The Moons of Barsk

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  Speakers, both on and off Barsk, had rituals when summoning someone. They’d emerged about the same time as the rules for what one should and shouldn’t do with nefshons. Margda’s rules. He knew of them from his studies but had never used them. He only ever summoned the Archetype of Man, and Jorl himself had assured him the establishing ritual would be meaningless to it. Which meant it wasn’t a necessary part of the process, just a commonplace one. So, if the nefshons didn’t care, he didn’t see any reason he should. With no more thought for protocol, he reached out for the particles he desired.

  Pizlo was one of the few people who knew that Jorl had broken the rules of the Speaker’s Edict. And yet, he summoned people just the same. So, like the establishing ritual, the rules of the edict were just another lie of the Matriarch. With that in mind he broke one of them, reaching out for the nefshons of a man he believed still lived. Jorl had sent him far away to a frontier world that might one day become a new colony of the Alliance. But seven years earlier all of his nefshons had been pulled to the space station in orbit above Barsk. They’d dissipated in that time, but not so far that Pizlo couldn’t call to them, not much harder than another Speaker might reach out to a relative that had sailed off a tenyear ago. Soon he had a portion of those nefshons gathering in front of him. They in turn connected back to the source, defying rules of time and distance, a trail of particles that allowed him to capture more recent nefshons from his living target. It was like he held a string made of connected particles, running all the way from Barsk to the other side of the galaxy. Like—and Pizlo gasped as he made the connection—like the nefshon thread he’d seen Dabni manipulating.

  As the connection solidified, he had a sense of the man as he now was. Pizlo let him take form, drawing the appearance from a blend of self-image and unconscious admittance of how he appeared to others that were present in the memories sloughed off from the moment before.

  The Yak took shape, aged far more than he appeared in Pizlo’s seven-year-old premonition. He’d lost a lot of weight, muscle mass mostly, and his body sagged as if his horns sought to drag him to the ground at every moment. Gone were the former senator’s fancy robes, replaced by a utilitarian and heavily patched jumpsuit somewhere between dirt brown and mottled green. He appeared tired beyond the power of simple sleep to repair, his eyes as dead as any Pizlo had looked upon. He looked defeated, or worse, broken.

  “Do you know where you are?” he asked the Bos.

  Slowly Bish lifted his head. His eyes widened as he took in the room, the desk. He tried to speak, failed, wet his lips and tried again.

  “This … is my office.”

  “No, this was your office. It’s mine now, at least for the moment. But never yours again. Do you know me? Or if not, can you infer who I am?”

  “You’re a Fant.”

  Pizlo rolled his eyes. Why had he been so afraid of this man? “Push past the obvious. I can’t believe you’ve met very many of us.”

  “You’re not Jorl.” He scowled and spat into the grass rug. “I’ll remember him to my dying day. He killed me.”

  “Worse, he left you alive. But no, I’m not Jorl. Nor does he know we’re having this conversation. This doesn’t concern him.”

  Bish stood a bit straighter, meeting Pizlo’s gaze for the first time. “This isn’t real. I’m still on Dorrance. Still picking beans like a common laborer.”

  “That’s right, we’re a long way from your colony. You’re there but you’re also here.”

  He nodded. “This is like when Jorl brought the members of the committee together from all their worlds. But … you’re not him. I thought only he could do that.”

  “There’s a trick to it, but it’s not important. Do you recognize me? One abomination to another?” Pizlo saw on the Yak’s face when the pieces fell together.

  “You’re the brat.” He stood a little straighter as he said that last word, anger evident in his eyes. “The precognitive wonder that Druz brought to me. You’ve grown up some. That makes sense. The days run together here but surely you’ve had years to mature. And you’ve become another damn Speaker, too?”

  “I am. I have. Though you’re one of a very small number of conversants that I’ve summoned.”

  The Bos snorted. “Excuse me if I don’t feel flattered by the attention. What do you want? And how is it you know who I am? No one does. No one remembers a thing.”

  “They all forgot you. Everyone but Jorl.”

  “And you.”

  “No, I forgot you too. I just remember what I learned by unconventional means before I forgot. Like you said, I’m a wonder.”

  His guest considered that a moment then nodded. “Druz said your rating was likely to exceed all others when you hit puberty. Huh. Score one for the Brady.”

  “There’s no point in keeping score or worrying about anyone but us. I brought you here to talk with you. I won’t keep you long.”

  Bish snorted again, shaking his head. The tips of his horns danced briefly closer causing Pizlo to flinch. That reaction drew a smile from the Yak.

  “Why would you think I’d have anything to say to a Fant? My time in exile hasn’t made your kind any less repugnant, and I blame your associate for my fall. End this. Send me back. We’re done.” He bowed his head and as he exhaled his body folded in, what little bluster he’d possessed used up that quickly. The anger that had flared from some banked inner fire had spent itself. Once again he just looked broken.

