“Is Telko another Fant?”
Pizlo laughed and wriggled his trunk. Druz was so funny. “No, Telko’s my fourth moon.” And with that he closed his eyes.
TWENTY-NINE
CHOICE AND SACRIFICE
EVERY time Arlo had been summoned, he’d had his eyes closed when it started. One moment he didn’t exist, and then he did, becoming aware of his own body in a way that wasn’t at all like waking up. The first time, he had opened his eyes and with cold rationalism concluded that he had been summoned and must be dead. Then, and every time since, he endured a wave of regret over his suicide, swiftly followed by recrimination for its necessity.
Only then would he open his eyes.
He knew time had passed, in the way that someone knew that breathing made sense or wind could not be captured and put in your pocket. How much time, or what had occurred during it—for others, not for him—was not part of his awareness. He’d experienced every summoning as a distinct event, always intending to ask Jorl about that effect and never getting to it. And so here he was again, but as Arlo glanced around he found himself in a strange place. It differed from anywhere he’d been before, both from the familiar settings his friend always provided or the long-vanished home the interloper had created. And yet, there she was in front of him.
“You, again.” Arlo glared at the Matriarch. “Did you forget something?” Then his gaze shifted and took in the figure of his friend. “Jorl? Did she bring you here, too? No, that’s not possible. Did you both summon me?”
“Actually, it’s quite possible, but not what’s happened,” said Margda. “You are here as Jorl’s conversant. But anyone who can perceive nefshons can witness a summoning. How else do you imagine old Speakers train new ones?”
Arlo frowned. Jorl looked … off. Tired, underfed, but also broken somehow. Despite Margda’s presence, his first instinct was to comfort his friend, but it wasn’t the time. This wasn’t one of Jorl’s regular summonings, a blend of nostalgia and longing; he’d never have included the Matriarch. They’d brought him back for a purpose.
His ears drooped and his trunk swung from side to side as he studied his surroundings with wide eyes. “I can’t say I care for this place. Not something that a Fant would make. Not from materials anyone on Barsk would build with. What’s going on, Jorl? Where are we?”
His friend grinned shyly. “You’ve finally joined me in leaving Barsk. We’re in orbit above the planet.”
“The export station? Seriously? Most of my life’s work passed through there. But it’s neither a destination nor a way station for Fant. Even when you joined the Patrol, they sent an automated shuttle down for you. How do you even know what the station looks like?”
“I’m there now. In this room. And, in a way, so is the Matriarch.”
Arlo’s frown deepened. “We’ve met, and it wasn’t the highlight of my being dead. So, let me ask again, what’s going on?”
“Your friend is here to ask you to reconsider your earlier decision,” said Margda.
“I don’t know how much time has passed for you, but nothing is different for me since I gave you my answer.”
Margda’s trunk whipped across her body in denial. “Everything is different. I’m not relying solely on a vision from centuries before your birth. I have met the madman who threatens our planet and people. He’s a Bos, complete with the stereotypic stubbornness of his race and the power of a senior member of the Alliance senate. He knows you have created a more powerful version of koph, and he will have it or destroy us all.”
Jorl’s head spun side to side as he flipped his focus between the two dead Fant. “What are you talking about? How is the new koph more powerful? Is that why you died, Arlo?”
He kept his focus on the Matriarch. “How does this Yak know such a thing? What did you tell him?”
“I didn’t need to. He knows of it the same way I came to suspect it. But where I was limited to just my own visions, he has been employing multiple prognosticators for three generations.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Arlo. “It doesn’t change a thing. The drug is too powerful if taken by someone with the bioluminescent factor in their systems.”
Margda swore. “What makes you think they’ll start using your damn bugjuice? Does Barsk even export it? Is anyone in the Alliance using it? Certainly not to create tattoos on their furry bodies.”
Arlo said nothing. He tucked his ears down, crossed his arms over his chest, and lowered his trunk as he glared at the Matriarch.
