The Moons of Barsk

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  Regina, Klarce’s second assistant, cleared her throat on the other side of the chamber’s curtains. “Your pardon, Klarce, your presence is urgently requested in the council chamber.”

  Adolo murmured something that could have been an endearment or just as easily a swear word of exasperation and propped herself up on one elbow as she used her trunk to caress Klarce’s ear in the way that always sent shivers through her, even sated as she was. The abrupt end of such a hard-won encounter could be blamed on nepotism. Regina was a fine second assistant, but she was also Adolo’s cousin, the adopted daughter of one of her innumerable aunts, and thus someone who could enter the family home with impunity and seek her here despite the instructions she’d left not to be disturbed.

  “Go away, Regina. I am off shift and the rest of the Quick Council knows it. Whatever it is needs doing, pass it on to Sind with my compliments.”

  “Again, your pardon, but it was Sind who insisted that I fetch you. He says he received word that a Speaker has broken the edict.”

  Adolo rolled her eyes at this bit of news, a fair reflection of Klarce’s own reaction. “What of it?” she called back. “We’ve been breaking the edict every day since Margda first created the damn thing.”

  “My apologies. I’m not being clear. This Speaker wasn’t one of ours.”

  Klarce bolted out of bed and was halfway to the curtain before she recalled she was naked. She spun around and there was Adolo handing her the simple, floral one-piece she liked to wear during her personal time. She hadn’t known, years earlier, how limited that time would become once she ascended to the Quick Council. Would she have aspired to it all the same? Probably. Klarce snatched the clothing with her trunk, blew her lover a kiss as she turned, stepping into the garment. She slid her arms into it as she plowed through the curtains and nearly bowled into Regina.

  “Do we have a name for this renegade Speaker? A location?” Klarce hurried down the corridor toward the main exit from Adolo’s family’s home, reviewing the best route to get to the council chamber from this location, something she’d never had cause to consider before.

  “Yes, ma’am. A Lox. Male. Name of Jorl ben Tral. He lives on the island of—”

  “Keslo,” finished Klarce. “It’s the Aleph.”

  “Ma’am?”

  She sighed. “It’s above your clearance, Regina. Though, I suppose Sind will be upgrading it or he wouldn’t have sent you with that name. Jorl is one of only two Fant currently alive who bears one of Margda’s marks.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I know what the Aleph is. I thought the name was familiar.”

  They were out of the house by that point, racing down a boardway of the Civilized Wood. Klarce waved her trunk to indicate her intended direction and Regina hustled along beside her.

  “I would assume so. What you probably don’t know is that we investigate every recipient of the mark. No doubt Sind will ensure you can rattle off the names and particulars of all fifty-seven of them since Margda invented the damn thing and had herself inked with the first one.”

  Klarce knew Regina already had a full workload and an ongoing educational track, she’d composed much of both herself, holding the girl to higher standards to offset any claims of impropriety. She may have gotten the initial interview through nepotism, but she’d earned her position time and again. It was only the young woman’s naturally diffident nature that obscured a quick mind. Adding a bit more to her studies wouldn’t break her, and again if Sind had cleared her for a security promotion now was not the time to coddle her.

  “The more recent Aleph is a fishmonger. She’s … an amusing case, but of no real interest to us. Jorl ben Tral is a different matter. Of all to take the mark, he’s the only one that Margda included in her prophecies. Don’t look so shocked, girl. Yes, his being a Bearer was foretold, but that’s not the half of it. He was an odd leaf even before he came to our attention. Actually petitioned the Alliance to set aside his right of deferment and joined up with the Patrol.”

  Regina gasped, eyes wide. “He left … left Barsk?”

