Cary Neeper--Writings
© 2002 Carolyn A. Neeper

1. Varok

Shawne and I usually enjoyed our arguments, but this was different. She sat beside me on the deck of the house pond furiously kicking water at the ahl tree, and I could do nothing to improve her mood.

She was my human daughter—all right, my adopted human daughter—the child Tandra, Orram, and I had raised from age two, the new soul that had bonded to the off-beat lights in my glance from the first moment she ran into my arms and toyed with the mossy edges of my pressure plates and stole a stray plume that came loose with the quick yank of her baby hand. How could I disappoint her now, twenty-some-odd Earth-years later?

"Conn, I have to go to Ellason," she insisted. "I have to talk to the great-fish Haralahn."

I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did. "There’s no way, Shawnoon. We’d never get a ticket. Now that Ellason is close to perihelion, everyone on Varok wants to go out there."

"We’ll find a reason the council can’t refuse."

"I’m sorry, Love. It just isn’t going to happen."

"Why, Conn? Our work here is no excuse, yet. We’ve all written our reports about our trip to Earth. Varok can do without us for a while."

"Forget it, Shawne. We just got home."

"Please, Conn. I want you to show me where you grew legs. I want to experience your native planet."

"Well, I don’t…I guess." I hated to say it, especially to Shawne, but it was true right then. I didn’t want to go back to Ellason and face—what? Myself, I suppose—my wild elllonian nature, the part that runs free when water is huge and clear and alive with soft lights.

"I have to go there, Conn. I have to figure out what life is all about."

Shawne had that look in her eye, that unique human look that said, "Forget you’re an elll, Conn. Give it to me straight, soul to soul. No funny business."

Shawne—now a lovely human woman. She knew nothing about wild ellls. Those of us who made Varok our home were more or less civilized.

I avoided the yearning in her eyes—or was it some kind of pain? Something needed was missing, something my unconditional love couldn’t give her.

As Varok’s auroral light flooded the pool loft, it brushed her hair with gold and sent sparks of orange and white off tiny crystals embedded in the rock walls. It was good to be home in Orserah’s, house, listening to the pleasant murmur of Tandra’s voice downstairs at the hearth, feeling the warmth of Orram’s latest soup concoction settle in our bellies.

Ten Jovian years ago, Orserah’s grandparents (Orram’s great grandparents) had designed our house, set on the Oran family homestead beneath the most beautiful hills on Varok, to allow for the care and feeding of us student ellls. It was built around a huge old ironwood tree beside an outcropping of rock supporting the upper level. Spiraling stairs carved into the rock were tunneled out as a chimney for the fireplace and hearth below.

Now, rocks laced with seams of pink granite surround the deep, natural pond, creating a handy deck roofed with long ironwood branches that reach over the water. Feathery leaves dip into the water, a fair game for snacking. As a tad, our elllonian offspring, Stringer, could hang by his leg joints from one of the branches. My mate, Lanoll, had to stop him and Shawne from taking flying leaps over that branch.

Delicious pink and silver Ellasonian mosses grow from every rocky crack in Orserah’s house, brightening and softening the reds and browns of the granite and satisfying the gustatory cravings of the many elllonian visitors to the house.

I think red and brown in English translate to medium off-dim and rich-bright in Elllonian. Having evolved in water on a planet (Ellason) lit by moonlight, shore-pool lightning bugs, and deep-sea vents, we ellls see far into the infrared at the expense of what humans might call color.

We also see far along logical tracks of thought, but my instincts told me Shawne didn’t need logic right now. She needed soul-to-soul time, and I’m not sure I have one. We ellls are too loaded with sensory input to be very soulful.

Orram—now there’s a good solid soul for Shawne to talk to. Why was she trying to pin down the slippery thoughts of a moss-eating aquatic like me? True, Shawne and I were as close as a curly-headed primate and a be-plumed biped could be, but Orram is a varok. He breathes air much like Earth’s, and he has no optional gills to prevent him from escaping to muddy pond bottoms when human daughters come around with difficult questions.

