Barsk (12 page)

 

TEN

MOONLIGHT

LIKE
some over-ripened piece of fruit dragging down the branch of its birth, Pizlo hung from the penultimate level of the forest canopy, dangling in the emptiness that was Arlo's Chimney. Slimmer and straighter than any of Keslo's other open air monuments, the shaft that bore Arlo's name also commemorated the path he'd taken as he'd fallen from a tiny platform above the canopy. Wreathed in fire, his plunge had burned a passage all the way through the Civilized Wood and into the Shadow Dwell. The shape of that trajectory had been smoothed in the transformation to art. The width of the shaft now averaged twice the height of a Fant. The inner surface had been planed into six evenly sized walls that turned like a lazy hexagonal helix, completing ten rotations as it ran from top to bottom.

Pizlo had come not out of sentimentality, but rather at the beckoning of his personal oracle. The sense of it had begun days ago, a gentle urging of where and when that had grown in insistence even as he prepared himself. Night had fallen before his arrival, smothering the limited, diffused glow that reached the spot at the height of day. And despite the direct route of the shaft, he was too far up for any illumination spilling from homes in the Civilized Wood below. But darkness suited him. He knew his surroundings, every plant, every branch, every vine, with a surety that did not depend on traditional senses.

He had rigged a sling to hold himself precisely where he needed to be, equidistant from the six green walls, not quite supine, gazing up to the top of the shaft at an opening as black as everything else. Long before morning, Pizlo would be gone, leaving no indication that he'd ever been here.

He waited. Swayed. His trunk grasped a supporting vine of the sling and leveraged his angle a few degrees, easing an unfelt strain on his neck as he stared up into darkness. Rain had fallen down the shaft when he'd first arrived and set up, but it had since stopped as he knew it would.

A buzzing cloud of winged insects took advantage of the break in weather and rose from below, attacking a colony of flightless bugs that had emerged from a hollowed knot of a kalatma tree on one face of the shaft just above Pizlo's height. The defenders beat back most of the invaders, shredding their wings with brutal swipes of barbed and edged forelimbs. Bodies hurtled downward as a warning against future attacks. But some few of the fliers, maybe one in twenty, profited from their comrades' sacrifice and swept past the other bugs to bite into the tap of the kalatma. They drank deep of the sap. As their abdomens swelled with fluid, each began to give off a pinprick-sized vermillion glow, taunting the defenders who turned to repulse them too late. The bloated, surviving fliers pushed off, formed a small, glowing cloud, and began to drift back down the shaft. They paid no attention to the young Fant hanging in their midst.

Pizlo lurched in his sling. He thrust both arms into the cloud, hands curled into two cups that he brought together, capturing some of the insects. Squirming, he unstopped a gourd that hung from his waist, curling his trunk around the neck to hold it steady as he transferred most of his prize. His collection had twenty-seven varieties of insects that glowed under one or another circumstance. He'd study this latest addition after he crept into Tolta's house for breakfast. He kept a few of the fliers, coaxing them into a single closed fist as he restoppered the gourd with the newly freed hand.

Nearly time. Whatever event had required him to be in this place at this moment sang in him. Pizlo wanted to mark it somehow and tightened his fist, bringing it up to beat once against his chest. Then he flung his hand away, fingers wide. The crushed bug bodies disappeared into the night. Their passing left an amorphous glow on his outstretched hand, enough light to mark the return of vision amidst the darkness. He stared at this palm, eerie and orange in the emptiness of Arlo's Chimney.

As if signaled by his light, the clouds above parted. A moon shone down from directly overhead, small enough that the edges of the shaft framed it. Its light poured in, filling the shaft. Pizlo cried out, his weak eyes the only source of pain in his world. He held his stained hand high, part offering, part protestation, as he understood what had brought him here. The moon itself had called out, not specifically to him, but to any who could hear it. And he had heeded the call. He forced his eyes open, desperate to see the moon despite his tears. Its radiance flooded him and he grinned with satisfaction.

