Barsk (19 page)

Rüsul's nubs lightly grazed the mark on his left ear, his thoughts hurtling back to a foolish bachelor trying to woo the two prettiest women on Telba at the same time. “It's been a long time since I thought back to that night. Probably just denial that I was ever so young and stupid.”

“Maybe I scared some maturity into you. I confess, I was angry for days. But you actually did me a favor. I caught a boat headed to Zlorka and threw myself into my studies. I wouldn't have had the career I did if you hadn't broken my heart. But it's all crumbled leaves, eh? It's good to see a familiar face here. Not that any of us expected to see another soul.”

“What is this place, Phas? How long have you been here?”

“Time makes little sense anymore. The day goes on and on. The night comes and goes in less time than a midday nap requires. The company is depressing and the food's terrible. And the outsiders, they're the worst. The Feln aren't so bad, they look down on everyone, but the Ailuros are indifferent and the Taxi are flat cruel. Not that any of it matters to most of these Fant, they're so wrapped up in their own heads about having set off to die that not much gets to them.”

“And what makes you so different?”

Phas laughed. “A lifetime spent with the dead. I was a historian, and all of this feels like just another story to me, the only difference being I've been cast in the events this time around.”

Before Rüsul could respond, the young Lox from the ship approached the older pair of Elephs, trunk down and ears still, like a reluctant child presenting himself after having shattered some bit of crockery in an ill-conceived game that should never have been played indoors.

“Excuse me, I did not mean to eavesdrop, but I thought I recognized your voice and I heard you say you were a historian, yes?”

Phas stumbled back, clearly startled by the presence of the young man even as her gaze locked onto his tattooed forehead. Rüsul saw recognition flash into his former lover's eyes.

“Jorl ben Tral! What in the world are you doing here?”

The Lox shrugged and relaxed as he came closer. “In a way, I'm here because I went looking to ask you about a text, only you'd sailed off a season earlier. I tried to Speak to you, and couldn't. And that put me in mind of Margda's prophecy about the Silence and—”

Nodding her head and fanning her ears, Phas interrupted. “And you're the newest Aleph, of course.” She swept her trunk toward Rüsul. “Allow me to perform some introductions. Rüsul, may I present my colleague, Jorl ben Tral. And Jorl, this is Rüsul ben Shel, the boy that got away and whom I blame for a life spent in academia.”

Rüsul opened his mouth to speak then stopped.

Jorl nodded and sighed. “I'm sorry. My mark notwithstanding, it's fine if you're not comfortable talking to me.”

“It's not that,” said Rüsul, eyes focused over Jorl's shoulder. “I was just distracted by that person rushing toward us.”

Jorl turned around to see, recognizing the woman who sped up as she now clearly recognized him as well.

“I might have known! Jorl ben Tral! No surprise to see you showing up when there's oddness. You oaf, what did you do this time?”

Phas's head spun as she stared first at the swiftly approaching Lox and then to Jorl. “This is your doing?”

“No, of course not,” said Jorl.

“You said he was a colleague. I thought you meant a fellow historian, not that he also had a history of erratic behaviors,” said Rüsul.

“What are you implying?” Phas's trunk coiled defensively. “Erratic? I was scorned, and I—”

“Oh my,” said Jorl. “Kembü?”

“Kembü?” repeated Rüsul and Phas together.

“The mother of my best friend. He and I, uh, used to get into a lot of trouble.”

“Hrumph!” said Kembü, as she stopped her charge just short of knocking Jorl over. “My boy got into trouble. You, on the other hand, sowed chaos with your every breath. I swear, they gave you that mark for being contrary, if for anything at all. Now tell me what you did to cause all of this!” She threw out an arm, encompassing the entire yard.

“Honestly, none of this is my doing. I doubt I know more of what's going on than any of you.”

“I don't think that's quite true,” said Phas. “The ship that abducted each of us, it's a Patrol vessel, isn't it?”

“Yes, but—”

“And you served in the Patrol. And then there's the matter of Margda's prophecy of the Silence.”

