Forty Thousand in Gehenna (24 page)

“They’re all about us,” he told the man, and the man started violently and batted at a flitter which chanced at that moment to land on his neck. The startlement made Jin laugh. “Listen,” Jin said, and squatted down, so the old man squatted too, and paid attention when he pointed across the water, among the trees. “Over there—across the water—that’s theirs. That’s theirs all the way to the salt water, as far as a man can walk. They’re smart, those calibans.”

“Some of you—live in there. I’ve heard so. Could I talk with one?”

Jin’s skin prickled up. He looked toward the safe side of the river, toward familiar things. “Tell you something, old born-man. You don’t talk to them. You don’t talk about them.”

“Bad people?”

Jin shrugged, not wanting to discuss it. “Want a caliban? I can whistle one.”

“They’re dangerous, aren’t they?”

“So’s everyone. Want one?” He did not wait, but gave out a low warble, knowing what it would do.

And very quickly, because he knew a guard had been watching all this tramping about near the mound, a caliban put its head up out of the brushy entrance and a good deal more of the caliban followed.

He heard a tiny sound by him, a whirring kind of thing. He shot out a hand at the machinery the man carried. “Don’t do that. Don’t make sounds.”

It stopped at once. “They pick that up.”

“You just don’t make sounds.”

“It’s
big”

Children said that, when they first saw the old browns. Jin pursed his lips again, amused. “Seen enough, old born-man. Beyond here’s his. And no arguing that.”

“But the ones—the humans—that go inside—Is it wrong to talk about that? Do you trade with them?”

He shook his head ever so slightly. “They live, that’s all. Eat fish.” Above them on the ridge the caliban raised its crest, flicked out a tongue. That was enough. “Time to move, born-man.”

“That’s a threat.”

“No. That’s wanting.” He heard something, knew with his ears what it was coming up in the brush, grabbed the born-man’s sleeve to take him away.

But the Weird crouched there, all long-haired and smeared with mud, head and shoulders above the brush.

And the born-man refused to move.

“Come on,” Jin said urgently. “Come on.” Out of the tail of his eye, in the river, a ripple was making its way toward them. The man made his machinery work once more, briefly. “There’s another one. There’s too many, born-man. Let’s move.”

He was relieved when the man lurched to his feet and came with him. Very quietly they hurried out of the place, but the old man turned and looked back when the splash announced the arrival of the swimmer on the shore.

“Would they attack?” the born-man asked.

“Sometimes they do and sometimes not.”

“The man back there—”

“They’re trouble, is all. Sometimes they’re trouble.”

The old man panted a little, making better speed with all his load.

“What do you want with calibans?” Jin asked.

“Curious,” the old man said. He made good time, the two of them going along at the same pace. “That’s following us.”

Jin tracked the old man’s glance at the river, saw the ripples. “That’s so.”

“I can hurry,” the old man offered.

“Not wise. Just walk.”

He kept an eye to it—and knowing calibans, to the woods as well. He imagined small sounds…or perhaps did not imagine them. But they ceased when they had come close to the curve of the river where the rest of the born-men waited.

They were nervous. They got up from sitting on their baggage and had their guns in their hands. Out in the river the ripples stopped, beyond the reeds, in the deep part.

“They’re there,” the old man said to the one in charge of the others. “Got some data. They’re stirred up some. Let’s be walking back.”

“Got a shirt owed me,” Jin reminded them, hands on hips, standing easy. But he reckoned not to be cheated.

“Hobbs.” The old man turned to the younger, and there was some ado while one of the men took off his shirt and passed it over. The old man gave it to Jin, who looked it over and found it sound enough. “Jin, I might like to talk with you. Might like you to come to the town and talk.”

“Ah.” Jin tucked his shirt under his arm and backed off. “You don’t put any mark on me, no, you don’t, born-man.”

“Get you a special kind of paper so you can come and go through the gates. No number on you. I promise. You know a lot, Jin. You’d find it worth your time. Not just one shirt. Real pay, town scale.”

He stopped backing, thinking on that.

And just then a splash and a brown came up through the reeds, water sliding off its pebbly hide. It came up all the way on its legs.

