The Moons of Barsk

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  Ryne tried not to drop into lecture mode. Lolte most certainly was not one of his students. She was primarily a systems biologist, with a research program of her own that involved improving the longevity treatments she administered to himself and a handful of formerly Dying Fant that had reached this island. As the physician charged with maintaining his health, she most likely kept tabs on him for Bernath and the others, but more than that she genuinely appeared to want to be his friend, and one did not lecture to friends. Still, a lifetime of habit crept into his voice.

  “Generally speaking, particles tend to diffuse, from areas of higher concentration to lower. That applies to one of two states of nefshons. Those which are still attached and integrated into a person’s memory don’t diffuse. Likewise nefshons that are still bound to their source don’t either. Dispersion only becomes a thing after their source stops generating them, or when the memory that has received them loses coherence.”

  “You mean when we die,” said Lolte. She passed him a sealed bowl of soup and took one herself.

  “Right. But a Speaker can reverse that process and pull a specific individual’s nefshons to them. Under that guidance, when the particles reach a critical mass their very nature allows them to organize and a simulacrum forms, but only for so long as the Speaker continues to apply their will. It’s very much a quantum phenomenon.”

  “Meaning that when the Speaker stops, the organization they imposed upon the particles falls away?”

  Ryne dipped his trunk into the soup and transferred the bowl’s contents to his mouth, nodding all the while. “Just so. Diffusion reoccurs.”

  “And your prototype reverses this?”

  “What? Oh no, not even close. I haven’t even begun to approximate the math that allows Speakers to do what they do. I can’t summon nefshons, let alone pick out one individual’s particles amidst all others, or build a simulacrum. Imposing order on that level of magnitude requires an active mind. But, I can prevent the natural entropic processes that would follow once that mind is removed. At least, according to the simulations.”

  “So … your prototype will maintain a nefshon simulacrum once it’s been created?”

  “Well, yes. When you stop the diffusion the established organization continues.”

  “Without a Speaker? Without requiring more koph?”

  “The mind and the chemical agent that grants perception and manipulation are only needed to bring the particles together and create the simulacrum. Once that’s been done, the state can be continued indefinitely. It still requires energy to operate, but not a living agent. That part’s done.”

  “How long have you been working on this?”

  He shrugged. “I had the idea about thirty years ago. I gave a paper on the subject at a conference on Yargo around that time. It stirred a bit of interest, a touch of controversy, but nothing much because it was only an idea. A thought experiment. The math only started falling into place over the last fifteen years or so.”

  “I think I understand now why the Full Council set Bernath on your trail. They’re wild for anything involving nefshons.” She waved her trunk in a wide arc. “All of this exists because of that.”

  Ryne reached into the picnic hamper with his trunk, questing for dessert. “So I’ve gathered. You explained about the memes. I suspect there are applications far beyond that, perhaps that no one has imagined yet. But that’s for the engineers to manage. I’ve always been a theoretician.”

  Lolte batted his trunk aside and took a pair of individual fruit pies from the hamper, placing one in front of each of them. The conversation lagged as they enjoyed their dessert. A trio of drummers entered the park, set up as far from the roving children as possible, then began to play. As Lolte finished her pie she looked up and waved at their surroundings with her trunk. “This is why they do it. All of it. The Caudex looks out for all Fant, for all of Barsk. What we have here is a reflection of what they want for everyone. The simplicity of a good life. Children enjoying themselves, musicians expressing their art, and scientists like yourself encouraged and supported in pursuit of new ideas.”

  He nodded, licking away the last crumbs from his fingers and nubs. “Yes, I understand that larger picture. I just don’t see how my work contributes to it.”

  “Would you like to?”

  “How do you mean?”

  Lolte was already packing the detritus of their meal into the picnic hamper. “Time for a field trip, Ryne. You’ve been so focused on the work in your lab, you haven’t seen half of the marvels that happen in this place.”

  * * *

  THE biologist cradled the picnic hamper while Ryne shook out the blanket, scattering crumbs into the grass. She took his arm and they left the machinations of children and musicians behind, strolling along one of the major boardways, transferred to a narrower path and from there ascended several levels higher in the city.

  “What was the organizational structure on Taylr?” asked Lolte.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Did you have a mayor or a city council? Something else? How were decisions made? How did people get heard? Boardways repaired? Local gymnasia funded?”

  “Oh, we had a grandmother committee,” said Ryne.

  “I don’t know that term.”

  “That’s not the official name. There probably is one, but I don’t know it. Taylr wasn’t colonized for more than a century after Fant came to Barsk, and its Civilized Wood took decades more to build. It was very much a ‘planned’ city, not like some of the first ones. Anyway, Taylr’s founders were five women, Four Eleph and a Lox. They each came from a different island, having raised development capital. They pooled resources and came together with the intention to create a new city with twin emphases on stability and innovation. The first thing they built were schools, both gymnasia for the children as well as vocational schools and colleges for young adults. They each laid claim to vast areas of the still largely empty city, marking off where each would build her line’s house, both the respective core homes for themselves and their immediate families as well as clear plans for successive expansions. Next they built some of the best bachelor facilities anyone had ever seen, which made the island a draw for young men eager to get an education. The hitch was the housing came with limited-span leases to ensure a good circulation of men.”