  Pizlo considered ending it. Bad as he’d been, this man had lost everything. What right did he have to add to Bish’s torment? But then he recalled the Abomination of Fintz, and wrapped himself in his resolve. “We’ll be done when I say we’re done. You have the rest of your life, whatever time may be left to it, to pick beans. I don’t care about that. I need to know about the life you led before you were forgotten. I need to understand how you did what you accomplished, built what you created. I don’t have the luxury of figuring it out on my own. I want you to teach it to me, the high points, the underlying structure and concepts, as much as you can, right here, right now.”

  The Yak raised his head again, staring across the desk. “What are you talking about, boy? It’s all gone. You understand that? There’s nothing left that I could teach you even if I wanted to.”

  “There is. Your life’s work, the methods, the skills, they’re still in you. I need that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Power,” said Pizlo. “Teach me about the acquisition of power.”

  Bish shook his head. “You’re just a boy. Why would you crave power?”

  “Why does anyone? Start there. Why crave instead of want or desire?”

  The Bos chuckled then, weak and soft, laughing at him. “That’s the heart of it, boy. The difference between need and want.”

  “Explain. Why is that the heart?”

  Nodding, the Yak turned and stepped to the sofa, lowering himself down upon it, too tired to hold up his own frame. “Look at those words. What do people need?”

  Pizlo waited, thinking at first the Yak was being rhetorical. But no, he truly wanted an answer. “Do you mean what do people need to live? Like air and water? And food? Shelter?”

  “What else? What must a person have?”

  “Um … clothing? Companionship maybe?”

  “And what do people want?”

  “Like I said, all of that.”

  “No, that was need,” said Bish. “What do they want?”

  “Stuff. A nicer house, maybe. Or books. Trips? I don’t know … I don’t really want much, I guess.”

  “How nice for you. But that’s the crux of it. That’s where power fits in.”

  “Because people want power?”

  “No, the people who want power aren’t the ones to concern yourself with. It’s the ones who need it, like air and sustenance. That’s it, right there. Power sustains. It is the means to everything else. Those who understand this, who truly crave power, are the only people who
can properly wield it.”

  “Wield it how?”

  “As they choose. That’s the beauty of power. At its essence, it becomes the means to shape creation, to impose one’s will on reality.”

  Pizlo felt a little sick. “Like here, in a summoning. I created this room. I have the power here.”

  Bish laughed, cackled actually. “This? This isn’t power. This is fantasy. I’m not a Speaker but I know this cannot last much longer. And when it ends, I’ll be back to picking beans and you’ll return to being a repugnant child who thought it might be amusing to waste my time with your questions.”

  “Maybe you’re right—”

  “I am!”

  “Yeah, but if you are, while I’ve got you here, I’m going to keep asking you questions.”

  The Yak shrugged and looked away. “You can ask. I don’t have to answer.”

  “Are your beans really more interesting? I’d think you’d welcome the distraction from what your life has become.”

  He lifted his head, the tips of his horns glinting in the dim light. “Did Jorl teach you that?”

  “What?”

  “To think like that? Cruel truths?”

  “I … I’m sorry, I just need to know these things. The way you describe it, power is about controlling things. But you haven’t explained how you get that power in the first place.”

  “How you get … you don’t get power, boy. You take it! Do you ask for the air you breathe? The food you eat? Do you wait for it to fall from the sky and fill your outstretched hands?” He lurched to his feet and came at Pizlo, stopping on the other side of the desk, arms extended over it. Pizlo pulled his trunk back. “You see it, and you reach out your hands, gripping it tightly, and you take it!”

  “Like nefshons,” Pizlo said, and in response to the confusion spreading out on Bish’s face, he reached out and pulled apart the collection he’d gathered to bring the Yak here. Vanishing him and ending the summoning. His thoughts turned back to Dabni and the index. And that other construct which she hadn’t shared with Jorl because it would have hurt him. “Like nefshons.”

  * * *

  “IF all stories are really the same story just told differently—like you can take a piece of paper and fold it a billion different ways—that’s one thing. But then, what about the stories that aren’t tales or myths or like that? What about the stories of ordinary people? Are those stories, too? Because, if everyone is the hero of their own story, and all the stories are the same story, then doesn’t that mean all the heroes are the same hero?”

  After his interview with Bish, Pizlo had climbed down to the Shadow Dwell. Sometimes contrast helped him sort through things and so he’d arrived at a hot sulfur spring of bubbling mud that lay adjacent to a cool stream. The mud soaked into his skin, soothing the unfelt lacerations that were a part of his daily life. He’d been speaking aloud, as much to himself as to the world all around him, trying to work through the tumult of ideas that threatened to pull him down. The warmth of the spring calmed his mind, while the fumes made his head heavy with a need for sleep. Each time he began to nod off Pizlo pulled himself out of the mud and dropped like a stone into the stream’s flowing rush of water, clearing his thoughts in the process. He’d already climbed from the stream to the spring and back again several times, expressing his thoughts to a nearby collection of grubs that were on hand to feast on some plants growing near the spring. Though the grubs themselves did not reply to his question outright, a reply resonated in his mind all the same. The world insisted on answering even his rhetorical questions.

