Lawrence Schoen: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard

“But that’s only two!”

“Well, there was a third, but it’s not really something I did.” He leaned back against the railing, closing his eyes, the memory still very fresh.

Pizlo interrupted the reverie. “Who then? What was the third?”

“The third was something I’d studied back at university, from the writings of the Matriarch. At the time I never imagined it was about me. She’s the one who invented the idea of giving people the aleph in the first place.”

“A prophecy!” shouted Pizlo, causing Jorl to flinch.

“More like a footnote. The Matriarch had written a letter to tell future councils to expect someone, and to give him an aleph when they found him.”

“How would they know who to give it to?” Pizlo’s voice had grown quiet and dry, like a storyteller building tension.

“She wrote that there would be one who had gone out and come back, and who though of the present would look into the past. The council took that to mean leaving Barsk and returning, and being a Speaker.”

“But that’s still only two!”

“Yep, and here’s the weird part. The Matriarch told them that those were the first and second reasons to bestow the aleph, and that the third reason was finding the person she wrote about. Kind of circular, but there you have it.”

“So it really was a vision? Not just a letter she wrote and mailed into the future.”

Jorl smiled. The life and times of the Matriarch had been the focus of his study back at university and occupied much of his professional life. “Technically, though it’s not viewed as one of her more serious or bigger prophecies.” He paused, his thoughts returning to his conversation with Arlo from days earlier.

“So, she knew things. Things other people didn’t know. Did she write them all down, or did she keep some just to herself?”

“She wrote some of them down. She wrote a whole book about the visions that came to her when she had her seizures, and notes about what she thought each of them meant,” said Jorl. “But was it everything she saw? How would we know? Maybe she kept some to herself.”

“Can you ask her? You know, cuz you’re a Speaker and all. Maybe she’s got other stuff she wants to talk about now that she’s dead and all.”

“That would be something, wouldn’t it? To actually sit down and have a chat with the Matriarch? But I can’t do that. No one can. It’s against the rules for a Speaker to summon anyone who was ever a Speaker.”

Pizlo scowled again. “That’s stupid. Who gave you that kind of rule?”

“Ah, well, that would be the Matriarch again. Maybe that’s why she wrote down her visions, because she knew no one would be able to talk to her about them.”

“Maybe. Maybe I should write down the stuff that I know. Just in case I ever become a Speaker, too. It could happen. Yeah, I’m going to do that. I’m going to start right now!”

With no further warning, Pizlo jumped up and pulled himself through a gap in the railing. He grabbed an underside support, balanced for an instant, and then dropped. Jorl rushed to his feet and leaned out, looking for the boy. He caught a glimpse of him, already far below, crashing through the leaves and branches at the bottom of the bowl, making his own paths, heedless of the damage he did to either his surroundings or himself.

UNLIKEmost officers in the Patrol, Krasnoi had achieved his rank through merit rather than favoritism, nepotism, or outright commerce. If he had acquired a reputation for following his superiors’ orders without question — which he knew some saw as evidence of a lack of initiative — he was also known for efficiency that his detractors described as frugality. Neither evaluation bothered him. The Urs-major saw himself as having a job to do and the responsibility to do it well. Everything else became secondary.

Which is not to say that he didn’t find some of the actions required by his assignments distasteful.

When Bish, a high-ranking senator, had informed him that he would establish a base on Barsk’s uninhabited south polar continent, he had done so. As support personnel poured in, so, too, did documentation, including an annotated version of the Fant’s cherished Compact. The Alliance spanned thousands of worlds, each with vast histories of treaties and documents, and as a rule Krasnoi left knowledge and facility of them to the politicians. But in situations where he expected to spend extended time on a planet, he took the time to brief himself on local policies and regulations.

He’d had a brief moment of conscience, wondering if his superiors had sent him unlawfully, and having ignorantly followed such orders if anything could be accomplished by crying foul now. But no, distasteful as it might be, that path offered no gain and only led to waste. It would not erase the illegal trespass, nor accomplish any good. Better to complete the mission with efficiency and move on. Having reached a decision, Krasnoi had put the matter out of his mind.

His command grew as season passed season on Barsk. Under the authority of the Bos senator, he visited several worlds to acquire needed or assigned assets for the work ahead. Work crews constructed a durable albeit temporary base anchored upon a century or more of hard-packed snow. The bored crew of the mostly automated orbital station had been reassigned to perform whatever tasks he deemed necessary. A Patrol vessel began making scheduled visits, bringing naked, aged Fant who variously claimed to be already dead or seeking some ordained demise. Supplemental staff, everything from cooks to guards to an interrogation squad, reported in as the mission’s needs unfolded.

The interrogators had brought his thoughts back to his original concern over illegal orders. Personally, he loathed the Fant. Something about them, maybe their trunks, maybe their vast hairless bodies, made him truculent. He’d quickly given up attempts to engage any of his charges, after the first few encounters had left him belligerent regardless of the conversational content. He didn’t like that about himself, and prior to the arrival of the interrogators — a squad of Badgers from Scrothe, a world on the barely habitable edge of the spectrum — he hadn’t imagined anyone would. He hadn’t met any of that race before, though he’d been aware of the stereotype of Taxi being anti-social. Even on long-established and well-mixed worlds, they kept to themselves. He stood now in front of the vid-wall in his office, watching a live feed as they practiced their craft on one of his captive Fant, an old woman whose sickly gray, wrinkled flesh elicited his own aggression.

It did more for the Badgers.

They circled around her, none standing more than waist-high to her. The Taxi took turns, not so much making inquiries as screaming questions at their victim. Before she could complete a response to one, another on the other side of the circle demanded an answer about something else. As Krasnoi watched, the Fant became disoriented, spinning in place to face and answer each current interrogator. After several minutes of this, she stopped responding at all. The Urs-major appreciated the strategy; what point when the interrogators obviously weren’t listening?

The Badgers took it differently. They started over, the same range of questions about koph, what it was derived from, how it was manufactured, but this time they punctuated their queries with jabs from electrified batons!

The Fant resumed speaking, but no matter how forthcoming her responses, as Krasnoi watched the Taxi became anxious, or frustrated, or perhaps simply irritated with the quality of her answers. Each held a baton, each baton possessed an apparently limitless supply of charges. The Badgers unleashed these from behind the Fant, against calf or knee or thigh, occasionally reaching up to attack the stomach or back, making their victim whirl and spin all the faster. But always the smaller interrogators danced back out of reach of a rare swinging fist or flailing trunk, and always another of the squad darted in from a different direction with another baton.