Barsk (6 page)

This time her conversant was male, naked, and to her horror aroused. She'd drawn him from his most recent nefshons; had he died while having sex? He cradled his head in both hands and looked at her through red-rimmed eyes. “Grandma's tusks, what did you put in my drink, woman?”

“I'm a Speaker. You're dead.”

“Oh. Really? Huh. I guess that explains it. I didn't think this house had any Lutr girls. A shame. I hear your people are really flexible.”

Lirlowil flinched. She'd found the Fant because of his sordid exploits. Born on Barsk shortly after its colonization, he had left to visit his parents' birthworld, Marbalarma, and then spent the next thirty years bouncing from planet to planet, recounting his travels in a series of flims. These had found an audience in some parts of the Alliance, generating enough revenue for the Fant to continue in ever more exuberant acts of tourism until the day he died in a particularly vulgar incident on Dawn involving an exotic courtesan and her employer.

With even more reluctance than with her first attempt, Lirlowil slipped into his mind and went searching. His knowledge of drugs was extensive, but only with regard to the variety and palatability of recreational substances readily found off Barsk. Other than the diluted bits of koph that were part of seasonal celebrations during his childhood, he had no experience of the drug Krasnoi wanted.

She fled his mind and dissolved the summoning at speed. She'd not immersed herself as fully in this one's mind but nonetheless felt even more unclean.

*   *   *

LIRLOWIL
filed her reports in unending detail for both encounters and received back both written praise as well as authorization to request a boon from off station. She asked for the impossible, hoping perhaps to gain some leverage when the promised gift never materialized. In this she was disappointed. The “impossible” took twenty days, but she awoke one morning to find an enormous globule of water floating in the middle of her bedroom. A squad of Patrollers had returned to Sharv, visited her family's homepond, and hauled away thirty metric tons of water.

Lirlowil had thrown off her nightclothes, pushed off from the bed, and dove into and through the water, emerging sleek and restored, feeling better than she had since she'd arrived. She shook off myriad droplets that formed almost perfect spheres in the room's null field. As she floated, grooming her dark, wiry pelt, the room's air system jetted the dropules back toward their source. Far from being defeated by her failed ploy, she took inspiration from it. If her captors could do the impossible, she would at least continue to try.

*   *   *

FOR
her third attempt she'd immersed herself in propaganda written by a radical isolationist who had dedicated his life to severing all ties between his home and the Alliance. She hated politics and she had no patience for the ultra-serious, wide-eyed dreamers who wanted to change your world whether you wanted to live with those changes or not.

“You are Emil, an Eleph of Barsk. Your time in life has long since ended; you are now as you once were but not alive. In this, a world of my—owww!”

As soon as he'd taken form, Emil had somehow slapped aside the telepathic tendrils that Lirlowil had reached toward him.

“What? I'm not dead. This is a trick. Get out of here. Your kind aren't allowed.”

“My kind?” How had she already lost control of the conversation.

“Your high and mighty furred kind. Isn't that how you exclude us? Because we're not covered in hair? Well, fine, we neither need nor want you either. Away with you!”

She reached for his mind again, and found her probe batted aside as before. Did he have some innate defenses? Emil didn't seem aware of her attempts.

“I don't plan to linger, believe me. But I have to ask you some questions—”

“I have nothing to say to you! Begone!”

“Look, I'm a Speaker and you're dead. This ends when I choose to end it, not before. So stop giving me grief and we'll get done that much sooner.”

The Fant glared at her. “You want to see grief, I'll show you grief.”

His trunk pulled back and to the left, then swung at her head. Lirlowil ducked in the other direction but the attack had been a feint. Not so the fist that came at her from the other side and struck her in the face.

It was as if the nefshons under her control shattered and exploded. Or maybe she'd just been blinded to them. Either way, she was back in her room, the summoning ended. It hadn't been real but her face ached for days all the same.

She'd gotten nothing from him, filed a report of her failure, and returned to her research. Nine days later she was ready to try again.

