Forty Thousand in Gehenna (31 page)

“Do you live at the Base, MaGee?”

“Yes.”

She thought a moment, and finally brought her dearest dream into the light. “Have you been to the mountains out there, the ones you see from the beach?”

“No.”

“Is that very far?”

“Is that what you sail your ships for?”

“Someday I’ll build a big one.”

Silence from MaGee.

“I’ll go there,” Elai said.

“That ship would have to be big,” MaGee allowed.

“How big?”

“Questions again.”

“Is it far, MaGee?”

“As far as from the New Tower to the Base.”

“Do people live there?”

MaGee said nothing, but stopped, and pointed to the Towers. “That’s home, isn’t it?” MaGee said.

Elai dug her fingers into the softness of Scar’s hide beneath the collar, felt the power that was hers now, understood what was the star-folk’s power, and felt something partly anger, partly loss. “Come to the beach tomorrow,” she said.

“I don’t think I can,” MaGee said. “But maybe.”

Elai memorized the face, the look of MaGee. If, she thought, I led thousands like this starman, I would take the islands, the Styx, the heavens everyone came from.

But MaGee kept the secrets to herself, and did not belong to her or to her mother.

“
Hai,”
she yelled at Scar, and rode him off at a pace that sent jolting spears of pain through her leg, that had her swaying when she arrived in her own lands, to the solicitude of those that met her.

188 CR, day 178
Memo, office of the Director to staff member Elizabeth McGee

Appreciating potential difficulties, the Director nevertheless considers this a prime opportunity for further study.

The Cloud Towers

Elai lay fitfully that night, with Weirds to soothe Scar in his restlessness, with a firebowl boiling water for compresses they laid on her leg. Figures moved like nightmare about her, and Scar fretted and hissed, not trusting any of them. Even her mother came, asking coldly after her safety, questioning her what had happened.

“Nothing,” she said.

Ellai scowled at that; but Ellai’s Twig came no further than the outer passage of her room, fretting and hissing on her own. The temperature of the situation rose steadily so that—“See to her,” her mother snapped at those who tried, and went away, collecting Twig and getting no answers.

It was like that the next day and the next. The leg bothered her, and the small rides she could take in days after that turned up no sign of the star-folk. No MaGee. No answers. Nothing.

She sat on Scar’s shoulders and stared out to sea, or at the river, or vented her moodishness on the Weirds, who said nothing and only did those services for Scar she was too tired to do.

And then one day MaGee was there—on the beach, watching her.

“MaGee,” Elai said, riding up to her, trying not to sound as if it mattered. She slid down from Scar—trying not to limp, but she did.

“How is that leg?” MaGee asked.

“Oh, not so bad.”

It was not what she wanted to discuss with MaGee. It was the world that mattered, and every question in it. Elai sat and Patterned idly while she asked and answered—she got very little, but that little she stored away, building and building.

“Help me make a ship,” she asked MaGee.

But MaGee smiled and said no. That was always the way of it.

And the days passed. Sometimes MaGee was there and sometimes not.

And then, day after bitter day, Magee was not there at all.

She rode Scar as far as the Wire, a great long distance, and slid down at the gate through which star-folk came and went, in sight of a Styx-tower in the far distance, which reminded her that there were those who rivaled the Cloud Towers to gain star-brought secrets.

“I want to see MaGee,” she said to the guard at the gate, and all the while she was comparing the Cloud-towers and this place, and thinking how strong and disturbingly regular it was. On the other side of the Wire, ships landed, and she hoped to see one, looking beyond the guard without seeming to stare—but there was none.

The guard wrote…
wrote
on a paper, at which performance Elai could not help but wonder. He sent his companion inside with that message, and she must stand and wait…trying in her discomfiture to talk to the guard, who looked down at her through the Wire, who talked to her in a strange accent worse than MaGee’s, and who made little of her, as if she was a child.

“My name’s Elai,” she said, pointing loftily back toward the Towers. “From First Tower.”

The guard refused to be impressed. Her face burned.

“Tell MaGee to hurry,” she said, but the man stood where he was.

Eventually the message came back, and the guard waved his hand at her, dismissing her. “The Director says no,” the guard said.

Elai mounted Scar and rode away. She had surrendered enough of her dignity, and it hurt. It hurt enough that she cried on the way home, but she was dry-eyed and temperful when she came among her own, and never admitted where she had been, not to all the anxious questions.

Memo, Base Director to staff member Elizabeth McGee

…commends you for excellent observations and requests you write up your reports in detail for transmission and publication. The Director feels that further investigation should extend in other directions and requests you hold yourself ready…

Memo, E. McGee to Base Director in the offices of Gehenna Base

…The Styxsiders have turned reluctant for contact. Genley’s report on my desk indicates a team member suffered injury as the team retreated from a caliban within the permitted zone of observation. The team is anxious to return to the Styx; I would discourage this while the Calibans show reluctance.

Report, R. Genley to Base Director transmitted from field

Dr. McGee is overcautious. The incident involved a sprained wrist as the team cleared the immediate vicinity of a caliban engaged in mound-building. No Styxsider was present.

Message, E. McGee to R. Genley Copy to Base Director

The cooperation between calibans and humans is close enough to warrant alarm at this attack.

Message, R. Genley to Base Director transmitted from field

I do not agree with Dr. McGee’s hypothesis. We are under observation by Styxsiders. Retreat now would give an impression of fear. I object to McGee’s treatment of the data we transmit.

Base Director to R. Genley in field

Continue with caution. Measured risk seems justified.

