Forty Thousand in Gehenna (41 page)

“A bath’s ready,” Parm’s sister said.

He waved them off again. Held out his hand from beneath the blanket. A cup arrived in it; he never looked to see, but carried it to his lips and drank, looking up at Genley the while. He was not easy. Gen-ley read that mood. Beyond him Thorn rested, only half relaxed.

“Like Parm Tower?” Jin asked him.

“It’s wet here.”

Jin failed to laugh. Just stared at him.

“Didn’t think it would take this long,” Genley ventured, still pushing, judging he had to push. And pay the young bastard a compliment, if he took it that way.

It halfway pleased Jin. Genley saw the blink. The mouth never changed. Jin gestured with the cup.
Sit
. Jin took the ledge. The floor was damp from what had not run down the slant to the drain. Genley ignored the invitation, not liking looking up, but stood easier, and that was all right: it had not been an order. Jin puffed his cheeks, let out a long, slow breath.

“The Styx is cold,” Jin said.

“Cold here too. No women here.”

Jin looked up, nonplussed.

“Didn’t have that matter taken care of here,” Genley said.

Jin blinked, blinked again, and a small wicked smile started at the corners of his mouth. “Forgot that. That old sod Parm.” It became a laugh, a silent shaking of the shoulders. “O my father, all this time. Poor Genley.” He wiped his eyes. “No women.” He laughed again, gestured with the cup. “We fix that.”

Genley regarded him with touchy humor. There were other things about Parm he would have wished to say, but a list seemed risky. He folded his arms and looked down at Jin. “Mostly,” he said, “I fished. Hunted a bit along the banks. In the bog. Didn’t hear anything, didn’t get any news. So you settled with that Mes bastard.”

“Yes.”

“Want to talk to you when you’ve got time.”

“About what?”

“When you’ve got time.”

The brows came down, instant frown. “But I always have time,” Jin said, “if its news.”

“Told you I had none of that. That’s what about. There’s a point past which the Base is going to be asking questions.”

“Let them ask.”

“They’ll know there was fighting up north. They see things like that. They’ll make up the answers.”

“Let them make them up. What will they do?”

“I don’t know what they’ll do.”

“But they don’t interfere outside the Wire.”

Genley thought about that suddenly, in sudden caution. That was a question, posed hunter-style, flatly.

“Up to a point,” he hedged it. “I don’t know what they’d do. There’s no need to stir things up with them.”

“Tell me, Gen-ley. Who are they like? You—or Mannin? Like Kim?”

Genley frowned, perceiving he was being pressed, backed up on this, step and step and step, and Jin was choosing the direction. “You’re asking what the Base might do about it if they didn’t hear from us.”

“Maybe we found that out?”

“What’s that mean?”

The dark eyes rested on him, redirected to the wall. Jin took a drink, pursed his lips. “They’re Mannins.”

“Some are. Some aren’t.” He squatted, arms on knees, to meet Jin’s eyes. “You listen to me. There’s a point past which. There always is. I tell you what’s good. You want advice, I give you advice. You’ve got the Styx in your hand; got roads; got stone; got ways to get yourself written down as the man that made this collection of towers into something star-men have to respect, you hear me? You have it all in your hand. But you don’t deal with Base the way you deal with that petty tower lord up north. I’m telling you. Think of a tower as large as the whole Base, in the sky, over your head: that’s what the Station is, and it watches the whole world; it has other watching posts strung out round the world, so nothing moves but what they see it. Imagine beyond that a hundred towers like that, imagine half a dozen places as big as all Gehenna itself where millions of towers stand—you reckon in millions, Jin? That’s a lot more than thousands. Towers beyond counting. You pick a fight with Base, Jin, that’s what you’ve got. You want to deal with Base, they’ll deal, but
not yet.”

Jin’s face was rigid. “When,” he said in a quiet, quiet voice, “when is the time?”

“Maybe next year. Maybe you go to the Wire. I’ll set it up. I’ll talk to them. It’ll take some time. But they’ll listen to me sooner or later if nothing happens to foul it up. We get them to talk. That first. Beyond that, we start making them understand that they have to deal with you. We can do that. But you don’t get anywhere by going against the Base. It’s not just the Base you see. There’s more of it you don’t see. They’re not weak. They know you’re not. You listen to me and they’ll hear of you all across the territories the starmen have. They’ll know you.”