He even looks the part for philosophical ruminations, with his planar face and probing blue eyes. His head of silver-streaked hair adds a distinguishing touch to a body as tall as mine. Superficially, he resembles a human who has been through a body fire, for his skin is smooth and hairless. He let his head hair grow to shoulder length when we went to Earth last year so it would hide his patch organs, the only feature not even vaguely similar to human features on casual surveillance. Normally, varoks have good sense, except when their thought-sensing patch organs behind their ears pick up too much static, or their emotions cut loose from their natural tethers and swamp their reason.

Then there is our Tandra. Maybe she should be the one to talk about the meaning of life with Shawne. She is Shawne’s adoptive mother, human, with a holistic view of things that goes beyond Orram’s common sense and my logic. I think her holistic views probably come from peering into a microscope half her life. In the microscope, she is plunged, visually, into different worlds that exist in parallel to our own medium-sized existence. It gives her a knowledge of things unseen and a faith that there is much much more to life than our nine senses (five for humans, six for varoks) can tell.

Tandra. Even more beautiful now than when Orram and I fell in love with her twenty-some years ago. Tandra came to our lab on Earth’s moon to check out any germs we might share before we indulged in extensive contact with each other. More infectious than the germs we shared, however, were the emotional fires we ignited between our three species. Complex brains can come up with anything—including emotions we can’t predict—hence we are very much alike. Chemistry is chemistry. We’re all made of the same stuff.


(Excerpt from Chapter 9. Daramonts, Light-hoppers, and Parents)

"While we talked, curious light-hoppers living in the ruins of Tahkin gathered around us. Thankfully, they kept their distance and their chatter to a low fizzle. Before dark, we saw two daramonts happily lopping toward us on the shore like big gray kangaroos on holiday.

"‘I’ll go back to the school and finish my farewell adjustments," Stringer told me. "I should be home before the next Callisto Cycle.’ He turned to the daramonts and gave each a web stalk from the pack I had stashed near the beach. ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said to them. ‘My human sister needs a ride over the mountains to Orserah’s house. Eat all you want there. The stalks are good. Then please come back to get me, here, in six light-periods.’

"‘Are you sure that’s enough time for you, Stringer?’ I shouldn’t have said anything, but my human emotions blurted it out ‘You’ll never see these ellls again, Stringer. They taught you everything you know about schooling.’

"His look stopped me cold. Ellls don’t grieve for things like death and final departure. I shouldn’t have rubbed it in. I don’t know how they do facial expressions, with eyes like saucers and frowzy plumed brows that don’t rise and fall like human eyebrows. I think the crease deepens beneath their pointed-ear-shaped sonic melons when they disapprove of something. I probably learned to read Conn’s face when I was being obnoxious as a three-year-old.

"‘I’ll be home in eight light-periods,’ Stringer said, always the diplomat. He backed through the gentle surf, dove, and disappeared. The last thing I saw were his wide, befinned toes slipping under a cresting wave.

"Now, writing this, I feel a little silly, but I had to indulge my quest. I asked the daramonts to sit down, have another web stalk, and tell me their thoughts about God. Of course, they didn’t recognize the word, so I tried Creator. No luck. Daramonts don’t create anything tangible—just racing strategies or faster, safer routes down the rocks of the Vahinorral.

"‘Source of life,’ I tried.

That was easy for them.

"‘Females,’ they indicated.

"‘Meaning. What is the meaning of your lives?’ It took me a while to translate that one for them, and all they could come up with was, ‘Good web stalks.’ Food. Conn would probably agree, in a zenfull sort of way.

"Meanwhile, the light-hoppers were going crazy, trying to get in on the philosophical (Hah!) discussion. I wouldn’t let them interfere. I needed to get into the daramont soul. It was pure, I thought, untouched by technology or training, not domesticated, not messed up by too much complexity. Everything daramonts do for ellls is strictly voluntary. No varok would try to constrain a daramont, or teach it anything. Varoks suggest, and only if an elll is nearby or has asked a favor.

"One last try: ‘Source of love, I asked, ‘like helping ellls. Why do you help ellls and their friends? Where does that love come from? Love for a colt, for a running buddy? Why? What is such love?

