, and was embarrassed to have arrived without a visitor’s gift. Adolo had waved away his discomfort by placing a hefty mug of day beer in his hands and ushering him over to the very chair that Klarce had occupied over the span of many visits while wooing her.

  Klarce had expected Adolo to be put out at the prospect of hosting Jorl in her own home, but in fact she had embraced the idea with delight, perhaps seeing it as an opportunity to bring their personal lives closer to her work in the council. And certainly the Full Council had demonstrated a pronounced inability to come up with anything better. But now, having this Aleph sitting in her parlor, occupying her favorite chair, nibbling dried vlarjna berries from a dish Adolo had made for her during an ill-conceived couples’ pottery class, it was all too much. She wasn’t entertaining some visiting leader or scientist recovered from among the Dying, this was an Alliance senator in Fant guise, and always and above all the chosen of the Matriarch. More, he had somehow resisted the efforts of two teams to disrupt his memory. What secrets did he hold and what game was he playing?

  They’d settled in and Jorl blandly held forth with a string of seemingly sincere compliments of the parlor, the courtesy afforded by Temmel and Regina, the appearance of what portion of the Civilized Wood he’d seen on his way here. It was all polite and empty and demonstrated he had no intention of volunteering anything. Before she could organize the myriad thoughts in her head and begin to properly but surreptitiously interrogate their guest, Adolo broke the conversational ice.

  “I am led to understand that you are a scholar with an unparalleled knowledge of the Matriarch’s prophecies,” Adolo said, even as she stepped up to refill Jorl’s cup with another serving of beer. If she caught Klarce’s glare she gave no sign but continued making small talk, ever the perfect hostess. “That must be fascinating.”

  “Margda was a manipulative bitch,” snapped Klarce, diplomacy giving way to the effects of too much koph on her illness. Schooling herself, she elaborated, attempting to soften her outburst. “Her many accomplishments not withstanding, nor the tragedy of the illness that caused her such discomfort in the latter half of her life, but she was the most disagreeable, single-minded Fant that ever lived.”

  Adolo had blanched at her lover’s vehemence, but Jorl showed no offense. He sipped from his cup, scooped up another helping of berries with his trunk, and nodded thoughtfully as he chewed and swallowed. “That doesn’t come through if you’re just reading her texts or the other papers she left behind, but that was my assessment of her as well.” He paused, turned his attention to Adolo, and smiled. “Thank you, these refreshments were exactly what I needed after the voyage here.”

  Klarce bit back a scowl. Let her love be taken in by his charm for the moment, she knew better and would sort her later. “Assessment, scholar? That sounds more like a personal opinion than a conclusion reached by many hours of research. Surely you never conversed with her yourself?”

  The historian had been raising the cup to his mouth again and halted, likely realizing he had slipped up. His eyes revealed him in the midst of a calculation, whether he ought to dissemble or bluff his way through, or minimize the truth by treating it as a triviality.

  He nodded. “Actually, I did. Only a few times over a couple of days. After so many years immersed in her work, it was a singularly … disappointing experience. I tend to let it fade from memory.”

  “How, disappointing? As a student of her life, someone actually foretold by one of her prophecies, you were marked with the aleph and forever changed on her word alone, and you found conversing with her disappointing?”

  Jorl shrugged and fanned his ears, pretending a nonchalance that she knew was all fiction. “Say rather the conversation itself was disappointing. My apologies, I’m not at liberty to discuss the particulars of it.”

  “As may be,” said Klarce. “And yet, if you had words with Margda, dead now the better part of eight centuries, you must perforce have been in violation of the first law of the Speaker’s Edict. Was that what made the conversation less than the pinnacle event one might expect of a scholar meeting the source of his life’s work? The utter betrayal of one of her most fundamental precepts, by her chosen one no less!”

  From the corner of her eye Klarce could see Adolo flinch at still another display of bad manners, but her intention here wasn’t simply to be rude to a guest. Rather, she had selected her words deliberately. She needed Jorl unbalanced, needed to gain the upper hand with him, no matter how convivial a visit Adolo had created. And yet, she had somehow failed. Far from appearing mortified, Jorl looked to be striving to fight back a smirk. He hid his mirth behind another swig, draining the cup and waving off Adolo’s move to refill it again.

