Alliance of Exiles

by Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  Once, a Rul, trying to be friendly, slowly asked their name. Unsure if the slowness was condescension or merely the fault of the translator, Vysha gave the Rul the benefit of the doubt and answered her. But Vysha’s Veerten name was a long string of warmlight pulses detailing their generation, ancestry, and social group in the rhizomic organization of Traat. The translator hadn’t relayed any of that. Confronted with silence, the Rul retreated with a muttered “Forget it,” her pods bristling indignantly as Vysha coiled their stalk in embarrassment.

  So Vysha hadn’t expected much when the bushy figure of another Rul had stopped in front of their stall. “Excuse me,” the shape said in simulated Bask. “Apologies if this is rude, but your stalk has a beautiful coloration.”

  “It does?” Vysha had been too surprised to say anything else.

  “You have a collection of small brown spots that show well against the tan. Like a dapple of pebbles against sand. My name is Sky Harvester.” He inclined his pods in a gesture of deference Vysha had seen Rul use among themselves. Awaiting a response.

  “My name—” Vysha’d stopped, laughed. “Well, I’m not sure it would mean much to you even if I could get this garbage translator to work.”

  It was not the most auspicious start to a friendship. Vysha still admires Sky Harvester for not shrugging his pods and moving on. After a moment of awkwardness, he’d said, “Can I call you Vysha?”

  Vysha is Bask for “little pebble”. A name inspired by those darker dapples of coloration running up their stalk. Vysha can only approximate the idea of colors as the Rul know them; they think colors might be similar to gradations of warmlight, but senses they’re not quite the same thing. Vysha cannot see themself as Sky Harvester can see them.

  Yet as their acquaintance developed into friendship, Vysha has come to appreciate Sky Harvester’s aesthetic sensibilities, for all that the senses on which they rely differ from Vysha’s own. They know from past conversations that the Rul has spent years honing his skills as a sculptor, exhibiting works to growing praise; to be selected for a Council-sponsored commission is an achievement that will cement his reputation and visibility.

  An idea, still dimmer than the faintest warmlight pulse, flickers in Vysha’s mind. “Can you show me?” they ask, and the translator grinds out their words.

  “Show you?” The water stills as Sky Harvester stops washing his bundle of weeds.

  “Can you show me the commission you’re making for the city?”

  “Vysha…” His soft bushy outline changes shape in their vision as Sky Harvester bunches his pods uneasily. “It’s in a warehouse near the Rul quarter.”

  A dry part of the city, though Vysha senses that isn’t the reason for Sky Harvester’s hesitation. He too is aware of the gap that separates their ways of seeing. And Sky Harvester is an artist above all else, wary of having his work misconstrued.

  “I’ll bring a palanquin,” Vysha says.

  The palanquin’s treads bite into the ribbed ramp and ferry the machine into the warehouse. Its sensors paint the dimensions of the space in soft lines of warmlight on the screen. Vysha has no trouble navigating the palanquin around piles of crates and machinery to the area set aside for Sky Harvester’s commission. The first time they’d driven a palanquin had been awful; they’d felt cramped and blind. But after a few ventures into the upper city, Vysha got used to the flattened quality of the viewscreen images. The palanquin screen shows only a fraction of Vysha’s usual field of view of course, but otherwise it’s almost like seeing normally.

  Cloth whispers as Vysha comes to a halt. They imagine Sky Harvester whipping a tarp off his creation. “Only this section is finished so far,” Sky Harvester says. His articulated feet shuffle, clicking too loudly on the metal floor. “Can you… see from in there?”

  Vysha realizes that to him the palanquin is a windowless cone of metal. Even through the viewscreen, Vysha can only see the outline of a slab perhaps ten times longer than their body and twice as high. The ambient heat in the room is too evenly distributed to show detail.

  “I will come out,” Vysha says. Before Sky Harvester can protest, they check that the translator is in place over their sensory bulb, then shunt the saltwater in the palanquin’s cabin into a storage compartment. Their arms wrap reflexively around their bulb as warm water gives way to air. Then Vysha cracks the hatch and slithers from the machine onto hard metal.