“You don’t know, do you?” Margda scoffed and waggled her trunk toward Jorl. “He never asked the question.”
Arlo sighed. “I didn’t want to stir up interest in the chemical compound by doing a search. I know we export a small amount of the insects themselves. The Cynomy consider them a delicacy. But as far as I know, no one has broken them down or analyzed them further.”
“So, it’s possible.” The Matriarch smiled. “You could give them the improved drug. And they’ll have little incentive to demand to know how it’s made because in every generation each person will only need a single dose. Yes, the Alliance will still be relying on Barsk for the drug, but much less so than they currently do. That will appease them.”
“That’s it? You killed yourself because a Speaker would only have to take the drug once?” Jorl looked stricken.
“No, it’s more than that.”
“Yeah, I get that, there’s a different effect on people with an aleph. What happens to them?”
Arlo jerked his trunk toward Margda. “I already told her, but I’m not going to tell you.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because she’s dead, and you’re not. Look, even if the Matriarch’s idea could work, there isn’t anyone who can make the drug. I destroyed all my notes. No one else knows how to create the thing, and in case it’s slipped everyone’s mind, I’m also dead.”
“Arlo, we have to find a way. I don’t know if Senator Bish could actually destroy everyone on Barsk, but I’ve seen him order one of his own people killed. He murdered a senior officer right in front of me with no hesitation and—”
“Jorl, you can’t wipe out hundreds of thousands of people by pulling a trigger. Do you imagine I didn’t think about my wife and son down on Barsk when the Matriarch first told me about this?”
“You didn’t let me finish. Like I said, I don’t know if he could do that or not, but it doesn’t matter. Pizlo isn’t back home in Keslo. He’s here, on this station, right now.”
“What? How?”
“I don’t know how he got here. He was here before I arrived. But Bish has him. And he’s threatened to hurt him—”
“He can’t be hurt, you know that—”
“Not cause him pain, really hurt him. Maim him and worse. He’ll kill your son if he doesn’t get your drug, and he thinks I can give it to him.”
Dead or not, it was like having his feet go out from under him while he trod a boardway in the canopy on Keslo. Like having his trunk yanked one way while his stomach dropped in another direction. His son, the boy that should never have been, who had defied all odds to live and grow up, at risk now because of his discovery? No, he couldn’t dwell on that. What else had Jorl said? The Yak expected his friend to hand him the drug?
“How? You said he’s a senator, not an imbecile. You’re not a pharmer, Jorl. Does he think you can Speak to me and I’ll give you a cookbook recipe and that’s all it takes?”
“It’s because he is a senator that he’s blinded to the pragmatics,” said Margda. “He’s used to making decisions, setting plans in motion, and acquiring the resources and talented personnel to manage the details for him. I understand him perfectly well; he is ambitious and convinced beyond any dissuasion that he is right. It’s a special kind of monster that would torture a child to achieve his ends.”
Arlo paced the room, much as he’d often seen Jorl do when anxious, his ears flapping with each step. The space wasn’t big and it didn’t take long to complete the cir
cuit several times. He stopped in front of the Matriarch, brought his trunk up to grasp her chin. He jerked her into place and stared into her eyes.
“That’s the heart of this, isn’t it? You believe this senator could do all of this, harm my boy, destroy a world, all because in his head he knows he’s right. You believe it, because you’re the same kind of monster.”
The Matriarch didn’t even flinch. “If you had a lab here on this station, if you had access to the full range of materials that we export, could you re-create your drug?”
“I could do it, yes, but it’s not something I can walk someone else through.” Arlo waved his arm taking in the room. “And none of this is real.”
“But if you were really here, alive on this station, could you do it? Would you do it?”
“That’s not—”
“Just answer me. Would you?”
“Yes, of course. To save my son.”
“Good. Then we’re back on track. All we have to do is bring you back to life.”