Memo, E. McGee to Base Director

I am applying for a return to the field. We are losing an opportunity. We already have sufficient observations of calibans. Genley’s approach is producing no useful results. We should use the approaches we do have on the Cloud and draw the Styx into contact on their own initiative. The Styx is
not
peaceful. This very silence is a danger signal. I am sending another personal advisement to Genley. All others have been disregarded. I am concerned. I urge the Board to act quickly to recall this mission before some serious incident occurs.

Message, E. McGee to R. Genley

Pull back. Conduct your investigations on this side. The Calibans’ moundbuilding is the equivalent of a wall. They are telling you you are not wanted there.

Message, R. Genley to Base Director

I have received another communication from Dr. McGee. Her theories are based on communication with a single minor child, and earnest as I am sure her concern is, and not based on any eagerness to advance her own studies, I do not feel that her theories, preliminary as they are, and drawn from such a source, ought to become the official standard for dealing with this culture. Independent assessment and cross-check of observations is essential to this mission. Dr. McGee is making a basic error in applying her Cloud River study to the Styx: she assumes that the development here is the same, when by all evidence of dwelling-patterns it is not.

I am frankly concerned that the Board has assigned Dr. McGee to the writing of reports based on my data. I would like to see these before they are sent.

Message, E. McGee to R. Genley transmitted from Base

You are committing a basic error in the assumption that calibans do not themselves constitute a single culture which lies at the foundations of both Cloud and Styx.

As for the reports, be assured that they will be written up with more professionalism than your suggestion contained.

Message, Base Director to R. Genley in the field

The Board will make assignments by its own consensus. The Board has every confidence in Dr. McGee.

Memo, Base Director to E. McGee

You are more valuable in your present assignment inside the Base. The Board will assess and determine the proper assignment of personnel. Where is the write-up on the Styxside data? Documents is complaining about short schedules.

We have a shuttle due to make that Document pickup in four days.

The Cloud Towers

She designed ships in her mind, great ones, which she intended to build when she was in Ellai’s place. She gave orders to the Weirds and experimented with her stick-and-leaf fliers off the very top of the First Tower.

Her tiny constructions wrecked themselves at the base of the Tower. And some of the fishers had the bad grace to laugh, while Ellai looked at her askance—not reprimanding her: Ellai never reprimanded her in things that might do her harm.

Her mother hoped, Elai thought obscurely, for accidents—to her person or to her pride. Sometimes she caught her mother with that look in her eyes. Like Twig, bluffing and blustering and making way for Scar because Scar had the power and all the world knew it.

It was not even hate. It was too reasonable for that. Like the calibans. They simply knew who was first.

“I met a starman,” Elai said to her mother, one more thing between them. “She stopped the bleeding when I hurt my leg. Like that. We talked about flying. And lots of things.”

“Stop throwing things off the Tower,” her mother said, precise in her counterattack. “People laugh at you.”

“I never hear them.”

“Keep at it and you will.”

188 CR
Report: Dr. Elizabeth McGee to Alliance Science Bureau
for Dr. R. Genley; Dr. E. McGee; Dr. P. Mendel; Dr. T. Galliano; Dr. T. Mannin; Dr. S. Kim

…The Cloud River settlement exists in a loose unity called, if they understand a name, the Cloud Towers.

The administrative organization is difficult to analyze at a distance. Each of the twelve Cloud Towers seems to have its hereditary ruler, male or female, with no clearly observed pattern of allegiances, while the First Tower seems to have the right to call up all the population in defense or attack—after what, if any, co-deliberation is unclear, in their more or less perpetual distrust of the Styxdwellers. Presumably one Ellai daughter of Ellai, who seems to have no official title, has the hereditary right to give orders in the largest and oldest of the Towers, which gives her by extension the right to “give orders” (the language of my informant) to rulers of other towers in some but not all situations; and to individuals of her tower and other towers, but not in all situations.

If this seems confusing, it seems to reflect a power structure generally controlled by seniority, heredity, lines of descent, and traditions and divisions of responsibility which are generally understood by the community, but which may not be codified or clearly worked out. Another source of confusion may be the level of understanding of my informant, due to her youth, but to my observation, this youth understands the system far better than she is willing or able to communicate.

By far the largest number of individuals in the Cloud Towers are fishers or farmers, most of the latter operating in cooperatives, although again, this system seems to vary from tower to tower in a fashion which suggests a loose amalgamation or federation of independent traditions of rule…

Concerning the fisheries, the fishing technique seems to involve the calibans, who do the fishing in partnership with humans who derive the benefit: generally the gray calibans fish, although some browns do so… There is trade among the towers, in the form of barter… Another caliban/human cooperation exists in construction: evidently the calibans rear the towers and humans do the modifications or supervise the modifications. Both humans and calibans of all types inhabit the towers, including also the ariels…

A typical tower population includes the underground shelters of fishers and farmers and artisans who may, however, live in subterranean shelters skirting the towers or as part of the spiral which culminates in the crest: there seems to be as much of a tower extended underground and round about as in the tower-structure itself.

The inhabitants of each upper tower seem to be the ruler, the elders, a number of riders, persons of some hereditary importance, a number of Calibans who come and go at will, and another class about which I have been able to gather only limited information, which seems linked to the care of the Calibans…

…Elai herself… The girl has an amazing precocity. There were times that I wondered whether she derived some of her inquisitiveness and above all her use of forms and techniques more advanced than what is practiced elsewhere, from some record or restricted educational system to which she might have access as Ellai’s heir. But I have watched her approach a new situation and discover an answer with a facility which makes me believe completely that this precocity is genuine.

I confess to a certain awe of this ten year old. I think of a young da Vinci, of an Eratosthenes, a naive talent perhaps tragically limited by Gehenna. And then I recall that this is the heir who may live to direct the Cloud Towers.