Forty Thousand in Gehenna

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Come back here." Ma Elly clenched his shirt, pulled at him with all her might, a stout woman, the woman who had mothered him half his life.

  "You've got a family to see to, hear?"

  "Ma Elly— if we don't stop them out there together—"

  "You're not going out there. Come back here. They'll kill you out there, and what good is that?"

  His wife held him, her arms added to ma Elly's, and young Tarn held to his waist. They pulled him inside, and he lost his courage, lost all the fire 214

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  that urged him to go out and die for them, because he was thinking now.

  Then what? ma Elly asked, and he had no answer, none. He patted his wife's shoulder, hugged his sister. "All right," he said.

  "Gather everything," ma Elly said, and they started at it, in the dark.

  Young Tam tossed a log on the hearth— "No," Cloud said, and pulled the boy back and raked the log out with a stick before it took light, a scattering of coals. He took the boy by the shoulders and shook him. "No light. Get all the clothes you can find. Hear?"

  The boy nodded, swallowed tears and went. Cloud looked rightward, where ma Elly was down on her knees among the scattered coals wrestling with the flagstones.

  He squatted down and levered it up for her with his knife, asked no question as she pulled up the leather-wrapped books that were the treasure of Elly's line. She hugged them to her and he helped her up while the business of packing went on around them. "Not going to live in any caliban hole," ma Elly muttered. He heard her voice break. He had not heard Elly Flanahan cry since his mother died. "You hear me, Cloud. We go out that door, we keep going."

  "Yes," he said. If he had seen no other way he would have surrendered for his family's sake, for nothing else; but what ma Elly wanted suddenly fell into place with all his instincts. Of course that was where they would try to go. Of course that was where they had to try. Only— his mind shuddered under the truth it had kept shoving back for the last few moments— the invaders would get the old, the weak, the children: the calibans would have them, and the darts would strike down those that stood to fight. All that might get away was a family like his, with all its members able to run, even old ma Elly. Coward, something said to him; but— Fool, that something said when he thought of fighting calibans and darts at night.

  He took up a bundle of something his wife gave him, and very quietly went to the door and looked out into the commons, where calibans moved between them and the common-hall lights. It was quiet yet. "Come on," he said, "keep close. Pia, go last."

  "Yes," she said, a hunter herself, for all she was fifteen. "Go on. I'm behind you."

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  He slipped out, strung his bow, nocked an arrow as he went around the side of the house, toward the slope of the hill.

  A gray thrashed toward him, sentry in the bushes. He whipped the bow up and fired, one true venomed shot. The gray hissed and whipped in its pain, and he ran, down the slope, collected his family again at the bottom, out of breath as they were, and started off again, a jog for a time, a walk, and then a mild run, gaining what ground they could, because he heard panic behind him.

  "Fire," Pia breathed.

  He looked back. There was. He saw the glow. Houses were afire.

  "Keep walking," ma Elly said, a gasp for air. "Keep walking."

  A noise broke at their backs, a running, but not of caliban feet. Cloud aimed an arrow, but it was more of their own coming.

  "Who are you?" Cloud hissed at them. But the runners just kept running—of shame, perhaps, or fear. His own family went as fast as it could already, and soon he carried young Tam, and Dal took the books from ma Elly, who tottered along at the limit of her strength.

  He wept. He did not know it until he felt the wind on his face turn the tears cold. He looked back from time to time at the glow which marked the end of what he knew.

  And if the calibans would hunt them further, if they had a mind to, he knew nowhere that they were safe. He only hoped they would forget.

  Calibans did, or seemed to, sometimes.

  xvii

  The Town

  The snap of wires, flares in the dark— there was screaming, above all the commotion of people running in the streets.

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  They surged at the gates, at the wire, but the Base never saw them.

  "Open up," Dean cried, screamed, lost among the others. "Open the gates—"

  But the Base would not. Would never open the gates at all, to let a rabble pour into their neat concrete gardens, come too near their doors, bring their tradecloth rags and their stink and their terror. Dean knew that before the others believed it. He turned away, ran, panting, crying at once, stopped in a clear place and looked over his shoulder at nightmare—

  —at a seam opening in the earth, at houses beginning to fold in upon themselves under the floodlights and collapse in heaps of stone— at the rip growing and tilting the slabs of the paved road, and under the crowd itself, people falling.

  A renewed screaming rang out.

  The rift kept travelling.

  And suddenly in the dark and the floodlights a monstrous head thrust up out of the earth.

  Dean ran, everything abandoned, the way the calibans themselves had opened, across the ruined fields.

  Once, at screams, a thin and pitiful screaming from behind, he looked back; and many of the lights had gone out, but such as were left shone on a puff of smoke, a billowing cloud amid the tall concrete buildings of main Base… and there was a building less than there had been.

