Barsk (33 page)

A three-pronged metal claw embedded itself in the table above his head. Jorl reached up and pulled it free with his nubs, curling his trunk around its cable. Druz stepped back from the door, retracting the cable as she went, and he slid across the floor on a frictionless carpet of suppression foam. As soon as he reached the outer room, the clean room's door slammed shut and a shudder vibrated through the glass box. Jorl turned as he stood, watching a cyclone appear where he'd been. The fires had gone out, replaced by a mixture of foam and wind and smoke. The wind gathered up everything that hadn't been bolted to the floor, not just the sopping foam, but chemicals, hardware, glassware, and tools. The mix of them whirled around and around, picking up speed, and then abruptly and soundlessly vanished. A hatch in the ceiling had blown and the inner room been laid open to a conduit that led to the outside edge of the senator's ship and the vacuum beyond.

Another pair—or possibly one or more of those he'd seen before, he really couldn't tell—of the Ailuros guards arrived. The Brady didn't look at him or utter a word but must have issued a directive somehow. The Panda pair latched on and escorted him back through the ship, out the boarding corridor to the station, returning to the cabin where he'd last seen the Matriarch's Lutr. They left him there, locking the door on their way out.

Since taking Arlo's drug, Jorl had felt nothing. No effect at all. Perhaps it didn't work. The pharmer had never actually tested the thing. What if his simulations held some flaw that failed to capture the difference between theory and practice? He stood in the center of the room for a time, feeling younger and more foolish than he had ever felt in his youth, performing a mental inventory, searching for some sign of the drug he'd taken. Nothing.

He settled into a corner of the room, not bothering with either bench or bed, but choosing to curl up on the floor, his back cradled by the intersection of two walls. It had all been for nothing. Margda's prophecies and resurrection. His aleph. The abduction and slaughter of the Dying Fant. Arlo's death. He'd been struggling to give meaning to all of it, and failed. Just as he had with that artifact when he'd been in the Patrol. Useless all over again. With a sigh, he stopped fighting and accepted it.

He slumped in his corner, allowing his thoughts to jump randomly through a sequence of associations and half-remembered ideas that produced apparent non sequiturs but nothing worth lingering on. In his mind, he smelled spiralmint. It was a memory of olfaction, not actually sensed, existing only in his thoughts. It was enough though, so long associated in his experience with the use of koph and the beginnings of a Speaking state. His left ear tingled.

Jorl thought about sight and smiled, seeing himself afloat in a lightless void, and knowing he also still sat in a corner of the station cabin with his eyes fast shut. He'd taken no koph and yet he was manipulating nefshons. It intrigued him, but to what good?

He'd destroyed the lab, and likely prevented the senator from being able to re-create Arlo's drug. Even if the entire process had been recorded, he hoped no one would be able to tell where the real work ended and his cacophony began. And he'd consumed the sample himself, with no real plan in mind other than to keep it out of Bish's hands. Which put things back pretty much where they'd been before.

Margda had mirrored the Senator's ruthlessness, one politician to another, but despite her machinations which had shaped his own life, in the end she'd had no solutions. Arlo had killed himself, following the cold logic of a researcher. He'd been temporarily moved by an emotional appeal, but in the end had only been able to put the problem squarely in Jorl's hands. But Jorl was just a historian; what did his friend expect him to be able to do? He had no frame of reference, no precedent to draw upon. In all the thousands of years of Alliance history, nothing like this had ever happened. And yet … the nefshons danced before him now. He had to try
something
.

Being a historian, what if he looked back further, to a time before the Alliance. The idea was bizarre. Likely, the attempt would fail as soon as he began and he'd awaken on the station with nothing more than a trail of drool down his chin to show for the effort. But he had to at least try.

What did he know about those ancient times? What did anyone know? Now and then an artifact from Before was found on some dead planet or lifeless moon. One such had haunted his dreams. What had it said? Something about being
the past sent forward
.