"Their answer surprised me. ‘Yes,’ they said with nods and suggestive snickers, ‘love is another word for God. Ask silly light-hoppers. They think they know all about it.’

"They turned into the ruins to graze on small tender plants and moss growing in the cracks of ancient polyphase synthetics, and I knew they were done with talking, such as it was—full of motioning and grunts and miming and a few repeated words.


(Excerpt from chapter 19. Conn’s Water)

"There’s a school of ellls coming in, Conn," Shawne said, standing up and pointing over my shoulder. "They gave me and Darak a good swim."

"Without drowning me!" Darak laughed.

"Where? When?" Raeral left his work in the rover to look out to sea.

"Is it your nursing school, Conn?" Shawne asked. "They wouldn’t say." She was very excited, poor thing.

"I can’t tell yet," I said. "I’ll swim out to meet them."

"Wait for me," Lanoll called, taking off behind me.

We cruised at a leisurely pace, sending out an ultrasonic ID and inviting the school to join us on shore.

Immediately, an answering welcome came back through the magical waters. Lanoll and I accelerated, and within minutes we were crashing and leaping and rolling, mating like dolphins, breaching the surface like wild ellls.

Wild. There was that thought again. What’s a wild elll? Moi? Lanoll? I guess so—in that moment. The school’s emotions washed over us and drowned our tacit monogamy, which we put aside as we found ourselves caught up in the nostalgic smells, pressure patterns and electro-fizz of my nursery school—the school that raised me from egg to tad, from long backfin to legs, from downy fuzz to adolescent plumes. We were captured by imprinting more subtle than memory. For the moment we were no longer loners. We dropped our wet sweaters and schooled. In short, we went wild. We lost our tameness to the ways of Varok and to the commitment to our mixed family. Was that what I really thought when I used the word wild? I guess so.


(Excerpt from Chapter 26. The Death of a Great-fish.)

"Before we begin our conversations bearing on your quest, Shawne," said the great-fish, "I must perform a duty for the elder who has given up her cave for us. Come with me if you like. Ihratohl has invited you to her death."

"Are you sure that’s what Oleyall meant?" Charley asked.

Before Shawne could repeat the question, Oleyall had answered it. Charley nodded.

"Your friend is very open, as open as Tandra," Oleyall said. "Come, Shawne. You alone are invited."


(Excerpt from Chapter 29. Stringer and Orram Missing)

Stringer assumed the northern school of lime-green ellls was taking him on a trip to the famous Life’s Heart, a wide rift in the planet’s crust, where sulfur had powered the first simple experiments in living entities on Ellason. It was a place of great beauty, where vast drifts of ancient, glowing microorganisms fed the voracious fields of whip lilies that reached this way and that in the warm currents. Their elongated funnels of succulent flesh lined with beckoning micro-paddles fascinated him. He wanted to spend more time there, but his tour guides refused him permission, and when he bid them farewell, they bound him with ahl vines and towed him north along a remote branch of Ellason’s intricate network of deep sea ridges.

Confused and disoriented by such treatment, Stringer protested, then struggled in panic, but his captors managed to lash him to a large ahl tree overlooking one of the lesser canyons. When he complained loudly, by calling out in long-range ultrasonics, two lime green ellls returned briefly to tie his face shut. They tied together his sonic melons, also, so he could not focus sound waves produced by the sonic generator behind his nasal gills. Since they were not into torture, they left his mouth and tongue free so he would be left with the life-joy of eating and drinking.

"You play rough," Stringer said. "Is this a game of homing ability? Find the newcomer? Is that it? I won’t show up on an ultrasonic scan next to this tree. You should have told me the rules. I would have stayed quiet so as not to help the seekers."

"That’s right. You will stay quiet," one of the ellls said. "Enjoy the view."

They swam off with no other explanation. Naïve, good sport that he was, Stringer relaxed onto his bonds and slept, expecting to be found by the seekers before the whip lilies on the cliff edges awoke and renewed their feeding dance.