Someone shot. It lurched and hissed and came—“No!” Jin yelled at them, running, which was the wise thing. But they shot with the guns, and it hissed and whirled and flattened reeds in its entry into the river. The ripples spread and vanished in the sluggish current. It went deep. Jin crouched on his rock and hugged himself with a dire cold feeling at his gut. There was shouting among the folk. The old man shouted at the younger and the younger at the others, but there was a great quiet in the world.

“It was a
brown,”
Jin said. The old man looked up at him, looking as if he of all of them halfway understood. “Go away now,” Jin said. “Go away fast.”

“I want to talk with you.”

“I’ll come to your gate, old born-man. When I want. Go away.”

“Look,” the younger man said, “if we—”

“Let’s go,” the old man said, and there was authority in his voice. The folk with guns gathered up all that was theirs and went away down the shore. The bent place stayed in the reeds, and Jin watched until they had gone out of sight around the bend, until the bank was whole again. A sweat gathered on his body. He stared at the gray light on the Styx, trying to see ripples, hoping for them.

But brush whispered. He stood up slowly, on his rock, faced in the direction of the sound.

Two of the Weirds stood there, with the rags of garments that Weirds affected, their deathly pale skins streaked with mud about hands and knees. Their backs were to the upriver. Their shadowed eyes rested on him, and he grew very cold, reckoning he was about to die. There was nowhere to run but the born-men’s wire. The hiller village could never hide him; and he would die of other reasons if he was shut away behind the wire and numbered.

One Weird lifted his head only slightly, a gesture he took for a summons. He might cause them trouble. He was minded to. But somewhere, not so far away and not in sight either, would be another of them, or two or three. They would move if he denied them. So he leapt down from his rock and came closer to the Weirds as they seemed to want.

They parted, opening a way for him to go, and a quiet panic settled into him, because he understood then that they intended to bring him back with them upriver. Desperately he looked leftward, toward the Styx, toward the gray sunlight mirrored among the reeds, hoping against all expectation that the brown the born-men had shot would surface.

No. It was gone—dead, hurt, no one might know. A gentle hand took his elbow, ever so gently tugging at him, directing him where he had to go if he had any hope to live.

He went, retracing the track he and the old man had followed, and now the Weirds held him by either arm. The one on his left deftly reached and relieved him of his belt knife.

He could not understand—how they moved him, or why he did not break and run; only the death about him was instant and what was ahead was indefinite, holding some small chance. There was no reckoning with the Weirds or with the browns. There was no understanding. They might bring him back to the mounds and then as capriciously let him go.

The turns of the Styx unwound themselves until the sky-shining sheet was dimmed in the shade of trees, until they reached the towering ridges and the tracks he and the old man had made when they had stopped.

Perhaps they would hold him here and the old brown would come out and eye him as calibans would, and lose interest as calibans would, and they would let him go.

No. They urged him up the slope of the mound, toward the dark entryway in the side of it, and he refused, bolted suddenly out of their hands and down among the brush at the right, breaking twigs and thorns on his leather clothing, shielding his face with his arms.

A hiss broke in front of him and the head of a great brown loomed up, jaws gaping. He skidded to a stop, slapped instinctively at a sharp sting on his cheek and felt a dart fall from under his fingers. The brown in front of him turned its head to regard him with one round golden eye while he felt that side of his face numb, his heart speeding. His extremities lost feeling, his knees buckled: he flung up an arm to protect his eyes as brush came up at him, and lacked the strength to move when he landed among the thorny branches. They were all about him, the human shapes, silent. Gentle hands tugged at him, turning him onto his back, so that a lacery of cloudy sky and branches swung into his vision.

He was not dying. He was numb, so that they could gather him up and carry him but he was not dead when they carried him toward the hole in the earth, and realizing this, he tried to fight, in a terror deeper than all his nightmares. But he could not move, not the least twitch of a finger, not even to close his eyes when dirt fell into his face, not to close his mouth or swallow or use his tongue, even to cry out when the dark went around him and he was alone with them, with their silence and their touches.