This was Pemma, the second smallest of Bark's seven moons. It was the third moon whose light he had bathed in, one more than most adult Fant ever saw in a long life. Pizlo was only six and knew he'd live to witness the other four as well. He didn't know when the next one would come his way, but he felt certain that the one after the one after that was one he would share. He strained to keep his eyes open, joyful tears washing away the pain. He could hear the moon, its voice brilliant and clear. It had called to him and he had listened and all was right with the world.

The clouds closed again, cutting off the light and leaving Arlo's Chimney dark once more, save for the faint glow from the boy's palm.

Still smiling, he pulled himself up from his sling, using only his unstained hand and his trunk. This moon, like the previous two, had spoken of very different things than the rest of Barsk did. Pemma had said many things at once, bits of wisdom, smatterings of gossip, tangents of possibilities. Listening to a moon was like eavesdropping on dozens of separate conversations at once and contributing to none. It had lasted only a few moments, but days would pass before Pizlo understood anything that had been said. He climbed up the vine to the knot of crossed strands that had let him hang there and transferred his weight to them, pulling the sling up after. He paused, standing in the middle of the shaft and reached into a pocket of his daypouch, withdrawing a small wooden object. He'd found it that morning on the edge of the Shadow Dwell, stained and battered from the ocean. He'd plucked it from the surf.

It was his favorite of Keslo's beaches. More gravel than sand, it had the most turbulent waves, and he'd found no better place to go to talk with the ocean. He would walk out into the water until it recognized him, until a wave lifted him up in greeting. The conversation would continue as the ocean pulled him away from shore and hurled him back, over and over until there was nothing left to say. He wished he could share it with Jorl. But Jorl couldn't hear the ocean that way and would only be frightened to see him dragged across the gravel time and again. Jorl would worry about Pizlo being injured and hurt and completely miss what really took place. Besides, the ocean wouldn't hurt him. Nothing could.

Pizlo gazed at the gift the water had given him that morning, a carved figurine that had been indistinct by morning light. He studied it now by the glow of his stained hand and marveled that it had so many emotions in the worn face. Certainty and pain, confusion and confidence. Pizlo did not believe in coincidence, but wondered why an image of the Matriarch had come to him today of all days. Jorl had said she had visions and seizures; he hadn't had seizures, but maybe that was because he didn't talk to many other Fant, and Margda had talked and talked to them all. He was pretty sure she was still talking now.

“Shhh, it will be okay,” he told the wooden figure. “He'll be big soon. Bigger than anyone.” He closed his fist, restoring the darkness, and ran the nubs of his trunk over the wood one last time before letting it drop. Perhaps tomorrow someone else would find it. Perhaps not.

Untying the last of the vines, Pizlo let them fall away. He rode one of them to a wall of the chimney and pulled himself through the foliage and deeper into the canopy, disappearing, not unlike the moon.

 

ELEVEN

PROBLEMATIC PROBABILITY

SENATOR
Bish paused as his private elevator opened outside the entrance to what he'd come to think of as his
psychic bullpen
. The door was actually a heavy security airlock that opened on to the top floor of a luxury hotel on the main continent of Gripta. His maternal grandfather had been born on Gripta, and owned a wide range of real property there, this hotel among many others. It had led the old Bos to hide his private team of precognitivists there, far from potential prying eyes back in the capital on Dawn. The irony that before being forcibly relocated to Barsk, several hundred Fant had once called Gripta home was not wasted on Bish.

His aide, a faithful Brady, accessed the airlock controls. Passive sensors in the wall compared the signals radiated by devices sewn into her kaftan and compared these to the pattern of keys she tapped on a pad. Many of his colleagues in the senate would have flinched at having a Sloth on staff, let alone as personal assistant, but the well-known lethargy was an inaccurate stereotype. Druz moved more slowly than he did, true enough, but the delay created a pause in which he could gather his thoughts as he moved from task to task, and that had proved a boon. He had his own stereotypes to beat back. People assumed a Yak would be headstrong, and every time he presented a reasoned and reflective argument he cut through half his opposition. Far from being a liability, Druz provided an opportunity for him to excel.

