Barsk (34 page)

Jorl stopped pacing, the comforting illusion of movement overwhelmed by the significance of the device's words. A station! Someone had found an entire station from Before! He fanned himself rapidly and stared up at the huge machine.

“What did you mean by fifty-four-two-seventeen? Is that a date?”

“Yes. It refers to the year of my final activation on the station. Prior to that, I was last activated in the year twenty-one fifty-nine by Dr. Castleman. She and Dr. Gieber performed routine searches through my collection. Dr. Castleman had a particular fondness for stories of the original peoples of the Pacific Northwest.

“Twenty-one fifty-nine? What calendar is that?”

“It is the calendar in popular use on Earth at the time of my construction. Earth is the planetary designation of the human origin. Despite my location on a station far removed from Earth's system, my timing mechanism utilizes terrestrial units.” The Archetype paused. “Jorl, something is wrong. Time is not passing. My internal chronometer is not functioning properly, and yet I am not detecting any system errors. Moreover, my efforts at self-diagnostics do not yield any feedback at all.”

Jorl fanned himself faster. The machine sounded concerned. “You're only partially correct. Time
is
passing, but not in the conventional sense. I have been Speaking with you for a while now, and it is later than when we began. But from your personal point of view you're no older than when we started. You don't have the same physicality as you did in life. You're not aging, um, if you ever did. Understand?”

“My comprehension is incomplete. Perhaps the flaw is in my programming. I am not designed for independent philosophy. Dr. Castleman constructed me to be one of the Archetypes, to keep the stories of the heroes alive for humanity's descendants. As a function of my inability to fully comprehend the current situation, I have failed her. Perhaps she would understand you better.”

“Maybe. Can you tell me about her? Your Dr. Castleman sounds like someone I would like to Speak with.”

 

THIRTY-THREE

LEGION

JORL
opened his eyes. He sat up, stretched, rose to his feet and began pacing the cabin. He'd dispersed the construct of the Archetype of Man, ending the Speaking more easily than ever before. Was that the extent of the power from Arlo's drug, an effortlessness to the work of Speaking? He couldn't worry about that now, he had to figure out what to do next.

He saw the tray on the desk and absently sent his trunk after some food each time his pacing brought him within range. The Archetype had been clear. Although sapient, its consciousness was artificial, its sense of self, limited. It viewed Dr. Chieko Castleman with a reverence that bordered on awe, not merely the devotion of a child for a parent, but more like some mythic figure responsible for all of creation. It had felt certain that while it could provide an endless supply of stories to inspire and instruct, the woman who had made it could offer up actual answers to any questions Jorl might ask. And more, it had provided ample information and details about her. Many of them made no sense to him, but enough to allow a Speaker to summon someone he'd never met.

Except for the minor point that Castleman had been dead for more than sixty-three thousand years. The woman's nefshons must surely have diffused throughout the galaxy by now, barely imaginable distances existing between each tiny mote of personality. It was impossible for Jorl to summon her. He'd tried. Even with the greater ability he'd presumably been granted by Arlo's drug, the most he'd managed was to detect a handful of particles, a general sense that the woman had existed, but now lay far beyond his reach.

He sat on the bench and finished the meal on the desk, absently massaging an ache in his shoulder with the nubs of his trunk. Margda had insisted he would be able to do what needed to be done. She hadn't foreseen what that was, only that it had involved Barsk's most recent Bearer and whatever Arlo had died to protect. Jorl's earlier depression threatened to engulf him again. He'd run out of ideas, and likely was running out of time. How long before the senator acted?

Jorl considered questioning the Matriarch, summoning her directly as she had done with him, but stopped short. The ease with which she had shoved his mind away and put Arlo in his body frightened him. And, to a lesser extent, the prohibition against summoning another Speaker—despite the machinations behind its creation—remained ingrained in him.

