Action Plays and Power Players

Just came back from that ballet. It was quite a bit different from the one I went to when I first got to Kesata. It started out with the Storyteller like the other one, but once we got into the play there were a lot of holographic images and lights and even fireworks (in the underwater stages, no less). I'm didn't get the story very well, the dancing was quite fast and confused and the yela'kaja couldn't keep up with the translation -- something about a group of terrorists trying to sink one of those big Kesatan deep-sea cities. Meanwhile, I was surrounded by Kesatan diplomats who seemed to be enjoying themselves a bit, though most of them were quite old. Their feelers kept twitching and their hands would slap at the walls.

The yela'kaja later explained to me that there were two major modes to Kesatan ballet, traditional mode and modern mode. Traditional was what I saw when I first got to the planet, with set pieces of all natural materials and very few big effects. Modern is what would describe the play I just came from, lots of lights and pyrotechnics and some applications of Xala technology that I hadn't yet seen, like force-fields formed into giant holograms.

Anyway, the Kesatan diplomats went for a soak after the ballet (they'd started to dry out spending the whole play in the air-breather areas with me), and then they came back and started talking to me. I'd already had the introductions before the play, but apparently they wanted to do small talk. I think there were some Kesatan reporters there with something that looked like a camera along with a little Xala device that puts writing up on a force-field screen in front of you (though I couldn't read the writing, of course. I think it was Kesatan.) They asked me a couple of stupid questions like "Do you like it here on Kesata?" (something every one of the diplomats asked me, as well.) and "Do you thing your planet will soon join the trade network?" How am I supposed to know whether my planet is going to join the trade network? I don't even know if the most powerful leader. But I guess that's how things go.

Pretty soon I'll be heading out for the next planet. The Xala call it Lasga. All I know about it is it's cool and dark and it's possible I might be incessantly annoyed by clicking sounds if my hearing goes up high enough to hear it (the Xala haven't tested that part of my anatomy completely). Anyway, my next blog is likely to be from there, if I can get a light to work.

Anyway, after the ballet was over

My Little Entourage

As I guess you might expect, any time I get to walking around in a lot of the areas on this planet, I tend to get a trail of little Kesatans, lots of them barely xasedê following me like and entourage. The older ones sometimes get a bit curious, too, though most have them have seen an alien at at least once before (not a human, of course, but the Xala use the same routes whenever they take a new alien delegation to Kesata or just about any other planet in their network).

Kesata's a big contrast from what I experienced on Jed. There, the most curious of anyone were the Ŋãna, and I travelled long enough with them that they eventually just got used to me. Xala, on Kesata and on Jed, usually don't seem to care about me, unless they're yela'kaja. Even the Kesatans I met while touring Jed seemed to see me more as an annoyance than as an interesting new alien. Of course I can explain that last part, as the Kesatans that come to talk to me that have any experience with Kesatan diplomats describe them as kind of stuffy, upper-class types that live away from the other Kesatans either on islands closer to the Xala gâ'axao stations or in the central parts of some of these deep-ocean cities (like Kesatan City 32, in fact, where I'm told the central cylinder houses the offices of some regional council or something, despite the fact that, as I understand, this place only houses a few thousand people).

Anyway, to get back to what I was talking about, I've developed a bit of an entourage here, as well. All these little Kesatans, most of them really young, ask me all sorts of silly questions, via interpreter of course. One of them asked me about "villages" on Earth, and when I said that lots of humans live far away from the ocean on the interiors of the continents, he croaked and backed away, signing something that the yela'kaja told me meant "How do you not dry up?" Needless to say, I figure that whenever he visits the larger islands, that's what the adults tell him to keep him from going far from the shore, for good reason. Kesatans really can "dry up" and die if they don't have seawater.

Anyway, I do enjoy the attention, though my bodyguards often seem nervous about it. And of course, I can get away from the group if I wish, my quarters here are isolated and secured so no one can get in -- not that I think the Xala's security precautions are really needed in the first place.

Real Food

The Xala have tested some Kesatan food and managed to find some stuff I can eat. Now granted, they eat a lot of raw fish and sea food dressed with various seaweeds and such, but all that's better than those Xala powerbars every day. In fact it's really not so bad. Apparently the Kesatans are very good at cultivating and breeding. They serve everything with a combination of sea plants and spices they get from the land, even some fruit they grow on the coasts. The seaweed is a bit salty, usually, but they actually grow some mushrooms that are quite sweet. Besides that, I always liked crab a good bit, and they have some crustaceans that taste pretty much exactly like it.

