NEBULA AWARD NOMINEE

BEST NOVEL

EXCERPT FROM BARSK: THE ELEPHANTS’ GRAVEYARD

LAWRENCE M. SCHOEN

Lawrence M. Schoen holds a PhD in cognitive psychology, has been nominated for the Campbell, Hugo, and Nebula awards, is a world authority on the Klingon language, operates the small press Paper Golem, and is a practicing hypnotherapist specializing in authors’ issues.

His previous science fiction includes many light and humorous adventures of a space-faring stage hypnotist and his alien animal companion. His most recent book, Barsk, takes a very different tone, exploring issues of prophecy, intolerance, friendship, conspiracy, and loyalty, and redefines the continua between life and death. He lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with his wife and their dog. In 2015, Barsk won the Cóyotl Award for Best Novel.

FROM THE AUTHOR

I started writing Barsk in 1988, during my second year as a college professor. The first two chapters were published in a fan magazine in 1990, and I went on to write the entire novel, all fifty chapters of it! I was very proud of the book, as it was the first novel I had written from beginning to end. I tried to find a publisher, and fortunately I failed, primarily because it was a horrible book! It wasn’t that the story was bad, just that I didn’t know how to write without endless exposition and overdone tropes. I hadn’t learned enough or acquired the necessary tools to tell it well. Eventually this fact bypassed my ego and percolated through to my awareness and I put the damn manuscript in a drawer. I went back to writing, to studying, to improving. I joined a regular writing group. I attended James Gunn’s two-week workshop at the University of Kansas. I climbed the mountain and took part in Walter Jon Williams’s master class in Taos, New Mexico. And I practiced, practiced, practiced. Twenty plus years later, I had what I needed to do it right, and here we are.

Jorl 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 off world. 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.”

“I’ve long since forgotten the details of her warnings. Of all the areas of history to study, I never understood why you made her life your focus. Most of her writings bored me, and the prophecies were so weird they made little sense, at least at the time we covered them in class. Which one are you going on about here?”

“The Silence.”

Arlo scrunched up his trunk and spat. “I hate that one. You remember how my mam told us stories about it when we were small, years before we got to that section in school? Scared the leaves out of us.”

“I remember. I had nightmares. Sometimes I think I grew up to study them as a reaction. You know, so that I could really understand what scared me.”

“Yeah? Well, be sure and thank her for your livelihood next time you see her.”

Jorl looked down, finding a sudden interest in the cuticles of one hand.

“What?” said Arlo.

“Your mom is part of the problem. I wasn’t going to bother you with the knowledge, but she sailed off a season ago. I’m sorry.”

“Oh.”

“Kembü had a full life, Ar. It didn’t have anything to do with your own passing. It was just her time.”

“What do you mean, she’s ‘part of the problem’?”

“Do you remember when we were eight and crazy for insects? We spent the summer collecting every bug we could find? I got to thinking about it, and I found myself wanting the specimen jar you used. Just a sentimental reminder. And you know how your mother never threw anything away. . . . So I tried to ask her if she knew where it was.”

“What do you mean, you tried?”

“I couldn’t summon her.”

“How long ago?”

“Weeks. More than enough time for her to finish her last voyage and be summonable. Something set me off, thinking about that long ago summer. I snatched up a pellet of koph and reached out to pull your mother’s nefshons together, only . . . I couldn’t.”