Cary Neeper--Writings
© 2002 Carolyn A. Neeper

Chapter 1. Doubts Over High Storms

Like a banded agate, Jupiter shone in the blackness of space, its image slowly expanding to fill Conn's view from the flight deck of the Elll-Varok interplanetary cruiser, Lurlial. His black, poker-chip eyes moved systematically over the instruments as he prepared the cruiser for entry into Jupiter’s maelstrom. Rushes of orange and yellow, wider than planets, swirled below. Cautiously, he brought the Lurlial around a vicious white boil. The brow plumes that framed his sonic melons stiffened with tension until the ship settled into a quiet path over the violent rivers of color.

Conn was an elll, with vision that extended far into the infrared. He wondered what colors his human soul-sister, Tandra, and her daughter, Shawne, were seeing, wondered what they were feeling. It was far too late to go back to Earth. All that mattered now was landing his human family safely on Varok, one of Jupiter's hidden moons, nestled warmly in a quiet pocket of oxygen beneath the screaming hurricanes of the upper atmosphere.

Illuminated like a glow discharge tube with Jovian auroras and continuous sheets of lightning, Varok represented to Conn the ultimate paradox as a complex system. The planet and its collection of intelligent life forms were as steady and true as the storms that hid them, yet just as unpredictable. Varok would provide many strange attractors for the changing lives of their mixed family.

Time slowed to a crawl as the Great Red Spot moved into view. A whirling mad eye of reds and brown, yellows and orange, its northern lid boiled with vicious white cancers. Its baleful glance sent a shiver of anticipation through everyone on the ship: humans, ellls, and varoks alike.

From the pilot's seat, the elll nodded to his life-partner sitting next to him, the varok, Orram, then he waited until Orram’s patch organs tuned in to his channels of logic. Catching Conn’s thoughts as they flew the storm, Orram would be able to react instantly with the adjustments the elll wanted.

The varok locked out the orbital maneuvering system, and the elll took control. His mouth broke into a grin that spread from one side of his triangular face to the other, and his tongue reached up to wet the gills lining his trapezoidal nose. "Aee-yulll!" he sang out, and the ship plunged downward toward the Great Red Spot.


(Excerpt from Chapter 5. Ahlork on the Ahlkahn)

"What strange looking birds," I said.

The nearest ahlork was a large female. Under converging brow ridges, her armored, square face carried a lippy sneer, punctuated by two tiny black eyes.

"Better not call them birds," Orram said.

He waved them an invitation, and the two ahlork flew to the ceiling. With a clatter of broad, plated wings, they came toward us, swooping low over two elder varoks sitting nearby. One grimaced and ducked ever so slightly in revulsion. The ahlork noticed the reaction, circled, and made another pass over them.

I felt an uncontrollable surge of mirth. Orram warned me to stifle it, but one of the ahlork had already seen my wavering smile. He flapped toward me and sat on my head, then peered down into my tear-filled eyes, and I burst into laughter.

"You are nothing more than an elll, with all that shaking and grimacing, First-Human-Being-On-Varok," the ahlork said in abbreviated Varokian. His flapping lower lip was distorted by a long scar that gave him a permanent questioning leer. "We made you cry, I fear."

I answered in Elllonian, trying to remember the ahlork manners Orram had taught me. "I cry for you, plated one," I choked, "but not out of sadness." I spoke with some difficulty, for the scene played too vividly in my mind: this ridiculous, clumsy creature careening over the crowd of immaculate varoks with his implied threat.

"Please get off my head," I managed to say. "You are very heavy." With that I burst into another volley of chuckles that gave me some relief.

Although he had tried to retreat from my mind, Orram watched my reaction with amusement.

"Get off my human, Nidok!" Conn bellowed.

"It's all right, Conn," I laughed, though the ahlork's talons were beginning to dig sharply into my head.

"You are not half mad as varoks." The ahlork standing on the floor before me spoke in a voice like broken foam. "Surely Earth is not such a heap of ruins. Why have you come to Varok?"


"I brought my child here for her health, so I could live without stress, with a future, in safety. Basic rights are protected by law here. No one, not even ahlork, may foul her drinking water and get away with it. Right?"

"Ouch! Too serious, Tan," Conn said.

"Wrong!" Nidok croaked, rising off my head with a dig of his talons. "I foul your stringy hair if I like, and I come from L'orkah to nip the ears of your child whenever I please!" The ahlork flapped noisily toward the rear of the coach where Killah held Shawne, wide-eyed and huddling in his arms.

"Stay away from that child, Nidok!" Conn warned. He dove through the maze of coach seats after the ahlork, startling passengers as he went.