And yet, of the three limits Margda's Edict imposed on all Speakers, she had only broken two of them. Not summoning another Speaker had made a certain amount of sense and propriety. Not Speaking to the living had also seemed obvious. But the third, a restriction against summoning oneself, had never made sense to him. Why should any Speaker wish to Speak with himself? And besides, wouldn't doing so be covered under the first two restrictions? But the Matriarch had thought it important enough to her vision of the future to proscribe it on its own. Perhaps like the other two, she had done so to keep it sacrosanct until she herself needed it. Or … what if she had meant for Jorl to break this last rule himself?

He left the desk and returned to the corner, sitting on the floor and bracing himself between the walls once more. It required nothing more than closing his eyes to slip back into the awareness of nefshons, his waking reality supplanted by the mental one. He conjured up the same meeting place he'd used for the Archetype of Man and imagined himself standing at its center point.

Once there, he concentrated on his own nefshons, the very thing all Speakers were taught to filter out with their very first lesson. His nefshons enshrouded him, roiling and gleaming gold. Some of the particles were newly born elements of his personal history, while others, minutes or seconds older, pushed outward as if to diffuse like the particles of the dead, only to pull back and enmesh themselves among fellows without number, because he was very much alive.

The second lesson of every Speaker was to draw sufficient numbers of one's own particles to create a self-construct. Gathering them was like holding out your hands during a leafstorm and becoming filled almost as rapidly as the idea occurred. A mental tweak, a nudge, and one's own construct coalesced. He'd done it so many times before, it was as automatic as removing his own particles from his perception. He'd already done it upon returning here; he did it now, again and deliberately.

Jorl stared, open mouthed, at Jorl. One nefshon construct confronting another as in any summoning, both existing only in the mind of the Speaker, but both a part of that mind.

“You're me,” the first Jorl said, realizing how stupid it sounded as the words left him. So did his twin.

“And you're me,” he replied with a self-deprecating smirk. “We're us.”

They paused, each studying the other, both aware of the golden fabric of nefshons surrounding them. Simultaneous grins burst out across both faces as the full ramifications took hold and they spoke in unison. “And we're both Speakers!”

The two Jorls took a moment, concentrating in the way all Speakers do when summoning, and then there were four of him, all grinning like a child who has told each of his older sisters and aunts that one of the others is looking after him and then sneaks off to pursue adventures of his own.

Four became eight, effortlessly; Arlo's drug making it trivial to maintain more than one construct, especially when the other constructs distributed the burden among themselves. Eight became sixteen, became thirty-two, became sixty-four, on and on, doubling and redoubling until they overflowed the meeting space the first Jorl had imagined and they let the venue fall away as hundreds upon hundreds, thousands of Jorl, imagined themselves linked, side by side, hand in hand, forming a vast chain of themselves around the island of Keslo, feet planted firmly on the edge of the shore, waves across their feet, the rain falling upon identical laughing faces.

With one purpose, they cast themselves wide. The Jorls reached out to encompass the galaxy. Together they did what no single Speaker could ever achieve, they sought out the essence of Dr. Chieko Castleman from wherever each isolated nefshon might lie and compelled every one of them to this single place. Like a magnet of personality, they drew the particles, the strength of their compulsion outstripping the restrictions of distance and time.

For a long while there was nothing. The pull hung in otherwise empty air. But then, slowly at first, nefshons trickled in. Like the first faint and tentative drops of a shower at the end of the season of wind, they came. Then more and more, swifter and in greater number. The trickle built to a steady flow, the flow to a torrent, the torrent to a deluge. And as the particles poured in, one by one the individual Jorls began to disperse. Their purpose achieved they dismissed themselves, until at last there was just the one of him standing there, the image of the cabin on board the space station restored around him amidst a growing collection of sixty-three-thousand-year-old nefshons. With no more effort than it would take to blink, Jorl exercised his will, and Dr. Chieko Castleman came into being again.