Year 89, day 208 CR
Main Base

“No sign of this hiller,” Spencer said.

“No, sir,” Dean said, hands behind him.

Spencer frowned, turned from his table fully facing Dean—an intense young man, his assistant, with a shock of thick black hair and a coppery skin tone and a faded blue number on his hand that meant townsman, at least intermittently. Presently Dean was doing field work, meaning he was back in the town again. “How did you hunt for him?” Spencer asked.

“Asking other hillers. Those who come to trade.
They
haven’t seen him.”

“They know him?”

Dean took the liberty and sat down on the other stool at the slanted desk full of reports, pulled it under him. He smelled of recent soap, never of the fields. Meticulous in that. He had ambitions, Spencer reckoned. He was good—in what they let him do. “Name’s known, yes. There’s a kind of split—I don’t pick up all of it; I’ve given you notes on that. At any rate, there was this very old azi—You want his history?”

“Might be pertinent.”

“The last azi survivor. His brood went for the hills. That’s the ancestry. You
hear
about that line, but you don’t see them. None of them are registered to come into the camp. There’s an order among hillers. The ones we get around here—they’ll talk easy on some things. But I didn’t get an easy feeling asking about this fellow Jin.”

“How—not easy?”

A shrug. “Like first it was no townsman’s business; like second, that maybe this particular hiller wouldn’t be dealing with a townsman.”

“How did you put it to them?”

“Just that I had come on something that had to do with this Jin. I thought it was clever. After all, his ancestor was hereabouts. And it used to be that townsmen would trade found-things to the hills. I didn’t say anything more than that. They might get curious. But if this man’s a bush hiller, it could be a while.”

“Meaning he might be out of their settlement and out of touch.”

“Meaning that, likely. It seemed to be a good bit of gossip. I imagine it’ll go on quick feet. But no news yet.—You mind if I ask what I’m looking for?”

Spencer clamped his lips together, thinking on it, reached then and dragged a set of pictures down from the clutter on the desk, arranged them in front of Dean.

“That’s the Styx.”

“I see that,” Dean said.

Spencer frowned and livened the wallscreen, played the tapeloop that was loaded in the machine. He had seen the tape a score of times, studied it frame by frame. Now he watched Dean’s face instead, saw Dean’s face go rigid in the light of the screen, seeing the caliban and then the human come out of the mound. Dean’s whole body gave back, hands on the edge of the tabletop.

“Bother you?”

Dean looked toward him as the tape looped round again. Spencer cut the machine off. Dean straightened with a certain nonchalance. “Not particularly. Calibans. But someone got real close to do that tape.”

“Not so far upriver. Look at the orbiting survey.”

Spencer marked the place, difficult to detect under the general canopy of trees. Dean looked, looked up, without the nonchalance. “This have to do with the hiller you’re looking for, by any chance?”

“It might.”

“You take these?”

“You’re full of questions.”

“That’s where you and the soldiers went. Upriver last week. Looking for calibans.”

“Might be.”

“This hunter—this Jin—He was there? He guided you?”

“You don’t like the sound of it.”

Dean bit at his lip. “Not a good idea to go up on calibans like that. Not a good idea at all.”

“Let me show you something else.” Spencer pulled a tide of pictures down the slope of the desk. “Try those.”

Dean turned and sorted through them, frowning.

“You know what you’re looking at?”

“The world,” Dean said. “Seen from orbit.”

“Pictures of what?”

A long silence, a shuffling of pictures. “Rivers. Rivers all over the world. I don’t know their names. And the Styx.”

“And?”

A long silence. Dean did not look around.

“Caliban patterns,” Spencer said. “You see them?”

“Yes.”

“Want to show you something more.” Spencer found the aerial shot of the hiller village, thatched huts and stone walls, winding walls, walls that bent and curved. He put a shot of the Base and town and fields next to it, a checkerboard geometry. “Don’t you find something remarkable in that? Have you ever seen it?”

Dean sat still, his eyes only on the pictures under his hands. “I think any townsman would tend to understand that.”

“How do you mean?”

“The founders laid out the town streets. Hillers made the hiller village.”