Arlo snorted. “Right. That’s all. I have no doubt that if you ever figured out a way to do that, you’d be walking Barsk right now, taking charge of things all over again.”
She smiled. “I’m right here, boy. Alive and well.”
He trumpeted into her face and she scrambled backwards on the bunk, slamming against the wall. “None of this is real! You’re dead. I’m dead. You want me to re-create the drug I died to protect? I don’t just need a lab, I need to be back in my body in the real world, not capering around in some mental construct Jorl’s imagined out of particles I can’t even see.”
“You’re quite right. I’m long dead and none of this has any substance. And yet, when Jorl first met me during his interment, it was in the waking world and I had a body of flesh and blood.”
Arlo turned to Jorl. “What is she saying?”
“It’s true. Somehow she’s taken possession of another person’s body. An Otter. That’s the body that’s sitting in the real version of this room with me right now.”
“An Otter with a powerful telepathic talent. That’s what allowed me to put my nefshon construct in control of her body. And doing the same for you is the last piece of my final vision. If you both are willing.”
Arlo hesitated, but only for a moment. The look in Jorl’s eyes answered any question he might have asked, granted any permission he might have needed. It all seemed like madness, but was madness anything other than desperation blended with hope?
“Do what you need to do,” was all he said.
“Whenever I can,” said Margda, and disappeared.
“Where did she go?”
Jorl frowned at him. “I didn’t vanish her any more than I brought her here in the first place. She came on her own and probably left the same way. Give me a moment and I’ll check.” The pharmer watched his friend’s eyes unfocus for an instant. Arlo blinked, and everything went away.
* * *
HE remembered the time he and Jorl had traveled to Gerd, that last season before they started at the academy. The hostel had been so overcrowded they’d had to sleep on the roof, taking down a pair of clothes lines in the dark so they could string their hammocks. The next morning, waking up had been a slow and gradual thing. They hadn’t seen that the next roof over had been planted as a garden full of sartha. The morning breeze had washed the pair of them in the buds’ soporific scent and kept them asleep well into midday.
It was like that now and unlike any of the times Jorl had summoned him. His neck had gone stiff and his throat felt dry. He grappled with the distinction between groggy and disoriented, and realized that the preoccupation probably meant a bit of both. The growing sense of wrongness in his proprioception jerked him full awake and he found himself back in the station cabin where Jorl had summoned him before, seated on the sleeping platform much as his friend had been.
Arlo held up his hands and trunk in front of his face. They looked different. He stood and began flailing his arms to keep from falling, stumbling around the room in a body that felt shorter and thicker than his reflexes remembered. He understood what had happened even before he noticed the Lutr leaning by the door.
“You’ve put my soul in Jorl’s body!”
“Nothing quite so melodramatic,” said the Otter. The voice was higher, more melodic than the Matriarch’s, but it had her rhythm. “If nefshon amalgams are souls, I’ve never seen proof of it. No, I’ve simply taken Jorl’s construction of your particles and bonded them to his form, at least for a while.”
He put one foreign hand out to the wall to steady himself, agog that it moved to his will. Even so small a thing made him feel more … comfortable. It drove home a new understanding. Life had a quality that had been absent every time Jorl had Spoken to him, a quality that he had always possessed in life but hadn’t noticed the lack of, not once in all those many summonings. Until now. He was alive!
“We need to hurry,” said Margda, and he realized she wasn’t so much leaning as slumped against the wall. “Creating the bond has exhausted me. I cannot actively maintain the impression for long, and once I stop I don’t know how much time it will take Jorl’s mind to break through and wrest control of his body again.”
He nodded, the gesture feeling odd because it was Jorl’s gesture, not his own. “You said you could give me access to a lab?”
“And so I shall. This station is a minor maze, but the senator’s aide gave me directions to where his vessel is docked. The lab is aboard that vessel. One thing though, the Sloth will likely be there; don’t let her touch you.”
“Why?”