Something glittered in the depth of Jin’s eyes, something dark. The frown gathered. He set the cup down, gathered the blanket between his knees and leaned forward. “Then why do they send MaGee?”

“MaGee doesn’t matter.”

“They send this woman. This
woman
. Ma-Gee.” Jin drew a breath. It shuddered, going in. “
Talk
, you say. Tell me this, Gen-ley. What does this MaGee say to Elai down there on the Cloud? Tells her starmen will talk to her—is that what this MaGee says?”

“It doesn’t matter what McGee says. Elai’s
nothing
. They’ve got nothing to what you’ve got. Don’t lose it.”

“They make me a fool. They make me a fool, Gen-ley.” The veins stood out on his neck, on his temples. “I gut one man, his band, his women—but there’s others. You know why, Gen-ley? This woman. This woman on the Cloud. Wait, you say. Talk to the Base. My men say something else. My men have waited. They see me make roads, make fields—they hear their enemy gets stronger, that this MaGee is in First Tower, like you, here. Wait, you say. No, my father.”

“Don’t be a fool.” Wrong word. Genley caught it, seized Jin’s wrist in the hardest grip he had. “Don’t be one. You don’t let those women plan what you do, do you? McGee’s nothing. Elai’s not worth your time. Let them be. You can deal with Base without involving them. They don’t matter.”

“It’s you who are the fool, Genley. No. This MaGee, this Elai, there’s enough of them. It’s
winter
, my father.”

A chill came on him that had nothing to do with the weather. “Listen to me.”

“There are men coming,” Jin said, “from across the Styx. Thousands. What I did to Mes—will be double on the Cloud. Before this woman’s eyes.”

“You listen. This isn’t the way to settle this.”

“Yes, it is,” said Jin.

“Or to have the Base on your side.”

“I know where the Base is,” Jin said. “And you can go with me, Genley. You hear? You ride with us. You. Those men of yours. I want you with me.”

“No. I’m not getting into this.”

The dark eyes bore into his. “But you are. On my side. In case this MaGee has something. And your Base, they won’t interfere. They’ll deal with me, all the same. There won’t be anybody else to deal with. Will there?”

“Where’s the com?”

“Somewhere,” Jin said. “Not here. If you called them—what would they do?”

Nothing
, Genley thought. He stood up, scowling, close to shaking, but that would never do. He jammed his hands into his belt.

“Nothing,” Jin said, leaning back. “Later is good enough.” He wrapped the blanket back about himself, looked up at him with a half lidded smile. “Go find yourself a woman. Do you good, Gen-ley.”

205 CR, day 48
Cloud Towers

Something was amiss. Elai knew it. It had come in a great wave up the Cloudside, like the building of storm, like the sudden waft of change in the winter wind, like both these things, but this storm was in caliban minds, and moved constantly, so that each day the sun rose on something new in the patterns across the Cloud; so that mounds continually revised themselves and the soft earth churned, collapsed, rose and fell again. The Weirds patterned their distress; Tower-work grew disorganized, the place grew untidy with neglect. There was winter-work to do; and riders and craftsfolk tended to it alone, the little mendings of the walls after rain, the bracing-up with stone.

The Weirds abdicated, mostly; and calibans grew restive; children fretted, sulked, retreated, reading patterns too. Cloud grew irritable; Taem kept much to himself; Din went back and forth between the roof and the depths, a frown between his brows.

There was no staying from the roof: Elai went up to see what was written on the world, compulsively, throughout the day. Others did. And so she found MaGee, staring outward from the rim.

Riders—Dain, and Branch, had paused in their work, bare to the waist and sweating in the unseasonal sun, muddy-armed from their wall-mending. Two of her sons were there, Taem and Cloud. The nurses stood forgetting Cloud, while Taem—Taem sat beside an aged Weird, only sat, his naked arms about his knees, in the shelter of the rim.

Elai looked out, past MaGee, with the sun at her back, her shadow falling long over the baked-clay roof, the irregular tiles scored by generations of caliban claws, eroded by winter rains. A drowsing ariel noticed it was beshadowed and moved aside, sunseeking. Everywhere on the roof ariels shifted, and then calibans moved, for Scar came up from the access, thrust himself to her side, and lumbered to the rim, rising up on one scaly clawed foot to survey the world, then sinking down again, walking the rim, trampling the riders’ new tile-work, dislodging what they had done.

