Barsk (40 page)

“What? No. I don't—”

“This is non-negotiable. Our charter demands we maintain a body of twenty-five members. There will be paperwork, no government action can occur without it, but that can come later. In this moment it is enough to speak these words. By vote of the Committee of Information, I elevate you to the position of senator and name you as a junior member of this committee. We will be in touch by courier soon. Until then, this gathering of the committee is concluded.”

“Wait, I haven't agreed—”

“You have what you desired. Release us from this summoning. We are adjourned, Senator Jorl.”

He nodded, too stunned to argue. It required no effort to summon multiples of himself again, the better to more easily unravel the tethers of the twenty-four remaining senators. One by one he let them slip away, each of his duplicates vanishing immediately after until only he and Chieko Castleman remained.

“You live in a future my people couldn't have imagined,” said the human.

Jorl replied with a wry quirk of his mouth. “Not least of which because my ancestors slaughtered your descendants?”

“Well, yeah, that, but—”

“I'd very much like to continue our conversation, Dr. Castleman. But there's a young boy I need to find, and then see about getting us both off this station and back downworld. With your permission, I will summon you again.”

“I think I'd like that.”

Jorl let the construct of the human fall away, and dissolved the mindscape immediately after. He opened his eyes to the now-familiar walls of the station cabin and wiped at the trail of spittle that had run down his chin. He lay down on the cabin's Spartan sleeping platform and waited.

*   *   *

JORL
heard the voices of the Pandas outside his door and sat up. A moment later the guards marched into the room. The Brady followed several paces behind, walking hand in trunk with Pizlo.

“Jorl!” The boy darted past the Ailuros and launched himself into Jorl's arms. His trunk curled around the older Fant's neck and he sobbed. “The horrible thing happened. Horrible!”

“Shh, shh, what thing?”

“With Senator Bish.”

He disentangled Pizlo from his neck and held him away to see the boy's face. “You remember him?”

“No,” said Pizlo. “That's what's so horrible. Everyone everywhere forgot him.”

Jorl frowned. “If you forgot him then how do you know that?”

“The moons. They told me. I knew it was going to happen, but I didn't understand it. I was still putting it together. It only made sense right before. I don't remember him, but I remember what the moons told me about him.”

The pair of guards had taken up positions on either side of the room. The Sloth made a throat clearing noise and both Jorl and Pizlo looked up to see her standing alongside the sleeping platform.

“I know you, sir. Jorl, yes? You were in my lab. You wrecked my clean room. But I … I can't recall what you were doing there. And … why were you locked in here? You're marked with the aleph of Barsk. No doors are supposed to be barred to you.”

“You know about that?”

“I make it my business to know a great many things. I'm quite well versed on the full range of Barsk history and culture. Oh. Are you
that
Jorl? I think I've studied from some of your books.”

“This is Druz,” said Pizlo. “She was Senator Bish's aide.”

The Sloth frowned, and brought a hand up to rub at a spot on her forehead. “I assist a senator, yes, but I don't know that name. I'm having trouble making sense of quite a number of things. Did I strike my head?”

“No, that was me. See?” With the tip of his trunk Pizlo gingerly prodded the bump where he'd fallen on his head.

“You're fine,” said Jorl. “I think it will sort itself out fairly soon. I'm sorry, none of this was planned. There's been collateral damage to anyone who spent a lot of time working for him. But we'll get it all resolved. Where is he now?”

“Druz locked him in his room on the ship,” said Pizlo.

“The Yak is Bish? I still don't understand how he got on the ship.”

“Don't worry about it, his power has been broken. He'll be busy starting his life over again. When you have a moment, put in a call to Senator Welv and I'll discuss with her where to drop him off. I have an idea, but Bish is not going to be happy.”

“So the horrible thing is done? It won't keep happening?” Pizlo clutched at Jorl again.

“You both remember locking him away? Well, that's a sure sign that his nefshons are working again just like everyone else's. They've just been … reset.”

