theurgy fogging up his screen.” She smiled, switching the camera off with a tap. He noticeably jumped before standing up, eyes now flickering rapidly between the both of them. “It just says on the bottom ‘speak here’ and I assumed...” He trailed off. “Are you quite sure...” he mumbled, beginning to wring his sun-darkened hands. Something flashed onto Benj’s screen, out of her line of sight, but it must have been reassuring since he immediately stopped fidgeting and managed to train his gaze on her for more than a few jittery seconds. “You’re here for the Test, then.” It hadn’t been a question, but she answered as brightly as she was able in the scorching heat and while coated in at least several inches of sand. “Actually, I’d just started on it. Infrastructure (transport) and (construction) with a little of Artistic Faculty (architecture).” The parentheses were very important in the Test. The capital letter less so, but it had stuck. It was apparently the wrong thing to say, however cheerfully, because he instantly resumed fidgeting and locked his eyes firmly on the ground. Sighing wearily, he offered to take the two of them to the official government outpost, and after turning her cheer back on long enough to explain the situation with the rover to him she agreed. Mostly novels, but I have made some attempts at poetry. I had little success, though I suspect this to be the result of cultural differences. Unfortunately, many of my kind are still illiterate, since it is such an alien practice to grasp, so the majority of my audience are Animal and mobile. Faya leaned forward attentively in his chair. “But it must be very gratifying to find success outside of your own people, surely? To be accepted by other species as an artist.” He glanced at Sul, whose eyes where rapidly darting and blinking at her lenses, “well, it must make you very proud.” Must it? The screen went blank for a few seconds, then continued. Value tied primarily to how other’s perceive the artist as ‘legitimate’ is valid only to those observers, presumably? The man laughed, though it was uneasy. They were sat at the smaller desk in the already cramped room, Faya having offered Sul the larger when she announced that it was time to compile her two days worth of findings. The office was built from the same mud-and-grass material as the rest of the town but the inside had been painted a deep red, presumably by the supervisor since there did not appear to be any other Test-certified staff on the planet. They were surrounded on all sides by various cabinets and shelves stuffed with everything from electronic books of sense-compiled data to wispy sheaves of paper that, Faya had brightly and repeatedly stated, were made by the locals using quite sophisticated mills. The interior was pleasantly cool, but had no windows, leaving Benjamin relying on the little strands of ultraviolet-lightwire twined around his branches to avoid falling into stasis. The pale glow he emitted was not quite washed away by the light from the gas torch hanging from the ceiling, painting the room’s inhabitants in flickering
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