Jorl focused on what he remembered: a cube of metal and glass, the whirls of color rising like smoke within it, taking on a living shape. Random dust motes swam in his vision, less than a flicker. Nothing. Despite Arlo's assurance the drug would increase his abilities, there was nothing to find. The device that had spoken, its alleged sapience notwithstanding, had apparently left behind no nefshons.

Back in the waking world, he became aware of a crick in his back. The cabin's temperature was cooler than he liked, and sweat beaded on his skin. This latest physical effort had been enough to push his own odor through to his awareness. The guards had locked him in. Bish had no further use for him and might simply leave him there to die of thirst or hunger. It annoyed him, not the idea of dying, but that he might do so while stinking so far above the cleansing rains of home.

No one would ever use koph to summon him, the prohibition applying to Speakers would ensure that. No one would learn his story. All that would be left of him would be the work he'd published before setting off to identify the Silence, an assortment of films and books, nothing but words. His words …

Jorl stiffened. Was he completely awake? He wasn't sure. Words. How many times in the past had he used the words, the writings or speeches, the messages written by an individual to summon and Speak with him? So many countless beings, all long dead, who had spoken the same strings of words, made it difficult. But when the phrases were something unique that the conversant identified with, a slogan or credo, they bound something of themselves to those words. Doing so imbued the words with their own identities, which in turn meant their nefshons were locked there as well. If the device from Before had had even the merest hint of a nefshon, perhaps it could be found in its own distinct speech. And he recalled it, a string of phrases that sounded like total gibberish but which would not have been used by another sapient. He spoke them in his mind, reaching out, straining.

“Gilgamesh. The Pendragon. Kal-El. I am these and more. I am the Archetype of Man, and from slumber such as you have never known have I awoken. Speak, friend, and I shall hear you.”

Walls formed in the darkness within his mind as long habit once again created his workroom back home. The chill and odor of the real world slipped away from his awareness, replaced by warm humidity and a hint of sartha coming from the window of another room. And all around him words echoed, like a child's infrasonic call but richer. “Kal-El…” Over and over, the words tumbled from his lips, the phrase uttered dozens of times, each occurrence spoken with a stronger conviction than Jorl had managed before. “I am these and more…” Something approached. Across time and space, nefshons converged on him from all directions, hurtling with impossible speed from a provenance inexpressibly vast. “I am the Archetype of Man…”

“… and from slumber such as you have never known have I awoken. Speak, friend, and I shall hear you.”

It was there. Right in front of him. Far larger than could be contained in the confines of his workroom. Summoning it had wiped away the walls of his imagined venue and had this been the real world his neighbors would surely be gaping at the sudden appearance of a giant cube that had ruined his house. Jorl smiled.

“You are the Archetype of Man,” said Jorl, improvising the establishing ritual to the circumstances. “Your time before, unique and protracted, has ended; you are now much as you were in, um, life, but not alive. In this, a world of my own making, I bid you welcome.”

There was silence. If the device had heard him it did not respond. And still the intensity of its self-awareness blazed in its words. Machine or not, it
possessed
nefshons. He'd already pulled together enough to manifest a conversant, and more continued to arrive, more impressions of words, but nothing else. No feelings or emotions or reveries like he'd typically feel when he summoned someone. There was no quality of essence or personality, only that overpowering statement of self. The device had been alive and sapient, but not in any way that Jorl could understand.

In that, he wasn't alone.

Behind the glassy portion of the cube, swirls of color coalesced in a humanoid shape. “Speak, friend, and I hear you. And I will answer, but I do not understand.”

*   *   *

THE
pair of Panda guards returned with a meal tray, a shallow bowl of the same processed vegetable clusters as had been served down in the internment camp. One came in with the tray and set it on the desk while the other stayed by the door, weapon at the ready. At some unconscious level, Jorl noted these things, but he didn't move. To the Ailuros he doubtless appeared to be asleep, slumped in the corner nearest the sleeping platform. His ears hung limp, his trunk lay looped in his lap, and his head lolled to one side with a trail of drool running from the corner of his mouth. Whether they looked upon him with disgust, pity, or some other emotion he'd never know. The events in his station cabin didn't matter just now. With greater focus and concentration than he had ever known, he existed in a mental landscape more vivid than any Speaker had ever achieved.

