Forty Thousand in Gehenna

by C. J. Cherryh

  There were none. Flanahan had none; had hate— had that, for her daughter's suffering, for the hush that had fallen on Jane, the loss of innocence. For her daughter who sat inside or fell to the studies which she had always hated, because it filled her mind.

  "Move out," Jones said, and they moved, filed out quietly through the hills, amid the brush and the trees of the mounds. Some of Bilas' crew brought the demolitions. Vandermeer had a projectile gun, and gas cannisters to flood the mound and make it unpleasant for the refugees.

  And a few shots after that—

  The orders were not to kill. But Flanahan reckoned that accidents might happen; there might be excuse. She was looking for one.

  They walked, moving cautiously, making as little disturbance as possible… but the way they knew, had it down precisely— the spot where Emberton's unit had set up shop, watching the accesses, watching the runaways come and go.

  They came on a sentry: that was Ogden, one of their own— and gathered him up into their small band: eight of them, in all, counting borrowings from Maintenance— and Emberton was arriving with her escort a little earlier, to take personal command up on the ridge. From now on it was careful stealth: and they broke as few branches as possible, disturbed the brush only where they had to. Flitters troubled them, brushed aside when they would light and cling. A fevered sweat ran on Flanahan's arms and body— a chance, finally, to do something. To take arms against the 140

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  confusion that had marked all their efforts in Gehenna. A few shots fired, a little healthy fear on the part of the aziborn: that would settle it.

  And then they might build again.

  Flanahan was breathing hard when they topped the ridge: the gun was no small weight and she was years out of training. So were they all— Jones with his waist twice its former girth; Emberton gray with rejuv. She saw the tactical op chief in conference with Masu and Tamilin and Rogers as they came up, into that area where Masu and Kontrin and Ogden had sat out observing the situation throughout.

  The runaways were still there. Kate Flanahan crept up with the others, near the edge. The word passed among their crouching ranks. Vandermeer armed the projectile gun with the gas cannisters, aimed at the access of the mound they faced. And right in front of them a pair of the fugitives sat naked, sunning their bony, muddy limbs.

  Of the Calibans, no sight; and that was just as well: less confusion. Jones put the safety off his rifle, and Flanahan did the same, the sweat colder and heavier on her with the passing moments. Those ragged creatures down there, those fugitives from all that was human, they had hurt Jane… had humiliated her; had cared nothing for what they did, for their pleasure; and Jane would never be the same. She wanted those two. Had one all picked out.

  "Move," the order came from Jones; and they did as they had arranged, pasted a few shots near the visible fugitive, came down the slope.

  Flanahan whipped off a shot, saw the taller of the two go down like he was axed.

  And then the ground pitched underfoot, went soft, slid: there were outcries. One was hers. Trees were toppling about them. Of a sudden she was waistdeep in earth and still sliding down as the whole slope dissolved.

  She let go the rifle, used her hands to fight the cascading earth; but it went over her, pinning her arms, filling her mouth and nose and eyes; and that and the pressure were all, pain and the crack of joints.

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  xi

  So they failed. Jane Flanahan-Gutierrez understood that when her father came to her to break the news… but she had understood that already, when the radio had been long silent, and the rumor went through the Camp. She took it quietly, having abandoned the thought that her life would proceed as she wanted. Little surprised her.

  Her father settled into silence. His calibans went unhunted, after all; but Kate was gone, and calibans had killed her. He smiled very little, and a slump settled into his shoulders in the passing months.

  He offered to have the doctors rid her of it, the swelling presence of the child in her belly; but no, Jane said, no. She did not want that. She paid no attention to the stares and the talk among the youths who had been her friends. There was herself and her father; there was that… and the baby was at least some of Kate Flanahan; some of her father, too; and of whatever one of the lostlings had sired it.

  When it came she called her daughter Elly— Eleanor Kathryn Flanahan, after her mother: and her father took it into his arms and found some comfort in it.