  “What does any of this have to do with a ‘grandmother committee’?”

  “I’m getting to that. As the city began to attract immigrants, the five women who had started everything were all too busy doing things to be bothered with actually running their city. But they’d each persuaded their grandmothers to come over and run the houses they’d built for themselves. They agreed it was a natural thing to let the grandmothers make the governance decisions for all of Taylr, and that tradition continues.”

  “And the grandmothers of these five houses still run everything?”

  “That’s my understanding. There are a lot more than five multi-generational homes now; the original five have long outgrown the grandest of their expansion plans. But yes, the senior-most woman in each of those five family lines are in charge, and they rule by a system of consensus.”

  “Huh. Well, that’s different. But … I think you’ll find the system here even stranger. We have what we call a ‘Full Council,’ made up of two parts, and there’s nothing like it anywhere else on Barsk.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, for one thing, membership on the council requires sensitivity to koph and the ability to manipulate nefshons.”

  “That seems … capricious. It’s a biological talent and not correlated with leadership or management skills.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s a necessary prerequisite.”

  Ryne twitched his ears in irritation. “How so?”

  “Half of the council is dead.”

  He stopped, dragging Lolte to a halt. “Wait, what? Dead? How can half of your governing council be dead?”

  She smiled and pulled him forward
“Because the other half, the living half we call the ‘Quick Council,’ is made up of Speakers. This way we get a balance, the benefit of the best minds that ever existed on Barsk, and the perspective and skills of the brightest of our current public servants. Together, they not only set policy for the island, but help to plan the course for the survival of all Fant going out beyond Barsk.”

  Again he paused and Lolte stopped with him. “How do you mean, ‘beyond Barsk’? We’re cut off from the Alliance, deliberately so. What influence does this council have when no other community on the planet even knows of their existence?”

  “That’s what I want to show you. What your discoveries are going to affect in ways that will do wonders for us all. Come on!”

  She led the way, exiting the narrow avenue onto a mall of shops and restaurants, museums and arcades, the main commercial boardway for the unnamed island. They fell in with the flow of foot traffic and turned down a cul-de-sac lined entirely with art galleries, save for a single, simple office building at the far end. They passed beneath the lintel of its double doors and paused in a modest rotunda with ascending staircases to either side.

  “This is the council building. The members of the Quick Council have offices upstairs, and the main council chamber is up there as well. Directly in front of us is a hidden door that leads to a series of smaller offices used by the support staff—”

  “I don’t see any door,” interrupted Ryne, “just a portrait gallery along the wall.”

  “I told you, it’s hidden. When people come here, it’s for formal pronouncements and the like. The councilors—the living ones at least—stand at the railing of the landing where the staircases meet with the crowd here below. It’s very impressive seeing them proclaim and such. The space was built for that. When the public comes, they don’t care that there’s a team of assistants and adjuncts and the like supporting the councilors, so the access to them is tucked away. Here.” She led him toward a painting on the far wall. Her fingers slipped behind the edge of the frame as if she might pull the artwork down. Instead, a portion of the wall fell back and slid to one side, revealing a door-lined corridor behind.

  “Come on, there’s someone I want you to meet.” She stepped through and after a moment he followed. Ryne heard the wall fall back into place behind him but refused to look back. What would be the point?

  The alternating doors of the hallway reminded him of similar university spaces, though these doors lacked the personality of individualized notes and images that faculty used to adorn the entrances to the tiny spaces where they met with students and did so much of the work of the mind. His own had borne a humorous cartoon of two Fant arguing over a formula whose meaning changed depending on the interpretation of a smudged glyph in the equation. At least once in every tenday for all the many seasons since an anonymous student had affixed it to his door, that cartoon had brought a smile to his face. In contrast this corridor was all business. Small plaques with tightly printed names hung at eye level to the right of each doorway. Lolte barely glanced at them as she led him along until she stopped and gestured at one. He read the sign.

  “Ajax?”

  “A cousin. He’s my aunt’s youngest son. I used to babysit him and some of his sibs back before I went off to school, and during his college days I bailed him out of trouble on more than one occasion. So, he owes me.”

  “Owes you? Are we not supposed to be here? Lolte, I don’t have time for pranks or intrigue. My work is too important.”

  “More important than you know, which is why we’re here. You should see this.” She knocked twice on the door, then pushed it open and stepped within without waiting for a response. Ryne followed.

  The room beyond was much as he’d expected, a simple office with a desk and matching chair hammock behind it, a pair of comfortable-looking standing chairs for visitors waiting in front. One wall was a vast screen set up to look like a window gazing out onto a scrap of beach and the falling rain of a small bay. The other walls had been painted an institutional green, broken up by another door and a few photos and free-standing shelves with bric-a-brac. A young Lox sat slumped in his hammock, hands folded in his lap, trunk lounging across the bend of his right arm, a stylus lightly gripped in his nubs.