*   *   *

HER
fourth attempt went more smoothly. “You are Tral, a Lox of Barsk. Your time in life has ended; you are now as you were in life, but not alive. In this, a world of my own making, I bid you welcome.”

“Oh. Hello. We're doing this again? Wait, you're not my son.”

The Fant had taken form quicker than most, and his minimal confusion confirmed Lirlowil's suspicion that he'd been summoned before.

“No, I'm not. But he wrote a lovely biography about you that let me summon you.” She reached into his mind and began her search.

“Did he? I didn't know that. He's always writing, that one. Even as a boy. Not a real livelihood, I told him, but what child ever listens to his parent, am I right?”

She found extensive knowledge of Barsk flora in his mind, but all of it involved tapa and other sources of material for tailoring, which made sense for a garment maker. Of pharmaceuticals in general and koph in particular, Tral knew less than nothing.

Although the most civil and benign of her Fant conversants, he was nonetheless still a large and ugly monster. She concluded yet another useless summoning and sent the man away.

Lirlowil filed this fourth report as she had the preceding three. Appended to it was, once again, her insistence that such haphazard summoning of Fant was almost sure to be unproductive. She had a response the next day. They thanked her for her continued struggles, as they had three times before, and encouraged her to resume her efforts immediately. Lirlowil put this latest document, covered with the signatures of unrecognizable names, in her desk with the others.

Beyond melancholy, she also knew that no display of melodrama would accomplish anything. Krasnoi and the Patrollers who held her captive only cared for results. She was nothing more than a tool to them. Lirlowil didn't need to probe their minds to understand they would leave her there to succeed or die trying. She had no intention of dying in a converted warehouse in orbit above a world of misshapen freaks. The past four attempts had convinced her of the worthlessness of her research materials.

If she was to have any hope of finding a summonable Fant with the information her captors wanted, she had to reshape the problem and see it in a new way. She'd been pairing the traditional methods of Speaking with the radical technique of her telepathy. What would it mean to approach things from a novel stance? There were rules, set in place by the very first Speaker—a Fant, naturally. A glimmering of an idea began to form in Lirlowil's mind. She was certainly no stranger to breaking rules …

 

FIVE

RECIPROCAL REFERENCE

THE
first diffusion of dawn's light through the Civilized Wood had reached Jorl's home and begun to warm the buds of sartha that a well-meaning friend had planted beneath the window of his sleeping room. All too often the heavy fragrance wafting in would cause him to fall back asleep. As a result, he often missed his early appointments. But not today. He'd awakened in the night, following the fragment of some dream and moved to the writing table in his study. For hours he'd been lost in his revision of a troublesome section of text, a comparative analysis of the significance of the Compact from the point of view of the first generation members of the Archipelagos' Council.

He'd started the project in the last days of the dark season, when the constant cloud cover of the sky thickened in a layer that removed the distinction between day and night. The seasons turned as they always did, dark giving way to storm. The rain increased eightfold. Continuous thunder and ubiquitous lightning made long stretches of indoor work more desirable. Jorl had fled the fury of the season and performed day after day of Speaking, summoning and interviewing each council member.

He'd completed that portion yesterday and celebrated by visiting the little bookshop down the boardway from his home. He'd allowed himself to be distracted by the pretty clerk who always flirted with him, and if he came away with a few more volumes than he'd intended, well, where was the harm?

Then he'd set to work writing it all up. It should have been an inspiring document, but the minutia of those days, all the pointless details from the perspective of history that had seemed so critical to the men and women living them moment by moment, dragged it down. Jorl frowned and started again. After the third rewrite of the opening pages it still felt dull as mud. With a grimace and a nervous fan of his ears Jorl pushed away from his work table.

He sighed and then inhaled deeply. The scent of the sartha came to him from his sleeping chamber and he toyed with the notion of returning to bed, if only for a short nap. The resounding crash as his study's shutters burst open chased the thought from his head. He leapt from his chair to see Pizlo landing in a blurred tumble, all arms and legs and trunk, in the center of the room. The boy wobbled and rolled a bit, finally coming to rest almost at Jorl's feet. He shook his head once, seemingly none the worse for wear, and smiled up at Jorl.