  She nodded, puffing as she forced herself to better speed to the council chamber. “He’s an odd one. Tested positive for koph upon his return. A nice perk for a historian. That damned council—the one that determines Bearers, not our council—marked him soon after. That’s when we put him under observation … about ten years now. Turns out his academic specialty is the prophecies of the Matriarch. Let me tell you, that set off some alarm bells. It was all just a little convenient, do you see? But, while his work is insightful—and believe me, I’ve read every word of the six published treatises he wrote on the subject, from his dissertation on down—there’s nothing in there to suggest anything other than a talented scholar. Even so, seven years ago we reassigned an agent to his island to cover him specifically.”

  “An agent for just one person, ma’am? For a historian? That seems … excessive. Even if he is a Bearer.”

  “You’re right to think so. And odd as I said he was, he’s also been fairly conservative in his views. Or he was. Something happened seven years ago, a hiccough in the Alliance senate. Somehow Jorl got himself named to a seat.”

  “I don’t understand. A seat? You don’t mean a senate seat?”

  They arrived at the entrance to the council chamber and Klarce pulled up short and leaned against the doorframe, catching her breath and collecting her thoughts. She eyed her second assistant closely, finding doubts in her earlier assessment of the girl’s intelligence. “Stay with me, Regina. That’s exactly what I mean. Jorl is a member of the Alliance senate. It’s not a secret, but it’s not bandied about either. The average person on Barsk couldn’t care less about the doings of the senate, and the members of the larger Alliance would be aghast if it was brought to their attention. But a senator he most certainly is, the first and only Fant so designated.”

  “Is this something Margda foresaw?” Regina’s ears pulled in closer to her head as her eyes narrowed with concentration.

  Klarce nodded her approval as her assistant focused and took in the information. “We don’t believe so. There’s no indication in any of her prophecies, not the ones she published or those from her private journals that are in the hands of the Caudex. No, our best guess is that Jorl’s historical research accidentally discovered dirt on someone of interest to the Alliance government and he brokered a deal.”

  “So he’s an opportunist and an extortionist?”

  The councilor smiled even as she shook her head, holding up her trunk in a gainsaying gesture. “That would be a convenient explanation, but no. It doesn’t mesh at all with the file we have on him. Everything in his psych profile suggests he’s as straight a branch as ever grew. Jorl’s no more likely to blackmail someone—even some fuzzy Alliance politician—than you’re apt to call yourself Pholo and fly away on a fine wind day. But enough, I’ll discuss your additional educational assignments with Sind after I meet with the council. I’ve allowed myself to be distracted and I need all the information Sind would have passed along before sending you to me. Tell me, which part of the edict did Jorl break?”

  “The first. He summoned Fisco, and with sufficient power that he pulled her out of a class.”

  “How long ago did this happen?”

  “Just over two hours ago, ma’am.”

  Klarce frowned. Regina took a half step back, her ears folding forward defensively.

  “This makes no sense. Surely Sind activated a team to scramble the memory before it consolidated fully. We have people in place to layer in some suggestions that it was all a dream. It’s reason enough to double our surveillance of him, but not to pull me out of bed or summon me to the council.”

  “That’s just it, ma’am,” said Regina. “The scramble didn’t take.”

  “Don’t be stupid. It can’t not take. Memory consolidation and its disruption are well understood at the nefshon level. An individual Speaker can manage it. We only use a team as a precaution in case something goes wrong—w
ith our agents, not with the process.”

  “Yes, ma’am, only the team couldn’t do it. This Jorl fellow still had koph in him.”

  “Well, of course he did, he’d just summoned Fisco, hadn’t he?” Klarce checked herself. Her tone had become strident and now threatened to cross over into outright bellowing. She pinched the bottom corner of her left ear, distracting herself with the stab of pain and paused for the span of several breaths. “Why didn’t the team wait for it to flush out of his system?”

  Regina swallowed, stared at her feet, dropped her ears, but said nothing.

  “By the moons above, show some spine, girl. Out with it. What aren’t you telling me?”

  “The team waited, ma’am. But it still didn’t work. They waited more. But still, no. They’d just tried a third time and failed. That’s when Sind instructed me to fetch you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Jorl ben Tral finished his summoning of Fisco more than two hours past, and he’s still showing as having koph in him.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s what Sind said, right before he sent me for you.”

