Forty Thousand in Gehenna (34 page)

The division of labor offers a working model of theories long held regarding early human development and in the degree to which Gehenna has recapitulated human patterns, offers exciting prospects for future anthropological study. One could easily imagine the ancient Euphrates, modified ziggurats, used in this case for dwellings as well as for the ancient purpose, the storage of grain above the floods and seasonal dampness of the ground.

Women have turned to agriculture and do all manner of work of this kind. Hunting, fishing, and the crafts and handcrafts, including weaving, are almost exclusively a male domain and enjoy a high status, most notably the hunters who have exclusive control of the brown Calibans. Fishers employ the grays. The grays are active in the fields as well, performing such tasks as moving dikes and letting in the water, but they are directed in this case by the class called Weirds. Weirds are both male and female, individuals who have so thoroughly identified with the calibans that they have abandoned speech and often go naked in weather too cool to make it comfortable. They do understand speech or gesture, apparently, but I have never heard one speak, although I have seen them react to hunters who speak to them. They maneuver the grays and a few browns, but the calibans do not seem to attach to them as individuals in the manner in which they attach to the hunter-class.

Only hunters, as I have observed, own a particular caliban and give it a name. It should also be mentioned that one is born a hunter, and hunter marriages are arranged within towers after a curious polyandrous fashion: a woman marries her male relatives’ hunting comrades as a group; and her male relatives are married to their hunting comrades’ female sibs. Younger sisters usually marry outside the tower, thus minimizing inbreeding; they are aware of genetics, though, curiously enough, they have reverted to or reinvented the old term “blood” to handle the concept. There is no attempt to distinguish full brother-sister relationship from half. In that much the system is matrilineal. But women of hunter class are ornaments, doing little labor but the making of clothes and the group care of children in which they are assisted by women relieved from field work. All important decisions are the province of the men. I have observed one exception to this rule, a woman of about fifty who seems to have outlived all her sibs and her band. She wears the leather clothing of a rider, has a caliban and carries a knife. She sits with the men at meals and has no association with the wives.

Crafts and fisher-class women work in the fields with their daughters. Male children can strive for any class, even to be a hunter, although should a lower class male succeed in gaining a caliban he may have to fight other hunters and endure considerable harassment. There is one such individual at Parm Tower. His name is Matso. He is a fisher’s son. The women are particularly cruel to him, apparently resenting the possibility of his bringing some fisher-sib into their society should he join a hunter-group.

Over all of this of course is Jin himself. This is a remarkable man. Younger than most of his council, he dominates them. Not physically tall, he is still imposing because of the energy which flows from him. The calibans react to him with nervousness-displays, a reaction in which his own plays some part: this is a beast named Thorn, which is both large and aggressive. But the most of it is due to Jin’s own force of personality. He is a persuasive speaker, eloquent, though unlettered: he is a hunter, and writing is a craft: he will not practice it.

He has survived eight years of guardianship to seize power for himself at sixteen, effectively deposing but not killing his former guardian Mes of the River Tower, from what I hear. He is inquisitive, loves verbal games, loves to get the better hand in an argument, is generous with gifts—he bestows ornaments freehandedly in the manner of some oldworld chief. He has a number of wives who are reserved to him alone but these are across the Styx. At Parm Tower he is afforded the hospitality of the hunter-class women, which is a thing done otherwise only between two bands in payment of some very high favor. This lending of wives and the resultant uncertainty of parentage of some offspring seems to strengthen the political structure and to create strong bonds between Jin and certain of the hunter-bands. Whether Jin lends his wives in this fashion we cannot presently ascertain.

We apparently have the freedom to come and go with the escort of one or the other hunters. Jin himself has entertained us in Parm Tower hall and given us gifts which we are hard put to reciprocate.

The people are well-fed, well-clothed and in all have a healthy look. Jin enumerates his plans for more fields, more towers, wider range of his hunters to the north…

Memo, E, McGee to Committee

It seems to me that it is a deceptively easy assumption that these Styxsiders are recapitulating some
natural
course of human society. This is selective seeking-out of evidence to fit the model Dr. Genley wishes to support. He totally ignores the contrary evidence of the Cloud Towers, who have grown up in a very different pattern.

Message from field: R. Genley

I thank the committee for the inclusion of the reports.

As for Dr. McGee’s assertion that I am selecting my data, I would be interested to see this presented in full, rather than in an inter-office memo, if she has obtained any new data from the Cloud.

As for the earlier data I am of course familiar with it. It is not surprising that one of the communities has managed to cling to their ancestral ways and, in their unstressed river-plain environment, lack the impetus to change. It is inconceivable that their ways would survive except for the circumstance of their origin which flung them into close community: they were, be it remembered, a settlement of refugees. They are not coping well. Their cultivated areas are small. They do not hunt widely, if at all. They are predominantly fishers, which is an occupation, at least as practiced on Gehenna, which does not require physical strength.

The critical difference is the necessity of physical strength in the hunter culture of the Styx, a difference which should be self-evident given the biological realities of the human species.

Memo, E. McGee to Committee
Copy transmitted to R. Genley

It is a difficult task to extricate the observer from the observation. I do not believe we are out here at considerable expense to seek to reaffirm theories dearly held by our various disciplines, but to faithfully record what exists, and secondly to challenge, where appropriate, theories which become questionable in the light of observed fact.

It is possible that the entanglement of the observer with the observation throughout history, along with the sorrowful fact that in general only the winners write the accounts of wars, has tended to advance certain cultural values in the place of fact, when these values are confused with fact by the observer.

Fact: two ways of life exist on Gehenna.

Fact: more than one way of life has existed in humanity’s cradles of civilization.

