Rüsul’s eyes widened and he studied his surroundings for the first time. As the Dogs had hauled him in he’d acknowledged only the formless gray of the place, but now the clear outlines of plastic wall panels, metal floor tilings, and piercing artificial light removed all doubt that he was inside an artificial structure. He gazed longingly back at the open gate they’d brought him through, where Nonyx-Captain Selishta stood silhouetted against the darkening sky. Rüsul watched as other Dogs in their red plastic suits hurried past the Cheetah, carrying away his supplies in the tarp that had previously covered them. Other Dogs had dragged the mast and sail in and down another corridor. Moments later, more of Selishta’s crew entered with the disassembled pieces of his raft. And then he saw the Cheetah stoop to pick up something else. As she straightened up and regarded the object in her hand, Rüsul saw that Selishta had found his carving of Margda.
The Nonyx waved the carving in a gesture encompassing everything that moments ago had made up Rüsul’s raft. “You won’t need any of that where we’re going.” She paused and regarded the image in his hand. “This is one of your women? Unbelievable. And I thought the males were the ugly ones.” She tossed it away.
The Cheetah dismissed Rüsul with a wave and the pair of Dogs took him away, deeper into the “ship” as the captain had named it. But it wasn’t like any vessel of good wood that he had heard of, open to rain and sky. The world seemed to close in around him, and at first Rüsul imagined that he had actually died. But he knew it wasn’t time yet. Time, in fact, seemed to have stopped. A claustrophobia that he’d never known before squeezed at his heart.
To the chagrin of the Cans leading him, Rüsul’s body went limp. Head and trunk down, he began to wail, as mournful a sound as any living being could manage. The Dogs dropped him. They clutched at their heads and kicked him until pain silenced him.
“Why do they all do that?” said one of the Cans, over the sound of the Fant’s moans. “I think my ears are bleeding.”
“Shut up and grab an end,” said another. “I just want to get him into a cell before he catches his breath and starts in again.”
“Why do I get the smelly end?”
“The whole thing stinks. All the more reason to hurry up and dump his ass where he won’t be polluting our air.”
One took Rüsul’s arms, the other his legs. Neither Dog came anywhere near touching his trunk or ears.
“How can something that’s been sitting out in the rain for days smell this bad?”
“Yeah, every time we grab another one, I worry the ship’s recycler is going to break down and then we’re all screwed.”
They hauled him ever further away from his death.
TWO. POSSIBILITIES AND MYTHS
JORL slipped the pellet of koph under his tongue, closing his eyes as the drug dissolved and began to take hold. His left ear tingled as it always did, and he flapped it once, twice, and then settled back, resting his head against the wall. The darkness behind his eyelids lasted only a moment, replaced by a roiling curtain of golden light, the gold of his own nefshons.
The first perception granted by the drug induced panic for many novice Speakers. One moment you were alone in the darkness of your own head, and in the next you saw yourself swaddled by shimmering subatomic particles of memory. Those layers of golden fabric could suffocate a beginner. A successful Speaker imprinted on it, learned to identify the unique tang that permeated every gleaming particle. Then it only required an act of will for the Speaker to blind herself to it and move on.
Jorl had been Speaking less than a year, but he had disciplined his mind in academia. At the first glimpse of his own nefshons he banished them from his perception.
He filled the resulting darkness with images from his own memory, imagining a familiar room in a house on the island of Keslo. The dimensions and materials, the colors and textures and scents formed around him. That easily, he sat in a small alcove that lay just off of the kitchen of the home maintained by his friend’s widow. The walls were beech, yellow, bright in their own right and polished to a high sheen. A hand-braided rug covered the floor from the kitchen’s threshold to the hidden door in the back wall that provided a less obvious entrance to the house. A tapestry woven of wild flowers hung on that wall, filling the air with light, sweet fragrance. Two comfortably curved benches faced one another, set far back against opposite sides such that their occupants would be unseen by anyone passing the opening. Jorl saw it all in his mind, just as he had seen it before taking the koph and settling into that very spot after dinner.
While his best friend’s widow busied herself with after-dinner tasks, he muttered a name aloud, “Arlo,” and began summoning particles, luring them with memories: sitting in a classroom in his grandmother’s hall learning to cipher … sampling their first efforts at distillation … introducing him to Tolta, the daughter of a friend of his mother … laughing in the rain as they took a raft to Gerd for the first time … embracing him, trunks wrapped around one another’s ears, the day he left Barsk …
When he had a sufficient number, he willed the particles to coalesce into his friend’s form, occupying the bench opposite him, visible to anyone who possessed the Speaker’s gift.
“Your wife made the most amazing dinner tonight,” said Jorl, the mental construct of himself smacking his lips with satisfaction while in the real world his head pressed back against the wall, his trunk draping languidly down his chest, a trickle of drool starting at the corner of his flaccid mouth.
Arlo smiled. It started at his eyes and spread with exaggerated slowness across his face, until his ears gave a little flap of merriment. “Did she? You say that like you’re surprised. Tolta’s always been a great cook. You know that.”
“Of regional dishes, sure. The safe and same traditional meals that everyone’s aunt knows how to make. I’m talking about recipes from other worlds, places where no Fant has been in centuries.”
“Now you’re just being foolish. No one is going to bother venturing into space just for dinner. Not even you.”
“I didn’t say we left Barsk, only that the recipes, the spices, were from offworld. Pay attention.”
“Or what? You’ll banish me? Spread the glowing bits of me far and wide?”
“I’d never — don’t even joke about that!”
“I’m dead, Jorl. You can’t tell me what to do. More importantly, you shouldn’t be trying to tell me anything. This is what, the thirtieth time you’ve summoned me? It’s not healthy.”
“I’m a Speaker. It’s a rare gift, even on Barsk. Why shouldn’t I use it?”
“Just because a thing can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. I’m not telling you not to use your gift. You’re a historian, and I imagine it must be a powerful tool in your work, talking directly to the people who made history. That’s incredible. Do more of that. But you shouldn’t keep talking to me. Let me go. Even a historian can’t keep living in the past.”
“I don’t want to have this argument with you.”
Arlo spread his hands, his trunk lifting in an ironic gesture. “Stop summoning me and you won’t.”
“I needed to talk to you. Something’s going on and I don’t understand it. I thought discussing it with you might help.”
The smile fell away from Arlo’s face. “Something more than Tolta’s cooking?”
“I’ve been studying the prophecies of the Matriarch since our school days.” He grew still, head bowed, hands clasping the nubs of his trunk and one another in his lap. Even his ears had stopped moving. “I think one of the dire ones is coming to pass.”