Alliance of Exiles

by Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  The metabolic demands of producing spitstone leave Vysha weak and torpid. Vysha spends more than one night-cycle in their palanquin, consciousness draining away to the steady swoosh of the vehicle’s water tanks.

  More tiring than the material production is the aesthetic work of sculpting. Creating a representation of Vysha’s people that will be comprehensible to the thousands of eyes that will absorb its reflected light. Vysha floats in the rejuve pool long after their siblings have gone torpid, footbody almost too tired to grip the floor. Thinking.

  A bas-relief is out of the question. Vysha knew that as soon as their pads touched Sky Harvester’s piece. The illusion of depth and perspective in such a sculpture are beyond them. Nor can Vysha rely on Veerten ways of sculpting. They must blend the two ways of seeing, find the place like the velvet ribbon of shore where the land meets the sea. The place where the Veert and the other people of Teluk feel the same ground beneath them.

  When not working or making spitstone, Vysha wanders. Anmerresh is a city of artists. Its walled gardens, colonnades, and canals boasted paintings and sculptures long before the war made art a propagandic necessity. They run their pads over the freestanding sculptures, sensing possibilities in their shapes: a thin column like a branch of seaweed, a jut of stone like the lip of one of Traat’s windows.

  Disappointment follows just as quickly. Too many possibilities contained in a single point of contact. The shapes could mean anything. Only by draping their arms over the sculptures can Vysha form even a hazy image of what the pieces represent. Vysha embraces the cool stone standing in a shaded garden and imagines seeing, like touching something with their whole body at once.

  Vysha toys with form, shaping chunks of soft spitstone with two arms while the other wipes a treated cloth over the cement to keep it pliable. As they work, Vysha turns their memory back to those three-dimensional sculptures, remembering the curves and angles impressed into their pads. On a good day, Vysha is convinced their pads are every bit as perceptive as the most sophisticated terrestrial eye. On other days, their senses seem incapable of creating anything but amorphous blobs, wastes of spitstone. On these days Vysha turns guiltily away from these failures, proof that their energies would be better spent digging tunnels. Some days the loss of confidence is enough to make Vysha stop work for hours at a time, retreating to their palanquin and its console to catch up on news of the war or to message the Veert in their cohort.

  Vysha misses their cohort—they did not count on how this project would isolate them. Even when they see their cohort at the seastack, Vysha is too reluctant to discuss their art with them—they fear the others would not understand it. This has never been the case with anything before. Vysha asked themself once why Sky Harvester never told them about this side of being an artist, the sacrifices involved in accomplishing the work. Eventually, Vysha realized the very difficulty of the task is the answer: had they known at the start how isolating and draining it would be, they might have been discouraged from pursuing it. They learn to push through bad days like hard-packed sand, that continuous, incremental work is the best cure for the doubt. There is no cure for the loneliness.

  Yet Vysha keeps pushing against the current. Because, slowly, they have recognized that all their failed experiments are still attempts to realize something. What they imagine is less than an image, more than a warmlight impression. It is a weight, like the press of ancient sediment, whose only release is through their pads into the mass of spitstone coming into some as-yet-unknowable form under them.

  Later on, Vysha will wonder if it was Basalt who told the others where to find them. Of course, it is the nature of Traat to spread rumors as a fast current spreads scents; yet Vysha is startled to open the warehouse doors on a collection of palanquins. As warmlight greetings enfold their sensory bulb, Vysha realizes their cohort has also longed for their presence.

  Though the day is overcast and damp, it takes much coaxing for the others to venture from their palanquins. Vysha suspects curiosity is a factor: from inside the palanquins, their sculpture must look as mysterious as Sky Harvester’s bas-relief. Even Vysha is not sure what it is—at this stage the piece is a vaguely columnar shape taller than Vysha.

  Heard you were working on something important; came to help. Must be important for you to tolerate this dry place, one of them says in answer to Vysha’s question. Among their cohort, everyone uses an informal declension that elides individual pronouns; after Bask’s rigid insistence on a singular subject, it’s like relaxing into warm sand.

  Is a sculpture, Vysha says, flattered and nervous. Elder gave permission. You can touch it. The boldest of their cohort stretches forth an arm and traces the wet spitstone; the rest follow the first one’s example.

  Don’t recognize the form, the Veert who first touched it says. Feels like neither ripplestone nor heatstone. What will its function be?

  The temperature drops all along Vysha’s stalk in their sudden anxiety. They remind themself these are their cohort—the Veert Vysha was raised with from hatching onward. The commission is theirs as much as it is Vysha’s.

  Is a new form, Vysha says. A sculpture meant to reflect light and be understood by land-dwellers as well as Veert.

  Questions engulf them in a babble of pulses. Vysha answers them one at a time: no, the Council didn’t invite them to make the commission; yes, that is all spitstone; no, Vysha doesn’t know yet what it will be.

  Not used to this sort of thinking, Vysha admits with some embarrassment. Neither Veerten art nor language is suited to the visual mode the land-dwellers seem so fond of.

  Many arms return to the sculpture in renewed interest, trying, as Vysha has for so long, to imagine what it could be. Their stalks glow with intense concentration, suggestions flashing around the warehouse.