  * * *

  SIND met her in the vestibule outside the council chamber. He was an Eleph like herself, but that was the extent of their similarity. Klarce had been born into the Caudex, but Sind had arrived on the island’s shore thirty-two years earlier, following the siren call of his own death after an impressive career as an administrator across fourteen separate islands. He’d climbed through the ranks until now, at the age of one hundred seventeen, he was the oldest living member of the Quick Council. The other half of their governing body—that comprised the Full Council—was made up of Fant all born long before him, some by as many as seven centuries.

  He waved Regina away and instead of stepping back inside with Klarce, guided her down a hallway to his office.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  Klarce dropped into Sind’s guest hammock and regarded her former mentor. “Did Regina get it right? Because it’s quite frankly impossible.”

  “I know that. You think I don’t know that? And yet … it’s happened.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll have to figure that part out. In the meantime, you need to keep a tight lid on this. It’s exactly why we have contingency protocols. Who else knows?”

  “Just you, me, your second assistant, and two three-member scramble teams. I have the teams on lockdown and in a disturbing bit of irony, once we’re done here I’ll meet with them and disrupt their own memories of the attempt. They’ll sleep it off and in the morning recall none of it. But frankly, I don’t have a clue what any of this means.”

  “You haven’t told the rest of the Quick Council? Or summoned any members of the Full Council?”

  Sind flapped his ears in barely restrained panic. “It doesn’t make sense. Damn it, I wrote some of those protocols. This can’t be happening.”

  Klarce nodded. “That’s why you activated a second team? To be sure it wasn’t some fluke with the first?”

  “Yes, and it’s also why I pulled you in. I need your sharp mind here, backing up my own in case I missed something. This is exactly the kind of thing I don’t want to distract the council with, either our fellow living members or the rest. Everyone has enough on their plate.”

  “You haven’t missed anything. All the pieces should fit together, but they don’t.”

  “I don’t like puzzles,” said Sind. “How can he still have the drug in his system?”

  She shrugged. “We know he’s a researcher. Maybe he’s on some kind of deadline, pulling an ‘all-nighter’ and summoning several different conversants for some project.”

  “For two hours? I was a damn good Speaker in my day, and I couldn’t maintain that, not and perform multiple summonings. We know he pulled in Fisco, so what did he do after she ended it? Is there anything in his dossier to suggest he has that kind of strength?”

  “Nothing,” said Klarce. “He tested well within the normal range of talents. Speaking isn’t like a muscle. It doesn’t improve with practice or over time. Something else is going on here. We don’t have a clue what it is, and I don’t like not having that kind of control over the situation. And this isn’t just any Speaker.”

  “That was my thought as well. Margda’s chosen. But chosen for what?”

  She stood and regarded the man who had been her mentor for most of her life. “I don’t think we have the luxury of waiting to find out,” she said. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but we’re out of options.”

  Sind closed his eyes and brought a hand up to massage the bridge of his trunk. She waited. This was the real reason he’d sent for her. Sind had a brilliant mind, but age had banked the fire in him. He could set policy but needed her to follow through with procedure. Or maybe he just wanted plausible deniability if any of this ever came back on them.

  After several beats Sind dropped his hand and opened his eyes. Tight-lipped, his reply was a curt nod. That was enough. She turned and left his office to do what he couldn’t.

  * * *

  BACK before Arlo’s death, the space that now served as Dabni’s bedroom had been a supply closet. In fairness, it had been an inordinately large supply closet, and she suspected that before Tolta’s husband had done the surprising thing of co-habitating with her, that it had been a luxurious walk-in closet. It was also far more space than she’d had growing up on the last island.