“Something’s happened,” MaGee said, pointing outward. “The Styx-pattern. Something’s come out from it.”

“Yes,” Elai said. The wind stirred at her robes, pulled at them, at her hair and MaGee’s.

“What’s going on?” MaGee asked. And when she was silent: “Has something moved from the Styx?”

Elai shrugged. For all the warmth of the day, the wind was chill.

“First,” Dain appealed to her, at her right, with Branch and the others.
First
, as if she could mend it. She did not look that way. She walked up beside MaGee, rested her hands on the rim, staring outward at the world.

“
Have they moved
?” MaGee persisted.

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, MaGee, they’ve moved.”

“They’re coming here.”

Elai looked at her, and a strange sad sweetness came to her.
O MaGee
, she thought. She had waited for this thing all her life. Now that it was here there was someone it truly horrified. “MaGee, my friend.” She smiled then, not so distraught as she should have been. “You are simple.” But to make it lighter she laid a hand on MaGee’s shoulder, then turned and walked away to the downwards entry, ignoring the eyes of all the rest.

“
First,”
she heard MaGee call after her. “
Elai
!”

So she stopped, curiously tranquil in this day.

“I have to warn the Base,” MaGee said.

“No. No com.”

“Are they in danger?” MaGee asked.

She stared at MaGee. There were other things to think of. Other folk had begun to arrive from below. Din was one. Twostone was with him. Beside them all stood Dain and Branch, still waiting. “First,” said Dain, fretting at her. “Do what, First?”

Three of the elders had come up, their white hair blowing in the wind. There was Din, her son, who stood with his hands behind him, whose brown had its crest up and advanced stiffly on its legs, very near to Scar.

Whhhhhsssss!
Scar moved, seized up the young caliban in his great jaws, and nothing moved on that rooftop for the space of a long-held breath, until Scar decided to let Twostone go.

So much for juvenile ambition, borne on the moment’s possibilities.
Wait your turn
, Elai thought with a cold, cold stare at her son, and turned her shoulder in disdain, not even bothering to address her anger to the boy.

This was cruel. After a moment she heard him flee the daylight, a scraping of claws, a patter of naked boyish feet vanishing down into the tower, while Scar’s crest lowered in satisfaction. There was a second, slower retreat, Cloud with his nurses; but Taem, when she looked his way, had stayed, small, bare-kneed boy, with a Weird’s cool observance of what had passed between her and Din. So she knew this morning that Taem was gone for good, and that hit her unpleasantly, and completed her anger at the world.

That was what it was to be First. From the time that she was small, when Scar had come to her and made her what she was; and now that pathetic brown of Din’s, young yet, and not likely to get older—

Wisest to kill the rivals, with such a winnowing coming. It was not alone that Styxsider she fought. It was far more general a matter than that. Kill the rivals, unite the Towers. That was what Jin had been doing, one by one.

She walked and looked about her, and calibans and ariels shifted, a scaly wave, a refixing of gold and sea-green eyes all set on her. She looked about her from the Tower rim, to the Patterns, the river, the towers, the bright sea to which the river ran.
Go bring
, she signed abruptly, facing Dain; aloud: “Paeia.” Dain started away in grim haste. “Taem,” she added, which command turned Dain about at the entry with bewilderment on his face.

“Bring him too,” she said. “Tell him mind his manners. He knows.”

She hoped he did. She seldom felt Taem active in the Patterns. The New Towers were isolate; and for Taem the Twelve Towers calibans made a whorl with a silent center. Paeia they made as sunward, full of activity; but Taem was silence, like his son.

“Bring them,” Dain echoed her, as if he could have mistaken it. “And if they won’t come?”

Taem
, he meant.
If Taem won’t come
.

She gave Dain no answer. Dain went. Perhaps her son had read it all too; perhaps he read his death out there, patterned on the shore.

Violence
, his caliban had signalled. Desperate, not comic, a young caliban, too young for such a challenge.
Mother, I want to live
.

She had waited for this all her life. So had her son. She wanted to be alone now, only with MaGee, and Scar, not under these staring eyes that looked on her now with estimations—whether she would die now, whether that was what she meant by calling in those most dangerous to her life. She was frail; she limped. She ached when it rained. And her heirs were under twelve.