Kesatans are apparently quite famous for their food. They've developed various recipes that are keyed to different species' tastes and physiology, but my yela'kajas tell me that they all have the same kinds of flavors (and their strong stomachs can handle most varieties, so they've tried a few). Yes, the Xala here eat the Kesatan stuff once in a while. Apparently they've grown accustomed to the stuff, though they usually have a Xala variety that goes light on the veggies and heavy on the fish -- yela'kaja can learn to like vegetables and fruit, but regular Xala are all carnivores. From what I hear, the fact that Xala even tolerate spices once in a while is a departure from the culture on Jed.

All this said, the Xala are watching me pretty closely after I eat Kesatan food. They assure me that they've found nothing in the stuff that they're giving me that would poison me, but they want to be cautious. As far as I'm concerned, nothing has had an ill effect so far. Kesatan food's probably good for any human that doesn't have a seafood allergy.

Kesatan Ballet

Been a while since my last post, and there are reasons for that. My laptop has been doing strange things, so I had to get that fixed. Plus, we've been very busy touring all the little islands that dot this planet. It's a very interesting place, no doubt. I saw that dance a little while ago, but it didn't tell me anything new. I took some notes so I could describe it:

Kesatan "ballets", as the yela'kaja called them, begin regularly at sunset in an outdoor theater above water with a single dancer, who the yela'kaja calls the Storyteller. (The Kesatan sign for him, I'm told, comes from a sign meaning "to tell" or "to teach".) He basically does a long dance that invokes some sort of water spirit and then sets up the whole story for us. This particular story follows a young Kesatan who witnessed the first contact with the Xala and went to warn the elders about it.

Before I go on, I need to tell you a little bit about this theater. You see, the whole building, which seems to be a combination of the dull metallic architecture of the Xala with the incorporation of some very artistic structures made of stone and some sort of coral that most definitely comes from the Kesatans, is built both above and below water. The audience is actually expected to follow the action both above and below water by circling around when it moves from one location to another. That, of course, means that there are actually very few seats in the entire building, and to get a good view you often have to jostle around in the crowd. Luckily, there weren't a whole lot of other land-dwellers watching, just a few Xala and a couple delegations from some other planets that I unfortunately don't know much about yet, one species that looked a bit like an upright-walking feathered lizard and some really pale creatures with some fuzzy hair and no visible eyes (they didn't go underwater as much, and I don't think they appreciated the play to much, either).

As you've probably guessed, the underwater section is separated between a truly underwater experience for the Kesatans and any other species that has gills and can deal with the Kesatan ocean, and an upper section that is protected by force-fields and pressurized for those of us who rely only on our lungs. I don't know how they keep the water clear as it is, as a lot of the underwater dances get pretty vigorous and involve quite a few performers.

I was very surprised by how well the show was done. I couldn't understand a single thing without my yela'kaja interpreter there beside me, but I did like some of the numbers. The only music in these dances comes from some various sizes of drums, all tuned specially so that they can be played with certain pitches in and out of water. I think there was actually one drum that was partially filled with water, and they'd turn it really quick to make a "thump" of water rushing from one end to the other.

Kesatans are good with costumes, too. Their Xala costumes were kind of artsy, but they definitely didn't look like the Kesatans inside them. For a while I wondered if there were Xala in the play, but they only "flew" in the underwater dances, so I really doubt it. There were also a lot of set pieces that I think are supposed to be Xala war machines, with lighting effects and some sounds from the drums. The yela'kaja actually showed me one afterward and showed me how it was made. All of the props are made from that coral material, with some metal plating and some dyes added where necessary. The lighting effects were the real interesting part. they use trained bio-luminescent fish that can actually swim out fast enough to look like an energy bolt firing at someone. The only thing the Xala provide for most of the props is the metal and some levitation crystals for easier transportation (which probably isn't all that necessary, as the coral stuff is pretty light underwater.

Anyway, as I said, the play followed a young, and probably fictional, Kesatan who saw the Xala coming and went to warn the elders, but they ignored him, thinking it was just a fantasy. Then it goes all the way up through the Xala civil war, showing mostly battles fought on Kesata, and a few on Jed, which seemed to be thousands of cloned Xala against a smaller number of the Je'e Edag group with some powerful bombs and weapons. Eventually the cloned Xala kill the leader of Je'e Edag and apparently annihilate or banish the rest of the group, liberating protecting the Kesatans from certain extinction. I figure the whole story has been pretty romanticized, but its still another view on it.

I can see that I've already got a really long post here, so I'll save a little bit about my little island-hopping here for the next one.