The Moons of Barsk

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  “Hi hi! I’m Rina. I’m a friend of Pizlo’s.”

  Druz reached out a hand with quicker than normal speed and steadied the girl. She bowed solemnly. “It is a privilege and delight to meet anyone who calls the little prince friend. Be welcome here, senator’s child.”

  Rina giggled. “Pizlo’s not a prince. That’s a title from storybooks.”

  “You know, he has said the same thing to me many times. And who is this?” The Brady gestured to Rina’s doll with the same seriousness she might use for a diplomat.

  “That’s Kokab. He wanted to come along. He’s very smart.”

  The Sloth nodded. “A trusted advisor then. Welcome to you also, Kokab.”

  “And what about me?” asked Jorl, as he came up behind his daughter carrying her travel case and the assortment of meals from Hearne’s which Chisulo had stowed aboard his boat.

  “It’s all as you requested, sir. I’ve determined the coordinates, but much as we experienced when I flew you there seven years ago, the ship’s instruments as well as satellite imagery insists there’s nothing there.”

  “Well, at a minimum, we know there’s an island there,” said Jorl. “It’s an anomaly, all right. And since I’ve found another one, I’m thinking why not keep both of them in one place. But first, let’s try to explain away some of the mystery. After that, well, worst case, we park close enough for me to wade out and go ashore and I waste a day and get a good hike.”

  “If that’s the worst case, what is the best one? What do you hope to find?”

  Jorl smiled. “Same thing Rina came to the ship to find. People.”

  * * *

  DRUZ took them up into the planet’s mesosphere and then due east until reaching a spot nearly equidistant between the nearest islands of the western and eastern archipelagos far below. Nothing was visible except the tops of distant clouds beneath them.

  “I don’t understand,” said Abenaki. “Druz tells me we’re traveling to an island that doesn’t exist? Why, when you have hundreds of perfectly good islands to visit.”

  “It exists. I’ve stood upon its shore. Druz, were you able to confirm my suspicions?”

  “Yes. From our current position I have identified a vast array of atmospheric drones near the top of the troposphere, spread out above an area of ocean with the island at its center. They appear to be scattering the spectrum above. There’s some data loss, but it’s well within the tolerance that weather would cause anyway.”

  Jorl nodded. “Rendering the island invisible to the initial survey mapping from early in the first century.”

  “Yes, sir. And from any subsequent scans from the station above Zlorka.”

  After being introduced to the Procyon, Rina had sat quietly on a low couch, her gaze flitting back and forth from Druz to Abenaki, now and then whispering to her doll but otherwise seemingly engrossed. Jorl kept looking her way, unsure of how much of the conversation she was following.

  “I’m assuming those drones aren’t something that could just be put up once and function indefinitely?”

  “They’re lightweight and durable, but no, even drawing energy from the weather they’d still need regular, albeit infrequent, maintenance. In fact, their manufacture suggests materials not otherwise available on Barsk.”

  Jorl chuckled. “Care to wager that someone on that island is producing such materials?”

  “No, sir. The fact that they exist to hide the island suggests there may be other things occurring there worth hiding.”

  “I agree. So, for as much as seven hundred years there’s been an ongoing and deliberate effort to keep the existence of this island from public record and awareness. And yet, almost every Fant on the planet sails here as the last thing they do before they die.”

  “Papa? You’re not going there are you?” Rina’s question rang like a cry for help. In fact, intentionally or not, she was sending out an infrasonic pulse of profound distress that neither the Sloth nor the Raccoon detected. Jorl rushed to her couch and knelt alongside her.

  “What’s wrong, Rina?”

  “That’s where people go to die. Please don’t go there, Papa. Don’t die.”

  “Hush, little twig. I’m not going to die. I didn’t wake up this morning or any morning suddenly knowing where it was. And besides, I’ve been here already, back before you were born. I’m going back and so this isn’t like when other people travel here.”

  Rina clutched her doll to her chest, some of her fear fading and the thrumming of her emotions falling away. “How did you know where to go the first time?”

  “Pizlo told me,” he said. “He actually came with me.”

  If there was any real magic in the world it was saying that name to his daughter. She smiled like the sun peeking from behind relentless clouds.

  “Okay, then,” she said. And then added, “Maybe we should have asked him to come with?”

  “I thought about it, little twig, but he’s been busy with other things lately. He and I will be having breakfast and probably lunch together after we all get back. I’ll ask your mom about having you join us for that lunch. Okay?”

  She nodded solemnly, still smiling brightly.

  “All right, Druz. Take us down as we discussed. Come in from the north so we don’t disturb or distract any Dying who are sailing there. Find us a nice piece of beach where you can put down, and hopefully I won’t have to wade through too much water to get ashore to see who’s there.”

  Abenaki drummed her fingers in what Jorl had come to see as a nervous tell. “Even if there are people on your invisible island, Senator, do you really think they’ll be waiting for you when you arrive?”