“Yes, but I—”

“Relax, Jorl, I'm not accusing you of anything, but we both have studied too much history to ignore coincidence. Come on. There's some folk I want you to meet. They're not so deep being dead as most of the others here. I suspect you've a story to tell, and I want them to hear it. Rüsul, and uh, Kembü, you're welcome to come, too.”

Rüsul shrugged. “I've only got one other place to be, same as the rest of you, and I don't imagine this will slow that trip one way or the other. Let's go.”

They made their way a short distance to a corner where two of the barracks halls met. Three other Fant, a woman and two men, sat on shallow cots, heads bowed in quiet conversation. Phas trumpeted at them as she approached, causing all three to lift their heads.

“Seems my day to be doing introductions. The lady is Mlarma, the fellow on the left is Tarva and the other is Abso. This handsome devil here is Rüsul, whom I haven't seen since the world was young, and this woman is Kembü, whom I've only just met. The youngster, who is being ignored or shunned by all the right-thinking Fant in the yard is Jorl, a former colleague.”

“You're not Dying,” said Abso. He sat shoulder to shoulder with the other man, trunks lightly entwined. “Everyone else here was picked up on their last journey. How did the Dogs grab you?”

Phas had vanished into a barracks while Abso spoke and reappeared now dragging a pair of cots. Rüsul set them up for himself and Kembü and Phas went back for more.

Jorl captured his attention as he explained about how he had set out for the final island. He elaborated on the prophecy that Phas had mentioned, backtracked to explain how he'd acquired his mark of passage. Rüsul almost lost the thread of the story as the youngster rambled on about serving in the Patrol, but eventually he tied it all together and brought it through to the present moment.

Mlarma nodded and said, “Phas has been telling us tales out of Barsk's past and earlier before the Fant were brought all together. It seems to me, that the most unlikely events almost have to happen, or life would just be dull and no one would write anything down. Your experiences are no more bizarre than these two.” She jerked her trunk at the two men who responded by smiling at her.

“Forty and some odd years ago, I was a poet,” said Abso. “I wandered over half of the islands of both archipelagos, finding inspiration in the strangest of places and never dreaming I might stop and settle down. Then I met this one and realized I'd found the muse I hadn't known I'd been seeking.”

Tarva blushed and picked up the tale. “I taught math,” he said. “Not the most popular of fields, nor the easiest. But it suited me. I'd also wandered, even more than him. There was always something in me that would not let me stay still. But I managed, for a time, after meeting Abso. It was wondrous, but after three seasons together I just couldn't stay. You know how the wanderlust gets for some? And yet, in all the rest of my life's wandering, I never met another person who spoke words to rival the beauty of mathematics.”

“Nor I, anyone who let me see things in such miraculous ways.”

Phas made a rude noise with her trunk and everyone started. “So here we sit, two hundred-some Dying Fant, and these two act like it's some deliberate act of the universe set in motion for no better reason than to bring them back together again. I've known other poets and fictionists with big egos, but who knew mathematicians thought so highly of themselves?”

Rüsul stiffened, but from the reactions of the others it was quickly clear that this was old ground they covered and the remark in good fun. And almost without thought, he joined in and told a story of his own life, followed by Kembü telling one about herself when she was younger than Jorl—and judging by the expression on his face it was clear he'd never imagined his friend's mother as ever having had any other life.

When it was Tarva's turn again he sighed and got a wistful look in his eye. “All of this reminds me of my gram. She had the most amazing adventures. Of course, it never occurred to us that any of it might not be true. But Gram wasn't telling us tales for truth. She filled us with concepts and questions and amazement for the world. I like to think Gram was a born mathematician, only she never knew it.”

Phas, Mlarma, and Abso chuckled, and Rüsul realized they'd heard this comment before. If Tarva noticed, he gave no sign.

“I couldn't have been more than four, and it was one of my sister's birthday, though now I don't recall which one. Our aunts had cooked her her favorite meal and barely two bites into it Gram asked her if it was good. My sis laughed and told her it was delicious, and Gram nodded and we all went back to eating. A bit later she asked her ‘does it taste like it did the first time you had it, and decided it was your favorite, or when you say it's delicious are you tasting the memory of that first time, and making a comparison?' That was my Gram.”

