Forty Thousand in Gehenna

by C. J. Cherryh

  But if she steps aside— we have no stability.

  "Go away," she said, and they went. Their going let the wind come at her pattern and blow the sand in streamers across the stone, as if the wind were patterning back at her and mocking her folly.

  MaGee stayed. Only MaGee and Scar. Even Taem and the other Weird had gone. The solitary gray retreated with other calibans and ariels, a retreating skein of lithe bodies and tails flowing down the entry to the Tower.

  Shall I go? MaGee signed.

  "I want to ask you something."

  "Ask," MaGee said.

  "If we should fall— will the starfolk do anything?"

  "No," MaGee said slowly, "no, I don't think they will. They only watch what happens."

  "Does this amuse them?"

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  "They want to see— they've waited all these years to see what Pattern you'll make. You. The Styx. No. They won't intervene."

  This was a thunderclap of understanding. She saw the look Magee had, like a caliban well-fed and dreaming in the sun. MaGee knew what she had said, had meant to let that slip. Elai spread her fingers at MaGee like the lifting of a crest.

  "Yes," MaGee acknowledged the curse. "The absolute truth, old friend.

  That's what they've been up to all these years."

  A wider spread of the fingers.

  MaGee lifted her head, blinked lazily as Scar could do. Defiant, as Scar could be, defying her in a way that was silent and more subtle than her son. "You can't keep much secret from Jin, can you?" MaGee asked.

  "No." Pattern-blind starfolk could keep their movements secret from each other. Cloudsiders swam in the knowledge of patterns like a sea. What she had done this morning flowed across the river; and the word would flow back again to Jin like a rebounding wave. I'm coming, man-who-wants-the-world. I'm bringing all that ever escaped Green's hands. I'll take your towers, I'll erase you and all you are.

  "MaGee," she said, suddenly, thinking on this, "you're not in the Pattern.

  Not really. Tell me in words what you'd do if you were me. Maybe it would confuse them."

  For a moment then MaGee looked less than confident. "No."

  "Then you do know something."

  "What would I know? What would I know that calibans don't? Oh, I'd confuse things. Maybe not in a way you'd like. Don't make me do that."

  "My rivals would take you," Elai said, "Jin, Taem, Paeia— They'd want you to use. Taem and Paeia'd treat you all right. But Jin's another matter.

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  They have different ways on Styxside. Do you want that? Give me advice."

  MaGee set her jaw and ducked her head, then looked up. "First thing, I'd get the conflict out of here. Away from the Towers and the fields. But that, you're going to do."

  "Calibans say that much."

  "What else do they say?"

  "We'll meet upriver."

  "What kind of war is that," MaGee exclaimed, "when you know where you'll meet? That's not war, that's an appointment. They'll kill you, Elai, you know that?"

  Elai felt a chill. "Come with me. Come with me to meet with Jin, my friend."

  "Up the Cloud? To fight a war?"

  Elai made the affirmative. MaGee thrust out her lip, a pensive look as if it were just some ordinary venture she were considering.

  "Oh, well," MaGee said, "sure."

  And then, from nowhere: "You should have built your ships, Elai."

  "What's that mean?"

  "You should have, that's all."

  "You think I'll die?"

  "What would you leave behind you?"

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  MaGee had a way of walking ground others knew better than to tread. Elai lifted her head and stared at her like some drowsing old caliban. "Don't know that. No one does, do they?" She walked away, beside Scar's huge length, stopped near his tail-tip. "Never wore leathers myself. Got some, though. Wished I could, now and then, just take Scar and go."

  " Ships, Elai."

  She stared at this insistent starman. "Was that what I was supposed to do?

  Was that what you were waiting for?" She recalled a day on the beach, the launching of her boats, a starman watching from the shore. "Of course,"

  she said softly when MaGee answered only with silence. Her heart plummeted. Of course. Scar had chosen her for one reason; of course starmen also came equipped with reasons. She was the creature of others.

  That was what it was to be First. She was self-amused and pained.

  And she walked toward the wall, stood there looking seaward. "Give Jin ships?" she asked MaGee. "If I'd made them, he'd have built them too.

  He'd have patterned how they are. We talk to each other— have for years, back and forth. Takes days. But I always know where he is. And what he's doing. And he knows me. Hates me, MaGee. Hates me. Hates what got from the fingers of the Styxsiders. Ships. That could be something. He wants the world, he does. Wants the world. He'll break those men."

  "Who? Genley?"

  "Don't know their names. Three of them. His starmen."