  Jane did not. Jin's daughter, it might be; or one of his brothers'. Or something that had happened beneath the hill. She fed it, cared for it, saw a darkhaired girl toddling for her father's hands, or going after him with smaller paces, or squatting to play with Ruffles— at this she shuddered, but said nothing— Elly followed her grandfather everywhere, and he showed her flitters and snails and the patterning of leaves.

  That was well enough. It was all Jane asked of life, to keep a little peace in it.

  The fields went smaller. The azi who had fled did some independent farming, over by the cliffs, so the rumor ran. Gallin died, a cough that started in the winter and went to pneumonia; that winter carried off Bilas too. They went no longer outside the Camp— the Calibans came here, 142

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  too… made mounds on the shore, between them and the fishing; and only that roused them to fight the intruders back.

  But the calibans came back. They always did.

  Jane sat in the summer sun the year her father died, and saw Elly half grown— a darkhaired young woman of wiry strength who ran with azi youths. She cared not even to call her back.

  That was the way, at the end of it all, she felt about the child.

  xii

  Year 49, day 206 CR

  There were more and more graves— of which the born-man Ada Beaumont had been the first. Jin elder knew them all: Beaumont and Davies, Conn and Chiles, Dean who had birthed his son; Bilas and White and Innis; Gallin and Burdette, Gutierrez and all the others. Names that he had known; and faces. One of his own sibs lay here, killed in an accident… a few other azi, the earliest lost, but generally it was not a place for azi. Azi were buried down by the town, where his Pia lay, worn out with children; but he came here sometimes, to cut the weeds, with a crew of the elders who had known Cyteen.

  So this time he brought the young, a troop of them, his daughter Pia's children and three of his son Jin's; and some of Tam's, and children who played with them, a rowdy lot. They trod across the graves and played bat-the-stone among the weeds.

  "Listen," Jin said, and was stern with them until they stopped their games and at least looked his way. "I brought you here to show you why you have to do your work. There was a ship that brought us. It put us here to take care of the world. To take care of the born-men and to do what they said. They built this place, all the camp."

  "Calibans made it," said his granddaughter Pia-called-Red and the children giggled.

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  " We made it, the azi did. Every last building. The big tower too. We built that. And they showed us how, these born-men. This one was Beaumont: she was one of the best. And Conn— everyone called him the colonel; and he was stronger than Gallin was… Stop that!" he said, because the youngest Jin had thrown a stone, that glanced off a headstone. "You have to understand. You behave badly. You have to have respect for others.

  You have to understand what this is. These were the born-men. They lived in the domes."

  "Calibans live there now," another said.

  "We have to keep this place," Jin said, "all the same. They gave us orders."

  "They're dead."

  "The orders are there."

  "Why should we listen to dead people?"

  "They were born-men; they planned all this."

  "So are we," said his eldest grandson. "We were born."

  It went like that. The chil
dren ran off along the shore, and gathered shells, and played chase among the stones. Ariels waddled unconcerned along the beach, and Jin 458 shook his head and walked away. He limped a little, arthritis setting in, that the cold nights made worse.

  He worked in the fields, but the fields had shrunk a great deal, and it was all they could do to raise grain enough. They traded bits and pieces of the camp to their own children in the hills— for fish and grain and vegetables, year by year.

  He walked back to the camp, abandoning the children, avoiding the place where the machines that had killed Beaumont rusted away.

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  Some azi still held their posts in the domes, and the tower still caught the sun, a steel spire rising amid the brush and weeds. Flitters glided, a nuisance for walkers. Ariels had the run of all the empty domes in maincamp, and trees grew tall among the ridges which had advanced across the land, creating forests and grassy hills where plains and fields had been. Most of the born-men had gone to the high hills to build on stone, or their children had. In maincamp only the graves had human occupants.

  He was old, and the children went their own way, more and more of them.