  Smells of metal shavings and limestone dust scrape against their skin. For a breath cycle Vysha feels as helpless as any mollusc washed up on the beach at low tide—but this is not the first time they have known dry air. The Veert are littoral creatures, adapted to deal with the ebb and flow of tides, with fluctuating levels of salt and moisture. They reach for the remembered muscles in their footbody and flex them, opening the rudimentary lungs on either side of their stalk. Saline bladders moisten the tender alveoli, softening the first inhalation of terrestrial air. They close as many of the chemosensing pores on their skin as possible, focusing only on the gradient of alkali coming from the freshly carved slab. Vysha raises their flexible arms and touches pads to stone.

  Sky Harvester’s commission is a bas-relief. Vysha traces the curves and dimples of embossed stone, slightly raised or recessed from the surface. Contrary to what many land-dwellers think, the Veert do have art: Curvestone and ripplestone decorate Traat’s interior walls, smooth basalt and limestone polished to a delight under their pads. The tactile art is beautiful as only Veert, with a sense of touch that can discern the finest grains of sand, can truly appreciate. This bas-relief is rough and jagged in comparison. Not meant for touch at all. Neither is it heatstone, carved to absorb and release warmlight over hours in pleasantly changing gradients. This is an artwork meant for light-seeing eyes.

  Disappointed, wondering what else they expected, Vysha makes the best guess their senses allow. “It is a… landscape?”

  “It’s not finished, of course,” Sky Harvester says. He shuffles to their side and begins to point his pods at the carving. “It will be a panorama depicting the glorious battle of Banesh-114.”

  Vysha recognizes the serial number: a nickel-iron asteroid brought into stable orbit for refining around Banesh, Teluk’s third moon. A hard-fought firefight kept the asteroid out of Terran hands, at the cost of Banesh-114’s orbital stability.

  “These rhomboids will be Coalition ships.” Sky Harvester speaks rapidly, blindly eager to share his vision. “You see these diagonal streaks? That’s where the asteroid fragments plunged into the sea. I even sketched out the coastline below. If you look closely you can see...” A pause. “But you can’t, can you?”

  His body temperature, rising in excitement, falters along with his words. It is like watching his happiness dim. For a breath cycle Vysha regrets asking this favor of the Rul. They’d known as they asked that the gap between them might be too broad to bridge; that his art might mean nothing to them.

  Or not nothing. The form is strange, alien, but the context has a power Vysha cannot close their sense organs to. Boosting the tenuous morale of a populace at war, the Council has asked artists like Sky Harvester to create a visual history of that war—triumphant images that will no doubt be installed in public places, visible to all Teluk’s citizens. With something close to envy, Vysha wonders if Sky Harvester understands how much power he has been given.

  “I cannot see those things.” Vysha goes on before Sky Harvester can interject. “But I can see the honor the High Council has done you and the other artists. Your art will become part of Teluk’s history.”

  “The Coalition’s defense against the Terrans will become history,” Sky Harvester corrects them, his simulated Bask voice lowering modestly. “We merely depict its results.”

  It is the moment Vysha was waiting for. “I will make one,” they say. “I too will make a war commemoration for the city.”

  Again that uneasy shuffle of pods. “I am not sure that translated correctly,” says Sky Harvester.
“What do you mean you will make one?”

  The Council rejected Veerten overtures for a treaty with the Expansion. Name notwithstanding, the Coalition of United Species recruited no Veert, with their inadequate senses, to fight in their fleets. The Veert founded Teluk: they were the first to discover the warm waterworld and establish coastal colonies, eventually opening the system gate to interspecies trade and commerce. The spitstone of Vysha’s ancestors unites the foundations of Anmerresh; their people are part of Teluk’s history. Yet sometime after declaring their war, the Council forgot that history.

  They feel the anger again, flaring hot. Vysha is glad the Rul doesn’t have the eyes to see their spike in body temperature.

  By his lightless silence, they can tell Sky Harvester has realized his mistake. His first dapples of renewed communication are tentative. “I did not intend offense. But there are no Veerten artists among the commissioned.”

  “Then I will be the first.”

