Barsk (14 page)

“That's my fault. I guess these are for you.” Jorl took a sealed pouch from his cart, paperwork from the provost, and presented it to the attendant. She rifled through the pages, made a point of glancing up at Jorl's aleph again, and shrugged.

“Okay. I guess that's all right then. But, you didn't complete this last section indicating your destination. It's for your own safety, like in case you have an accident or something goes wrong and you don't get there.” She pulled a stick of ink bamboo from a pocket and held it poised to fill in the missing information. “So, where are you going?”

“Yeah, about that. If you have to ask, I can't tell you. But don't worry. Nothing's going to go wrong.”

Wishing he felt as confident as he sounded, Jorl waved the attendant toward the boat's tie and motioned for her to cast off. He hauled the rope aboard and then settled in. It was three times the length of any of the rowboats he had used for past travels between islands, and even had a small shelter enclosed on three sides. Jorl didn't mind sleeping out in the rain, but it was nice to know he wouldn't have to.

*   *   *

FOR
reasons that could only be appreciated by another academician, Grummel the oceanographer had named his craft
Tenure Redeemed
. Jorl passed plenty of other craft on their way moving from one island to another, from simple rowboats and small ferry rafts to larger ships with as many as three masts and sails all unfurled. It was the middle of the season of wind, the most popular time for travel, and Jorl kept a firm hand on the ship's rudder. The near-silent engine of the academy craft gave him good speed, and he didn't trust his own skill enough if he let himself come too close to any other boats. Eventually though, in the final moments of twilight, Jorl slid past the last island that lay east of Keslo and out into the open water beyond the edge of the western archipelago.

According to every map on Barsk, the next bit of land he could expect to see was Relfa, the western most island of the planet's other chain of islands, a voyage that took a sailing ship at least twenty days. Jorl had never visited Relfa nor any of the islands beyond it, though he knew plenty who had. His own father had told him tales of setting forth in the company of several dozen other men in a co-opt-owned galley that made the trip several times a year. Common sense said that such a large collection of young bachelors and wandering husbands in a confined space, day after day, had to end badly. Once they reached adulthood, male Fant just tended to get surly around large numbers of their fellows. Each wanted to be off living his own way, master of his own destiny, and free of any reminders that someone else might have another way of going about things.

It had been less of an issue in the time before the Fant had come to Barsk. When the Lox and Eleph had been minority populations on mixed worlds of other races, seeing others of their kind, even other men, had felt more reassuring than confrontational, perhaps in part because of the general animosity they received from anyone who wasn't Fant. Nonetheless, pilgrimages of collectives of men from one group of islands to the other happened, as much a rite of passage as the passage to distant lands. Tral had spoken of massive wrestling matches on the deck of his ship, the consumption of prodigious quantities of distilled spirits, and spontaneous songs being written and sung with so many verses that they could outlast the day's light. But he'd also talked about how half of the men on that particular voyager had leapt from their ship when they'd come in sight of land, preferring to swim to shore than spend another moment in the company of others. Jorl had asked him once if he'd been among the Fant who'd stayed aboard and put into dock at Relfa, or if he'd opted to swim, but his father had only smiled and changed the subject.

As night fell, Jorl dropped anchor and retired to the boat's enclosure. By lamplight he read through what he gratefully considered an idiot's guide to the boat's state-of-the-art navigation system, as fine a piece of Alliance technology as any he'd seen on Barsk. With the exception of those who worked in the planet's pharming industry, most Fant eschewed complex devices. Jorl could imagine the cognitive dissonance someone like Grummel must have endured in a vessel perfectly designed for a stereotypically absent-minded academician. If not for his own time in the Patrol, he'd probably be in similar straits.