"You won't stop me! Conn-Who-Gives-Ahlork-Their-Names," the scarred ahlork called.

With that, Conn leapt up and grabbed the ahlork by a wing-tip. He shouted a stern command in the ahlork language, and Nidok jerked his wing aside, throwing Conn roughly against the coach wall.

As Killah ducked away with Shawne, Conn looked for another vulnerable spot in the beast's well-shielded body. With a grab that locked the ahlork's chitinous wings to his body, he pulled Nidok to the floor.

"Mind your manners, Lop-lip," Conn hissed in English. "Stay back! They're drunk!" he called out to Orram.

Conn's announcement brought several varoks to their feet. They converged on the female, easily subdued her, and tossed her out of the coach to fly free of the train. Meanwhile, Nidok struggled in Conn's arms, leaving the elll's moss tiles painfully engraved before he broke loose with a grotesque roar.

Conn ducked to protect his face, then, with all his strength, he rammed into the exposed body, throwing the ahlork toward the open coach door. I gasped as its wings flexed into a lethal array of chitinous plates.

"Good point! Good point! I give you that one," the ahlork laughed.


(Excerpt from Chapter 13. Mind-Block)
He moved on less cautiously, into Mahntik's early years as a student growing up in Viorlegh. There he found an intense pocket of anger. It drew him like a magnet. He saw Mahntik's sister: a neighbor had given the sister new cloth in exchange for her work. Mahntik wanted it. She should have it. It would set off more beautifully the lights in her hair. She would have it! The anger rose to a fury, mindless--

Suddenly, as if he had been struck, Gitahl recoiled from Mahntik.

"What is wrong, Gitahl?"

"I'm not sure. I feel as if something has fallen between us. It nearly crushed my mind."

"There is nothing between us now. Try again. You were entering my childhood memories--a quarrel with my sister."

Gitahl lay close to Mahntik and touched his patches as if to steady them. "I'll start again by reading your mood, while you think of the incident that made you angry. Then I'll see if I can follow your memory to its source. I think we have found a way to begin our consummation, Mahntik."


She thought of the quarrel with her sister, the cruel things that were said so many Callisto cycles past--and she felt Gitahl enter her memory. It was pleasant. She could feel his sympathy like a gentle caress, far more pleasant than touch. Perhaps she really should become one with him. She was lonely enough--and he was clever. He would know when to leave her alone and when to be by her side.

As she relaxed the portals of her mind, she felt him sink past specific memory to the raw edge of feeling where motivation had roots. He touched jealousy for her sister and was groping toward the murderous hate that had sent her flying with a laser knife at her sister's eyes--when suddenly, again, she slammed shut the window of her mind.


"Aee-e-e-e! Mahntik! You will destroy me!" Gitahl rolled away from her, writhing in agony.

She laughed a terrible laugh. "You see my talent, Gitahl? You see? I am no simple varok!"


(Excerpt from Chapter 17. Sudden Death)
"The message will soon be complete," Orram told me. "He is suggesting nothing less than the demise of Varok's second civilization: not through ignorance and greed, but through some corrupt influence, some cancer that will eat at the heart and threaten the soul of Varokian society. I can no longer deny such an interpretation."

He looked around the theater. "Where is Conn? I need to watch his mind during Leyoon's climax."

It was common for the great-fish to suggest a theme and then clearly define their message in the last moments. Usually there was a surprise, a new fact or even a reversal of previously accepted truth, something that set the lesson and stimulated thought. If one could get outside of the details, grasp the general drift, the total effect, then the conclusion would be obvious.

Orram waited. Where was the conclusion, the accusation? Leyoon's dance had become labored and slow.

Suddenly the great-fish lurched and twisted. His triangular body fought for relief from some indefinable agony--and then his fins went limp, and he drifted to the bottom of the ocean floor.

Orram ran to the crystal barrier and watched helplessly as Leyoon settled into the soft sea earth. I followed, and saw one dimming light-sensor fix on Orram's face, demanding, pleading--then it went out, but an insistent mental whisper flooded my mind.

Varoks and ellls were on their feet, stunned. Within the globe, great-fish and light-hoppers gathered around Leyoon's body and carried it into the depths of the sea.

Orram clutched at his patches, fighting for control. I managed to hold him to rationality, as together we stared through the crystal into the barren waters.

The audience slowly filtered out of the theater, and still no great-fish came to us. Reluctantly we turned away from the crystal and made out way through the deserted perches and moss water-seats toward the cavern entrance, where we expected to find Conn waiting for us.