  His son Mark was dead, drowned, they said, and he had not seen the rest of his sons in the better part of a year. Only his daughter Pia came and went from them, and brought him gifts, and left her children to his care…

  because, she said, you're good at it.

  He doubted that, or he might have taught them something. The shouts of children pursued him as he went; they played their games. That was all.

  When they grew up they would go to the hills and go and come as they pleased. Himself, he kept trying with them, with life, with the world. This was not the world born-men had planned. But he did the best he knew.

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  V

  OUTSIDE

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  i

  Excerpt, treaty of the new territories

  "Union recognizes the territorial interests of the Alliance in the star systems variously named the Gehenna Reach or the MacLaren Stars; in its turn the Alliance will undertake to route fifty percent of trade with these systems through Union gateway ports after such time as a positive trade balance has been achieved;… further… that the defense of these territories will be maintained jointly by the terms of the Accord of Pell…."

  ii

  Private apartments, the First of Council, Cyteen Capital

  "It's only come a few years ahead of expectations." Councillor Harad's face, naturally long, was longer still in his contemplation. He paused, poured himself and the Secretary each a glass of wine— lifted his, thoughtfully. "This is our purchase. Pell wine, from the heart of Alliance."

  "You would have opposed the signing."

  "Absolutely not." Harad sipped slowly and settled again in his chair. The window overlooked the concrete canyons of the city and the winding silver sheen of the Amity River. Outside, commerce came and went. "As it is, Alliance ships go on serving our ports. No boycott. And the longer that's true— the less likely it becomes. So the colonies were well spent.

  They'll keep the Alliance quite busy."

  "They may just lift the colonists off, you know. And if one colony should resist, we'll have a crisis on our hands."

  "They won't. There'll be no untoward incident. Maybe Alliance knows they're there. We'll have to break that news, at least, now the treaty's signed. They'll take that hard, if they don't know. They'll be demanding records, access to files. They'll know, of course, the files will be culled; but we'll cooperate. That's at the bureau level."

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  "It seems to me a halfwitted move."

  "What?"

  "To give up. Oh, I know the logic: hard worlds to develop; and we've hurried Alliance into expansion— but all things considered, maybe we should have thrown more into it. We may regret those worlds."

  "The economics of the time."

  "But not our present limits."

  Harad frowned. "I've looked into this. My predecessor left us a legacy.

  Those worlds were all hard. I'll tell you something I've known since first I opened the file. The Reach colonies were all designed to fail."

  The Secretary favored him with a cold blue stare. "You're serious."

  "Absolutely. We couldn't afford to do it right. Not in those years. It was all going into ships. So we set them up to fail. Ecological disaster; a human population that would survive but scatter into impossible terrain. That's what they'll find. No mission was ever backed up. No ships were dispatched. The colonists never knew."

  "Union citizens— Union lives—"

  "That was the way of it in those days. That's why I supported the treaty.

  We've just dictated Alliance's first colonial moves, handed them a prize that will bog them down in that direction for decades yet to come.

  Whatever they do hereafter will have to be in spite of what they've gained."

  "But the lives, Councillor. Those people waiting on ships that never came—"

  "But it accomplished what it set out to do. And isn't it, in all accounts, far cheaper than a war?"

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  VI

  RE-ENTRY

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  Military Personnel:

  Col. James A. Conn, governor general d. 3 CR

  Capt. Ada P. Beaumont, lt. governor, d. year of founding Maj. Peter T.