 

THIRTY-FOUR

ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT

THREE
kinds of people existed in Pizlo's taxonomy. Almost everyone everywhere fell into the first group: people who didn't talk to him. The people who did talk to him accounted for the other two groups. There were his parents, Arlo and Tolta. That group had dropped from two to one, though now he wasn't so sure. He'd talked to Arlo before going to sleep here, and he had the order right, it hadn't been a dream. The last kind of people was anyone else who talked to him but who wasn't related to him, and before today that had only been Jorl. In his mind, this was more than enough to make Jorl his friend. But now another person had talked to him, a woman who wasn't even a Fant. She'd been nice, and also interesting, and he hoped that meant he could count her as a friend, too. The possibility danced sweetly in his dreams while he slept.

He awoke to find the Sloth hovering over him. She'd changed the bandages on his hands and was in the midst of slowly moving one of her sleeved arms back and forth above his head. The sight of her round face made him smile. Jorl would be proud of him, having made a friend who wasn't a Fant.

“How do you feel, Little Prince?”

“I'm excited.”

“Ah, I imagine seeing this station must be very strange and wondrous to you.”

He shrugged, and his smile increased as he realized he'd never done that while lying down before. “No, it's not that. It's mostly pretty boring once you get over how ugly everything is.”

“Well, why don't we go do something more interesting then?”

“Really? Like what?”

“Do you know what a spacecraft is?”

“Sure, Jorl worked on one before he came back home. Why?”

“We're on one right now. It's docked with the station you were on. Do you remember when I carried you here? We passed through an airlock and a connection tube.”

“Yeah, the little room with the big doors. I remember.” He sat up and looked at one of the walls and pointed with his trunk. “That's open space through there, right?”

“Yes, how did you—”

“Wow. This is even better than being on a station.”

“I agree. I've always found stations to be significantly lacking relative to vessels. Would you like to meet the person who owns this one?”

Pizlo laughed. “You can't own a spacecraft. They're too big and important.”

“The man who owns this one
is
important. He's a senior senator. Do you know what a senator is?”

“Is it like the captain of a ship?”

“No, even more important. So important that he has his own ship, and it goes wherever he says.”

“Wow.”

“Just so. His name is Senator Bish, and you actually saw him before, when you bumped your head. I've been telling him about you, and he's very interested in having a chat with you.”

He gasped, eyes wide with surprise. “He wants to
talk
to me? Really?”

“Absolutely. Why don't we go see him right now?”

“Sure! But…” he swiveled on the table until he could see into the tiny transparent room. Jorl stood inside, working with all kinds of stuff like Arlo used to do. But it wasn't Arlo, not any more. He was sure of that and wondered where he'd gone.

“What about Jorl?”

“He's busy at the moment, doing a favor for the senator. They'll talk later. Right now though, it's your turn. Come on.” She reached out with both arms, her hands still buried deep in her sleeves, and slid one under each of his arms to lift him up off the table and lower the boy to the floor.

Pizlo waved his trunk in farewell to Jorl, but the older Fant looked to be too focused on whatever he was doing. If he was doing it for the senator, and the senator owned this whole ship, then maybe it was really important. Pizlo looked up at the Sloth. He smiled at her and gripped the edge of one of her sleeves with his trunk and they walked out of the lab together.

*   *   *

FROM
the lab they followed an arcing hallway a third of the way around the ship. The Brady pressed one hand against the threshold and paused like someone was talking to her. Pizlo couldn't hear anyone else, but maybe it was like when things back on Keslo spoke to him and neither Jorl nor Tolta heard. When she took her hand away the door whooshed open. The room beyond was darker than the hallway. Standing at the entrance, Pizlo could see only silhouettes of a table surrounded on three sides by a heavy couch, some counters along two walls, and a big desk at the back of the room with someone seated behind it. Druz ushered him inside.

He squinted, his eyes adjusting to the dimmer light even as the illumination increased. He saw rugs on the floor that looked like grass. The sofa was dark brown and the table a polished green stone. The counters were white plastic like so much of the ship, but now he could tell they had cabinets in them. The desk was more of the same green stone; the man behind sat in a big chair and he had thick horns that grew out from either side of his head.