Forty Thousand in Gehenna (44 page)

It hissed at her, swung its head. Weirds calmed it with their hands. The tail swept the sand, impatient with her, with them. She tapped the leg with her spear; it dipped its shoulder, and her knees went to water.
Enough of that, McGee
. She planted her foot, heaved herself up and astride, caught the collar as it surged up under her and began to move, powerful steps, a creature at once out of control, never under it—the while she got the spear across to its right side, out of the way, got the kit that was slung at her shoulder settled so it stopped swinging. Scaly hide slid loosely under her thighs, over thick muscle and bony shoulders: buttocks on the shoulder-hollow, legs about the neck, the soft place behind the collar.
They’ve learned to carry humans
, she thought,
to protect their necks
—
O God, the tails, the jaws in a fight: that’s what the spear is for
. Get the rider off, Dain had said, showing her how to couch it. Go for the gut of a human, the underthroat of a caliban.
O God
.

The movement became a streaming outward, leisurely in the dawn. The Weird was left behind. She joined other riders of other towers, of every tower mingled. There was no order. Elai was up there somewhere, far ahead. So were Taem and Paeia, Dain and his sisters—all, all the ones she knew. As for herself, she clung, desperately, as they shouldered others on their way; she moved her legs out of the way when offended calibans swung their heads and snapped.

There were days of this to face. And war. Some horrid dawn to find themselves facing other calibans, men with spears and venomed darts.
How did I get into this
?

But she knew. She shivered, for none of them had had breakfast and the wind blew cold. She comforted herself with the thought of days to go, of distance between themselves and the enemy.

Time to get used to it
, she thought, and the
it
in her mind encompassed all manner of horrors. She hated being rushed; she had a compulsion to plan things: she wanted time to think, and this sudden madness of Elai’s that had brought them out of bed as if the enemy were at their door instead of far upriver—this was no way to wake, stumbling across the town in the dark, shoulder-deep in proddish calibans…
The shore, MaGee
, a Weird had signed to her, in the last of torchlight. That was all.

But of course
, she thought suddenly, weaving along within the press.
Of course. The Patterns. It confounds the Patterns
—

The Patterns could not foretell this madness of Elai’s, this sudden wild move. The news that they were coming could travel no faster than the calibans they rode, the great, long-striding calibans; was nothing for ariel gossip, up and down the Cloud.

Elai
, she thought, not without pride.
Elai, you bastard
. And on another level it was raw fear:
This is your world, not mine. I’m going to get killed in it
. She suffered a vision of battle, herself run through by some Styxside spear; or falling off, more likely, to be trampled under clawed feet, unnoticed in the moment; or meeting some even less romantic accident along the way—War. She remembered how fast old Scar could snap those jaws of his on an offending gray and shuddered in the wind.
I’m going to die like that
.

It was at least days remote. There was something left to see.

There was Elai up there. Friend. There was Dain. There were others that she knew.

For the Cloud
, she thought. She was shocked at herself, that her blood stirred, that she came not to observe but to fight a war. For the Cloud. For Elai. For the First.

No one shouted. There were no slogans, no banners. Elai yesterday had given her a thong on which a bone ornament was tied: so, Elai had said, so you have some prettiness, MaGee.

Prettiness. She had it about her neck. For friendship’s sake.

Do they love
? she had written once, naive.

205, day 107
Memo, Base Director to all staff

Orbiting survey shows the Styxside column advancing under cover of the woods headed toward the Cloud 200 km east of the Cloudside settlement. The Cloudsiders have advanced 75 km at a very leisurely pace and appear to have stopped in a place where the river offers some natural defense…

Message: Base director to Station

Negative on query regarding whereabouts of four observers. Com is inactive. We suspect the presence of observers with the columns but we are not able to confirm this without risking other personnel and possibly risking the lives of the observers themselves in the warlike movements of both groups.

