Forty Thousand in Gehenna

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Oh, off hereabouts. We'll find them on the way."

  "But Pia's on the river alone?"

  "No. She's got help. Anyhow, Green won't hurt her. Whatever else, not her." Jin Younger slid down the slope, Mark behind him, and they caught their balance and stopped at the bottom in front of him. "Or didn't that occur to you when you sent her into the hills by herself?"

  "She said she knew where you were."

  His sons looked at him in that way his sons had, of making him feel slow and small. They were born-men, after all, and quick about things, and full of tempers. "Come on," Jin Younger said; and they went, himself and these sons of his. They shamed him, infected him with tempers that left him nothing— his sons who ran off to the wild, who took no share of the work in the fields, but cut stone when the mood took them, and dealt with born-men for it in trade, their own discovery. Well enough— it was not calibans that drew them; but laziness. He tried to guide them, but they had never heard a tape, his sons, his daughter… who ran after her elder brothers.

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  Who left her youngest brother to himself; while Green— started down a path all his own.

  Jin thought that he might have done better by all of them. In the end he felt guilt— that he could not tell them what he knew, and how: that once there had been ships, that ships still might come, and there was a purpose for the world and patterns they were supposed to follow.

  It was the first time, this walk with his eldest sons, that they had ever walked in step at all— young men and a man twice their age, the first time he had ever come with them on their terms. He felt himself the child.

  iii

  The way was strange along the bank, the reeds long since left behind, where the river undercut the limestone banks and made grottoes and caves.

  The Calibans had taken great slabs of stone and heaved them up in walls— no caprice of the river had done such things. It was a shadowed place and a hazardous place, and Pia refused to go into it. She perched herself on a rock above the water, arms about her knees, in the shadows of the trees that arched out from rootholds in the crevices of the stone. Moss grew here, in the pools; fish swam, black shapes in the ripples, and a serpent moved, a ripple through the shallow backwaters of the river. Ariels and flitters left tracks on the delicate sand, washed up on the downstream side of the stones, and at several points were the grooves calibans made in their coming up from the river, deep muddy slides.

  She looked up and up, where the cliffs shadowed them, scrub trees clinging even to that purchase. There were caves up there. Possibly ariels found them accessible, but no human could climb that face. Bats might nest there. There might possibly be bats, though they came infrequently to the river.

  And very much she wished for her brothers… the more when something splashed and moved.

  She turned; caught her breath at the sight of the coveralled figure which had come up behind her among the rocks.

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  "Green." she said softly, ever so quietly. Her youngest brother looked back at her, out of breath, with that strange, sober stare he used habitually.

  "Green, our father's looking for you."

  A dip of the head, one of Green's staring nods, his eyes hardly leaving her.

  He knew, Green meant; she knew how to read him.

  "You know," she said, "how upset they'll be."

  A second nod. There was no hint of distress on Green's face. No feeling at all. She remembered why she hated this brother, this feelingless nothing of a brother who had changed everything when he came.

  "You don't care."

  Green blinked, solemn as one of his leathery pets.

  "Where do you think you're going?" she asked. "Doing what? You want to starve?"

  A shake of the head.

  "Speak to me. Once, speak to me."

  Green sank down on his haunches on the bank and gathered up a stone, laid it flat on another one. He no longer listened.

  "That's nice," she said. For one desperate moment she thought of warning him off, telling him the others were coming, so that he would run off, would escape, so that they would never again have to worry about him.

  But the words stuck in her throat, an ultimate dishonesty— not for themselves, but because it would be hard to look at her father and claim Green had run away.

  She sidled closer while her brother made patterns with the stones… sidled closer, snatched suddenly at his arm and spoiled his pattern. He came up flailing and splashing into the margin of the water, twisted in her grip, and of a sudden her foot skidded on wet moss, spilling them both.

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  He twisted loose. "Green," she yelled after him, as he went skittering this way and that among the higher rocks.

  But he was gone, and she was sitting in the water, soaked and shaken to think that finally he had gotten away. She was jolted by the fall—embarrassed and no small bit angry that he had outdone her, her little brother.

  But gone. They were free of him. Finally free.

  She gathered herself up then and laved off her hands and muddy coveralls, settled herself finally to dry off and wait.

  And when her brothers brought her father with them down the banks of the river, she rose up off her rock to meet them in the twilight.

  "He pushed me," she said as dourly as she could. "He hit me and he got away."

  She was not sure what to expect— focused only on her father's eyes.

  "Did he hurt you?" Jin elder asked, which question warmed her heart with a warmth she had hardly felt since she was small. There was concern there; care for her. He took her into his arms and hugged her as he had done when she was small, and in that moment she looked beyond him, at her brothers; and at Nine and his kin, with a warning and a triumph in her smile.

  She was someone again, with Green gone. She looked at Jin Younger, and Mark and Zed and Tam, and they knew what she had done. They had to know, that she had not struggled half hard enough; and why. So she was one of them: co-conspirator. Murderer, perhaps.