  “That’s Ajax,” said Lolte.

  Ryne scoffed. “Does he usually sleep in the middle of the workday?”

  “He’s not napping, he’s working. He’s a Speaker. Can’t you smell the koph?”

  “If he’s Speaking, where’s his client?”

  “You’re thinking in terms of the rest of Barsk,” said Lolte. “Those Speakers follow the training and rules laid down by Margda, and typically only summon the dead at the behest of someone else. But this island was founded by a different breed of Speakers, and they use nefshons for other purposes. Did you know that a Speaker can summon the particles of someone who’s still alive, and communicate with them no matter where they are? Not just on Barsk, but anywhere!”

  “What? No, surely not. That would mean…” Ryne paused, the common knowledge that every child had about Speaking supplanted by what he understood of the physics of nefshons. The math swam before him and fell into place and his ears lifted in astonishment. “That would mean instantaneous communication, anywhere in the galaxy.”

  “Yes.”

  “No lag whatsoever.”

  “Yes.”

  “Faster than messages transmitted from portal to portal.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Faster than light!”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  Ryne’s jaw dropped open. The implications staggered him. “Does the Alliance know about this?”

  “Not a clue. Because all of their Speakers were trained by Speakers who, when you go back far enough, were trained by Margda, and all of them embraced her edict with the prohibition of ever summoning the living. They absorbed it as axiomatic, never questioned in eight hundred years.”

  “Except here.”

  Lolte smiled. “Have I mentioned how much I admire how quick you are?”

  “So … if not the dead, then with whom is your cousin Ajax conversing?”

  “Ajax is assigned to Councilor Sind’s office, which is directly responsible for the sentry posts at each of the portals the Caudex maintains, both within our system and without.”

  “Portals? What, do you mean interstellar portals? Those only work on the periphery of a star system. Why would the Caudex have any portals on Barsk?”

  “They don’t. The closest ones hang at the edge of space, several days out from here. And each has a small outpost to maintain it. And each outpost includes a sentry. Ajax here contacts each of them on a daily basis.”

  “You said … you said the closest ones … where are the others?”

  Lolte’s smile broadened. “There are six in our system, and the matched partner of each opens onto the edge of another star system. The nearest of those is more than two hundred light years from us. The Fant aren’t just on Barsk, Ryne. Our people are exploring the galaxy.”

  “You’re saying the Caudex has starships out there?”

  She nodded. “I grew up on one.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I wasn’t born on Barsk. My father was a medical researcher here—in fact he made some of the most significant refinements to our longevity treatments—and my mother was an engineer on a ship. I was something of a surprise, conceived the night before she took a shuttle up to her ship. By the time she realized she was pregnant they were already well under way. I was born in space. At the end of the mission my mother returned a while, long enough to get me settled in the family home. Then she went back out there. After I finished schooling I had the choice to join her, but I opted to stay. I wasn’t born here, but Barsk is my home, now.”

  Ryne stared at her a while before letting his gaze slip back to the slack-faced Ajax. “Astounding. But … what does this have to do with my work?”

  “The work that my cousin here does
is just one of many uses that the Caudex has found for nefshons. And both Speakers and the koph they need are of limited supply. But the prototype our engineers are making from your theories would allow us to place the constructs of past Speakers at these outposts, as well as in places less hospitable to life. They can’t completely replace the need for people like Ajax, but they’ll extend the reach of them. Any one of them could serve as the bridge or relay to connect two living Speakers, without using a single bit of koph. Your theories will make that possible. That’s why the Caudex brought you here. That’s why they agreed to the longevity treatments for you despite the scarcity and the expense. You’re critical to the next stage of the master plan.”

  “Which is what, exactly? Where is all of this leading?”

  “Departing Barsk entirely.”

  “What? Why? How?”

  “One day, when everything is ready, the plan is for all of us to just slip away, leave this planet behind, with no trace for the Alliance to know where we’ve gone. Only then will all Fant be safe.”

  NINE

  RIPPLES

  AFTER too many days away, and still more days apart due to the reports and schedules and far too many meetings, Klarce had at last managed to find time to spend with her lover. Even within Adolo’s mother’s home, it often proved impossible to manage any privacy. Her status as one of the quick councilors meant that every adult woman in the house, some fifty aunts, cousins, and sisters—and make no mistake, the sisters were the worst—wanted to snatch a moment of her time, build a connection, possibly even supplant Adolo’s position in her heart, and/or in her bed, or at a minimum fawn over her when all she wanted was a chance to take her lover’s hand and slip away. She’d finally managed it, most of the household away attending a music recital involving a good number of the children. Delighted with their luck, the two women had spent the time bringing one another to a series of satisfying climaxes. They romped like lovers half their age with all the attendant enthusiasm and noise—further evidence that the sisters were elsewhere. Eventually, limbs and trunks entwined, they lay basking in the afterglow somewhere between bliss and sleep, murmuring shy syllables intended for one another’s ears alone.