  The austerity learned in youth resists the greater opulence that often comes with adulthood. Added to this was Dabni’s understanding that as an agent of the Caudex she could be called upon to discard her identity and location literally at a moment’s notice. All of which explained why she possessed little in the way of furnishings. Since arriving on Keslo she had acquired a simple chair and secretary desk, a tiny bin in which she folded her spare clothes, a handful of trinket reminders of signature life events, and a cache of koph hidden in a hollowed out book. She’d limited herself with the deliberate understanding that everything but that last handful could be abandoned if the need arose, even including her young daughter.

  A new sleeping pallet had been waiting for her when she moved in and Dabni had placed it in the corner farthest from the room’s only door. Tolta had not only refused to accept payment for the room, she’d also insisted on repainting it to a color of her new housemate’s preference. This was Dabni’s only nod toward decoration. Paint was not a possession. She’d chosen a midnight blue, a hue that would require many coats to paint over at some future point and not even remotely the fashion for interior rooms anywhere in either archipelago. But Dabni found it soothed her spirit. More, it gave her an empty setting to re-create when she manufactured her mindspace for manipulating nefshons.

  She lay asleep on her pallet enjoying a dream of playing with her daughter on a white sandy beach of Peckl—a place that Rina had never visited—when another Speaker gathered sufficient strands of her nefshons to pull her conscious mind to them. Most people saw consciousness as a static state; one was either conscious or not. Mind scholars and Speakers knew this consciousness for a continuum, one which included the normal waking mind, the altered state of dreams, and the unbounded state of existing as a nefshon construct. She found herself in this third consciousness now, neither awake nor asleep, standing in an office back on the last island. An administrator’s office. Facing the Fant who had summoned her, she recognized Councilor Klarce, her supervisor’s supervisor’s supervisor. She’d met the woman only once, upon her graduation nearly ten years before. Klarce had personally attended to award her a commendation for being second in her class. She’d appeared stern back then and the span of years had not changed her.

  “You recognize me, Dabni?”

  Despite lacking physicality, Dabni’s self-image flinched and nervously flapped her ears even as she nodded assessment.

  “That is well,” said Klarce. “It seems that each time we meet I give you a gift.” The councilor opened
her hand, revealing the glowing loops and knotted strands of a meme. Dabni gasped as she recognized it from an advanced seminar. As a field agent she had handled and distributed an assortment of different memes, but not this one. Nor had she ever expected to receive it. Klarce held a meme of death.

  The concept was simple: reify the memory of a body’s response to illness, pass that memory to a healthy person and in the process infect them. The technique had been developed to inoculate large populations quickly, allowing one’s own body to do the work of traditional drugs. This was different. This meme had been made by a Speaker in the final stages of a brutal, engineered disease. A swift and fatal disease. But it made no sense; the Caudex fought to preserve the life of all Fant on Barsk. Murder was not among their tools.

  “That’s a physicality cascade,” she said, staring at the circlet of light being offered. She didn’t reach for it, swallowed instead, opened her mouth to speak, stopped, and then managed it on the second attempt. “Have I failed in my assignment? Are you needing to kill me?”

  A thin parting of her lips was as much of a smile as she’d heard Klarce ever showed to field agents, but the older woman’s eyes twinkled. “No, my dear. The meme is not for you. It is for your charge. He has come into possession of knowledge that may lead him to awareness of the Caudex.”

  “Jorl.” Dabni swallowed again.

  “Yes.”

  “Your pardon, but I was taught that this has happened before and contingencies exist to handle such discoveries.”

  “That’s true,” replied Klarce. “In this case, though, these traditional measures have failed. Repeatedly. Your Jorl ben Tral was already an anomaly, fulfilling a prophecy of the Matriarch herself. It’s why you were assigned to keep watch over him. And no, you haven’t failed in your task. I’ve personally reviewed your reports and they’re exemplary. But the fact remains, even with direct observation for most of a decade, we still have no idea as to Margda’s intentions for him. For all those years that was sufficient; nothing your target did bore any resemblance to a threat. But this new development has made him a liability. The Caudex cannot afford such an unknown and unknowable variable to exist. Not at this stage of our operations.”