Barsk Read online

  The Bear had frowned at her, but his next words hadn’t made it into her memory. Perhaps she’d gone back to sleep. The next thing she recalled was the feeling that her heart would explode, it was pounding so fast. The PA was leaning over her, an empty ampoule in one hand. As Lirlowil began to sweat, puke, and piss herself into a clear-eyed panic, she understood she’d been slipped a sobriety agent which was systematically purging any and all toxins from her body as if her life depended on it.

  Gasping, she sat up in bed and grimaced. Nudity in front of strangers didn’t bother her but being covered in her own filth surely did. The Prairie Dog stepped up, wrinkling his own nose, and opened a small book.

  “The universe is vast and complex, comprising many peoples and many worlds.” Lirlowil rolled her eyes but managed to suppress a giggle. Still, the solemnity of his words were marred by the shrill pitch of his voice. “Rarely do any of us have the opportunity to be of service beyond the immediate circle of our own community. But when that chance occurs we must welcome it. Failing that, we must rely upon that same community to recognize the circumstance for what it is and surrender us up to that need. Gaze with me now upon such an individual and bear witness to what we do.”

  The Bear stepped forward, opening a small pouch on his belt and withdrawing a notary seal. “Her mark, now, if you please,” he said to the physician’s assistant who took Lirlowil’s hand, smeared a green gel over the pads of her fingers, and pressed them to a piece of cardstock. The Urs reviewed the impression and passed the card to the parson.

  “I do place the seal of my office alongside your mark, confirming your change of status from Citizen to Resource.” The parson tucked the card away, waited for the PA to pack up her things, and then both departed, leaving Lirlowil alone with the Bear.

  As her chemical panic subsided, Lirlowil asked “What … what just happened?”

  “What had to happen. There is a need and only you can serve it. We’re leaving in ten minutes. You can use that time to pack whatever you can carry, or not. I don’t much care. I’ll give you another five minutes to take a shower. I won’t subject my crew to your odor.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Your new home,” said the Bear. “Nine minutes and three quarters.”

  Free of chemical enhancement for the first time in more than a year, Lirlowil took in the sprawl of toys and distractions that filled her home, including a handful of other Lutr playmates that had managed to sleep through her unwilling transformation. Ten minutes was ludicrous. She’d need twice that span even to find her essentials, and she had no illusions about being able to carry it all. She instead opted to take nothing and went straight to her bathing chamber where she indulged with a variety of shower massagers, perfumed soaps, and bath oils, for far longer than the Urs had permitted. In the end, he pulled her from her shower and marched her out of her home and to a waiting vehicle, water still streaming from her sleek pelt, naked except for a flimsy robe he had found and thrown at her.

  Less than an hour later, Sharv was a dwindling blue-green marble in the view port of the Patrol vessel carrying her to the station above Barsk. Days later, a trio of Ailuros, the sheen of their slick, black security uniforms blending and contrasting against the black and white of their fur, took her from the ship and ensconced her in a suite remodeled from an unused warehouse. In the nearly one hundred days since, she hadn’t seen a living soul.

  A sealed viewer had awaited her in the middle of her rooms. She broke the seal and skimmed the document for an explanation. Then she dropped the viewer and threw a fit. She screamed. She wailed. She beat her hands and feet against the walls and floors. Nothing and no one responded. Trembling with frustration Lirlowil retrieved the viewer, reset it to the beginning, and read it through more carefully. Urs-Major Krasnoi’s instructions were precise and absurd. He instructed that she use her talents to Speak to Fant—those disgustingly furless freaks—and telepathically probe them for any knowledge that involved koph, the Speaker’s drug. According to her briefing, Alliance scientists had spent years attempting to reverse engineer the drug, without success. Her assignment was part of a new direction to obtain answers. They wanted the details of its refining, the quantities and characteristics of its ingredients, the qualities of the flora that made up its parts, the growing cycle of those plants, any particular methodologies involved in harvesting them, and on and on. If it touched on koph and existed in the minds of any of the dead Fant she could summon, the Bear wanted a detailed report.

  Lirlowil shuddered. Whoever had come up with the plan had been utterly clueless about Speakers. She couldn’t simply conjure up anyone from anywhere. The nefshons she manipulated were subatomic particles of personality that dispersed upon their creator’s death. But during the long course of a life, everyone transferred hundreds of particles with every touch. These in turn became the stuff of memory. It’s what made memory of people so vivid and different than memory of how to swim or the capitals of Sharv’s twenty-seven principalities.