  At last one of them asks, Could it be Traat?

  The day Vysha takes Sky Harvester to see the sculpture is blisteringly hot. They are grateful for the palanquin’s dimming; even on maximum polarization, the sky is a sheet of blazing warmlight in their eyes. With his permission, Vysha rearranged crates to make a private studio in the corner of the warehouse, which is, if possible, even hotter and dryer today than usual. Yet Vysha almost doesn’t feel the cracks threatening to form on their skin. Anticipation has pushed discomfort aside.

  They park the palanquin and lead Sky Harvester between the twisted columns of packing crates. The big Rul’s rustling gait is labored as he navigates the warren. Vysha must resist the urge to curl a tendril around one of his pods and drag him into their work space.

  “I think you will like it,” the translator on Vysha’s sensory bulb says for them. “It is very three dimensional, very…visual.” They carefully draw aside the tarp.

  The spitstone has hardened on Vysha’s masterpiece to the density and texture of enamel. Vysha tries to imagine seeing it for the first time and fails. To them every ledge, every prominence, every cavern is already an intimate friend. Always already home. Vysha could trace it with their warmlight organs covered.

  The seastack of Traat, first colony of the Veerten of Teluk, rises in a column of spitstone as wide as Vysha with arms extended and three times as tall. Its shape above the waterline should be unmistakable to any citizen of Anmerresh, a visible reminder that it was the Veert who shaped the bedrock of Teluk’s history. Vysha wishes Rul could see warmlight, so that Sky Harvester could see them glowing with pride.

  Sky Harvester is quiet for a time. At last he ventures, “I can see you’ve put a lot of work into it. But, ah, I’m not quite sure what it’s supposed to be.”

  Vysha feels like they’ve swallowed polluted seawater. Sky Harvester doesn’t see it at all. “It’s the seastack of Traat,” Vysha says.

  “Ah, I see it now.” Sky Harvester places two pods against the concrete-hard surface as though to mollify Vysha. “It is perhaps unfinished?”

  Vysha sees the escape Sky Harvester is offering them. “It is unfinished,” they lie. But t
heir insides are churning. Vysha had thought the sculpture a perfect replica of Traat, been assured by those in their cohort to whom they’d shown the piece that it was accurate in every detail.

  “I don’t know what to add,” Vysha admits to the Rul.

  Pensive flickers cross his pods. “When I was sketching my design, I had to weigh accuracy against the emotional impact of the piece.” He bunches his pods in a Rul shrug. “The Terran and Coalition ships were not as close as I depicted them, but it was my way of emphasizing the element of conflict. You have to ask yourself what elements of your sculpture are most important. Those are the parts that should be the most visible.”

  Vysha thinks about this long after Sky Harvester has left the warehouse. They focused on the total image of Traat, the way any Veert would do. But to land-dweller eyes, the piece is still background lacking a foreground. It needs a last element to bring the whole thing into focus.

  Kilning

  Six cycles after Vysha showed Sky Harvester their incomplete draft, war engulfs the sky.

  Vysha stands on one of the exterior terraces of the seastack, bulb tilted upward in awe at the silent battle scarring the night. On the terraces around them, jostling for space, is what seems to be the entire population of Traat.

  The Terran and Coalition ships would be invisibly tiny even to Sky Harvester’s eyes as they battle around Ankarrh-6, Teluk’s largest moon. It’s their hyperkinetic ordnance lighting the sky, crashing through the vacuum in so many spectra that even the Veert, the blind, sheltered Veert, can perceive the energies surrounding them. Enclosing Anmerresh in a shining cage.

  The war for territory has never come this close to Teluk before. Vysha can smell the acrid fear of their cohort. Some flee down through the seastack to the warrens carved into Anmerresh’s bedrock, to weather the bombardment if the Terrans win.

  But many stay. Stalks rigid with tension, washed by scents exuding a cellular command to flee to the safety of the deep ocean, they stay and watch and hope. Vysha is among them, one bulb among hundreds turned to the sky.

  The slamming of the warehouse door jolts Vysha from torpor. They cringe at the stale taste of the saline in the palanquin; the water is hours old, in need of recycling. The battle still raged above when Vysha left the seastack. They did not retreat to the tunnels but to the upper city, to sculpt until their pads were numb and their skin blistering from the dry air. Their memories of last night feel less like an act of creation than one of purging: vomiting up their fear and helplessness in layers of spitstone—as though, through sheer production of biomass, Vysha could bury forever the vision of their people watching their lives and their future being decided by beings whose interests and whose world was not theirs.

  By the end of the night-cycle, the thought of ever secreting another cubic centimeter of spitstone made them nauseous and dizzy. Yet when they half fell into the palanquin at last, what Vysha felt most was exultation.

  Vysha has no idea what part of the cycle it is now, day or night. They only know they’re alive. Which means the impossible has happened.

  Sky Harvester skids to a stop as Vysha slithers free of the palanquin. The bioluminescent spots along his pods stutter in and out of the warmlight spectrum. The display is quicker than lightspeech—the Rul equivalent of hyperventilating in excitement.