All of Pizlo's tension melted away and he slid down, sitting in Jorl's lap. He pressed the tip of his trunk into Jorl's hand. “This is yours now.”

Jorl took the ring. It just barely fit on his littlest finger.

Druz gasped. “Oh! I didn't realize … you're Senator Jorl. Forgive me, the confusion, I—”

“It's okay. I'm, uh, the new member of the Committee of Information.”

The Sloth nodded vigorously. “Of course. That would make sense. This ship serves the Committee. I'm to be your new personal assistant then, yes?”

“Um…”

“Say, ‘yes,' Jorl.” Pizlo squirmed and reached up to curl a fold of Druz's clothes with his trunk. “She's really nice. She talks to me. She's my friend.”

“We'll discuss it. I'll come up with something. I've disrupted your life enough already. But … the Ailuros? Are they part of your ship's crew as well?”

“No, they were brought to the station by Urs-Major Krasnoi. Though, I can't recall why now. I would expect they'd get reassigned as soon as the regular station personnel return. Your ship is well-appointed and automated. I'm the only crew. Is there somewhere you want to go?”

“Home,” said Jorl. “More than anything else, I just want to go home. But there are a few things I need to do first, and a stop we need to make.” He glanced at the guards. “Are they going to stop me if I try to leave this room? Or if I need to go to another part of the station?”

The Brady smiled. “Sir, I will have a word with them. They were also a bit confused when the little prince and I first arrived. Once they understand who you are, I assure you everything will be fine.”

“That's good. Could you see to that now, while I have a word with Pizlo?”

Druz waved one of the Pandas over to her as she walked to the other. Soon the three were conversing in hushed tones, and the occasional furtive glance back at Jorl.

Meanwhile, he set Pizlo on the ground and wrapped his trunk around the boy's ear, grinning. “Little prince?”

Pizlo blushed. “It's just something she calls me. I don't know why. It's stupid but … Jorl, she talks to me. There's a whole new person who talks to me!”

“I noticed that. I'm just sorry you had to go through all of this to find one. Are you ready to go home, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. But I need your help with something. Remember that place that wasn't on the map? Do you think you could help your new friend to find it and take us there?”

“I get to fly a space ship?!”

“No … you get to help with navigation. Which, um, is even better. Otherwise the ship would just be flying without a destination. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Jorl stood up, and as he did the pair of guards rushed to flank him. He looked over at Druz. “You said it would all be fine. This doesn't look fine.”

“If it please the senator, they would like to serve as your security detail until such time as you are ready to leave the station.”

“Bother. Well, no, that's fine. I need a guide around here anyway.”

*   *   *

WITH
what struck him as a fair degree of reluctance, Jorl's pair of Pandas led him to the suite of rooms that had been assigned to the Lutr telepath. They opened the room and, at his command, remained outside. He deliberately closed the door after entering and passed through the outer room. As he stepped into the bed chamber, gravity vanished and he flailed a moment before wrapping his trunk around a wall hook. He anchored himself, oriented his body so that his feet pointed at the floor, and at last surveyed the room. The Otter lay lightly belted and sprawled across a sleeping platform bolted to the floor at one end of the room.

“Are you still here? Still inside her?”

The Otter opened her eyes and showed him a weary smile. “I wondered if I would see you again. Prophecy only takes one so far, and even with the threat to his son I wasn't sure I could depend upon your friend to take the drug once he'd re-created it.”

“He didn't. He left the decision to me, such as it was. That's all the choice you left him to pass on, Margda. Dead all these years and you're still controlling lives. This Lutr's for the past however many days, and mine … how many years now has my entire existence been dictated by your machinations?”

He shifted his grip on the wall hook from his trunk to his hand and back again. It wasn't even remotely like pacing, but it was the closet bit of rhythmic movement the room's null-gravity permitted. He fanned his left ear and glared at the recumbent figure inhabited by the centuries-dead woman who had shaped his life.