  "You tried," Jin elder said. But she had no twinge of conscience, looking up into his face, because, at least in intent, she had done that much.

  "Go back with father," Jin Younger said. "We'll search further."

  "No," Jin elder said. "Don't. I don't want that."

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  Because he was afraid of this place, Pia thought; he took care for them now and not for Green. He had given up, and that was sweet to hear, that was what they had wanted to hear.

  "I'll look," Jin Younger insisted, and turned away, up the bank, up among the rocks, never asking which way Green might have gone. It was the wrong way; and Mark went off that way too, toward the cliffs where Jin was leading. So she understood.

  "We'd better get home," Zed said. "It's getting dark. He's off into the wild places. And there's no help in all of us wandering around out here."

  "Yes," Jin elder said finally, in that quiet way he had, that resigned things he could no longer mend. For once Pia felt a shame not for him, for the simple answers her father gave, but on their account; on her own. Yes.

  Like that. After walking through territory that was a terror to him. Yes.

  Let's go home. Let's tell mother how it is.

  Her brothers were in no wise bound after Green. They had no interest in Green. They had left themselves a maincamper up on the cliffs and night was falling; it was time to go get Jane Gutierrez down before she went silly with panic. Games were done. The night was coming. Fast.

  And as for her brother, as for Green, spending the night out in the cool damp, slithering underearth where he chose to be—

  She shivered in the circle of Jin elder's arm, turning back to the way along the shore. Nine and his brothers had already begun to walk back, having nothing to do with her father, and less with their own; besides, Nine had reason to avoid her
now. So Jin elder was their possession, theirs, finally, the way he had been before Green existed.

  iv

  The sun sank, casting twilight among the stones, and Jane Flanahan-Gutierrez walked briskly down the trail among the mounds. Her knees shook just slightly as she went, making the downhill course uncertain.

  Fear was a knot in her stomach; and she cursed the azi-born, the beautiful, the so-beautiful and so hollow. Stay away from them, her mother said—

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  stay away. And her father— said nothing, which was his habit. Or he delivered lectures on ships and birth-labs and plans gone amiss, and why she ought to think about her future, which she had no desire at all to hear.

  Beautiful and hollow. No hearts in them. Nothing like them in the main Camp, no men so beautiful as Jin and his brothers, who were made to fill up the world with their kind. She wanted them; lowered herself to go off in the hills with them, like their own wild breed; and then their half-minded brother took to the hills as crazy as everyone expected of him, and they left her— just walked off and left her, up in the wild and the oncoming dark, as if she were nothing, as if it was nothing that Jane Flanahan-Gutierrez came out of the camp and wanted them.

  Anger stiffened her knees; anger kept her going down the road into the brushy wild below the cliffs. She walked among the mounds, guided herself by the little sun that filtered through the trees atop the mounds.

  And suddenly— a moving in the brush— there was a boy. Her heart lurched, clenched tight, settled out of its panic. She stopped, facing the boy in the halflight, among the brush. His coveralls were ragged, his hair too long. But he was human at least. Weirds, they called them, like Green, who lived wild among the mounds. But he was only a boy, not even in his teens— and a better guide, she suddenly hoped, than Jin and the lot of his friends had proved.

  "I belong in the camp," she said, taking the kind of stance she used when she expected something of the azi who served. "I want to go through the maze. You understand? You take me through."

  The figure beckoned, never speaking a word. It began to move off through the brush as vague as ever it had been.

  "Wait a minute," she said; and panic was in her mind— wondering how she was going to explain all this when she got home. She was going to be late. The fugitive showed no interest in helping her and they would be turning out search parties when it got dark. It was already beyond easy explaining— I was lost, mother, father; I was fishing; I got back in the mounds— "Wait!"

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  Brush moved behind her. She looked about, saw a half dozen others, who held out hands toward her, silent. "Oh, no," she told them. "No, you don't…" Her heart was crashing against her ribs. "I'm going on my own, thank you. I've just changed my mind." She saw the eyes of some, the curious intensity, like the eyes of ariels. Crazy, every one. She edged back.

  "I have to get home. My friends are looking for me right now."

  They came closer, a soft stirring among their ranks, some of them in coveralls and some in only the remnant of clothing, or in blankets and sheeting. And strange, and silent and without sanity.

  She remembered the other one, the one behind her— turned suddenly and gave a muffled outcry, face to face with the boy, close enough to touch—

  "You keep your hands to yourself," she said, trying to keep the fear from her voice, because that was her chiefest hope— that there were still the town ways instilled in them, still the habit of obeying voices that had no doubt when they gave commands. "Be definite," her mother had taught her, special op and used to moving people, "and know what you're going to do if they refuse,"; but her father— "Know what you're poking your finger at," he said, whenever she was stung. She stared at the boy, a wild frozen moment before she realized the others were closing from behind.