(Excerpt from Chapter 30. In the City of Great-Fish)

Shawne looked behind her to where Oleyall’s tail fin pointed. Within the smooth petals of a huge flower, a varok knelt over an emaciated elll, offering him the last edible stalk from his bundle of web branches.

"Oh," she gasped. "I love this. Darak, look."

"Look well, then look over here," Oleyall said. "Here the elll saves the life of a drowning varok."

Shawne and Darak circled around the sculpture, which was larger than life, and came upon an ill-defined form attached to what had been the head of a great-fish torn open at the top.

"Good Harahn! What is this?" Darak asked.

"This is an expression of what is called a religious experience in English. Haralahn has won permission to revise it, to express the idea with less suggestion of violence."

"To rework it?" Charley was aghast. "Then its historical value will be lost."

"The ultrasonic archives have recorded it," I said. "Everything here is constantly being reworked."

"Creation is a process, not a single event, nor a single idea. That is the lesson of this gallery," Oleyall said.

"Or to phrase it in elllonian logic," I said, "arguments for the definition of God from cosmology or from moral imperatives, even from religious experience—the arguments themselves contain their own definition."

Charley added, "The human theologian Paul Tillich said that "…the question of the existence of God can neither be asked nor answered…[for]…God is being itself, not a being."

"Precisely the point," Oleyall agreed.

"You surprise me, Charley," I said, then wished I hadn’t.

"Conn, stop it," Shawne said.

Charley laughed, thank God, but Oleyall gave me a look that said it all: jealousy is unbecoming an elll. Of course he was right.

"The concept you are groping for, Shawne," Oleyall said, "may lie in your need to see that life has purpose or that values and existence have an ultimate point of reference. Could you be looking too far afield?"

"I don’t understand," Shawne said.

"You will, in time," Oleyall said. "It is said that one’s religion is not about analyzing, rationalizing, or believing concepts. It is about recognizing one’s deepest intuitions—a concept great-fish share with humans—recognizing instincts that shape your personal meaning and purpose."


(Excerpt from Chapter 46. Long rope and Short Tempers)

Allean was like an excited school girl at a prom, glowing with the chance to save Stringer. Too bad she didn’t use her brain instead of her hormones.

They managed to climb the chimney and pull themselves up to Nidok, but when they stood up over the blow hole to tie the rope around a large rock, they realized they were in full view of a school of ellls on a wide beach a few islands to the east.

Shawne whispered down the hole. "Stringer! The rope is secure. Can you pull yourself up? Hurry."

"Shawne, they’ve seen us," Allean said. "Some of the ellls are coming this way."

"Hurry, Stringer," Shawne called. "Nidok, go do something to keep the ellls busy."

"Heh heh," he gargled and took off. "My pleasure."

Stringer’s arms were as powerful as any elll’s, so climbing the rope was no problem, except for his finger and toe fins, which took a beating on the rough surfaces of rock and rope.

When he got to the top, Shawne and Allean smothered him with hugs and showered him with tears, then they panicked. "How do we get Haralahn out of there, Stringer? He’s huge."

"Show me the way down, my lovelies," Stringer smiled. "The master mechanic will open the boulder door. We can’t pull Haralahn up here. It would take all ten of us, and then he’d suffocate. Great-fish don’t have lungs, you know."

"I feet so stupid," Allean said. "I should have looked for the boulder mechanism when I first found you."

"We were busy…talking," Stringer said, kindly. "We didn’t think—I still don’t think the lock is accessible, to tell you the truth. The school doesn’t want the incubator found. There are hundreds of fertile eggs in there—far more than would replace Artalon’s school and the lime-greens combined."

"We’ve got to get it open, Stringer," Shawne said. "We can’t leave Haralahn in there."

"We might have to, for a while. He’s got plenty to eat, and the water circulation is adequate from cracks in the rock, but let’s give it a try."

They had just started down the rock chimney when three varoks suddenly appeared on top of the island thirty meters away.

"Dive," Allean commanded, and the three jumped off the cliff feet first, preferring to break legs instead of heads, if something went wrong with their aim.