Lawrence Schoen - Barsk - The Elephants' Graveyard

“I am a Speaker. As you must have realized by now, you are all conversants in a summoning I have performed.”

The senators murmured among themselves. Naming the strangeness of the experience ironically made it more real. The many Lox they had seen, all looking alike, might have been dismissed due to their inexperience with Fant. But as each senator’s escort had vanished and the one who’d identified himself as Jorl spoke, he saw realization dawning. They knew something was very wrong. There had only ever been one Fant there.

Jorl continued, “You know about Speakers. We can converse with images of the dead, one at a time. And yet, here there are many of you. And no, none of you are dead. But I am not like other Speakers.” He paused and gestured at the tattoo on his forehead. “I am only the second Speaker to ever bear this mark. The first was our Matriarch, who was both the very first Speaker and the first Aleph. In assembling you all here, I have achieved what has never even been attempted. I have sought you out from your respective, far flung worlds throughout the Alliance and brought you here, not to threaten but to show you I can do this thing. All I want to do is talk with you. You are the Committee of Information, and I want nothing more than to share knowledge. Because in addition to bringing you here, I can do another thing beyond the ability of any other Speaker. I can reach back, unimaginably far, and summon someone from Before.”

As he finished, Jorl opened his awareness to the collection of recently summoned nefshons and pulled them together again, summoning Dr. Chieko Castleman to stand alongside him.

Half of the senators began to scream.

“Impossible!” Bish roared. He glared at Jorl and at Castleman. “This is impossible !”

More than half of the senators showed signs of panic, but like Bish, some clearly recognized a human being. They glanced among themselves, whispering urgently.

“Senators, if you will allow, may I present Dr. Chieko Castleman, engineer, programmer, and archivist. A female human from Before.”

“No,” insisted T’Minah, a Geom senator Jorl particularly recognized from his past study of the committee; her office had final approval on historical research. “Bish is right. There must be a trick. There are no humans. There haven’t been since before the Expansion. This is a lie.”

“It’s not a lie,” Jorl assured them. “Like yourselves, the woman you see here has been summoned. Unlike you, she died tens of thousands of years ago. She comes from a time before most of our races even existed.”

“What does that mean?” This from one of the junior senators, a Feln. She’d clearly never seen a human before. “What does he mean before our races existed?”

Jorl gestured encouragingly to Castleman with his trunk.

“Well, as I explained to Jorl … we, that is, my species, the humans of my time, um, we made you. Built you up from other animals.”

“That is insane,” yowled the Feln senator. “Built us? Built us how?”

Castleman looked toward Jorl, a mix of nerves and confusion writ upon her face. Jorl nodded for her to continue.

“We wired language into you, encoded you for intelligence so you could develop reason. We altered your physiology to make you tool users. We educated you in science and art. We made you self-aware as never before.”

T’Minah had moved during Castleman’s explanation and now stood alongside Bish. “Do you really expect us to believe what you’re saying? Are we supposed to think you’re some kind of god?”

“What? Good Lord, no! I mean, of course not. I didn’t personally do any of that. My work was in a completely different area. But, uh, other members of my species did, yes. From what I’ve seen, and what Jorl has explained to me, you are all descendants of the raised mammals that humans created back in your Before epoch.”

Several of the younger senators gaped openly at Castleman. A few trembled. “A god. A furless god,” one muttered, which sent a shudder running through the rest of them. Jorl twitched his nubs at the succinct phrase.

“I see now what you’re attempting,” said Bish. He’d leashed his anger and his voice held some of its former power again. The thunder of his authority drowned out the other senators’ whines and whispers. “You brought this committee together so you could present this ‘information’ to us, but we are not all shocked or overwhelmed by your news. Some of us already knew this history, knew about humans, and of our true origins. The senate elite has always known. It’s in part why the Committee of Information was originally formed.”

Jorl nodded to himself. He watched the faces of the senators who’d clearly been ignorant, not only of humans but also of the existence of such an elite in their midst.

“I suspected as much. It explains the unofficial policy regarding artifacts from Before.” He turned to Castleman who looked as confused as the junior senators. “The ones who knew about you, knew what your artifacts represented. Bish has all but admitted that. Any time one turns up, it gets quietly destroyed so the rest of the Alliance can’t learn about your people or that you created us. They’re deliberately keeping everyone ignorant.”

“But why?” Castleman took a step toward Bish. “That all happened tens of thousands of years ago. None of it should matter now. Your species, your races, have existed for longer than mine had at the time we raised the first mammals. And, if what Jorl tells me is true, you’ve outlived us as well. Why keep any of this secret?”

Bish glared at the human, but Castleman met his gaze and in the end it was the senator who turned away. When he spoke, his voice had lost the power he’d briefly regained.

“You don’t understand. Neither you nor the Lox understand. You don’t know.” Bish seethed.

“You’re the Committee of Information,” said Jorl. “Share what you know.”

“We cannot,” said T’Minah. Several of the other members of the committee nodded her way, deferring to the Gopher’s expertise. “We only know what is written in our most ancient records, an accounting of the centuries before the Expansion, and all who have read it are sworn never to speak of it.”

Bish waved the other senator to silence. “All of this is less than a dream, and nothing revealed here violates any oaths.”

“Then tell us,” insisted Jorl.

The Geom closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Here is your truth. We did not outlive your kind, Chieko Castleman. We destroyed you.”

The human turned to look at Jorl, who in turn stared at T’Minah.

“What are you saying?”

“You heard her,” shouted Bish. His jaw tightened as he spat the words, his eyes focused on the Fant with more raw hatred than Jorl had ever imagined. “We destroyed them! That is the account we have. Our ancestors could not live among the gods that had made them. They could not bear the knowledge that they were so little different from beasts, could not accept that there was nothing of the divine in themselves that was not placed there by humans. Humanity had used up its homeworld and left it behind, spreading to several star systems. They took their creations with them. On each of these worlds our ancestors rose up against their makers and killed every last man, woman, and child among them.

“And when all the creators were dead — and many of our ancestors with them — the survivors gathered on a planet they named Dawn, wrote their account and locked it away. Then they spent years expunging all reference to humans from their cities, their worlds, and their lives. In time, a new generation came forth and they grew up ignorant of their parents’ origins. And no one spoke of the truth. Over and over for generations until all those who had taken part in the destruction of their creators had themselves died, and all their children, and their children’s children’s children, too, lest some whispered tale be passed down. And only then, when all memory of our creators had been expunged, only then did we leave Dawn and begin the great Expansion.