“Have you had breakfast?”

Jorl attempted his sternest look while secretly welcoming an excuse to ignore his revisions. “No, I have not. But you should know, I only share breakfast with guests who present themselves properly, and request permission before entering my home.” He studied the child. Pizlo's pale white flesh bore any number of scratches and minor wounds, but none of them were fresh or in need of attention. The only thing out of place in this out of place child was a greenish blob of paint on his forehead.

Pizlo grinned, “I don't need permission. All doors are open to me. I have an aleph,” and he pointed at the paint.

Jorl fought back a smile. He'd been expecting this conversation for some time. “Oh really?” he inquired. “And what three achievements of yours entitle you to such a distinction?”

The boy's delight in himself withered a bit. He rubbed at the paint and glanced at his hand. Nothing had come off. He bit his lip as if in thought and then took a bold stance, arms akimbo, and stared up into Jorl's eyes.

“Three things? Why … you know, the usual three, the same way that all of us do it. Same as you.”

Jorl went to the adjacent kitchen's small cupboard and took out an assortment of fruits and nuts before returning to Arlo's son. He beckoned Pizlo over to the table, setting the bowl down while he took his seat again, and helping himself to a large plel. Pizlo took hold of the wastebasket by the desk, upended it, and used it for a stool as he settled in and began working his way through the bowl of food.

“The thing is, it's never the same three. At least, it never has been. No two Aleph-Bearers have ever been marked for the same reasons.” Jorl finished the plel, and looked for the wastebasket to spit out the seeds, recalled its recent transformation, and spat them out the newly opened window instead.

Pizlo seemed thoughtful, or perhaps it was just that he was busy eating. Jorl had never known a child with so much energy, or one who could eat so voraciously. Already the bowl was all but empty. Even so, he suspected Pizlo had already eaten breakfast this morning. At least once.

Amidst mouthfuls he said, “I got mine because of my insect collection. It's the best one in Keslo!”

“No doubt,” agreed Jorl. Pizlo spent most of his days and nights out of doors, making his own trails in the spaces that surrounded the Civilized Wood and doubtless venturing down to the Shadow Dwell far below. Tolta had set aside an entire room to house his collection of several thousand specimens; it was one of the ways she lured him to come for an occasional dinner or spend an infrequent night sleeping in an actual bed. “But that is just one accomplishment. You need to have two more.”

Pizlo took in this new information, digesting it slowly while he chewed on the remaining plel. Only after he had finished the fruit did he cock his head. “I … I can swing real good. On vines. That's how I flew in through your window!” He beamed at Jorl and waved back at the window as evidence of his qualifications.

“Fair enough, but that's still only two. Perhaps you should wash that paint off and go back to asking permission to come in, at least until you manage a third appropriate accomplishment.” Jorl took the boy by the hand and led him to his utility closet in search of a rag and some solvent.

After they'd removed the paint, Pizlo asked Jorl to take a walk with him. He agreed, but only after insisting that the child exit by the door and not back through the window. They strolled along the boardways, the morning warming around them. The reactions of the other Fant they passed varied depending on whether they saw Jorl or Pizlo first. Friendly greetings trailed off to silence. Smiling faces turned cold and looked away. Some just stopped in their tracks, jaws slack, trunks limp, as they tried to make sense of a prestigious Aleph-Bearer out for a stroll with a non-person. Pizlo didn't appear to notice; they were no more a part of his world than he belonged to theirs.

The pair made their way along one of the less traveled routes and paused at a balcony that looked out on a hollow bowl in the green of the forest surrounding them, an open space that sometimes housed a suspended stage where students put on plays during the seasons of wind and mist. Pizlo leaned far out over the railing, glancing at other balconies above and below theirs. Jorl resisted the urge to grab hold of the boy and protect him from falling. He'd seen him climb before, and the likelihood was that Pizlo was as comfortable hanging there as Jorl would have been in his own bathtub.