  The Rul protests. Hundreds of artists compete for bids, yet so far the Council has granted only a few. And to a Veert least likely of all, Vysha intuits in the spaces between his words. Their art is dismissed as incomprehensible to creatures who see only on the higher spectra.

  “What about presenting them a finished piece?” Vysha says. “The Council could not turn it away without looking at it.” They coil their arms in a sly gesture. “If, suppose, a commissioned artist were to vouch for me.”

  An exasperated buzz sounds from Sky Harvester’s pods; one of the few voiced exclamations in the Rul language. “I cannot guarantee—”

  “I ask for none.” Vysha raises their arms placatingly. “Only a space in your warehouse.” The gesture is painful. Their footbody and stalk are sheathed in a rubbery integument resistant to dessication, but the skin on their sensory bulb and arms is thin, innervated with thousands of nerve endings that make the Veerten sense of touch the delicate instrument it is. Moisture evaporates much faster from this thinner tissue than elsewhere; already the top layers of skin have dried and begun to flake off in the parched warehouse. Working in this environment will be difficult. But Vysha can think of no space large enough in Traat’s communal chambers.

  “And the materials?” Sky Harvester asks.

  “I will provide the materials. And the vision.” Vysha means it as a joke, but Sky Harvester doesn’t laugh.

  There is work to do before Vysha can begin. Caught in a current of inspiration as they are, Vysha still knows better than to surrender to it without seeking guidance. Their idea, if it is to be a monument to all Veerten, is too important to trust to Vysha’s judgment alone.

  Vysha returns to Traat in the cooling air of evening, shedding the palanquin like a cumbersome steel molting in one of the sunken pools along Anmerresh’s waterfront. Other Veert flash warmlight greetings as Vysha joins the school milling and darting around one of the great apertures drilled into Traat’s base. Vysha returns the hails but does not pause to converse. Perhaps sensing the purpose behind Vysha’s haste, no one stops them.

  The deep levels of Traat are a world no land-dweller will ever see. A lightless labyrinth of tunnels bored into the rock by countless Veert, its heart so enclosed by stone that even warmlight doesn’t penetrate. Windows are unnecessary: the tunnels are only used for transit, shuttling Veert and goods between the seabed and the inhabited levels of Traat.

  Vysha takes a kind of defiant pride in jetting down the convoluted tunnels at speed, navigating corners and chimneys of rock using only the subtle changes in current and smell as a guide. In these tunnels they have known all their life, a Rul would be more helpless than a new larva: unable to see, unable to breathe, dashing their pods against the walls. Deficiency is a matter of perspective, Vysha thinks, and revels in the renewed sense of security that comes from being once more in a world made for them.

  Vysha finds the Veerten elder in a feeding chamber in the midlevel of Traat. They recognize the elder by their particular combination of scents, though Vysha has never spoken with them directly before and can’t bring to mind the string of warmlight pulses that forms their proper Veerten name. Instead, Vysha knows the elder by their nickname: to the land-dwellers, this Veerten elder is Basalt, named after the main material of their seastack home.

  Small crustaceans, visible as points of warmlight, scatter as Vysha settles near the seaweed-encrusted wall where Basalt is prying snails and swallowing them.

  The sea provides, Vysha says. The phrase is a formal request to join in the meal. They are careful to keep their warmlight pulses in a cooler range. The last thing they want to do is offend Basalt by shouting at them with a too-warm pulse.

  The sea’s children thank them, Basalt replies, shuffling over to make room for Vysha. There are a few other Veert in the chamber, none near enough to intercept a conversation. They wait for the elder to finish eating, for the sucking sound of snails being forcibly removed from the wall to cease.

  You are Traat’s representative to the High Council, Vysha says at last. A question would be disingenuous and a waste of Basalt’s time. The Veerten representative’s sensory bulb turns toward Vysha, their stalk heating in a pattern expressing mild curiosity.

  I am, Basalt acknowledges.

  Vysha doesn’t give themself time to lose resolve. In one long warmlight transmission, Vysha introduces themself and explains their idea for a commissioned artwork representing the Teluk Veerten.

  Basalt responds with a brief pulse of recognition. You’re the one who brought the Coalition’s recent treaty violation to Traat’s attention. There is a pause which stabs Vysha’s footbody with nerves.