Over a dinner of citrus and sweet leaves, he reviewed the scrap of paper with Pizlo's directions, as well as his own notes that he'd scribbled between lines. In the vast empty water that lay to the east, a mere three days journey given the speed of the
Tenure Redeemed
and far closer than distant Relfa lay his unnamed destination. He had no idea what he'd find there. As he lay himself down for sleep, his imagination served up a range of possibilities. Perhaps a beach overflowing with the rotting remains of rafts and boats that had carried their occupants on a final trip. Maybe the island held a rain forest like every other island on Barsk. Maybe the Dying had built their own version of a Civilized Wood filled with individual apartments where they enjoyed their last days. Or maybe he'd simply find a vast accretion of bones, the crumpled skeletons of eight centuries of Dying Fant, their flesh long since stripped away, strewn from one end of the island to the other, from its gravelly beach to the mud and streams of its Shadow Dwell. With images of animated corpses dancing in his head, Jorl wandered into sleep.

He rose at first light, the clouds on the eastern horizon beckoning him with a rosy glow, the sky overhead showering him with a light rain. With a yawn and a stretch he eased himself over the boat's side, splashed himself to full wakefulness and tended to the morning's ablutions. Clambering back aboard, he returned to Pizlo's page and converted the boy's route into terms the boat's hardware could understand. It quickly returned a declarative ping, and its display informed him of his options: barely two days if he left immediately and continued nonstop, a bit over three if he maintained his intention of cruising only during daytime. He hoisted anchor and engaged the engine. The
Tenure Redeemed
surged forward and he sat back to enjoy the warm rain and the vast open sky.

Jorl had been too intent on beginning the voyage to give much thought of how he'd occupy himself during it. His focus had been on setting out, and now he had insufficient distractions for the trip, having failed to bring along so much as a book to help pass the time. Ironically, he had a collection of
imramha
he'd been meaning to read, written by a Speaker on Telba. Every few generations some young man went off in a boat and had a voyage filled with impossible adventures. The Speaker had summoned a dozen of them, one at a time of course, and compared their own experiences with the tales that had spawned.

Lacking other diversion, he instead reviewed everything he could remember about the Matriarch's prophecy regarding the Silence, seeking any insight or clue that might guide him once he reached that final island. What had she seen? Jorl couldn't fathom how the simple act of arrival on its shore would resolve his or any Speaker's inability to summon the recently dead. Which meant that somehow, his destination wasn't the end of the journey but rather a necessary first step to something else. If Margda had known, she'd either given no indication in her prophecies, or had been far too cryptic for him or anyone else to have figured it out. Maybe it would be clear once he got there. Or maybe he had it all horribly wrong.

Most of that first day he simply sat in the boat and gazed up at the overcast sky. The cloud cover was as complete as ever, but it moved far faster than his boat and he tracked the arrival and disappearance of individual clouds within the larger sheet that defined the sky in shades of ever lighter gray. The flight of the clouds and the movement of his boat lulled him into an easy trance state and soon his mind began giving meaning to the half-shapes of the clouds. There was an Alliance ship racing to some secret mission beyond the horizon; far to the right was that cute shopgirl who always flirted with him and never complained at even his most obscure book requests; directly ahead must surely be hiding a tree from his childhood, where he and Arlo had convinced themselves no adults could ever find them no matter how hard they searched. The clouds swept past, his mind formed new explanations for their shapes, and in this way, pausing only for the occasional nap or meal break, he passed his first full day at sea.

The second day began much as the first, though the rain fell with a bit more force. The boat's instruments assured him he was making good time toward the open bit of water he insisted was his destination. The day's sun was halfway to its zenith and he'd already mapped out a pair of wrestling Prairie Dogs, the front door to Tolta's home, the glowering face of the Matriarch, and a bucket overflowing with ink bamboo from the roiling clouds overhead. Through it all the boat's engine had been a faint but constant hum, more felt than heard. Jorl's reveries ended as the background sound rose to a shrill wine, alerting him that the boat had crested the last swell and not fallen back but continued to rise.