(Excerpt from Chapter 27. New Ties, More Surprises)
"I wouldn't put much faith in great-fish prophecies." Mahntik rose from the hearth with a flourish and paced around it. "The last great-fish performance was obviously over-dramatized. Leyoon took himself too seriously. I suspect he was senile."

"The counterbalancing of the Gurahn was carefully planned. Leyoon was no fool."

"But he was arrogant. His success in influencing varokian thought had set his organs. He was too impressed with his own viewpoint. His play was a clever reinterpretation of history."

"So you think the performance was a reenactment of Varokian history?"

"Of course. You do not?" As Mahntik laughed behind her mind-block, she surveyed Orram's thoughts. He was openly puzzled by her coolness. She knew that his patches couldn't find the hint of disdain that her expression betrayed. Her voice was elegant, cushioning the edges of syllables that most varoks struck harshly, but where was her mood? She was not easy to read.

Good.

She rose from the hearth and moved close to him. "I want you to stay on L'orkah for several more light-periods." She made her longing blatantly visible in her mind. "Will you stay here? We can work on the ahlork problem together. Make this your home while you are on L'orkah. Help me decide how to help Orlah. I see we can never be one, but he does not."

Mahntik saw how her feigned sorrow drew him in. She openly admired his magnificent lean body and was about to scan his mind, when he turned away. He seemed to be nearly overcome with grief for Conn.


(Excerpt from Chapter 28. Variation on a Celebration)
Nidok stared across the long sweep of naked cliffs that rose from the Misted Ocean. Here many ahlork still lived as their ancestors had lived, hiding their broods away in deep caves, choosing not to nest in the ruins like rootless scavengers. "Yes," he said, "Nidok is a fool. But is he no part of the fools' Greater Flock."

Conn had never heard an ahlork speak so seriously. For a moment he felt ashamed of his insult, then he realized that the beast had not been insulted. He had simply agreed. "You do not like the alliance of the Greater Flock with Mahntik?" Conn asked. "Is that it?"

Nidok's square face came around and his great lip stretched into a queer sort of grin. "The True Flock forms no alliances. It is in this cave, pampering ellls!" The ahlork's wings scraped the ground as he jumped down from his perch and stood before Conn. "It is Sartak who flies with a sour name. Call him fool, Conn! He has forgotten the True Flock."

Nidok rummaged along the shelves etched into the rock and presented the elll with a wing-plate piled with potent berries. "Eat!" he insisted. "Your first insult is not wasted on me. The re-dominion of ahlork is begun--here!--now!!"

Conn watched Nidok with anxious eyes, knowing that the beast had come to some decision. His plans were far too important to be entrusted to an elll, one who might yet fall into the wrong hands. So, what the hell, Conn laughed to himself. Might as well put on a good berry-stupor with the clatter-plated chap.

He scooped up a pile of berries from Nidok's wing-plate and stuffed them into his mouth. "Down the hatch, Cave Buddy. Here's to ahlork! May their nests ring forever with praise for the courage of Nidok!"

"May their wing-plates crackle with the name of Sartak, enemy of the True Flock." Nidok bellowed in muscular tones, and his greater lip wrapped around a substantial heap of berries.

"The True Flock flies forever!" Conn sang out. "May its droppings find Mahntik's long hair!"

Nidok laughed heartily, and he lumbered off to fill a large skin with berries. He settled on the edge of the pool, while Conn lowered himself back into the water. The berries disappeared at a great rate.

The elll and the ahlork continued making toasts, while their mouths grew thick with the berries' acrid taste and their minds grew loose and careless with its drug. Before the dark-period was half over, they were wallowing in exaggerated emotions, verbosely grateful to each other for saving lives and flock.

"I don't know how to pet an ahlork," Conn said drunkenly, looking for a soft spot to vent his inflated affection on Nidok. "If you were a dog I would pat your head. If you were a varok, I'd give you a spiral salute--a human, I'd kiss your fat broken lip. You're the most unlovable piece of walking crockery in this solar system, Nidok. Frustrating! How can I thank you for saving my life?"

"You do this," Nidok said, leaning so close to Conn that his greater lip stirred the elll's head plumes as he spoke. "You tell everyone you meet...that Nidok holds the ancient honor of ahlork on his wing-tips. All varok must know! The restoration of the ahlork to the councils of Varok begins...with Nidok of Leahnyahorkah and none else. The true Flock flies with Nidok!"

In spite of his drunkenness, Conn sat back, flabbergasted at Nidok's pronouncement. "All right," he murmured, "all right." He could think of nothing else to say, so he curled up in the cave's pond and went to sleep.