  What form would this sculpture take? Basalt asks. Vysha’s insides leap inside their footbody. The representative is interested!

  Vysha reminds themself to be modest; they do not have permission yet, just the merest possibility of it. But that is more than they had a moment ago. I’m not sure yet, Vysha admits. I suspect the traditional forms may not be—they wash seawater over their gills, steadying themself to say this—may not be suitable if the piece is to be understood by non-Veert.

  There it is, Vysha’s gambit out in the open: what ve proposes is nothing less than the founding of a new artistic form, one with no precedent among the traditional Veerten forms -- a style that would wield art as a message, every bit as functional as a translator, though Vysha hopes more beautiful.

  Of course, I thought it of utmost importance to gain your counsel first, Vysha continues. It would be a work that would embody our history and continued presence in Teluk affairs.

  Finally, Basalt speaks. What you propose is propaganda. Impossible to gauge the tone in which this is said. The elder’s stalk remains neutral-cool to Vysha’s eyes.

  Swimming blind, Vysha chooses their words carefully. Yes, but not a celebration of conflict as so many of the land-dwellers’ pieces are. I simply wish to make the Veert visible again, to remind the other people of Teluk this is our home too; their fight is our fight.

  Basalt’s answer is immediate. Is it?

  Their words send Vysha reeling, as though a rogue wave had ripped them from a rock and sent them tumbling bulb over stalk. Yes. Of course it is, they offer weakly.

  The Coalition and Expansion fight over Teluk’s land, Basalt says, as though explaining something to a larva. We are children of the sea; what does it matter which group of land-dwellers scrabbles over the rocks?

  It matters, Vysha insists, stubborn.

  Why? Basalt probes, eager, bulb tilted forward—and Vysha realizes what they are doing. Playing the tide, pushing against Vysha to force them to push back and solidify their argument.

  It matters because neither side will recognize our stake unless we make them, Vysha says. Veerthome may be a Terran ally, but that won’t stop them from bombing Anmerresh to sand if they win. And as much as we all wish for a Coalition victory, it would still mean—

  Vysha stops. The word exile has been on the mind of every Veert in Traat, hover
ing like an unpleasant odor. If the Coalition wins it will mean the end of contact with Veerthome. The Council is prepared to cut off all commerce with the Expansion and its allied territories. The Teluk Veert will truly be on their own then, with only memories of an ancestry that runs eons deep on their home world. Vysha curses their muteness but cannot bring themself to go on.

  But Vysha doesn’t have to say it. Basalt entwines an arm with one of Vysha’s comfortingly. I myself am an emigré to this world, they say. The first quarter of my life was spent on Veerthome. As good as the seasons since have been, part of me will always think of that world as my home. That part finds it hard to accept that I may never see it again.

  Basalt disengages from Vysha. I believe your project has value, and I will advocate for it to the Council at such time as you are ready to present it.

  Vysha nearly talks over themself giving thanks, promising to work on the piece only when their daily duties to Traat have been discharged.

  I don’t doubt you will use your time responsibly, says Basalt. They dismiss Vysha with a wave of their arms, but Vysha doesn’t move. A lingering doubt bubbles under their joy. Do you think the Council will grant me audience? Why would they care now, Vysha thinks, what any Veert has to say?

  Basalt’s reply carries the warm solidity of the stone they are named after. I will persuade them to give you the chance. Your concern should be to produce something worthy of it.

  Vysha departs the chamber as quickly as decorum allows, filled with anticipation. They have everything they need to begin—the space to work, sanction from the representative, and the materials. In fact, the materials present the least challenge. All Vysha needs is some acetone, an inert container, and a little time.

  Process

  Vysha meant it when they told Sky Harvester they would provide the materials: at the end of each day-cycle, when their work shaping the tunnels under the seabed is done, Vysha comes to the warehouse and spends more hours exuding spitstone from the glands in their footbody into a sealed acetone-filled basin. In air or saltwater, the spitstone would dry in seconds to a concrete-like hardness; the acetone and lack of oxygen keep the organic cement soft and workable.