Jorl let the shattered walls of his house on Keslo fade, along with all the other structures of the Civilized Wood. Instead he constructed a clearing, much like the meeting place where they held public dances or speeches, but several times larger. Hand-cut planks of polished hardwood lay underfoot, each perfectly fit with the ones to either side. At the far ends of the floored space leafy branches created a solid wall all the way around, sealing them in a circle of green. More branches arched overhead, wooden ribs that had been woven together to create a ceiling three times the height of any Fant. Lamps hung from the arches, though Jorl could have just as easily included light without bothering to provide a source for it.

The great cube of the Archetype of Man rested in the precise middle of the clearing. Jorl stood less than an arm's reach from one face. He paced back and forth, toward one edge or the other, enough to catch a glimpse of a second or third side of the thing, but never quite crossing over, no more than he would have walked behind a traditional conversant. At some level he'd decided to think of the side in front of him as the thing's “face.” The silhouette that had formed on the other side of the glass helped.

As he paced, he Spoke. They traded questions and answers, both seeking insight, both eking out the parameters of the other's world. It—Jorl couldn't quite call the device a “he”—had accepted the explanation of Speaking and nefshon constructs. There'd been none of the confusion associated with a first summoning. The Archetype of Man had not leaped to any false conclusions, had not mistaken Jorl for a deity. Rather, it withheld judgment until it had compiled sufficient explanation. All in all, it presented itself as a very rational creature, but more so than in the simply logical processes of the machines Jorl had used while in the Patrol. There was more to it, something which had made it alive at one time.

“What is the last thing you remember?” he asked.

It did not pause like a person might. It had no eyes to glance up and to the side as it pondered and searched for a memory.

“I was in a narrow space. A cave of ice and rock. The automata that had taken me to that solar system had determined that moon would be an ideal location. They created the cave and placed me within. My systems went dormant and my beacon announced my presence at regular intervals and in response to any incursions in the space around that moon. I recorded significant geologic upheaval several millennia later but did not awaken. After an even greater span, passive receptors reacted to the energy signature of tool-using beings, activating my beacon. My boot cycle initiated and I awakened. My gross sensors indicated several beings standing in front of me, but most of my processing was still engaged in the restart cycle and self-check, and I cannot tell you more about the individuals who had ended my sleep. Before the cycle ran to completion, the beings retreated. I recorded the presence of vast energies being expended in my vicinity, in excess of the capacity of my protective shields. The cave in which I had been housed lost structural integrity and my own physicality became compromised. That is all I recall; something must have disrupted my memory consolidation at that point.”

Jorl nodded. “That happened in the recent past. I was among those, uh, beings, who activated you. We found you by accident. And then our commanding officer ordered you destroyed.”

“That individual failed in that task. I am here.”

“No, her commands were carried out. That was the end of you. Your, um, physicality. The manifestation conversing with me now is a nefshon construct, as I've described.”

“The physicality is not important. Your nefshon science preserves me. All the knowledge of the hero remains within. It has not been lost. The legacy of humanity remains intact.”

Jorl gasped as something inside him let go. He filed the notion away for later contemplation. “What's the next most recent thing you remember? You said something about automata placing you in that cave. Were you fully active then?”

“No. They were simply pre-programmed devices created to transport me to a safe site in the event my location was compromised. My previous activation occurred in fifty-four-two-seventeen, eleven thousand and thirteen years prior to you activating me. I had been aboard the station where I had been created. No one had visited there for more than fifty-two thousand years, and I remained inactive. My boot cycle had initiated and I detected four beings floating around me. They were clothed in protective suits. The station's structure had been breached at some earlier time, disabling the gravity and releasing the atmosphere. In the surrounding vacuum they could not hear my offer to share the tales of the heroes of man. After the prescribed period without any inquiry, I returned to an inactive state. I observed as they dismantled the station over the course of several years, taking it apart piece by piece. In time, their efforts activated some failsafe, and the preservation automata removed me from what remained of the station, and after several hundred years delivered me to the moon in an adjacent star system.”