  Vysha kicks their translator to life. “What happened? The battle…”

  “It’s over, Vysha.”

  “Then we lost.” But Vysha knows that’s wrong.

  “No. We won.” The Rul’s light display intensifies. “The Terran fleet has retreated from Ankarrh-6. The Council says that battle turned the tide. Within a few cycles at most, the Coalition will push the Terrans out of the system.”

  Vysha’s arms go limp with relief. But it is not an entirely happy feeling. They remember the hundreds of Veert gathered on the seastack of Traat—and no doubt on other seastacks around the planet—watching with eyes for once as good as any land-dweller’s as fire lanced through the sky. Watching and thinking of Veerthome, already so many light-years behind the border of the Expansion. This victory will not be without sorrow for the Veerten of Teluk, the peace not without cost.

  “I have… good news as well,” Vysha says. “My piece is complete.” Sky Harvester turns his pods toward the tarp-shrouded sculpture, seeming to notice it for the first time.

  “Ah. May I…” He grasps the tarp in a pod and starts to lift it away.

  “No!” Vysha says, a bit more loudly than they intend. Sky Harvester drops the tarp. “I wish to do the unveiling before the High Council. Today.”

  “Vysha, are you sure?” They can hear his hesitation behind the translator’s monotone.

  “What better time? The Council will be in a good mood. They just won their war.” If Sky Harvester hears the bitter seawater in Vysha’s tone, he says nothing.

  They hold the unveiling in the chambers of the old Open Council, an amphitheatre of stone that pleasantly absorbs and transmits the sun’s warmlight wavelengths. It appears as a series of concentric rings to Vysha’s eyes.

  And Vysha is in the center of it.

  The Open Council chambers have accommodations for all Teluk’s citizens: Vysha basks gratefully in a pool of seawater pumped in for their comfort. Around them gather Vysha’s entire cohort, their stalks radiating warm encouragement and soothing Vysha’s nerves.

  They very much need the reassurance, because on the level directly above them lounge two bored councilors, both Baskar, munching marine delicacies and chatting in soundspeech. Vysha’s unveiling is clearly an amusement to them, a pleasant distraction before their return to important matters.

  But Vysha is patient, as the Veert have learned to be. They wait for a lull in the sounds of chewing and conversation, then give a simulated cough. “May I begin?”

  “In a moment,” one of the Baskar says. “We’re awaiting our--” A pause. “Our colleague.”

  Vysha understands that pause when an aide opens a door on the second level and admits a palanquin. “Councilor Basalt has arrived,” the aide announces.

  The palanquin assumes a place beside the Baskar councilors, and its central pane goes transparent. To land-dweller eyes, the Veert inside must look like any other, but to Vysha, their warmlight signature is unmistakable.

  Hello, Little Pebble, Basalt transmits in the pulses that, of those in the room, only Vysha and their cohort can understand. Vysha senses good humor in Basalt’s use of their nickname, and underneath it, satisfaction.

  Councilor. Vysha coils their tendrils in a respectful gesture, unable to hide the surprise in the word.

  Since a few days ago, Basalt answers Vysha’s untransmitted question. I met with the Council to bring forward Traat’s concerns about the treaty violation. Their transmission turned sly. I may have suggested how embarrassing it would be for this Council were that violation to become public knowledge. Fortunately, the Council suggested an amicable solution by offering me this seat among them, and you the chance to present your commission.

  Basalt switches to their translator, addressing the other councilors. “Shall we see what Traat’s first artist has produced?”

  “You may present your artwork,” says one of the Baskar councilors a bit stiffly. “Though I would like to reiterate that the Council is under no obligation to accept a non-commissioned piece. Particularly a piece whose, ah, style may not be congruent with the rest of the commissions.”

  A polite way of saying how little they expect from a Veerten artist. Again Vysha feels that quick flash of anger—but something stronger has crept in underneath it. A desire to prove them wrong.

  Go on, Basalt transmits, warmlight words meant only for Vysha and their cohort. We want to see it.

  Vysha nods their sensory bulb toward Sky Harvester, standing next to the veiled piece. The Rul whips away the tarp.

  With the Baskar councilors’ first surprised intake of breath, Vysha knows they’ve won. For a breath-cy
cle, Vysha indulges themself—imagines what it would be like to see the piece with eyes for the first time. The sculpture is a massive pillar of hardened spitstone, lacquered to a dull sheen and pitted with the holes of windows. That alone would make for an impressive sculpture. But the thing that makes its image unmistakable, the thing that will make it the seastack of Traat in the eyes of Veerten and land-dwellers alike, is the final element Vysha added last night-cycle.

  Tiny Veert cluster around the mouth of every window and cling to every ledge of the miniature seastack, sensory bulbs tilted toward the sky as they watch the battle raging above them. Seeing out the peril that faced all of Teluk’s citizens. And being seen by them.

  After a moment of very satisfying silence, the righthand Baskar councilor asks, “What do you call this piece?”

  “I call it The Children of Traat Look Upward with Regret.” But that doesn’t sound quite right. A last element is still missing. “And With Hope.”