Request round the clock monitoring of base environs. We are presently discovering increased caliban activity on our own perimeters, both along the riverside and in burrowing. This, combined with the sudden massive aggression we are witnessing outside, is, in the consensus of the staff, a matter of some concern.

205 CR, day 109, 0233 hours
Engineering to Base Director

We have an attempt at undermining in progress, passing the fence at marker 30.

0236 hours Base Director to Security

…Stage one defense perimeter marker 30…

0340 hours Message, Base Director to Station

The defense systems were effective at primary level in turning back the intrusion. We are maintaining round the clock surveillance. We are advising agents still in the field of this move. Since caliban violence seems generally directed toward structures and not toward individuals some staff members have suggested that those agents in open country are not likely to be the objects of aggression, and may be safer where they are than attempting to approach the base. Agents are being advised to use their own discretion in this matter but to tend at once toward high stony ground where feasible.

More extensive report will follow.

205 CR, day 112
Cloud River

“Calibans,” Elai said, “have tried the Base.”

“Yes,” McGee said, sitting crosslegged in their camp, among others who sat near Elai and Scar, but her brown had deserted her when she dismounted. It always did, moving off alone to the river though other calibans stayed by their riders; and she was downcast, having read what she had read in the stones this morning, the small things ariels did, copying the greater Patterns current in the world. The little messengers. Mindless. Making miniature the world. They said the Base had held. They said that too.

They said that Jin was near.

“What do they do,” Elai asked, “to turn back calibans?”

McGee worked numb hands, her heart beating fast with notions of heroism, of refusing to say, but it was Elai asking, friend, First, her First, who had made her one of them.

There was a great silence about her. Elai simply waited, Gehennan-fashion, would wait long as a caliban could wait for that answer.

“They put a thing into the ground; it smells bad; it goes in under pressure. Calibans won’t like it. But there’s worse that they could do. A lot worse. There’s ships.”

Some looked skyward. Elai did not. She looked frail in the firelight, looked gaunt, her beaded braids hanging by her face. There was Paeia by her, Paeia’s son, a man full grown. On Elai’s other side sat Taem, silent, as Taem usually was.

“They won’t,” said Elai.

McGee shook her head.

“Why?” Taem asked.

“To see what Pattern we make,” Elai said quietly. “So we’ll show them.”

“Huh,” said Taem, and stared into the fire. He was methodically seeing to his darts, to the tiny wrappings of thread, in case the rain had gotten at them.

Something splashed in the river, a diving caliban. Sometimes there were other sounds, the scrape of claws on earth. The Pattern went on about them. There was no fear of ambush, of something breaking through. McGee understood this Word in which they travelled.
Cloud
, it said; and nothing alien got into it. A mound was between them and the Stygians. It would not be breached quietly.

McGee went back to her notes.

…It’s quiet tonight. It’s a strange way to fight a war. We know where they are. And it’s just as sure they’re not moving yet. Tomorrow, maybe. We heard about an assault on the Wire. That’s Styxside calibans, I think, not Cloud. They’re a different kind; and not different. I wish I understood that point…why two ways exist, so different, even among calibans.

Nations? But that’s thinking human-style again.

Are
we
the difference?

I don’t even know who’s at war out here…us or the calibans. Mine puts up with me. I don’t know why. A wild caliban takes a human onto his back. No training. Nothing. It’s all its idea. I don’t even pretend to control it.

As for order in the march, as for any sense of discipline—there’s none. Calibans wander when and where they like and we sit around the fire with no sentries posted.

But there are. Calibans.

She looked up. Close by her couples moved through the camp, going the way couples went these last few evenings while they had leisure, while this strange peace obtained.

Taem took Elai’s hand. Looked at her. So they had passed the night before. They rose, went off together. Paeia got up in pique, dusted herself, found one of her own riders. So did her son.

