Lawrence Schoen - Barsk - The Elephants' Graveyard

Being a historian, what if he looked back further, to a time before the Alliance. The idea was bizarre. Likely, the attempt would fail as soon as he began and he’d awaken on the station with nothing more than a trail of drool down his chin to show for the effort. But he had to at least try.

What did he know about those ancient times? What did anyone know? Now and then an artifact from Before was found on some dead planet or lifeless moon. One such had haunted his dreams. What had it said? Something about being the past sent forward .

Jorl focused on what he remembered: a cube of metal and glass, the whirls of color rising like smoke within it, taking on a living shape. Random dust motes swam in his vision, less than a flicker. Nothing. Despite Arlo’s assurance the drug would increase his abilities, there was nothing to find. The device that had spoken, its alleged sapience notwithstanding, had apparently left behind no nefshons.

Back in the waking world, he became aware of a crick in his back. The cabin’s temperature was cooler than he liked, and sweat beaded on his skin. This latest physical effort had been enough to push his own odor through to his awareness. The guards had locked him in. Bish had no further use for him and might simply leave him there to die of thirst or hunger. It annoyed him, not the idea of dying, but that he might do so while stinking so far above the cleansing rains of home.

No one would ever use koph to summon him, the prohibition applying to Speakers would ensure that. No one would learn his story. All that would be left of him would be the work he’d published before setting off to identify the Silence, an assortment of films and books, nothing but words. His words …

Jorl stiffened. Was he completely awake? He wasn’t sure. Words. How many times in the past had he used the words, the writings or speeches, the messages written by an individual to summon and Speak with him? So many countless beings, all long dead, who had spoken the same strings of words, made it difficult. But when the phrases were something unique that the conversant identified with, a slogan or credo, they bound something of themselves to those words. Doing so imbued the words with their own identities, which in turn meant their nefshons were locked there as well. If the device from Before had had even the merest hint of a nefshon, perhaps it could be found in its own distinct speech. And he recalled it, a string of phrases that sounded like total gibberish but which would not have been used by another sapient. He spoke them in his mind, reaching out, straining.

“Gilgamesh. The Pendragon. Kal-El. I am these and more. I am the Archetype of Man, and from slumber such as you have never known have I awoken. Speak, friend, and I shall hear you.”

Walls formed in the darkness within his mind as long habit once again created his workroom back home. The chill and odor of the real world slipped away from his awareness, replaced by warm humidity and a hint of sartha coming from the window of another room. And all around him words echoed, like a child’s infrasonic call but richer. “Kal-El…” Over and over, the words tumbled from his lips, the phrase uttered dozens of times, each occurrence spoken with a stronger conviction than Jorl had managed before. “I am these and more…” Something approached. Across time and space, nefshons converged on him from all directions, hurtling with impossible speed from a provenance inexpressibly vast. “I am the Archetype of Man…”

“… and from slumber such as you have never known have I awoken. Speak, friend, and I shall hear you.”

It was there. Right in front of him. Far larger than could be contained in the confines of his workroom. Summoning it had wiped away the walls of his imagined venue and had this been the real world his neighbors would surely be gaping at the sudden appearance of a giant cube that had ruined his house. Jorl smiled.

“You are the Archetype of Man,” said Jorl, improvising the establishing ritual to the circumstances. “Your time before, unique and protracted, has ended; you are now much as you were in, um, life, but not alive. In this, a world of my own making, I bid you welcome.”

There was silence. If the device had heard him it did not respond. And still the intensity of its self-awareness blazed in its words. Machine or not, it possessed nefshons. He’d already pulled together enough to manifest a conversant, and more continued to arrive, more impressions of words, but nothing else. No feelings or emotions or reveries like he’d typically feel when he summoned someone. There was no quality of essence or personality, only that overpowering statement of self. The device had been alive and sapient, but not in any way that Jorl could understand.

In that, he wasn’t alone.

Behind the glassy portion of the cube, swirls of color coalesced in a humanoid shape. “Speak, friend, and I hear you. And I will answer, but I do not understand.”

* * *

THEpair of Panda guards returned with a meal tray, a shallow bowl of the same processed vegetable clusters as had been served down in the internment camp. One came in with the tray and set it on the desk while the other stayed by the door, weapon at the ready. At some unconscious level, Jorl noted these things, but he didn’t move. To the Ailuros he doubtless appeared to be asleep, slumped in the corner nearest the sleeping platform. His ears hung limp, his trunk lay looped in his lap, and his head lolled to one side with a trail of drool running from the corner of his mouth. Whether they looked upon him with disgust, pity, or some other emotion he’d never know. The events in his station cabin didn’t matter just now. With greater focus and concentration than he had ever known, he existed in a mental landscape more vivid than any Speaker had ever achieved.

Jorl let the shattered walls of his house on Keslo fade, along with all the other structures of the Civilized Wood. Instead he constructed a clearing, much like the meeting place where they held public dances or speeches, but several times larger. Hand-cut planks of polished hardwood lay underfoot, each perfectly fit with the ones to either side. At the far ends of the floored space leafy branches created a solid wall all the way around, sealing them in a circle of green. More branches arched overhead, wooden ribs that had been woven together to create a ceiling three times the height of any Fant. Lamps hung from the arches, though Jorl could have just as easily included light without bothering to provide a source for it.

The great cube of the Archetype of Man rested in the precise middle of the clearing. Jorl stood less than an arm’s reach from one face. He paced back and forth, toward one edge or the other, enough to catch a glimpse of a second or third side of the thing, but never quite crossing over, no more than he would have walked behind a traditional conversant. At some level he’d decided to think of the side in front of him as the thing’s “face.” The silhouette that had formed on the other side of the glass helped.

As he paced, he Spoke. They traded questions and answers, both seeking insight, both eking out the parameters of the other’s world. It — Jorl couldn’t quite call the device a “he”—had accepted the explanation of Speaking and nefshon constructs. There’d been none of the confusion associated with a first summoning. The Archetype of Man had not leaped to any false conclusions, had not mistaken Jorl for a deity. Rather, it withheld judgment until it had compiled sufficient explanation. All in all, it presented itself as a very rational creature, but more so than in the simply logical processes of the machines Jorl had used while in the Patrol. There was more to it, something which had made it alive at one time.