  The calibans were under the foundations of the Base. The Base itself was falling.

  He ran, in terror, ran and ran and ran. He was not the only one to pass the wires. But he stayed for no one, found no companion, no friend, nothing, only drove himself further and further until he could no longer hear the screams.

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  xviii

  In the Hills

  They found him in the morning, among the rocks; and Cloud raised his bow, an arrow aimed across the narrow stream— because everything had become an enemy. But the townsman, wedged with his back to the rocks, only lifted a hand as if that could stop a flint-headed arrow and stared at them so bleakly, so wearily that Cloud lowered the bow and put the arrow away.

  "Who are you?" Cloud asked when they squatted across the narrow stream from each other, while his sister Pia and his wife and son tended ma Elly, bathing her face and holding water for her to drink. "What name?"

  "Name's Dean," the other said, hoarse, crouching there on his side with his arms about his knees and his fine town clothes in rags.

  "Name's Cloud," Cloud said; and Dal came beside him and handed him some of the food they had brought, while the stranger sat across the stream just looking at them, not asking.

  "He's hungry," Pia said. "We give him just a bit."

  Cloud thought about it, and finally took a morsel of bread and held it out to the townsman on his side.

  The man unwound himself from his crouch and got up and waded across the stream. He took the bit they offered him and sank down again, and ate the bread very slowly. Tears started from his eyes, ran down his face, but there was never expression on it, never a real focus to his eyes.

  "You come from town," ma Elly said.

  "Town's gone," he said.

  There was none of them could think of what to say then. Town had always been, rich and powerful.

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  "Base buildings fell," he said. "I saw it."

  "We go south," Cloud said finally.

  "They'll hunt us," Pia said.

  "We go down the coast," Cloud said, thinking through it, where the food was, where they could be sure of fresh water, streams coming to the sea.

  "South is a big river," said Dean in a quiet voice. "I know."

&n
bsp; They took the townsman with them. They found others as they went, some of their own kin, some that were only townsmen who had run far enough and fast enough— like themselves those who could run, and those who would run, for whatever reason.

  Others drifted to them, and sometimes calibans came, but kept their distance.

  xix

  Message from Gehenna Station to Alliance Headquarters couriered by AS Winifred

  "…intervention of station-based forces has secured the perimeter of the Base. Casualties among Base personnel are fourteen fatalities and forty six injuries, nine critical…. All personnel except security forces and essential staff have been lifted to the station.

  "Destruction in the town is total. Casualties are undetermined. Twenty are confirmed dead, but due to the extensive damage and the hazard of the ground, further search is not presently an option. Two hundred two survivors have reached the aid stations set up at the Base gate for treatment of injuries: most told of digging themselves free. Under the cover of darkness Calibans return to the ruin and dig in the rubble.

  Accompanying tape #2 shows this activity…

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  "The hiller village also suffered extensive damage and orbiting survey has seen no sign of life there. The survivors of the town and village have scattered….

  "The Station will make food drops attempting to consolidate the survivors where possible…. The Station urgently requests exception to the noninterference mandate for humanitarian reasons. The mission recommends lifting the survivors offworld."

  xx

  Message: Alliance Headquarters Science Bureau to Gehenna Station couriered by AS Phoenix

  "…with extreme regret and full appreciation of humanitarian concern the Bureau denies request for lifting of the non-interference mandate under any circumstance….

  "Gehenna Base will be reestablished under maximum security with equipment arriving aboard this courier….

  "It is Bureau policy that no interference be permitted in the territory of unconsenting sapience, even in benevolent intention….

  "The Station will extend all possible cooperation and courtesy to Bureau agent Dr. K. Florio…."

  xxi

  Year 90, day 144 CR

  Staff meeting: Gehenna Station

  "It is a tragedy," Florio said, making a fortress of his hands in front of him.

  He spoke quietly, eyed them all. "But those who disagree with policy have their option to be transferred."

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  There was silence from the rest of the table, poses like his own, grim faces male and female. Old hands at Gehenna Station. Seniority considerable.

  "We understand the rationale," the Director said. "The reality is a little difficult to take."

  "Are they dying?" Florio asked softly. "No. The loss of life is done. The human population has stabilized. They're surviving very efficiently down there." He moved his hands and sorted through the survey reports. "If I lacked evidence to support the Bureau decision— it's here. The world is put through turmoil and still two communities reassert themselves. One is well situated for observation from the Base. Both are surviving thanks to the food drops. The Bureau will sanction that much, through the winter, to maintain a viable population base. The final drop will be seed and tools.

  After that—"

  "And those that come to the wire?"

  "Have you been letting them in?"

  "We've been delivering health care and food."