  Speaking required she already possess some of these particles. A Speaker needed enough sense of her conversant’s identity to separate that individual from every other person that ever existed. Trivially easy if she had personal experience of the conversant—nefshons of the person carried in her own mind. Lacking that, a summoning was still possible if enough objective information existed to create a clear picture. Unfortunately, exceedingly few dead, Barsk-born Fant had been sufficiently well documented to allow anyone to Speak to them.

  Which was, Lirlowil realized, part of the reason they had wanted her. On Sharv she had developed a reputation for successfully Speaking to strangers. But it was a cheat. All those people whom she had never met were the friends or relatives or business associates of the clients that came to her. During interviews, while her petitioners unraveled anecdotes of the intended conversant, Lirlowil had slipped into their minds and gathered up richer impressions than their words could express, telepathically copying the nefshons the target had transferred in life. Armed with such intimate details, she succeeded where other Speakers would fail, all of which merely added to her prestige as a treasure of Sharv. But somewhere a bureaucrat had misunderstood the particulars of her technique, and here she was.

  Her usual solution, having a tantrum, had failed to accomplish anything so she ramped things up. Assuming her suite was monitored—she’d already confirmed it was shielded to prevent her telepathic spying on anyone beyond its walls—she ranted and railed against the injustice of her situation. She made wild accusations. She threatened. She screamed the most lurid improprieties and colorful invective that had ever been heard on any Patrol station, let alone from the lips of a young woman raised in a privileged society. She broke every piece of furniture and every implement in her rooms that wasn’t bolted to floor or wall. Nothing produced the slightest response or even a hint that anyone aboard the station monitored her at all.

  Only when she’d taken a broken shard of mirror to her own throat did the gravity field in her room suddenly increase, pinning her to the floor with ever-increasing weight until she passed out. She awoke some unknown span later to find everything restored. Not just the gravity but all the rooms’ furnishings had been returned to their earlier state. The viewer with her orders lay on the floor where she’d dropped it. Its content remained the same as well.

  Bit by bit, over the course of several days, she adapted to her new situation. The crew of the station did not interact with her, which suited her fine. She sent off notes and reports from a unit built into her desk and received printed replies. Through trial and error she learned a few simple things. They wanted what they wanted, and as long as she attempted to provide, they would in turn tolerate her behaviors up to the point of physical harm, and try to honor any requests within the limited resources of the station and its crew.

  The first proof of this was the gravity in one of her rooms. She’d asked for and received the plans detailing the electronics built into the walls that co
ntrolled her bedroom. Using the expertise she’d acquired from the mind of a thief she’d dallied with a year before, she removed various panels until she had access to the unit maintaining the room’s gravity and disabled it to see how the station crew would react. They didn’t.

  After two days of floating in her sleep, Lirlowil restored the panel, though not the gravity. The null field of her room felt invitingly like floating in the comforting waters of her favorite stream back home. Wrapping herself in that small bit of comfort she finally went to work.

  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.

  * * *

  “YOU are 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.

  * * *

  “YOU are 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.

  * * *

  LIRLOWIL filed 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.

  * * *

  FOR her 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 h
ave to ask you some questions—”

  “I have nothing to say to you! Begone!”

  “Look, I’m a Speaker and you’re dead. This ends when I choose to end it, not before. So stop giving me grief and we’ll get done that much sooner.”

  The Fant glared at her. “You want to see grief, I’ll show you grief.”

  His trunk pulled back and to the left, then swung at her head. Lirlowil ducked in the other direction but the attack had been a feint. Not so the fist that came at her from the other side and struck her in the face.

  It was as if the nefshons under her control shattered and exploded. Or maybe she’d just been blinded to them. Either way, she was back in her room, the summoning ended. It hadn’t been real but her face ached for days all the same.

  She’d gotten nothing from him, filed a report of her failure, and returned to her research. Nine days later she was ready to try again.

  * * *

  HER fourth attempt went more smoothly. “You are Tral, a Lox of Barsk. Your time in life has ended; you are now as you were in life, but not alive. In this, a world of my own making, I bid you welcome.”

  “Oh. Hello. We’re doing this again? Wait, you’re not my son.”

  The Fant had taken form quicker than most, and his minimal confusion confirmed Lirlowil’s suspicion that he’d been summoned before.

  “No, I’m not. But he wrote a lovely biography about you that let me summon you.” She reached into his mind and began her search.

  “Did he? I didn’t know that. He’s always writing, that one. Even as a boy. Not a real livelihood, I told him, but what child ever listens to his parent, am I right?”

  She found extensive knowledge of Barsk flora in his mind, but all of it involved tapa and other sources of material for tailoring, which made sense for a garment maker. Of pharmaceuticals in general and koph in particular, Tral knew less than nothing.