The Moons of Barsk

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  “Captured!” Ryne trumpeted, as the field utilization spiked on two more discs.

  “Confirmed. Shall we move to phase three?”

  “How many decedents do you intend to contain? Surely not all sixteen discs worth?” Lolte asked.

  “No, I arranged for twice as many discs in case there were complications. The goal today is to hold four constructs on the discs per Speaker, plus a fifth maintained in the traditional manner. That will do for today’s demonstration I think.”

  The two Eleph Speakers opened their eyes, stood, stretched, and once again changed seats. They settled in and, barely suppressing smiles at their own place in history, each began to summon their third conversant of the session.

  TWENTY-SIX

  SET FREE

  THAT morning, Dabni had gone down to the docks to await her husband’s return. She’d taken the funicular to the harbor and marched out onto the pier and then to the slip where Jorl would return. She didn’t imagine she’d have long to wait, but even that felt like too long in the heavy rain of the season. And yet, she deserved far worse. The full weight of Klarce’s revelation bore down on her. For seven years she’d successfully compartmentalized the two halves of her life. She’d grown comfortable in the invented identity of a young woman breaking from the family business to run a bookstore, all as a cover to observe and report on the activities of a historian and Aleph-Bearer. And along the way she’d taken on a new reality, lover and wife and mother. She’d fallen for her target, rationalizing at each critical step that it was just part of her deep cover.

  But no, she’d dropped that lie when she’d disregarded the order from the council and withheld the meme that would have caused Jorl’s death. Yes, Klarce had rescinded that order, but what if she hadn’t? How long before her handlers followed up and discovered she hadn’t so much delayed as disobeyed. Because that was the moment when she’d stopped serving the Caudex. That, more than anything else, was what she needed to tell Jorl. What she needed him to understand. Everything else, the deception and manipulation and lies of omission, that was all on her, and if he hated her for it she couldn’t fault him. But choosing his life over the life she’d led up to that point, that was a choice she had to have him hear.

  All the way to the harbor she’d run through variations of how to tell him, rejecting them one by one. Now, when she could go no further, when all she could do was wait, she found she had no words at all.

  She sat scanning the sea for the first sign of a returning boat. Visibility at the harbor was poor, something she’d known intellectually but had never actually tested by sitting on a pier during flood. Looking back, she couldn’t see all the way to the dock, and only the boats in the nearest of surrounding slips showed clearly. She saw movement on one of them, two slots further up the pier. The movement resolved into a pale, three-quarter sized person. Pizlo sat on the prow of a nearby boat, swinging his legs as he too stared out to sea.

  She hesitated to call to him. Even though she’d grown up in the progressive Civilized Wood of the unnamed island, she’d still learned to flinch from the mere mention of an abomination. And yet somewhere in the last few years he’d changed from an abstraction lent flesh to the bizarre best friend of her daughter. Which was to say, he was just Pizlo, no more and no less.

  Moreover, there was no one else around to react to the indecency of interacting with him. “Did you follow me here?”

  He turned to her and even through the rain she could see he was surprised she was there. So, no, he hadn’t followed. Probably, he’d even arrived first. He clambered down from the boat, tripping and tumbling along the pier like a gymnast and then up on his feet again in a brief jog that brought him alongside her.

  “No. I’m waiting for Jorl. Did the moon tell you he was coming?”

  She shook her head. “No, someone else.”

  “Was it Klarce? I’m going to go talk to her.”

  “What? Don’t even joke about that, Pizlo. It’s not funny.”

  He gave her a wounded look. “It’s not a joke.”

  “Just … don’t. Okay?”

  Pizlo looked up into the pouring rain. “Are you going to tell Jorl you’re a Speaker?”

  “Among other things, yes.”

  “Oh. Good. Because I thought I’d have to, but now I don’t.”

  “You’d have to … oh. Um, why would you do that?”

  “Because you were going to hurt him.”

  She leaned away from him, her ears fanning out in defense. “I wouldn’t. Never.”

  He stared at her a moment and then shrugged. “Well, no, not now. But before. Only … you changed that. Huh. I bet Telko missed that.”

  She frowned at him. “Is this something the precognitive voices in your head told you?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Well, I guess they were wrong.”

  “Not wrong. They can’t be wrong.”

  “Didn’t we just agree they must be? If they told you I was going to harm Jorl and we both know I’m not?”

  “No, it’s a timing thing. And an agency thing.”

  “Timing?”

  “The future. It’s mostly fixed. Unless you’re able to act and choose, and the timing of that choice may or may not be enough to change things. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t fixed before. Just that choice trumps destiny. I only really learned that recently.” He smiled.

  Choice. That single word from him summed up everything she’d been agonizing over. She looked at him, trading the smile on his face for an imagined one that she might expect to find on a boy who had grown up in a vast home of siblings and cousins and plenty of food and endless games to play. At times, his sickly pallor, as well as the bruises and lacerations that announced his hidden deformities, faded from her awareness and she had to look hard at him to see the abomination that had denied him that life. How was it he’d had no choice and yet so effortlessly pointed out hers?

