Transpecial: Haniyar

The third major character in Transpecial is the ky'iin neuter Haniyar.

Ict (the third gender pronoun I and my editor chose to use for this book) is an experienced career diplomat who has dealt with aliens before...in a somewhat limited fashion. Ict also happens to be the "nephew" of the task force commander. Ky'iin don't have the same worries about nepotism that we do.

Haniyar's background is kept somewhat quiet in the book. Ict has a brother and two sisters (not mentioned), and his brother has fathered two clutches. Ict's not that much younger than his aunt - this can happen often enough in humans, after all.

Ict is a good person. In many ways, ict is less complicated than Warren and even Suza. Ict has devoted his life to maintaining peace between the ky'iin and their neighbors. Now, ict faces the challenge of dealing with an alien race both similar to and hauntingly different from the ky'iin. An alien race that apparently fired on them unprovoked.

Ict's biggest concern is to establish whether the aliens have "myoran" or "true wisdom" - the factor that to the ky'iin distinguishes true sentients from animals. Myoran is the ability to transcend one's biology, overcome one's prejudices, to create art, and to seek knowledge for the sake of it - all qualities we tend to consider to be the height of being "human."

I've said before, although not in this blog, that any alien race's name for itself would, if run through the Star Trek universal translator, end up as "human." For convenience, we would probably use world of origin - or simply not translate that name. Ky'iin and human are the same word...and that might be something worth remembering if we ever do come into contact with aliens.