There are pairings in the camp. It’s a strange thing, as if all the barriers of Tower loyalty were down. As if there were a sense of time being short. There’s a fondness among these people—the way they’ve left everything behind, the way calibans that normally won’t tolerate each other have gotten unnaturally patient.

But it’s territory: the Cloud. Maybe they see it that way, that all of a sudden they all belong to the same territory.

Elai and Taem have paired up. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it portends any longer bond. If we get out of this alive—

Maybe it’s only politic. Maybe it’s something else. I’m sitting here alone. They’ve all left, as if. there were nothing else—

A shadow fell. Dain sat down by her, just sat on his haunches as she looked up. The fire shadowed his face. His long hair hung about his leathered shoulders. He wore beads hanging from a braid at the side of his head, among the rest of his locks. He was very fine, she thought, very fine. Any woman had to notice when Dain sat down that close to her: a lot had, so that Dain was never without partners. She had Dain in her notes, how this was; how the women courted him as he courted them, so it was a joke in the camp, one Dain liked as well as the tellers of it.

He just sat there looking at her. Nodded his head finally toward the dark. Toward what others did. He wanted her hand, holding his out.

He’s crazy
, she thought.
What is this? Me
?

Still the outheld hand. She put her papers down, thinking she was mistaken and might embarrass herself. He took her hand—friendship, she reckoned; he just wanted to talk to her, and she was wrong.

But he pulled her to her feet and kept drawing her along, going off to the dark.

She was afraid, then, putting this together with the attack on the Base, with Elai’s questions. She thought of betrayal, of factions, of Elai off with Taem.

But outside the firelight he pulled her down with him, this best of Elai’s riders, this Dain Flanahan—“Why?” she asked late, “why me?”—preparing herself for wounds.

He laughed as if that question surprised him, and they stayed that way till dawn, wrapped up in each other, the way she had had the Weird in the dark, in the depths, the same terms.

For friendship, then; she reckoned how she had been by the fire night after night; and no one had asked, and finally Dain took it on himself. He was kind, this young man. She had always known that.

205 CR, day 113
Cloud River

There was no coherency about it; the Cloudside patterns were confused—sudden advance and then this dawdling along the banks—“They’re crazy,” Blue said, with shaking of his head. “They’re farmers,” said Parm.

“Cloudsiders,” Jin muttered, still anxious, scowling, because he saw his men making light of it, because he saw his own camp less ordered than he liked. His men grew quiet, reading his mood. They were wise, the men nearest him, at least to duck their heads. But he suspected—in the least, niggling way suspected, that he was too cautious in their eyes, that there would be whispers if they dared. “This Elai,” he said, not for the first time, “this Elai’s nothing. But this isn’t one tower. There’s numbers. You keep thinking on that.
Hear
?”

They faced him across the fire, men he had won, tower by tower, themselves. He had his starman by him. Genley. Genley sat at his left hand, to do what he wanted, to tell him what he asked. The Cloud Towers…that had waited settling too long; there was MaGee; and that woman; and women worth the having; workers for the fields; these caliban-riders to deal with at his leisure, to teach the others what defying him was worth, any of them they got alive…far from the sight of the Wire. These women that played at war. There would be scores settled. Indeed, scores settled.

“Tomorrow,” he said, having thought it out, “we go by them.”

“Past?” echoed Blue.

“We go out from the shore.” He signed it as he spoke, frowning to himself, to no one in particular, satisfied, well-satisfied now he had mapped it out. “We come at them from the south. Let these Cloudsiders have the water at their backs. We drive them off the shore. Caliban matter then. All caliban.”

There were grins, figuring how it would be, darts for what riders remained astride, Calibans coming up from below, seizing legs, embattled calibans lashing the water to froth—it was not a way to get caught, in that kind of action. This woman, gullible, continued on the shore, going where calibans wanted to go—of course wanted to go, where the ground was soft, where they could throw up mounds to ring their camps, where there was fish abundant to satisfy caliban appetites.

Fish. On so small a thing, to lose a war.