  “You’re an odd young man, Pizlo.”

  He nodded. “I’m a contradiction,” he said.

  “That, too.”

  * * *

  SHE got to her feet at the first glimpse of Jorl’s boat arriving through the rain. Moments later she could see the shape of him through the windowpane of the wheelhouse. And then the boat was easing into its slip and Rina was capering on the deck and shouting to her.

  “Mama! Mama! I met a Sloth and she had real long sleeves. I mean really really long! And a Raccoon and she had a mask and then another mask painted on top. And we made a puzzle, only we didn’t finish it and—”

  And there he was, scooping their daughter up in his arms, making her giggle, crossing the deck and descending to the pier. Her target. Her husband. Rina’s father.

  “We need to talk,” she said as he came within quiet earshot.

  “We do,” he replied.

  Rina squirmed in his arms as she spied Pizlo and he set her down. “Pizlo, did you hear? I met a Procy. Did you ever meet a Procy?”

  The abomination came forward, stood right next to her and smiled at her daughter in a way that a creature who did not belong to society had no right to. This aberration whom Jorl befriended and taught, whom she had endured and grudgingly acknowledged in order to do her assignment, loved her daughter with a friendship stronger than any she had known.

  “Never,” said Pizlo.

  “Never ever?”

  “Not even once.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll tell you all about her.”

  “I’d like that, but in a moment.” He waved his trunk and Dabni half turned his way. “You need to tell him.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Pizlo wants to be sure I mention that I’m a Speaker, like you.”

  “Not exactly. No one’s like him. And you’re not even one like me. But I guess no one else is either. Ha!”

  “Pizlo, leave off. I already know.”

  Dabni turned back to her husband. “You met Klarce?”

  His ears were down and back. His hands folded to
gether in front of his body, his trunk low and still. “I did. She explained why you came to Keslo. Why you really came here. And what you’ve been doing since then right up to today.”

  “No,” she said. “It stopped days ago. I ended it.”

  “Oh? Klarce didn’t share that.”

  “She doesn’t know. I haven’t told her. I … I didn’t know myself, not consciously, until just a while ago.”

  “What happened days ago?”

  “I didn’t kill you.”

  “Mama?”

  She ignored the tone in her daughter’s voice, hadn’t meant to say that in front of her but in the moment it felt right. Where was that moment now?

  “You’d done … something. Learned of the existence of the Caudex. The council saw you as an immediate threat and they ordered me to slip a meme into your mind that would initiate a cascade failure of every major organ. Your body would sicken, weaken, and in a handful of days you’d be dead.”

  He stood there. Not … angry, not even judging, just taking in her words and staring at her. As though, because the things she’d said were in the past, he could regard them the way he contemplated history. Behind her, she could hear her daughter crying.

  “And you didn’t do this thing?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I thought so. At first I tried to rationalize it. You were my assignment. My target. For all that time. All those years watching you and writing reports and telling myself I was just playing a role so I could get close to you to do my job. But … you’re also Rina’s father. And I couldn’t do that to Rina. I love her too much to cause her that kind of pain. And … when I acknowledged that, I also realized I loved you too much, too. And then the choice was easy.”

  Small fists beat against the backs of her legs.

  “But you were going to!” Rina screamed, tears streaming down her face only to be washed away by the rain. “You thought about it. Someone told you to kill papa and you thought about doing it.”

  “Rina, sweetheart, it wasn’t quite like that.”

  For a moment the only sounds were the rain and the reluctant movement of the boats. Then, softly, Pizlo spoke. “Yes, it was.”

  “See? Even Pizlo thinks so. I hate you. Hate you!”

  Rina spun and ran away up the pier, arms and trunk flailing as she wailed. Her world turned wrong side over, Dabni started to go after her but Jorl’s hand gripped her arm and held her back.

  “Pizlo?” Jorl turned the name into a question beyond the capacity of language.

  “She’ll be fine. Worn out and hungry. But fine. Give her soup.”

  “And what about you?”

  He ignored Jorl and faced her instead. “I knew you were going to hurt him. Not you as you are now, but as another person. Only, I thought that was something new, and this you, this was who you’ve been all along. No one ever told me that all this time you weren’t like now. I should have been told.”

  “I…”

  “Maybe not everything. That’s too much. But, this. I should have been told this.” He still hadn’t looked at Jorl. Instead, he started away, back toward the harbor proper and the forest.

  “Where are you going, Pizlo?”

  “To think. You should too, Jorl. Different things, though. You’re better at it than I am, but I need to try.” He never so much as broke his stride. Soon the rain swallowed him and he was gone.

  And there was just the two of them. Fitting to end as it had begun.

  “Do you hate me?” There. She’d said it. Wanted to give herself credit for saying it, and then let that go. No credit for her, not after everything.

  “No,” he said. And that was all. She waited, in case he wanted to elaborate or qualify, but no. That was all he had to say on the matter.