  “Right. So Jorl is a hero, because he defeated the Matriarch and that bad senator. But Dabni’s a hero, too, even though she planned on killing him. And Tolta’s a hero as well, claiming me as her son. And I guess that means Druz is a hero, too, though she seems more like someone who is always there to help the hero, but maybe that’s just setting her up for her own quest. Maybe for her, being there for Jorl like that is her story.”

  He climbed out of the stream a final time, shook off the excess water, donned his shorts and bandolier again, and set off through the muck and roots of the Shadow Dwell making a line for a small spot of beach too small and too difficult to reach to attract anyone else. As he emerged from the edge of the forest, the rain whispered a greeting. Pizlo gazed up, paying his respects to the weather, the clouds, and the moons above them. Ulmazh and Pemma were overhead, Wella just dropping below the horizon.

  “The Yak thinks he’s a hero, or was; he had a quest and everything, but he failed at it. But he knew things, like the difference between need and want and how that relates to power, and he had it, for a long time. And that woman who’d given Dabni the thing to hurt Jorl, she’s a hero, too, right?” He paused. Despite the intervening clouds, Ulmazh was speaking to him, spurred on by his implication about Klarce. In that moment he saw a future, one where Klarce wanted more than just to hurt Jorl, she saw his death as a necessary part of the woman’s own story. Unlike Dabni who’d been ordered to harm him but refused, Pizlo saw Klarce tearing Jorl apart, using his own nefshons to kill him bit by bit.

  But that didn’t have to be the future. He’d repudiated the world and its moons, refused to accept that the things they told him that hadn’t yet happened—must happen—because they’d been told. Refused … like Dabni had refused? Was that what she’d done, broken from her own narrative, changed the nature of her quest? Not all quests were orthogonal, that was pretty obvious. Jorl and Klarce might both be heroes, but their goals were incompatible. That conflict might even be a big part of what made each of them heroes. But if only one could complete their quest, then only one could win, and his visions were telling him which way it would go.

  Unless he changed things. The future was fixed—even if only he could see it—but also only if he did nothing to alter it. Agency could defeat predestination. And hadn’t he decided to be the embodiment of contradiction? What was that if not agency personified? It was his choice to make—or not—to accept the vision of the future or work to change it.

  He shouted at the sky. “That doesn’t have to happen, Ulmazh, and you know it! I was wrong about it before. Maybe my quest is to intercede for Jorl, to convince Klarce that whatever has her so mad is a mistake. Is that why Jorl went back to the final island? Because if that’s where she is, I know the way. I’ll go there myself and confront her. I can borrow Jorl’s boat again, when he’s not using it, and I can make her see that he’s really on her side and…” He stopped as the realization that Klarce was not on that island washed over him. She wasn’t anywhere on Barsk at all.

  “That doesn’t make sense. She has to be here somewhere. She can’t … oh … that’s why you’re talking to me in the first place, isn’t it? She’s there, with you. In you. Klarce is inside Ulmazh. That’s sneaky. Too sneaky to take a boat to see her, but…”

  He spun around and plunged back into the forest. Pieces began falling in place in his mind, things he had to accomplish, details that had to fit into the right time and place. He could do this, he had the power if he only chose to clasp it to himself. Bish had made that clear. He didn’t know how Klarce had left the planet, and it didn’t matter. Very soon, Jorl would return to Keslo, and when he did Druz would be waiting just offshore in the only spacecraft on Barsk. A trip to the moon would be almost effortless for such a vessel. That’s how he would reach Klarce. He only had to convince the Sloth to take him there.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  BETRAYAL OR REDEMPTION

  JORL had returned to the yacht to find Druz, Abenaki, and Rina working a jigsaw puzzle on the floor just beyond the main boarding lock. The complexity was far beyond his daughter’s age level but far from being frustrated by it the child seemed enthralled. Instead of the simpler task of finding edges—which Rina could have done with ease—in consultation with her doll she would point out scattered pieces to the Procy and Abenaki would gather them together and assemble assorted portions from the middle into ever larger connected chunks. Somehow
Druz had been relegated to the work of building the frame.

  “Papa!” Leaving her doll to study the puzzle pieces, Rina leapt to her feet and flung herself at him, arms and trunk wrapping around his legs. “Did you meet the strangers? Was there a mystery? Did you bring me a present?”

  “Of course I did, little twig,” he said, answering her most important question first. His escort, Regina, had been kind enough to lead him past a sweets shop on his way back. Bending low, he folded his ears around his daughter to block her vision and pulled a bit of waxed paper from his pocket, revealing it with a flourish. “I think you’ll enjoy this. I never tasted anything quite like it anywhere else on Barsk.”

  She unwrapped it, revealing a lump of rock candy. Rina immediately put the whole thing into her mouth. Smiling around the lump she mumbled. “Did you bring one for Kokab?”

  “I’m sorry, I only thought to ask for the one. Perhaps you can share?”

  She nodded once, let go of his legs, and returned to her doll on the floor.

  Druz had also abandoned the puzzle and been rising more slowly. “Senator, did you learn what you came for?”

  “In part, but not in whole. I’ll need to return tomorrow.”

  “Return to Keslo, sir?”