“Quit complaining, Boy. You've won, or you wouldn't be here. The drug worked. You defeated that Bos bastard who would have destroyed us all. And if I'm not mistaken, that's a senatorial sigil on your hand. Huh. I certainly hadn't foreseen that.”

“You remember Bish?”

“Why wouldn't I?”

“Because he's gone. Stripped from the memory of every living person, except for a child who remembers him from visions, and me because I'm the one who destroyed him.”

“Ah. Arlo described that possibility. I confess, I didn't believe him, but then his understanding of the science of nefshons had advanced far beyond my own work.”

“He didn't tell me. Barely a hint. I'd never imagined something so wrong. I removed a man from the universe. His entire life is gone.”

“You did what you had to do.”

“I didn't. It wasn't a choice. It just … happened.”

“And you're complaining? You saved our entire world.”

He shook his head, both ears fanning as his anxiety climbed. “I never asked for this. I'm not suited to it. Why didn't your visions tell you that? I'm a historian; I write about the people who shape events, I don't do the shaping!”

Margda laughed. She rose from her bed and flew toward him, more fluidly than any Fant might move, but with only half the innate grace that an Otter possessed. Jorl stood still as she reached out and ran the fingers of one hand over his cheek. “Poor dear, forced to take some responsibility for a change? Did I not say that prophecy only takes us so far? It's not foolproof, Boy. At best, it's porous. In my life I rarely saw closure. More typically I had glimpses of fine details and had to work out the connections between them. I saw a crisis, but not the precise nature of it. I saw the critical value of your friend's discovery, but not what it did or how. I saw a Lox with the potential to be in the right place at the right time.”

“Is that what Bish's precognitivists saw, too?”

“In all likelihood. The real difference though was that I had a motivation they lacked. I gave destiny a push to make it happen. You study history, so stop your pathetic whining. You know better than most that destiny happens
to
us, it is never something we call forth.”

“I used to think that. But you controlled others' fates. The choices you made have manipulated me, and Arlo, and the telepath whose mind and body you've stolen. How many others? By what right have you imposed your will on us?”

“By the most basic of rights, Jorl. Because I
can
. Prophecy is first and foremost a self-serving gift. I used mine to gain power, but not just for me. What I have done has preserved Barsk for generations. And with your help I have obtained a closure in death that I knew I would never possess in life. Can you truly find fault in that?”

“Yes, I can. You just admitted that your sight wasn't complete. You don't know what might have happened if you'd done nothing. How much of what you feared actually came about because you inadvertently set it in motion? You created the Speaker's Edict. You helped craft the Compact that Bish and others in the Alliance would come to resent. You created the aleph which empowered Arlo's drug. And you didn't do any of these things because they were necessarily good unto themselves, but because you saw them as means to shape events to serve your own ends. The entire legacy of the Matriarch is the exploitation of others like pieces in some great game.”

She laughed in his face. “You can see it that way if you like. The weak usually do, if they see it at all. But you disappoint me. Despite your study of history, you fail to understand power. It's obvious you never will.”

Margda turned from him then, her feet not quite touching the floor as she carefully crossed to the middle of the room and let a hand hover just above the surface of the large globule of water floating there.

“There's really only one choice you ever have to make in any act of creation. Will you be the instrument or the artist? If you're only now coming to realize that you've been a tool all your life, there's no one to blame for it but yourself. If you don't like that state of affairs, then act! Impose your will upon the world and walk your own path. If you don't, you'll just end up being a token in someone else's game; you'll continue to be used as they see fit. That's how the universe works. You don't have to like it, but you'd do well to get used to it.”

He shoved himself from the wall, relying in part on old reflexes from emergency drills and mind-numbing training from his days in the Patrol. He rotated in mid-air and he struck the far wall feet first, bending at the knee to absorb the impact and launch himself along a new vector. Arms and trunk reaching out in front of him, he passed through the room's watery sphere. As he emerged through the far side, his momentum carried him into the Otter, tackling her, and eventually pinning her against the floor where he grabbed at an edge of the bedclothes to prevent any further rebounding.