Ollune Marker of the crossing for a shoal of Freyari, Cirrane — the one whose near word is the decision to cross a shear layer Active

Ilyare

ollune
cirrane
freyari
vantine-system
federation-of-sentient-beings
near-word
shear
civilian

Ilyare is an Ollune of Freyari, the band of habitable air around Cirrane, and the person in their shoal whose near word is the decision to cross a shear layer. The glossary entry gives the office in one sentence: a shoal passing through shear fills the band with far-word hazard calls from anyone who feels the drift go wrong, none of which binds anyone, and the decision to cross is a near word, marked by a named individual, that will still be readable years afterwards. For Ilyare's shoal the named individual is Ilyare. The record names no Ollune before them, and nothing on the people's page makes them unusual among the people; every shoal that crosses has someone whose mark the crossing is, and the Archive has no reason to call Ilyare the first of anything.

The name is the Federation record's rendering of the far-word call by which the shoal calls them, a low-frequency pressure sound spelled as the survey's instruments render it into something a human can say. The far word carries no speaker's identity, so the call is a name only in the sense that everyone in the band knows whom it means. What identifies Ilyare to the people who hold them is the near word, the chemical signature of their own body, which the record cannot reproduce on a page and does not try to. Whether an Ollune name is given or taken, and what the call would mean to the body drifting beside them, the record does not state. The pronoun is the people's page's own usage of an Ollune: they.

Known History

Born in Freyari, in a shoal of a band the record does not name, and held unconscious by others every night since, as every Ollune alive has been. The Federation record lists the shoal by depth, bearing and phase from the Long Eye, and the Archive does not reproduce the notation: a position with no time attached fails to denote one, and the time has passed.
Marker of the crossing for that shoal. The near word that is a decision to cross a shear layer is Ilyare's, and has been for some number of crossings the record does not count. Each mark is a durable chemical object attributable to Ilyare's body, readable by anyone close enough, and still readable years afterwards; the earliest of them are older than some of the people who sleep tethered to Ilyare now.
Party to at least one agreement between their shoal and a shoal in an adjacent band that was constituted by carriage: near words moved across the shear in an afternoon by a courier under power, between parties who would otherwise have had a few hours every several years. Which carrier, and what the agreement settled, the record does not say. The Ollune have no concept of a confidential agreement, so the terms are readable by anyone holding station beside Ilyare; the record simply has not been there.
Not one of the handful of Ollune who travel. Ilyare has never been in a Federation pressure hull and has never been set down. Present in Freyari in 2826 UCSD, and the record places them nowhere else.

The Work

A shear layer between bands is the most dangerous environment the Ollune routinely enter, and crossing one is a serious undertaking rather than a journey: the air on the far side is moving at hundreds of metres per second relative to the air on this one, and a body that is mostly envelope goes into that or does not. The decision to go is not made by a council and not made by the band. The far word cannot make it, since nothing said in the far channel binds anyone, and a decision nobody is bound by is not a decision. So it is made by one body, in the near word, and the mark is the decision: a thing Ilyare's body produced, that says cross, that anyone drifting beside Ilyare can read, and that will be found and read again by people examining what was decided and by whom, years after the shear has been crossed or has not.

What the office asks is not courage in the sense a surface people means by it. The Ollune experience the deep-fear response in full, the people's page says; they live above a fall, permanently, and pay hourly not to take it, and an alarm that costs the raiser nothing is an alarm nobody suppresses. So the band in the hours before a crossing is loud, and Ilyare's part is to hear all of it and owe none of it an answer. No caller has said anything they can be held to. Nobody has accused Ilyare of anything, volunteered for anything, or taken anything on. What Ilyare does with the far word is what everyone does with it, which is use it freely. What Ilyare does with the near word is the office, and it is done slowly, as the near word is composed slowly, at close range, with whoever has consented to hold station beside them while it is made.

The one offence the Ollune rank as grave is a false near word, and an office that consists of near words is an office held entirely inside that rule. The record does not say whether any mark of Ilyare's has ever been read back against the crossing it decided. It says only that the marks are still there, and that the Ollune keep them.

What Ilyare Cannot Do

Be held to anything they have said. Keep an agreement confidential, or see why anyone would want to. Set anything down, or rest unless carried. Reach a neighbour in their own band, however close, since everything in a band moves at the band's speed and never arrives. Name a place without saying when they will be at it. Be in the Federation assembly's room: the people's page says the Ollune delegate is generally not there, the position arriving by courier and read into the record by someone who is not Ollune, and Ilyare is not the delegate and has never been in any room at all.

Character Notes

The record holds Ilyare's manner from the Federation's own notes of the carriage, and it is the manner the people's page gives Ollune in dealings with other species: relaxed about what is said to them, to a degree that has alarmed visitors, and literal about what is marked. A courier who told Ilyare that the far side would hold was telling them nothing, and was not thought the worse of for it. A mark the courier carried that said the same thing was saying something, and whoever made it was answerable for it.

Ilyare's standing in the shoal is a claim on the lift of others, as every Ollune's is, and nobody's standing rests on never having needed the others. Ilyare has been carried through every night of their life and will be carried tonight. The people's page says the Ollune are very easy to romanticise, and that being told your body is somebody else's moral achievement wears thin by about the fourth occasion. Ilyare has been told it, by the Federation's own account of the carriage, at least once. What they said in reply was far word, binds nothing, and the record did not keep it.

The record gives Ilyare no age, since nothing on file says how long an Ollune lives, and no hold by name, since the people's page says a hold is eight to thirty and does not say who. It places them in Freyari in 2826 UCSD, in a band moving at its own speed, within near-word range of the people holding them, and nowhere else.

What the Record Does Not Carry

Ilyare's age, and the span of an Ollune life, neither stated anywhere. The shoal's name and its band, if a shoal has a name that is not an appointment. The hold's members. How a shoal's position on any assembly matter is arrived at before it is carried, which the record has not established; Ilyare is not said to have any part in it. The Ollune language beyond the handful of words the record renders, and the far-word call itself, which nothing recorded. Whether Ilyare has ever dealt with a Krenyi, or with a Ranger: the people's page gives the Star Rangers' courier role as the load-bearing member of Cirrane's economy, and the record has not placed a Ranger at Ilyare's shoal. Any chapter. The body, beyond what the people's page gives every Ollune: a broad, low, translucent gas bladder several metres across with a dark upper hide, a ring of filter-vanes beneath its rim and fine tendrils hanging from its centre; nothing on the record tells one Ollune from another by sight, and the page does not try.