“Both she and the senator have some technology that shields them from telepathic probing. It didn’t exist when I was alive, or if it did I didn’t know about it. My point is, I don’t know what effect it might have on nefshon constructs in general, or the imprint on Jorl in particular. Now, come, we need to get you to that lab.”
Her fingers, long and slender, gripped his upper arm as much for support as control. She led him out of the room and down a series of ugly, sterile hallways and eventually to a boarding gate and airlock with more hallways that managed to be both different yet still ugly. In the end, they arrived at a set of double doors that opened to reveal a thoroughly modern laboratory with its own miniature, glassine cleanroom within it. He saw only a single occupant, a Brady, who glanced up from running some test at a workstation as they entered. She wore a dark kaftan interrupted by glimmering bits that he recognized as a cunning sensor array. She put her station in standby and came toward them, the urgency of her words contrasting with the leisure of her gait.
“Have one or the other of you learned to make the thing?”
The Matriarch’s grip tightened on his arm, a squeeze that meant … what?
“I can do it,” he said, and the Otter gave a slight nod. “I’m going to need some things, but nothing that shouldn’t be stocked somewhere on the station.”
“Excellent. I’ll show you how to access inventory control. Make a list and I’ll have whatever you require brought here. Will this facility be sufficient?” She pointed at the transparent chamber in one corner, a small emergency shower standing next to it.
“That’s fine.” He fanned himself with his ears as he surveyed the rest of the room. Small protuberances in the ceiling gleamed with lenses, enough to capture each section of the lab several times over. Whatever he did here would be reviewed from every angle.
At the other side of the lab were a pair of medical beds, the like of which he’d only ever seen in the University’s infirmary on Zlorka and nowhere else on Barsk. One of them held a small, white Lox. Pizlo, his hands wrapped in bundles of pale gauze. What had Jorl said? Had the monster already tortured his son?
Arlo cleared his throat. “What’s the status of the boy?”
“That one’s a puzzle. But all good news. He’ll have quite a bump on his head, but there’s no concussion and I’ve reset the injured shoulder. He made an impressive effort to ruin his hands—he insis
ts he ‘rowed’ for more than a day, and even if what you said before about his not feeling pain is true, if I hadn’t seen the effect myself I wouldn’t believe he could have done it. The wounds had become infected but I believe I’ve caught it in time.”
“He’ll recover then?” It was all he could do to keep his voice from cracking. Tears were building up behind borrowed eyes and he blinked them back.
“I wouldn’t be surprised. He has the most amazing immune system I’ve ever encountered. And his cortical scans display the kind of patterns I’ve only seen in adult precognitivists. I’ve no doubt the senator will be pleased to offer him a home.”
Only the Matriarch’s suddenly tightening on his arm kept him from replying. He could feel the Sloth’s eyes on him and he had to remind himself that she saw Jorl, not him, and even then had no reason to believe there would be any connection between the child and the man. He nodded in response, and when he could speak without giving himself away asked, “May I see him?”
“Certainly. He’s only lightly sedated. I have him under simple restraints to keep him from upsetting the dressing on his hands.”
The Otter leaned in and hissed in his ear. “We don’t have time for this!”
He ignored her and crossed to his sleeping son.
Pizlo had been four and a half when Arlo had last seen him, articulate and curious, a born scientist who had already amassed an insect collection that would have astonished adult entomologists. He’d been so small and had grown so much. He would be six now. Jorl had said he’d taken on responsibility for the boy’s education. Arlo hadn’t reflected on what that meant, what a historian’s sensibilities would do to the keen edge of his son’s hunger for learning. No matter, it was just one of the many things he had sacrificed when he had weighed all the options and made his choice. Except, standing here now, alive again, gazing upon his son … he wanted nothing more than to wallow in selfishness and ignore the consequences.
Pizlo stirred in his sleep. He murmured, lips barely parting. “Druz … I had a dream about Tolta and Arlo. He’d come back to tell her goodbye…” His eyelids fluttered open and he stared upward.
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