  “Stands to reason,” he said. “If it was me going to all this effort to hide, I’d make sure to keep an eye open in case someone found me anyway. And given they have no compunction against technology, I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew we were on our way almost as soon as we did.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  REVISIONIST HISTORY

  EVERY season, a member of the Quick Council left their home in the Civilized Wood of the nameless island and boarded a hidden shuttle housed beneath a shallow bay. Despite being possessed of better stealth technology than the Patrol, the protocols of the Caudex insisted this shuttle could only be used when no other ships were within a day’s travel of the planet, when its destination—the moon the Fant had named Ulmazh—lay on the far side of the globe from the island of Zlorka and the space station in geosynchronous orbit above it. Despite centuries of successful missions to star systems beyond their own, the core of the Caudex’s program remained at the base its earliest visionaries had established within this moon. Theory and practice of the best developments of Alliance technology were explored, adapted, and enhanced there before being sent out to be implemented in still more ambitious projects. Ulmazh was the seat of Caudex manufacturing. The smaller portals that their ships had pushed for centuries were constructed there. Teams of ethernauts trained and drilled there, building up reflexes for contingencies that had never occurred but that some day might—for the Caudex, preparation for even the unlikely was mandatory. The moon also housed a modest shipyard, depending on the lesser gravity there to turn out new craft every decade. Small wonder then that a councilor spent a portion of each season on Ulmazh.

  If Klarce enjoyed her rotation up to the moon more than her peers, well that was fine, too. If one of them wanted to let her take their turns, she’d be beyond delight. As it was, she’d been looking forward to the day’s trip all season.

  Temmel arrived at Klarce’s office as she finished off several smaller tasks that would not wait for her return. Regina swapped out memos in front of her as quickly as she could skim, verify, and sign them, whisking the completed documents away to eventually distribute as necessary. When she was down to the last stack she didn’t bother to look up but acknowledged her first assistant’s presence with a simple question.

  “Are we loaded and ready to go?” She knew the answer. Temmel was the
very definition of efficiency. Klarce had traveled from world to moon and back with him many times and he wouldn’t be waiting on her now if there were anything left undone. In fact, he’d doubtless been yearning for the trip even more, eager for the chance to gain more flight time. Years before she’d joined the council, she’d been one of her predecessor’s assistants. Among the skills required for the job was piloting, a rarity on Barsk. Outside of the Caudex, she suspected that only Jorl could fly a shuttle. She’d enjoyed the rare opportunities to command a spacecraft, even within the restrictions of a covert dash from planet to moon and back again, and Temmel felt the same. For him, her turn to visit Ulmazh brought the satisfaction of sitting in a pilot’s seat, fingers and trunk hovering over the command board. As for her own hunger to pilot, Caudex protocols required someone else command the craft on such trips. Even so, Klarce had set aside time in her schedule over the next few days to drill with some ethernaut cadets and renew her certification. Should the need arrive, she liked knowing she could take the helm herself.

  Time passed, and when Temmel still hadn’t responded she glanced up from her paperwork and saw a different answer in his eyes. “Tell me,” she said.

  “Yes, the shuttle is ready, but … the launch has been countermanded.”

  Klarce had feared as much but hoped she’d be wrong this once. Her travel plans had been overturned by the rest of the council. The Caudex would not allow a shuttle to lift today, not with a senatorial yacht afloat off the coast of Keslo. Which, she supposed, was why contingencies existed.

  “We adapt,” she said. “Regina, send word to everyone I was scheduled to meet with over the next few days and express my apologies. Reschedule, loosely. With luck, whatever brought our senator’s private pleasure boat here ahead of schedule will send it back on its way promptly and we’ll have only minor delay. Temmel, is there anything that can’t wait?”

  “We have three candidates for flight school who were going up with us to replace the team that’s graduating and preparing to start pushing a portal from the Thrax system, but I’m sure they have plenty to occupy themselves until we’re ready to leave. And actually, this may be a good thing for us in another area.”

  “What are your referring to?”

  “Ryne’s work.”

  “The physicist? What of him?”

  “Bernath informs me that the engineering team is preparing to test the prototype he designed. She says it’s really quite elegant and if successful production can begin immediately.”

  “What’s that mean in terms of having working units?”

  Temmel smiled. “Days. We can probably have the first batch to carry up with us when your flight is cleared.”

  Klarce shifted in her chair, ears fanned wide with pleasure. “Now that is a piece of good news. Pending confirmation of the test from Bernath, I want you to review the schedule of outbound ships. Not much we can do for any ongoing portal-pushers already in transit, but I want one of the new units onboard any relay vessels. And when those are covered, create a timetable for delivering a unit to every watch station on both sides of our existing portals.”

  “Providing the devices to the watch stations is to be our first priority?”

  “Eventually we’ll distribute them to our more ambitious projects, but our first concern has to be preparing for emergencies both near and far. The greatest danger to our longer range plans remains the possibility of something coming through a portal that we hadn’t planned on.”

  “But, ma’am, they’re our portals. It shouldn’t be possible for someone we don’t want coming through to use them at all.”

