Lawrence Schoen - Barsk - The Elephants' Graveyard

Contrary to his assurances, it seemed that they actually walked quite a ways, passing an interminable number of closed doors on either side, each bearing a numbered control pad. His feet already ached from pounding on the unforgiving and lifeless flooring with every step. Through it all, the rhyming thrum continued around him, echoing in his skull, growing louder, more urgent. To The Tree … To The Tree … All Come Free … Calling all players to the home tree at the end of the day’s sport.

“Stop.” The Jaguar issued the command as they came up alongside a double-wide doorframe.

“I take it this is the secondary hold?”

Rismas ignored the question and tapped at the pad alongside the door. “Captain said you were in the Patrol, so you know how this works. The hold has a standard, two-door airlock. Both sides are under full atmo, so there’ll be no delay. I open this side, you walk in and I close it behind you. Then the inner door parts and you enter the hold. Don’t linger; I can tell. The airlock has security measures and I’ll use them.”

The door uncoupled with a familiar clunk and rolled open. Without a glance at the ensign, Jorl walked into the airlock, stopping a step shy of the far door. He managed not to flinch as the outer door sealed behind him. Regardless of the nature of Selishta’s cargo, it had to be better than the blind bigotry of the ship’s crew.

He waited; the thrumming he’d first felt on the bridge throbbed at its strongest here. The inner door clunked, an identical sound as before, and rolled back revealing a scene of unspeakable horror. Facing him from inside the hold had to be twenty, maybe thirty, Eleph and Lox, not simply elderly, but Dying. He saw it at once, something in the eyes that he’d last seen in his father the morning he’d sailed away. As surely all of these had sailed, and never reached their goal. The Nonyx-captain had collected them, just as she’d intercepted Jorl bound for the same destination.

He stepped from the airlock into the hold and the thrumming fell away.

One of the Eleph made a gesture with his trunk that was both dismissive and disbelieving. “Oh. You’re not what we expected. Not what we expected at all.” He paused. His mouth worked like he was chewing bitter grass, then he offered his hand. “My name is Rüsul.”

Jorl fanned his ears and introduced himself. He took the oldster’s hand, grasped it firmly but let it go quicker than might have been polite. His heart raced. He gazed upon a cargo hold full of the Dying, men and women pulled out of time. He’d been in space. He’d Spoken to the dead. Others might find such things bizarre or inconceivable, but he had not flinched at them. But this, the wrongness of it was like knots in his trunk. He’d never felt so clammy.

He crossed the few steps that separated him from the others, Rüsul’s words reflected on their faces. “Not what we expected at all.” Part of him recoiled from so much as breathing the same air. Their very presence was unthinkable. And yet … they were not to blame. He had to hold it together, help them somehow. And who better? Perhaps accepting the presence of Arlo’s son into his life, teaching a boy whom society insisted was a pariah, maybe that and not the aleph was the reason he was here.

Beyond the end of their years, they had reached out to him with the voices of children. He had to speak to them now as adults, if for no other reason than to show them that he could.

“I know you,” he said. “Margda knew you, knew of you, centuries ago. You’re the source of the Silence.”

“Don’t talk to us,” said an elderly Lox. “It’s not right. You shouldn’t be speaking to any of us.”

His shoulders dropped, his ears stilled their movement, and in a whisper that the cavernous hold made loud enough to hear, Jorl said, “You called to me. I’ve felt you calling to me almost since I came aboard.”

“We thought you were one of us,” said the Eleph who had first voiced disappointment. “That you’d sailed off as the rest of us had. That your final journey had been interrupted.”

“It was. Well, not my final journey, but I was bound for the last island same as the rest of you.”

“But you’re not Dying?” asked Rüsul. “How could you know where to go?”

“I didn’t, actually. I had some help. It’s, uh, complicated.”

The Lox who’d wanted him quiet advanced upon the Eleph, her trunk swiping at him even as she shook a finger in his face. “Stop talking to him. It only makes him talk back. He shouldn’t even be looking at us. He’s alive and we’re done with all that. You know that. It’s how it should be. How it’s always been.”

A slow rumble of murmurs, hoots, and trumpets swept through the Dying.

Rüsul batted at the old woman’s trunk and stomped his feet in place. “None of this is like it’s always been. None of us should be together. None of us should be in this place. The Cheetah and her Dogs plucked each of us from the ocean, and nothing of tradition fits now.”

“He’s right,” said Jorl. “This is what the Matriarch foresaw. This is part of what she called the Silence.”

“I read the prophecies,” said a new voice, another female Lox, even older than the first who’d spoken. “Back when I was in school. I remember them. And you have an aleph. Are you then the ‘newest Aleph’? Is that why you’re here?”

“I think maybe I am. Like the Matriarch, I’m a Speaker. I set out to reach the last island, hoping to solve the riddle of the Silence. I never imagined it would bring me here, or that I’d be talking to all of you.”

“You shouldn’t be. I don’t care what that one says, it’s unnatural and wrong.”

“You all need to stop talking and pay attention,” said an amplified voice, thundering through the hold. All the Fant turned toward it. Some gasped, others flinched, but all reacted to the sight of a Bear standing on a tiny balcony above a gate in the far wall. “Use those miserable ears you’re all so proud of and hear me well; I won’t be repeating myself. I am Urs-Major Krasnoi, and I command the internment facilities which are your new home. In a moment, the external gate of this hold will open. When it does, you are to exit in an orderly line. My staff will process you and see you settled. There’ll be a meal waiting for you in the yard. Likewise, barracks and a bed for each of you. Eat well, sleep well. Tomorrow we will begin the interrogations and learn if any of you are of use to me.”

Chaos erupted from the Dying Fant in the form of stomping and trumpeting with no sign of stopping. Some few began to shout their confusion.

“Interrogations?”

“The Compact!”

“Internment?”

“Don’t talk to us!”

The major shifted, rearing back and raising one hand high and behind his head. In the next moment the hand leapt forward as he hurtled a tiny ball with the fury of an accomplished athlete. It struck one of the hollering Dying squarely in her forehead, bounced halfway back toward the balcony, and fell among the crowd. The target Fant’s voice cut off and she crumpled to the floor. Everyone else fell silent, though a pair of Fant nearest Krasnoi’s target helped her to stand and nodded to the others around that she was all right.

“I told you to stop talking and pay attention. I don’t care about your Compact or your customs. You’re here because I’ve gleaned from studying your culture that none of you will be missed. You can all get back to killing yourselves after I have what I need.”

Jorl pushed his way through throng of subdued Dying until he stood directly below Krasnoi. “Which is what? What do you want to know?”

“Koph,” said the Bear. “When we know about koph, we’ll know what comes next.”