  “You should,” she said, tears filling her own eyes. She hoped the rain hid them. She turned from him, emptier than she had imagined ever feeling, and left him on the pier, wishing she’d never come to this island or met this man, or only come to realize how much she loved him in time to lose him.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  STALEMATE

  JORL watched nearly everyone he cared for run away from him, vanishing into the rain. He’d known more drama in the last handful of days than he’d seen since he’d first set out to find the unnamed island years before. In hindsight, he might have realized that seeking that place before his time couldn’t possibly lead to anything good, and yet he’d experienced wonders since. In that time, Pizlo had continued to grow and learn and defy every expectation of society. And Dabni had changed his life in so many fundamental ways which, regardless of her motivation, had resulted in him being a better man. And Rina, how could he ever doubt the perfection of having a daughter. All of that had come after his first trip to that unnamed island, and he had to believe that this second visit would eventually yield similar treasure. Not in the current moment, but eventually.

  For now, everyone was still reeling from the confrontation and revelations on the dock. Pizlo had fled to seek his own counsel, Dabni had likely retreated in confusion and shame to her bookstore, and Rina had run away home. He understood that everyone needed time and space to process, and that was fair, though he worried about his daughter getting back safely. She was mature for her age, but she was also upset. She would never have allowed him to accompany her, but perhaps.…

  He saw the harbormaster’s son hesitantly drawing closer, bringing him a solution. He beckoned Chisulo to his side and hurriedly explained the situation. The young man nodded, beaming with the responsibility Jorl placed in him, and set off in pursuit of Rina. She didn’t have much of a head start and he knew the routes up from the harbor better than anyone. His longer legs would let him catch up and shadow her all the way back, or “accidentally” encounter her and guide her home if she lost her way. Satisfied as he could be at the moment, Jorl took a different route, giving his family their space, and headed to the familiar comforts of his own home.

  * * *

  INSTEAD of answers to the problems before him, he had more questions. The abstract points and principles he’d discussed with Welv had been made concrete by Abenaki’s proposal. But her premise: that in order for the Fant to flourish they required reintegration with other races had been turned on its head by the accomplishments of the Caudex. Six unknown colonies? Another five million Fant out there in the galaxy? His people were already thriving. Even if the Raccoon’s theories promised still more, did he have the right to threaten the safety and stability of entire worlds?

  He sat in the hammock at his desk, a blank sheet before him and a fresh stick of ink bamboo in his trunk. He’d been sitting like that, poised to produce a list of pros and cons as he worked through the contents of a large bowl of salad. He was nearing the bottom of the bowl and still hadn’t written a thing. And then he felt a tug.

  He set everything down and pushed himself deeper into the hammock and opened himself to what he assumed was Pizlo reaching out to him. The boy’s name was on his lips when he realized the mental space that formed around him belonged to Klarce.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said.

  He smiled. There was much to admire about this councilor of the Caudex, not least of which was her conviction to her ideas and commitment to the survival of all Fant.

  “Not at all,” he replied. “In fact, I was just thinking about our conversation. I respect your caution and concern when it comes to the Alliance. No one alive on Barsk has any direct experience of them, only eight-hundred-year-old stories of disenfranchisement and oppression passed down from grandmothers.”

  “No one but you, you mean?”

  He bowed his head in acknowledgment.

  “And you would have me believe that those many grandmother tales are inaccurate, or grown out of proportion over the many years of their retelling?”

  “Perhaps, in part. But no, there’s certainly no shortage of truth in them. The real problem is they’ve become monolithic, rathe
r than actual. There are trillions of people in the Alliance, and though they may share similarities, just like the Fant they are individuals. Yes, there are regional biases, planetary biases, racial biases. I served in the Patrol and I experienced all of that firsthand, but there are also sociological and educational variables that can transcend those, bring people closer together, create common cause and shared interests. I’ve seen that working alongside my fellow senators in the Committee of Information.”

  “You would tell me that the Caudex is painting with too wide a brush?”

  “I’d ask that you consider that as a possibility.”

  “And if I tell you that we have? That for us these tales haven’t passed down through so many generations and grown distorted because we have ready access to the original grandmothers who experienced the oppression directly? And yes, when you go back to these victims, Speak to the men and women who were displaced from Marbalarma and Dramblys and the many other worlds where they had lived and worked only to find themselves relocated to the wilds of Barsk—there’s a reason we call our cities the Civilized Wood—you find personal descriptions of the individuals who sent them here. The accounts blurred over the years, I’ll grant you that, but the eyewitnesses, that zero-generation that predates Margda’s, they did not experience the Alliance as faceless, interchangeable figures. They saw them as individuals who actively destroyed their lives, separated kith from kin, stripped away all possessions, and cast them away with no concern as to whether they lived or died so long as the Fant were gone from their own daily experience.”

  Jorl frowned at her. “And in response? Margda and her generation—which includes your own founders—preoccupied themselves with survival. They took this planet that the Alliance had neither use nor love for and transformed it into an essential world to every stage of their economy and commerce. They sought niches and methods, drafted the Compact in a demand to have a voice and be heard again.”