  She reached out with her trunk and circled his wrist, like a parent focusing a child’s attention. “That’s exactly the kind of thinking that almost guarantees we’ve overlooked something and ensures it will catch us unprepared. Heed me, Temmel, if you want my job one day; factor the impossible into your plans. Now, since Regina has gotten me caught up and we’re not actually leaving, I’m taking the rest of the day off. Follow up on the last bits I’ve given you and then feel free to do the same.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But … keep an eye on the senator’s ship. If there’s any change, anything at all, inform me at once. There’s no good reason for it to be here out of season, which only leaves bad reasons. Understood?”

  Temmel turned and fled. Klarce nodded to herself. She had no complaints regarding her first assistant’s competency, but it would do him good to reflect on his own confidence. The galaxy had a nasty habit of rewarding hubris with ruination. That was another lesson Margda had taught them long ago.

  * * *

  WITH the intention of making mash out of fallen fruit, Klarce left her office with no greater purpose than to walk the boardways of the unnamed island’s Civilized Wood. She smiled and responded to greetings and well wishes from passersby, paused at a park to talk to a group of children playing some game with a long set of half-imagined rules, lingered at a fruit stand to select a few melons that would make a nice dessert that night when she surprised Adolo by actually having the time to cook dinner for them both.

  The world-weariness that defined her responsibilities as second-in-line of the Quick Council fell away. The constant ache from her disease—however well managed—faded into the background. She felt happy, as much because she stood at the edge of an event that future generations would look back on as a benchmark of Fant history as because she had a free afternoon for the first time in more seasons than she could count.

  That ended with such abruptness that she nearly stumbled and spilled her melons. Temmel had plucked a thread of her nefshons like a harp string, summoning her without warning, and even as she registered that he appeared to be back in her office she understood that to reach for her meant something critical or dire. Before he could apologize she interrupted him. “What’s happened?”

  “The senator’s ship. It’s moving.”

  “Leaving? Quicker than we thought. Does the rest of the council know? Are we back on for launch?”

  “Ma’am, not leaving, moving. It’s still in Barsk airspace. And … hold a moment.” He looked to one side, as if someone stood next to him. Presumably, in her actual office, someone did. “Regina just shared an update. In the time I needed to take koph to find and tell you this news, we’ve confirmed the ship’s vector. It’s heading for us. We estimate it’ll reach the unnamed island before day’s end.”

  “One of the western landing spots?”

  “Unlikely, ma’am. They look to be aiming slightly north. Almost as if they want to avoid seeing or perhaps being seen by anyone who’s sailed away and is making landing here.”

  She snorted. “As if anyone arriving after days of traveling to us during flood is apt to notice anything beyond their own trunk in the deluge.”

  “It was just a guess, ma’am.”

  “No, no, you’re probably right. A point to the senator for attempting discretion.”

  Temmel nodded, then frowned. “But ma’am, why is he coming? He knows there’s something called the Caudex, but why would he think we’re here of all places?”

  She considered this a moment and nodded. “Because he’s a scholar.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a matter of parsimony. Where else on Barsk could we be? And we know he knows how to find the island. But he’s never done more than land on the beach. Never had cause to. If he’s looking for the Caudex though, he’ll be looking for a city. Have you informed the rest of the Quick Council of this development?”

  “Regina is doing so now.”

  “Fine. Doubtless they’ll convene, but I can guess what they’ll decide. I’ll be asked to meet with him, learn what he knows, and determine what he wants.”

  “What does he want?”

  “This is just a guess, but if he’s being true to what we know of him, he’s coming to confirm a hypothesis, vetting his source. Send word to Sind that I’m on my way to the council chamber now. But also, let Adolo kno
w that I need her to oust her family from their guest parlor and that she’ll be hosting an intimate reception for our guest.”

  “Will the council sign off on such an informal venue? Wouldn’t something more official make a better choice?”

  “First impressions are critical. He’s not showing up as an Alliance senator with a formal presentation to the council. He’s using his senatorial perks to hitch a ride here and showing up as an individual, relying on his aleph to open any doors. I intend to reinforce that by treating him as such, and guide him toward the doors I want to open by inviting him into a home.”

  “But not your home.”

  Klarce snorted. “My home is my office, more often as not. Adolo won’t mind being pressed into service as hostess. And if the rest of her household doesn’t like it, well, they can file a complaint. It wouldn’t be the first time. In any case, they can certainly spare the guest parlor, and it has its own, discreet entrance.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m on it. Anything else?”

  Klarce considered. She pulled back from the connection with Temmel to get her bearings in the real world. She hadn’t made it all that far from the fruit stand and had come to a halt in the middle of the marketplace’s minor boardway, a confectioner on her left and a spice shop to the right. Sweet and savory, she wondered which would ultimately describe her face-to-face meeting with Margda’s chosen.

  “One thing more,” she said, returning her focus to her assistant. “Send someone over to the council to pick up a parcel and take it to Adolo. I no longer have time this afternoon to deliver these melons myself.”

  * * *

  THIS Full Council meeting was much like the last, tedious and pointless. Arguments ranged back and forth between cautious and proactive. Marsh even went so far as to suggest pretending the island was uninhabited, and if necessary using the same lightning manipulation they used to clear debris from the beaches on Jorl if he appeared determined to cross the sand.