“Sir, whenever you're ready.”

“Open it up,” he replied. “Let's get this over with. I'm sure their excuses will be inventive. They usually are.”

The Sloth gave the wall a final tap and the airlock's outer door opened. They stepped through and repeated the sequence at the inner door. Bish had inherited the hotel and its special occupants when he'd secured his grandfather's senate seat. The precognitivists themselves had requested the independent environment and airlock, presumably based on some possible future they had seen.

He slipped a hand into his robe and removed his senatorial ring from an inner pocket. A pretty collection of fossilized wood and platinum, every member of the Committee of Information had a similar, albeit unique, ring. Their wearers changed with the committee's composition, and the artist who'd designed them had intended them to accommodate the full range of Alliance races. But Bish's hands were big even for a Yak, and the ring fit uncomfortably on his littlest finger. On those rare occasions he needed to invoke its sigil he simply displayed it for a moment and then tucked it away again. Visits to his oracular menagerie were an exception. He held his arm out at length and slid the ring over the tip of his left horn and a short way down the length until it stuck snuggly, the face of the sigil aimed forward where it would catch the eye and remind the viewer of his status and power as head of the Senate's most powerful committee. Precogs, he'd found, could too easily get to feeling full of themselves.

The other side of the lock opened onto a wide vestibule which, in turn, had three hallways flowing from its far end, the center providing access to common spaces such as workrooms, kitchens, and dining areas, and the two side corridors leading to private apartments. Bish's current complement of psychic employees numbered fifty-four, a full third of them being Prairie Dogs. One such stood waiting for him now.

“Welcome, Senator. Your office did not notify us that you would be coming today.” The Cynomy fidgeted and refrained from eye contact.

Bish replied with his best beneficent smile. “A small test, Tekki,” he said, “which you passed with ease by being here to greet me.”

A twitch, followed by a moment's silence, and then. “I'm Brekki. Tekki is my uncle. And one of us is always here. Always.”

It was an indication of the Bos's good humor that he tolerated the correction. Projecting the aura of a tolerant and friendly elder relative, he continued. “That being so, you knew I was coming.”

“Yes,” said the Prairie Dog, finally raising its head and tilting back far enough to meet the Yak's gaze. “We saw the likelihood of it. Just as we saw the likelihood that you would not leave happy.”

Druz rushed ahead with a response. “Do not presume to tell the senator what he will be feeling. It is impertinent and you yourself acknowledge you can be mistaken.”

“I'm just saying. Don't take it out on us when we do the work you give us and you don't like the outcome. It's like blaming the desert for being dry.”

Bish took a deep breath and centered himself. Clairvoyants always acted this way, mistaking vision for power. The little shit in front of him wouldn't know what to do with actual power if the senator put it in his tiny hands.

“Friend Brekki, we are getting ahead of ourselves. Now that you've confirmed my presence, do me the kindness of informing your senior to come and brief me on your team's progress. Also, an offer of refreshment would not be unwelcome.”

In response, the Cynomy began to tremble. “Can't. Everyone else is busy or hard asleep. You get me. And I don't have any refreshments for you because you're not going to want it.”

The Sloth began to raise an arm toward Brekki but Bish gestured her to calm. Her defense on behalf of his own sensibilities warmed him, but disciplining a rude precog would not get him what he needed.

“Fine. If you are who I have, then you are whom I will use. At your team's suggestion, I initiated a program to investigate a drug the Fant of Barsk call ‘koph.' You informed me that doing so would trigger a sequence of possibilities leading to a great development affecting the Alliance. Has that come to pass?”

“Yes, Senator. The likelihood is a near certainty now.”

“Very good. So you can now tell me more about this development.”

“No, sir.”

“No?” Rudeness was one thing, but insolence and outright contradiction he would not tolerate. If it continued, he would make an example of this precog. He had plenty of other Prairie Dogs, after all. “The act of pursuing koph was supposed to bring it into focus. I was assured of this.”