Lawrence Schoen - Barsk - The Elephants' Graveyard

Margda let her smile dim as the Bear reasserted his power, or thought he did. His beliefs didn’t matter to her, but it did not harm her to allow him the delusion.

“Of course, Urs-Major.” She cocked her head to the side and arched a brow to get her escort’s attention. “Take me to the shuttle, if you please.”

* * *

SHE’Dlied, of course. What need had she of koph to summon? She was a nefshon construct herself, one that included the ability to perceive the subatomic particles of personality. She might need Lirlowil’s telepathic ability to exist, but while she did she could Speak whether her host was worn out or not, draining her resources right up to the point where the Lutr’s physiological systems began to collapse in a cascade of organ failure. Though bone weary, she was still a long way from that!

Over the course of the long day, her remaining Ailuros had transformed from oppressive to intrusive to respectful. Following the Bear major’s obvious appreciation of her he had turned downright subservient. He’d settled her into the shuttle’s private lounge and shown her how to access an assortment of gourmet snacks, chilled juices, and obscure liqueurs, as well as an entertainment screen with thousands of recorded options to distract her from the monotony of ascending out of Barsk’s gravity well. Margda had thanked him curtly, assured him she wanted nothing more than to sleep, and made it clear she was not to be disturbed until they’d arrived back at the station.

She ate a quick meal and hydrated, less interested in taste than in refueling the body she’d been abusing, and settled comfortably onto the lounge’s main acceleration couch. Then she closed the Lutr’s eyes, and brought forth the memory of having just taken koph. For the first time in her experience, she failed to see the golden cloth of her own particles still connected to one another and clinging stubbornly to her body. The confusion passed into amusement. The body that had produced all her nefshons had returned to dust long ago, further proof that she had died.

The construct she’d made for herself was her body as she’d last appeared before sailing away, not the fragile, furry thing of twig-like bones and minimal flesh that she’d suborned to house her. With long practice and firm memory she applied her attention to invoking a space to work. Her home in the Civilized Wood of Yargo opened all around her and she felt the familiar ache in her left knee as she lumbered from her visitors’ parlor to her kitchen. She opened a cupboard and smiled as she caused a box of Lirlowil’s preferred tea to appear, with a blister-pack of koph pellets alongside it. She went through the motions of heating water, adding the koph, and steeping the tea. She didn’t need it, but the ritual grounded her and she wanted every advantage for what came next. The fragrance of spiralmint filled the room of her imagination.

Margda moved back to her parlor and settled into a hammock seat by the window, glancing out at the still city she alone inhabited. She sipped her tea, closed her eyes, and sipped again. Her discovery of nefshons had come to her during a vision, the first of many that started when her body began rejecting her seizure medication. She’d understood the power implicit in transcending death, and seen a need to reserve some aspects of it for her own use, to ensure certain futures and prevent others. The three laws of the Speaker’s Edict had covered most of that. Lirlowil had broken the first law, as Margda had foreseen, making it possible for what she planned now, the violation of the second law: summoning the living.

She set her cup of tea on the floor and leaned back, letting the strands of the hammock support and gently rock her. She reached out, calling the nefshons to her and immediately discovered her influence weaker than it had been in life. She was a cheat, and it cost her, made her control more precarious. Dwelling on the possibility of failure would only summon failure, an ironic outcome instead of the summoning she wanted. She banished the possibility from her mind and focused on her impressions of the one she wanted. Jorl ben Tral. The flavor of him. Young and naive, adventurous and foolish. She had recognized him the instant she met him. In life and flesh he was just as she’d envisioned him centuries before. But he was only a means to an end. It was the other whom she needed. A name, a face, a life that had never come to her in visions, only the knowledge that his closest companion would stupidly leave Barsk, crossing the emptiness of space instead of being at his friend’s side when he chose to die.

In her mind, nested in the mind of another, she conceived a golden string of her desire. Plucking it sounded the music of Jorl’s life, vibrating all the way back to him in the living world where its far end anchored in the golden cloth of his living nefshons. Whatever he was doing back at the polar base, he would have just felt her touch on his soul. It all but guaranteed his full attention. She gripped the string tightly with her trunk and both hands and yanked, willing some portions of his nefshons to flow along the string to her. His construct formed as easily as any dead conversant’s would. He took form before her, shattering the second law of the edict as her vision from long ago had promised. The future she’d foreseen so many centuries ago opened before her.

BETWEENone chew and a swallow, Jorl twitched, as an itch ran all the way up his spine and radiated out through the pores of his skin. It resolved into a sensation like being watched; it came from all around.

He lifted his head and fanned his ears once, spat out the half-eaten vegetable cluster, and the yard fell away. With no sense of transition the snowy ground beneath him had become a wooden floor. His next breath did not create a visible puff in front of his face, and he inhaled air that was warm and moist and smelled of growing things. No barracks wall lay behind him, but rather the comforting intimacy of a parlor in some home of some island’s Civilized Wood. In front of him, seated in a frayed hammock, an old woman swayed and studied him.

He returned the favor. She had a familiar look, not as some once-met aunt of a distant friend, but rather in a way that suggested secondhand experience, not direct knowledge. He’d never seen a more ancient Eleph before, even among the Dying Fant, and the myriad wrinkles around her eyes showed someone who had spent years laughing as well as years in pain. On her forehead the mark of an aleph, dim and faded, exuded a faint glow.

Impossible as a dream, he recognized her. He was sitting across from Margda, the Matriarch of Barsk, discoverer of nefshons, architect of the Compact, creator of the aleph. He had finally lost his mind.

“Close your mouth, Jorl, you look like an oaf with it hanging like that.”

He blinked and, as an afterthought, closed his mouth. Somehow, he had expected a more polite apparition. He had never heard of anyone experiencing belligerent insanity. He blinked again and faintly, if he concentrated, he could still see the yard and the other abducted Fant, like translucent afterimages. Was the real world available to his other senses? He tried to listen for the sound of shuffling feet on packed snow, but the Matriarch’s words drowned out the attempt.

“So, you are the end result of my life’s plan. You are the consequence of my visions and predictions. You owe me for the aleph on your head, Child, and I’ve come to collect on that debt.”

He stared into her eyes, dark and cold and demanding his full attention. The dim image of the other reality faded away.

“Um, your pardon, Matriarch. This is certainly an interesting bit of delusion my mind has conjured, and I would love to play along, I assure you, but even if I actually felt I owed you anything, it would be quite the trick to repay you. You’re dead.”