Lawrence Schoen: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard

Her captors had provided a vast array of stolen diaries, biographies, and interviews, every bit of documentation on every known deceased Fant. Lirlowil had a keen intellect, she simply had never found any motivation to utilize it before now. She began pulling together sufficient information so that a few of the Fant became individuals for her, people she might actually have a chance to Speak with. When she was ready, she asked for and received a supply of koph. Then the real work began.

* * *

“YOUare Shtev, an Eleph born on Barsk. Your time in life has long since ended; you are now as you were in life, but not alive. In this, a world of my own making, I bid you welcome.”

Lirlowil had toyed with re-creating the comforts of her apartment as the venue for her summoning, but changed her mind. Being surrounded by memories of what had been taken away would only depress her afterwards. And, too, she didn’t want to associate anything from her real life with nefshon constructs of Fant.

Instead she re-created the bedroom they’d given her on the station, restoring the gravity as a minor kindness to her conversant. She sat on the floor and the Fant took shape across from her, a squat, thick, gray lump of a woman clothed in a grassy tabard that bared too much of her hairless skin. Even after preparing for it, the Lutr still cringed. It was like meeting a monster. Hadn’t her mother given her a storybook as a child where an evil Fant hid in a tributary and snuck out to devour innocent children as they played in the larger river nearby?

“I … where am I? Who are you?”

Lirlowil rolled her eyes. “I’m a Speaker. Which means you’re dead, so it doesn’t really matter where you are, does it? Now, I have a few questions I need to ask you, and trust me the sooner you can answer them the better it will be for both of us. You worked in pharmaceutical exports, is that right?”

“I do,” said Shtev. “I mean, I did. How did you know?”

“You had a Vulp penpal on an Alliance medical station. Her daughter published the letters as a book. That’s how I found you.”

“Found me? Why were you looking for me? I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to. Let’s talk about koph, okay?”

“What?”

Lirlowil slipped into the re-created mind of the Fant, taking advantage of the confusion she’d sown and following the chain of associations she’d sparked with her last inquiry. She’d done the same many times before with the living, tracking a person’s surface thoughts as they prattled on about something. Now she probed deeper, psychically interrogating the dead woman and plucking knowledge out of her without asking permission. The effort was inexpressible, and the act itself went against everything she’d been taught. The party girl who had enjoyed a life of water slides, recreational narcotics, and imaginative sex partners discovered she had moral limits after all. And then pushed past them.

Shtev cried out in pain. Fat gray fingers pressed against her forehead and her grotesque ears flapped uselessly. That disgusting trunk flailed. “Stop!”

The Otter cringed as the trunk intruded into her personal space. “You are worthless ! Go, get away, I’m done with you.” Her mind reeled with useless data gleaned from ancient shipping manifests, but she managed the mental exercise required to disperse the nefshons. Shtev vanished, dazed and violated, and Lirlowil had gained nothing.

She curled into a ball, floating in the null field of her room, and sobbed herself to sleep. Nightmares of waving, grasping trunks awaited her there.

Days passed before she had the courage to try again.

* * *

“YOUare Golub, a first-generation Lox of Barsk. Your time in life has long since ended; you are now as you were in life, but not alive. In this, a world of my own making, I bid you welcome.”

This time her conversant was male, naked, and to her horror aroused. She’d drawn him from his most recent nefshons; had he died while having sex? He cradled his head in both hands and looked at her through red-rimmed eyes. “Grandma’s tusks, what did you put in my drink, woman?”

“I’m a Speaker. You’re dead.”

“Oh. Really? Huh. I guess that explains it. I didn’t think this house had any Lutr girls. A shame. I hear your people are really flexible.”

Lirlowil flinched. She’d found the Fant because of his sordid exploits. Born on Barsk shortly after its colonization, he had left to visit his parents’ birthworld, Marbalarma, and then spent the next thirty years bouncing from planet to planet, recounting his travels in a series of flims. These had found an audience in some parts of the Alliance, generating enough revenue for the Fant to continue in ever more exuberant acts of tourism until the day he died in a particularly vulgar incident on Dawn involving an exotic courtesan and her employer.

With even more reluctance than with her first attempt, Lirlowil slipped into his mind and went searching. His knowledge of drugs was extensive, but only with regard to the variety and palatability of recreational substances readily found off Barsk. Other than the diluted bits of koph that were part of seasonal celebrations during his childhood, he had no experience of the drug Krasnoi wanted.

She fled his mind and dissolved the summoning at speed. She’d not immersed herself as fully in this one’s mind but nonetheless felt even more unclean.

* * *

LIRLOWILfiled her reports in unending detail for both encounters and received back both written praise as well as authorization to request a boon from off station. She asked for the impossible, hoping perhaps to gain some leverage when the promised gift never materialized. In this she was disappointed. The “impossible” took twenty days, but she awoke one morning to find an enormous globule of water floating in the middle of her bedroom. A squad of Patrollers had returned to Sharv, visited her family’s homepond, and hauled away thirty metric tons of water.

Lirlowil had thrown off her nightclothes, pushed off from the bed, and dove into and through the water, emerging sleek and restored, feeling better than she had since she’d arrived. She shook off myriad droplets that formed almost perfect spheres in the room’s null field. As she floated, grooming her dark, wiry pelt, the room’s air system jetted the dropules back toward their source. Far from being defeated by her failed ploy, she took inspiration from it. If her captors could do the impossible, she would at least continue to try.

* * *

FORher third attempt she’d immersed herself in propaganda written by a radical isolationist who had dedicated his life to severing all ties between his home and the Alliance. She hated politics and she had no patience for the ultra-serious, wide-eyed dreamers who wanted to change your world whether you wanted to live with those changes or not.

“You are Emil, an Eleph of Barsk. Your time in life has long since ended; you are now as you once were but not alive. In this, a world of my — owww!”

As soon as he’d taken form, Emil had somehow slapped aside the telepathic tendrils that Lirlowil had reached toward him.

“What? I’m not dead. This is a trick. Get out of here. Your kind aren’t allowed.”

“My kind?” How had she already lost control of the conversation.

“Your high and mighty furred kind. Isn’t that how you exclude us? Because we’re not covered in hair? Well, fine, we neither need nor want you either. Away with you!”

She reached for his mind again, and found her probe batted aside as before. Did he have some innate defenses? Emil didn’t seem aware of her attempts.

“I don’t plan to linger, believe me. But I have to ask you some questions—”