Tarva paused, turned to gaze into Abso's eyes for a moment, and then smiled sheepishly as he continued. “And just like that, she changed my life. I mean, wasn't she really asking if the second time we do a thing are we forced to remember the previous time to understand it? That every time my sister ate that meal, at some level, she was eating all the other same meals? I tell you now with no shame that it gave me bad dreams for nights, the notion that so little in life is truly novel, that so much of what we do is connected to our previous experience of virtually the same thing.

“One evening, about five nights after my sister's birthday dinner, Gram found me sobbing in my sleep and woke me. She asked me why I was crying and I tried to explain it to her, how it seemed like life had become empty and hollow if most everything I was going to do was something I'd already done. And do you know what she said? She told me that if that was true, then I'd done something new by fretting and crying about it, and that now that was old stuff and if I was really that worried about all of it, then I shouldn't bother doing either of those things again. Then she hugged me and wished me good dreams. And when I fell back to sleep everything was fine. Neatly tied up. And now here I am, telling that same story again, and when I think that it's so like but still a bit different from the other times I've told it, instead of feeling the futility of things, I can almost feel my Gram hugging me and telling me to go back to sleep.”

Abso sighed. “And I'm the one who's supposed to be the poet, right?”

Rüsul could only nod. He looked at Phas, thinking of a life he hadn't known, and then glanced at Jorl. The young man looked to be pondering the story still, or perhaps pondering futility itself.

 

EIGHTEEN

ONE-SIDED CONVERSATION

LIRLOWIL
could not keep herself from sobbing. It had become an automatic response, as much a part of her as breathing, her body wracked by the stress of hosting the Fant Matriarch in her head. Her once-sleek pelt felt grimy, the fur matted and spiked. But far beyond any physical discomfort, the horrible presence that had penetrated so deeply into her mind would not leave her alone.

The koph she'd consumed for the summoning had long since worn off, but Margda had stayed. Lirlowil had woken up slumped over her workstation, and dared to hope that her last summoning had been a dream. But when she closed her eyes, the old Fant was there. With frantic precision she'd performed the patterns and rituals for ending a summoning and dispersing the nefshons of her conversant, but to no effect. The particles of the discoverer of Speaking had taken on a life all their own, clinging to her brain. Lirlowil might as well have been in a dream.

“Why won't you leave me? Why are you here?” She hated the whining sound of her own pleas, but couldn't help it. The Fant's enduring presence violated her to her very core. Her mind, which had been the source of all her power, once sacrosanct, had been laid bare. “I'm sorry, I know, I know, I violated the Edict. I shouldn't have. It was wrong. Beyond wrong. But I didn't want to. I didn't have a choice. I didn't want to summon
any
Fant.”

She could feel Margda in her mind, as if the Fant sat biding her time in quiet meditation, ignoring the sobs and pleas of her summoner. She'd said nothing since Lirlowil had awakened, merely existing, like some hideous old woman napping in her brain.

When she opened her eyes, she glared at the Lutr and spoke as if picking up the thread of a conversation. “I've told you, Child, your wants and wishes don't interest me. Your sense of volition, or the lack of it, is an illusion. Everything you've done needed doing and was set in motion long ago. Let go of your self-pity. Your feelings in these events matter no more than a leaf's desire to steer the wind!”

The chill and brutal words caused Lirlowil to flee to her sleeping room. She leapt into the null field and threw herself upon her bed, gripping the bedclothes to keep from rebounding in the absence of gravity. Her sobbing shifted to shudders. The room was real, she knew it with certainty. Margda no longer bothered to maintain the nefshon construct of her long-vanished home from Barsk, nor of herself either. The Fant existed as a presence, a hideous creature Lirlowil alone saw when she sought respite from the external world, a voice sneering at her within her own head. But more, Lirlowil's telepathic abilities had vanished. Whether it was a consequence of having Margda in her mind, or something the Fant was doing to her, she didn't know.