  Florio frowned, sorted through the papers. "The natives brought up here for critical treatment haven't adjusted to Station life. Severe psychological upset. Is that humanitarian? I think it should be clear that good intentions have led to this disaster. Good intentions. I will tell you how it will be: the mission may observe without interference. There will be no program for acculturation. None. No firearms will be permitted onworld. No technological materials may be taken outside the Base perimeter except recording instruments."

  There was silence from the staff.

  "There is study to be pursued here," Florio said more softly still. "The Bureau has met measurable intelligences; it has never met an immeasurable one; it has never met a situation in which humanity is outcompeted by an adaptive species which may violate the criteria. The Bureau puts a priority on this study. The tragedy of Gehenna is not 221

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  inconsiderable… but it is a double tragedy, most indubitably a tragedy in terms of human lives. For the Calibans— very possibly a tragedy. Rights are in question, the rights of sapients to order their affairs under their own law, and this includes the human inhabitants, who are not directly under Alliance laws. Yes, it is an ethical question. I agree. The Bureau agrees.

  But it extends that ethical question to ask whether law itself is not a universal concept.

  "Humans and calibans may be in communication. We are very late being apprised of that possibility. Policy would have been different had we known.

  "If there were any question whether humans were adapted to Gehenna, that would have to be considered— that humans may have drifted into communication with a species the behaviors of which twenty years of technologically sophisticated research and trained observation has not understood. This in itself ought to make us question our conclusions. In any question of sapience— in any definition of sapience— where do we put this communication?

  "Suppose, only suppose, that humans venture into further space and meet something else that doesn't fit our definitions. How do we deal with it?

  What if it's spacefaring— and armed? The Bureau views Gehenna as a very valuable study.

  "Somehow we have to talk to a human who talks to calibans. Somehow what we have here has to be incorporated into the Alliance. Not disbanded, not disassembled, not reeducated. Incorporated."

  "At the cost of lives."

  The objection came from down the table, far down the table. From Security. Florio met the stare levelly, assured of power.

  "This world is on its own. We tell it nothing; we give it nothing. Not an invention, not a shred of cloth. No trade goods. Nothing. The Station will get its supplies from space. Not from Gehenna."

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  "Lives," the man said.

  "A closed world," Florio said, 'gains and loses lives by its own rules. We don't impose them. By next year all aid will have been withdrawn, food, tools, everything including medical assistance. Everything."

  There was silence after. No one had anything to say.

  xxii

  Year 90, day 203 CR

  Cloud's Settlement

  The calibans came to the huts they made on the new river in the south, and brought terror with them.

  But the shelters stood. There was no undermining. The grays arrived first, and then a tentative few browns, burrowing up along the stream.

  And more and more. They fired no arrows, but huddled in their huts and tried not to hear the calibans move at night, building walls about them, closing them about, making Patterns of which they were the heart.

  Calibans spared the gardens they had made. It was the village they haunted, and even by day ariels and grays sat beneath the sun.

  "They have come to us," said Elly, "the way they came to Jin."

  "We have to stay here," said an old man. "They won't let us go."

  It was true. They had their gardens. There was nowhere else to go.

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  GENEALOGY CR 90

  Gehenna Outpost [303]

  xxiii

  Settlement on Cloud's River

  "…They came from a place called Cyteen," Dean said, by the hearth where the only light was in their common shelter, and the light shone on faces young and old who gathered to listen. He had the light, but he told it by heart now, over and over, explaining it to c
hildren, to adults, to townsmen and hillers who had never seen the inside of modern buildings, who had to be told— so many things. Ma Elly and her folk sat nearest, Cloud with that habitual frown on his face, and Dal listening soberly; and Pia and young Tam solemn as the oldest. Twenty gathered here, crowded in; and there were others, too many to get into the shelter at once, who would come in their turn. They came because he could read the books, more than Elly herself— he could tell what was in them in ways the least could understand. Cloud valued him. Pia came to his bed, and called him my Dean in a way proud and possessive at once.

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  In a way it was the happiest period of his life. They cared for him and respected him; they listened to what he had to say and took his advice. He gave them a tentative love, and they set him in a kind of special category— excepting Pia, who made him very special indeed; and Cloud and Dal who adopted him and ma Elly who talked about the past with him and Tam who wanted stories. At times the village seemed all, as if the other had never been.

  But he read more than he could say. He interpreted; it was all that he could do. He was alone in what he understood and he understood things that tended to make him bitter, written in the hands of long-dead men who had seen the world as strangers. He could go to the wire again. They might take him back. But the bitterness stood in the way. The books were his, his revenge, his private understanding—

  Only sometimes like tonight when calibans moved and shifted in the village, when he thought of the mounds which crept tighter and tighter about their lives—