Jorl spun in place and saw the reason, his experience giving name to the color he saw, a shade of gray he knew intimately from many an afternoon pointlessly painting the outer hull of his own Patrol ship, punishment for one or another imagined offense on those occasions when they'd dipped into an atmosphere and docked at some welcoming port. A larger craft had risen up beneath his boat, so broad that he could have put a couple dozen of the
Tenure Redeemed
side by side and still not fallen off the edge. Its depth had to be at least as big, suggesting many levels or a series of huge cargo holds. He didn't have enough detail to guess which of several ship designs lay there, but even the smallest required a length ten or more times its width. Not a scout ship, and too big for a survey vessel. Something this big went into space for years at a time, ferrying important people between worlds or executing deep space missions or responding to unstable colonies on the fringes of Alliance space.

As if in response to this last thought, he saw a gate open further up where the gray hull rose in a lazy curve from horizontal to vertical and three red-clad figures poured out.

Contamination troops,
he thought. He'd worn the same garb once himself, his trunk tucked uncomfortably down the front of his translucent mask. He'd sweated a pool in all that plastic, investigating an abandoned ship left adrift, its atmosphere vanished and its skeleton crew dead at their stations. A malfunction of its systems had left it vulnerable to a hull breach that had killed everyone, but the Patrol had taken no chances and the investigation team had suited up expecting some kind of plague. When in doubt, the Patrol always prepared for the worst, which probably explained the gear worn by the trio striding toward him. He recognized their race by their gait before they came close enough to identify through the windows of their masks. He stood to meet them, giving voice to the first question to form in his mind. “What are Cans doing on Barsk?”

An instant later they had boarded his boat. One Dog grabbed hold of his left arm, another took the right. The third glared at him as if Jorl had insulted his mother so frequently and thoroughly that no retribution imaginable could be enough.

“A better question might be, what is a Fant in the prime of his life doing out on the open water like an imbecilic and suicidal elder?”

Jorl's head turned so quickly toward this voice that his trunk nearly slapped the third Dog in front of him, causing that one to flinch, duck, and fall onto his ass. Jorl frowned. Cans were fiercely loyal and disciplined; they made up the bulk of the Patrol, but they were almost never in charge. Standing now in the gate, the source of the responding question, was a Cheetah. Unlike the Dogs, she wore neither hood nor mask. The blue of her gear proclaimed her officer status, and the molded insignia at her elbows, distinct to the initiated but easily missed if you didn't know to look, marked her rank.

“I'll have to disagree with you, Captain. I'm well within the patterns of my culture to be here. Whereas your presence is a violation of the Compact we have with the rest of the Alliance.”

“Interesting and more interesting still,” said the Cheetah. “Perceptive and well educated. Let us hope you're smart enough not to offer any trouble. I am Nonyx-Captain Selishta, and my mission here grants me exemption from your precious Compact and permits me to detain you for investigatory purposes.”

Jorl frowned, and pulled his trunk close, coiling it for action. “I know enough to recognize when I'm being lied to, Captain. There are no exemptions. I learned that in my own time in the Patrol.”

The Captain strode across the hull with a swift fluidity, and the third Can who had only just regained his feet scurried out of the way. The Nonyx stood half a head taller than the Lox and stared down with an expression that clearly showed she did not respond well to contradiction.

“You're that one, are you? I understood one of your kind had served a partial tour.” She flicked a finger at Jorl's forehead without actually touching it. “What's that paint?”

“A cultural marking,” said Jorl. “It grants me free passage, anywhere and anytime. Its sanctity, like all of our customs, is also guaranteed under the terms of the Compact. Your troops holding me against my will is another violation.”

With a smile, the Cheetah gestured to the pair of Dogs holding him. “Release him. The lot of you go and prepare the tertiary hold for his vessel; it's obviously not going to dismantle like the others so we'll take it whole.”

The nearer two Dogs couldn't let go fast enough, and quick-timed back toward the open gate. The third whined a query. “Ma'am?”

“That's an order. Relax, it's not as though he has anywhere to go.”

“You can't take my boat.”