  Gallin, personnel, d. 34 CR

  M/Sgt. Ilya V. Burdette, Corps of Engineers, d. 23 CR

  Cpl. Antonia M. Cole, d. 32 CR

  Spec. Martin H. Andresson, d. 22 CR

  Spec. Emilie Kontrin, d. 31 CR

  Spec. Danton X. Norris, d. 22 CR

  M/Sgt. Danielle L. Emberton, tactical op., d. 22 CR

  Spec. Lewiston W. Rogers, d. 22 CR

  Spec. Hamil N. Masu, d. 22 CR

  Spec. Grigori R. Tamilin, d. 22 CR

  M/Sgt. Pavlos D. M. Bilas, maintenance, d. 34 CR

  Spec. Dorothy T. Kyle, d. 40 CR

  Spec. Egan I. Innis, d. 36 CR

  Spec. Lucas M. White, d. 32 CR

  Spec. Eron 678-4578 Miles, d. 49 CR

  Spec. Upton R. Patrick, d. 38 CR

  Spec. Gene T. Troyes, d. 42 CR

  Spec. Tyler W. Hammett, d. 42 CR

  Spec. Kelley N. Matsuo, d. 44 CR

  Spec. Belle M. Rider, d. 48 CR

  Spec. Vela K. James, d. 25 CR

  Spec. Matthew R. Mayes, d. 29 CR

  Spec. Adrian C. Potts, d. 27 CR

  Spec. Vasily C. Orlov, d. 44 CR

  Spec. Rinata W. Quarry, d. 39 CR

  Spec. Kito A. M. Kabir, d. 43 CR

  Spec. Sita Chandrus, d. 22 CR

  M/Sgt. Dinah L. Sigury, communications, d. 22 CR

  Spec. Yung Kim, d. 22CR

  Spec. Lee P. de Witt, d. 48 CR

  M/Sgt. Thomas W. Oliver, quartermaster, d. 39 CR

  Cpl. Nina N. Ferry, d. 45 CR

  Pfc. Hayes Brandon, d. 48 CR

  Lt. Romy T. Jones, special forces, d. 22 CR

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  Sgt. Jan Vandermeer, d. 22 CR

  Spec. Kathryn S. Flanahan, d. 22 CR

  Spec. Charles M. Ogden, d. 22 CR

  M/Sgt. Zell T. Parham, security, d. 22 CR

  Cpl. Quintan R. Witten, d. 22 CR

  Capt. Jessica N. Sedgewick, confessor-advocate, d. 38 CR

  Capt. Bethan M. Dean, surgeon, d. 46 CR

  Capt. Robert T. Hamil, surgeon, d. 32 CR

  Lt. Regan T. Chiles, computer services, d. 29 CR

  Civilian Personnel:

  Secretarial personnel: 12

  Medical/surgical: 1

  Medical/paramedic: 7

  Mechanical mainten
ance: 20

  Distribution and warehousing: 20

  Robert H. Davies, d. 3 CR

  Security: 12

  Computer service: 4

  Computer maintenance: 2

  Librarian: 1

  Agricultural specialists: 10

  Harold B. Hill, d. 32 CR

  Geologists: 5

  Meteorologist: 1

  Biologists: 6

  Marco X. Gutierrez, d. 39 CR

  Eva K. Jenks, d. 38 CR

  Jane Flanahan-Gutierrez, CR 2— CR 50

  Elly Flanahan-Gutierrez, b. 23 CR—

  Education: 5

  Cartographer: 1

  Management supervisors: 4

  Biocycle engineers: 4

  Construction personnel: 50

  Food preparation specialists: 6

  Industrial specialists: 15

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  Mining engineers: 2

  Energy systems supervisors: 8

  ADDITIONAL NONCITIZEN PERSONNEL:

  "A" class: 2890

  Jin 458-9998

  Pia 86-687, d. 46 CR

  (chart)

  "B" class: 12389

  "M" class: 4566

  "P" class: 20788

  "V" class: 1278

  i

  Communication: Alliance security to AS Ajax

  "…survey and report."

  ii

  Year 58, day 259 CR

  The ship came down, all longrange contact negative, and settled at the site the oribiting scan had turned up.

  And Westin Lake, Alliance Forces, ordered the hatch opened on a close view of the land; on a sprawl of human-made huts, on an eerie wilderness beyond, a landscape different than the sketchy Union charts told them they should find.