  “I can see why you might think so,” he said, “but in fact, I didn’t summon her.”

  Now Klarce snorted, ignoring the horrified stare she drew from Adolo. “You say you spoke with her?”

  He nodded. “I did.”

  “But didn’t summon her? The Matriarch of Barsk, dead for all those years. Pray, tell me how you two managed to converse if you didn’t discard the first law and summon her?”

  His ears fell back and went still. He’d managed to school the amusement from his mouth but his eyes twinkled. “She summoned me.”

  “What?”

  “Margda summoned me. She broke both the first and second law of the Speaker’s Edict in doing so, but I suppose since she created the rules in the first place they were hers to break.”

  “Impossible! How could a dead Speaker summon a living one?”

  The smile came back and as it spread across his face Klarce knew she’d lost this round. The smug bastard had stopped any pretense at hiding his amusement. But more, the gleam in his eye had transformed into something shrewder.

  “I think you of all people would know the answer to that better than me. That’s why I’m here, after all. Ignoring the Speaker’s Edict is the least of the surprising things that take place in this city that is found on no map. How many people not on this island even know of its existence?”

  Klarce bit back a laugh and resisted the temptation to quote the number, or lay claim to the handful or more for every island on Barsk, or mention the residents of Ulmazh above, let alone those beyond this star system. Any one of those responses would give too much away. He’d scored a hit, and knew it, but not to what extent. So, she could return his game and minimize, downplay what he thought he knew.

  “This community was founded by Margda’s contemporaries. They respected her work, but didn’t agree with all of her ideas or how they should be used. But she had the support of the sitting government and she did not tolerate differing opinions, let alone differing schools of thought. That was in the time of the planet’s first native-born generation. Less than half of the islands of the eastern archipelago had been colonized yet; the western islands had been charted from orbit but had yet to be visited. Those first Speakers who disagreed with her banded together and vanished from the world, creating a city on an unused spot beyond the western border of any settled land.”

  “So this island wasn’t hidden back then?”

  “Far from it. Back then you could even find it on maps—not that any of those maps exist today. And, of course, the cultural prohibition against technology was in its infancy so settling this place was easier because those who came here chose to embrace modernity rather than turn from it. That was the crux of the difference. Margda was a politician turned scientist. Our founders were scientists turned revolutionaries. While she was laying down her edict and defining the ‘one true way’ of Speaking, they were exploring the possibilities of nefshons in manners and directions that never occurred to her, generating hypotheses and testing their limits. I don’t know why she failed to examine any of those possibilities. She wasn’t stupid. Even those who hated her for her controlling personality acknowledged her brilliance. But she never pursued any of those other avenues of nefshon research.”

  “I suspect
she couldn’t,” said Jorl. “The visions she had of the future and her goal of keeping Barsk strong in the face of an antagonistic Alliance shaped her work.”

  Klarce nodded. It stung to agree with the scholar, but he made sense. And it fit with things she and a handful of other living Speakers knew from direct experience. “Yes, always the visions. Lacking a scientist’s curiosity, perhaps she had to rely on direction from her own damaged brain.”

  Jorl scooped up more berries, used chewing as an excuse for a moment of silence rather than reply. When he did speak, it was to direct the conversation back to an earlier topic.

  “You said my assessment reflected conversation, but I was simply affirming what you’d already said. Which I take to mean that you have spoken to her yourself. Even unhindered by the edict, I have to wonder how that came about.”

  She laughed. “Oh, not just me. Speakers in this city have been summoning Margda since word of her death reached our shore within days of her passing. She’s doubtless the most frequently summoned person in all of history. Doing so is a rite of passage among our leaders and most talented citizens. I myself have experienced her cutting intelligence, her contempt and disdain, seven separate times.”

  That had struck a nerve. His eyes had widened with each word. By the end, his trunk dropped into his lap, limp and weak. But what had he expected?

  “I … I find that difficult to credit,” he said. “Such a thing changes the deceased. I’ve seen it myself, before I learned better, from summoning a loved one again and again. I would have seen it in her when she summoned me. Heard it in her voice.”

  “No, scholar, you wouldn’t. None of those thousands—yes, that many and more—thousands of summonings left any mark on her nefshons.”

  Emotion became animation and he swung his head and trunk from side to side in violent denial. “No. That’s impossible.”