I propose that, instead of arguing old theories which have considerable cultural content, we consider this possibility: that humanity develops a multiplicity of answers to the environment, and that if there must be a system of polarities to explain the structure around which these answers are organized, that the polarity does not in and of itself involve gender, but the relative success of the population in curbing those individuals with the tendency to coerce their neighbors. Some cultures solve this problem. Some do not, and fall into a pattern which exalts this tendency and elevates it, again by the principle that survivors and rulers write the histories, to the guiding virtue of the culture. It is not that the Cloud River culture is unnatural. It is fully natural. It is, unfortunately, threatened with extinction by the hand of the Styxsiders, who will need centuries to attain the level of civilization already possessed by the Cloud. Barbarians win because civilizations are inherently more fragile.

Message from the field: R. Genley

I again urge Dr. McGee to present her theories formally when she can reestablish sufficient contact with the culture she is describing to secure corroborative and specific observations.

190 CR
Unedited text of message
Dr. E. McGee to Alliance HQ
couriered by
AS Pegasus

[Considering the personal difficulty of continuing in this position—]

[Considering the contribution which I feel I might make elsewhere and the personal disappointment]—

[Considering the—]

[Considering the unfortunate circumstances which have incurred, I suspect, some personal animosity on the part of the Cloud-siders—]

Considering the difficulty of life on Gehenna and my personal health, I would like to make application for immediate transfer from the project. [I feel that my work here is at a standstill and that the—] At the present level of activity my assistants are fully competent to conduct my project and I would urge the Bureau to appoint Dr. Leroy H. Cooper to the post. He has shown himself to be a skilled and dedicated investigator. [I feel that a certain cultural and personal bias on the part of the—] I wish my application for transfer to cast no shadow on the mission or the staff here. My reasons are medical and personal, involving a sensitivity to certain irritants present in the area…

191 CR, day 202
Message, Alliance HQ
to Dr. E. McGee, Gehenna Base

…with thorough sympathy for your medical difficulties, the Bureau still considers your presence in the project to be of overriding value, in view of the expense and difficulty of personnel adjustments. So it is with regret that we must reject your application for transfer…

…We have analysed the facilities available at Gehenna both on the Base and at the Station for alleviation of your difficulties and have made shipment of medicines which we feel will provide a wider range of treatment alternatives…

191 CR, day 205
Prescription, Base pharmacy
for Dr. E. McGee

…for insomnia, take one capsule at bedtime. ALCOHOL CONTRAINDICATED.

200 CR, day 33
Field report: E. McGee

…rumor which I have picked up from the usual New Tower source indicates that the heir, Elai, has given birth to a second son. Due to the tenuous nature of my contact with these sources and the need for caution I cannot yet confirm…

200 CR, day 98
Styxside

“Genley,” Jin said, in the warmth of Parm Tower, in the closeness that smelled of brew and Calibans and smoke and men. A hand came out and rocked his shoulder, pressed with strong fingers. “You write about me. What do you write?”

“Things.”

“Like what, Genley?”

“The way you live, the things you do. Like your records. Like the things you write down.”

“You make the starmen know me.”

“They know you.”

Jin clapped his shoulder. They were mostly alone. There was only Parm and his lot drowsing in the corner. The hand fell from his arm. “That Mannin, that Kim, always scratching away—You know, Gen-ley, they have fear. You know how I know they have fear? It’s in the eyes. They’re afraid. You watch them. They don’t look in my eyes. You do.”

Genley did, without flinching. Jin buffeted his arm and laughed when he had done it.

“You are my father,” Jin said.

Mannin would have taken notes on that. Asked questions: was it a common thing to say? Genley went on staring him in the eye, too solid for Jin to shake, in any sense.

“My father,” Jin said, still holding his arm. “Who asks me questions, questions, questions what I do. I learn from your questions, Gen-ley. So I call you my father. Why doesn’t my father ask me gifts?”

“What should I ask for?”

“A man should have women. You want the women, Gen-ley, you go down…anytime you like. Not hunter women: trouble, hunter women. But all the others. Anytime you like. You like that?”

200 CR, day 120
Field report: R. Genley

…The lord Jin has made considerable progress toward further stabilizing the government. The reports of dissent in the TransStyx have died down following a personal visit of one of his aides to that side and indications are that the chief of the opposition is now supporting his authority.

Memo, E. McGee to Base Director
Copy to R. Genley in field

The
lord
Jin?…

200 CR, day 203
Field report: R. Genley

…In all, Jin 12’s new programs are succeeding. Agriculture is up another 5 percent this year, for a total of 112% increase since his accession. Roadbuilding, a totally new development, has made possible the delivery of limestone to the hitherside tower, another of Jin’s ideas, gathered from observation, I surmise, of our own constructions inside the wire. The mission has continually observed the zero trade restriction and most carefully has withheld information, but it could be the mere presence of the Base is a goad to the energetic Styxside culture, accelerating their dissatisfaction with conditions as they are. Looking as they do through the wire at a permanent city, observing woven clothing and a wealth of metal, they are discontent with what they have. The lord Jin is particularly anxious for metal, but sees no present possibility of obtaining it. The choice which placed the colony in a fertile deep plain has ironically made that particular advancement difficult until explorations reach the mountainous southeast. The road to the quarries is part of a push in this direction, making possible, if not wheeled transport, the rapid transit of mounted traffic.

There has been another development, in the surprising invitation of the lord Jin for me to visit the farside settlements, an opportunity providing some hazards, but altogether attractive in terms of opening even wider contacts with this unprecedented culture. I have told the lord Jin that this will require some consultation and I hope for the Director’s consent…