  She whirled, one desperate effort to shock them all and find an opening; but they snatched at her, at her clothing— wrong timing, she thought in utter selfdisgust, and only half thought that she might die. She hit one of them and laid him out the way her mother had taught her, but that was only one of them: the others caught her hair and held her arms. And some of them had clubs, showing her what might happen if she yelled.

  Go along with it, she thought; none of the Weirds had ever killed. They were strange, but they had never yet kept their minds at anything: they would lose interest and then she might get away.

  They tugged her arms, drew her with them… and this she let happen, noticing everything, every landmark. Jin and his brothers would find her; or she might get away; or if she could not, then her father would come looking, with her mother and the specials who knew the hills and the mounds. The camp would come with guns; and then they would be sorry.

  The important thing now was not to startle them into violence.

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  The way they walked twisted and turned in the maze, among wooded ridges and through thickets, until she had only the sunset to rely on for direction. Now she began to feel lost and desperate, but something— be it common sense or despair itself— still kept her from sudden moves with them.

  They came to a hill, one of the caliban domes. A boy crouched there, dark of hair, who beckoned her inside, into the dark, gaping entry.

  "Oh, no, I won't. They'll miss me, you understand. They'll come—" —

  Hunting, she had almost said, and swallowed the very thought of shooting calibans. They were the Lost, these boys, this strange band. A shiver ran over her skin.

  "Come." The boy stretched out a hand, fingers spread upward, closed his fist with a slow intimation of power, so real it seemed to narrow all the space in the region, to draw in all that was. A second time he beckoned.

  Hands closed about her arms, propelled her forward… in a kind of paralysis— they brought her to him, this beautiful young man.

  "Green," she murmured, knowing him. It was his brother's look on him, but changed. Mad. Crazed.

  And others came, older than he, male and female.

  "They're looking for you," she said. "You'd better go."

  But then one of the young men came down from atop the hillside, came close to her, that same far distance in his expression. She might have been a stone. She was not really afraid of him for that reason— until he put his hand on her breast.

  "They won't like that," she said, "the people in the camp." And then she wished she had not said that at all; her wish was to get out of here alive, and threatening them was not the way to assure that. The youth fingered her clothing, and began at the closing of it. She stood quite, quite still, not minded to lose her life to these creatures.

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  He was beautiful beneath the dirt. Most were, who came of azi lines. They were gentle in their moves— all of them curiously gentle, stroking her hair, touching her now without violence, so that it began to wander somewhere between nightmare and dream.

  v

  "She's not here," Jin Younger said, looking about the rocks and scrub of the summit— looked at his brother as if Mark could comprehend any more than he what kind of craziness had taken Jane Gutierrez off the heights.

  "She's just not here."

  "She's got to have tried it on her own," Mark said, no less than what Jin had in his own mind. Jin pushed past his brother at the narrow passage up among the rocks and started down the trail at a run.

  "We've got to get the rest of us," Mark called after him. "We've got to get some help fast."

  "You go," Jin called back, and kept going. His brother yelled other things after him, and he ignored them.

  The sun was throwing the last orange light into the clouds, glinting like fire off the solar array down in the camp, like miniature suns; and around that brightness was the dark. She had come to them, this main Camp woman, her own choice, come to him in particular, because he had that about him, that he could impress any woman
he liked— he and his brothers. She came into the wild country, against all the rules and regulations: that was her choice too; and he was not one to turn away such favors. It had been good, up on the ridge Good all day, because Flanahan-Gutierrez was like them, wild.

  But he should have reckoned, he chided himself, that a maincamper who would have had the nerve to come up here with them would not cower atop the hill waiting; with more nerve than sense, she would not stay put.

  And Flanahan-Gutierrez was more than born-man, she had a father on Council; and a mother in the guards. That was more than trouble.

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  "Jane," he called, plunging off the trail and into the most direct course through the mounds. It was twilight this low among the hills, deep dusk, so that he pushed his way blindly among the brush, for the moment losing his way, finding the trail again: "Jane!"

  But he could see her with her anger and her born-man ways, just walking on, hearing his voice and ignoring it— determined to find her own way home. If she had started immediately after they had left the hill, she might almost have made it through the mounds by now, might be coming out among the hills just this side of town.

  That was his earnest hope.

  But the further he went, in the dark now, with sometimes the slither and hiss of calibans attending him— the more he feared, not for his safety, but for what an ignorant born-man might do out here at night. One could get by the calibans; but there were pits, and holes, and there were the Weirds like Green, who lurked and hid, who had habits calibans did not. Flitters troubled him, gliding from the trees. He brushed them aside and jogged where he could, out of breath now. "Jane!" he called. "Jane."

  No answer.

  He was gasping and sweating by the time he reached the top of the last ridge, with the town and Camp in front of him all lit up in floods. He stood there leaning over, his hands on his knees, getting his breath, and as soon as the pain subsided he started moving again.