  "How do you know these things?"

  There was dismay in MaGee's voice, in her eyes when Elai turned around.

  "Calibans talk to you," Elai said quietly. "But you don't hear all they say.

  You don't know everything, starman. Friend."

  "I've got to warn the Base, Elai."

  "You keep quiet with that com. They'd do nothing, you say. That true?"

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  "I think it's so."

  Elai looked her up and down. "You've gotten thin, MaGee. Leathers might fit you. You come with me, you keep that com quiet. You're mine, you hear?"

  MaGee thought about it. "All right," she said.

  * * *

  Later that day, Paeia came, grim and frowning— came, quite tamely, into hall, her caliban behind her. She had not brought her heir, came armed with only a knife; and stood there in front of the chair she had stood behind so often when Ellai had ruled. "You've read how it is," Elai said, from the authority of that chair. "I'm going upriver. You too."

  Elai watched Paeia draw a breath, a long, slow one. Paeia folded her arms and stared. Her face might have been stone, seamed and weathered as it was. She had braided her grizzled hair, with beads in the strands. Had taken her own time about coming, to look her best. Had thought long about coming, maybe— whether it was a trap, whether she might die.

  "With you," Paeia said.

  "I'm no fool," said Elai. "I don't want us weak. You tell me you'll be by me, I don't ask any other promises."

  Paeia went on thinking a moment. "I'll be there," Paeia said. And truth, there were no other promises she could have asked. Both of them knew that.

  "Taem's coming," Elai said.

  "Then, First, you are a fool."

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  Elai frowned at that. She had to, being First; and smiled after, bleak and cool, amused at Paeia warning her. "But he's coming," she said. "I asked him to."

  * * *

  Taem took three days, with the pattern growing worse each one of them. But come he did, with his riders across the Cloud, enough to raise the dust, to veil the shore in amber clouds.

  He crossed the Cloud alone then, just himself with his caliban.

  "Been a while," Taem said when he stood in hall where Paeia had stood.

  It had. He had not changed. The presence was the same. But it added up differently. There was no son. And she herself had changed. She met his eyes, saw him for what he was worth in the daylight as well as dark. He was straight and tall. Ambitious. Why else had he wanted her, in those years? She had no grace, was not fine to look on. He was.

  Din's father— he had come too, and stood by her now, one of her riders, nothing more. Din was there, against the wall; and Paeia stood close by her side. And Cloud and Clo
ud's father, one of the long line of Cloud, same as Paeia, but of Windward Tower— he had come. So all her men were here, and their kin; and two of her sons.

  "Why didn't you kill me?" Taem asked her outright. And that was like him too.

  205 CR, day 51

  Notes, coded journal Dr. E. McGee

  Elai has called the seaward towers to her aid, brought in this former mate of hers… Taem's father. Taem Eldest of New Tower. He's dangerous. You can see the way the calibans behave, up on their four legs, crests up. His caliban is trouble, Elai said once. I see what she means. This man is trouble.

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  "Why didn't you kill me?" he asked her right there in hall, and everyone seemed to be asking himself that question. I think he was insulted she hadn't tried. He came with all his riders, all of them just across the river, but he came into First Tower alone, and that took nerve, the kind of craziness calibans instill. I think he was reading Patterns all the way, that he could get away with it. That he had to come because she wouldn't come out to him; that he had to swallow the fish's tail, they say on the Cloud, when they mean that's all you've got left for choices. It galled him.

  Elai just looked at him, never getting up from her chair, and made some sign I couldn't read all of, but it was something like dismissing him as a threat, which didn't please him. "This isn't Styx," she said then. "I don't have Jin's manners." It was absolute arrogance; and his caliban bristled up and Scar bristled up, and those two calibans sucked air and stared at each other like two rocks determined to go on staring nose to nose forever.

  "How's the boy?" Taem asked then.

  "He's well," she said. Taem had to know about his son, that Elai's Taem had gone down to the Weirds; too much news travels unspoken, everywhere. But news about the Weirds, that have no name— well, that could be different. "I saw him this morning," Elai said.

  He's a handsome man, this Taem. I see what attracted Elai to him in spite of other troubles. He's none so old, this Taem Eldest: good-looking, straight and mean and trim; wears his hair braided at the crown, and a lot of ornament: he's rich as a Cloudsider can be, and those riders of his are part of it. I never saw a man move like that, like he owned whatever space he was in.

  "When do we go?" he asked, not patterning this: it was himself and Elai talking, two humans, that was all, and there was something electric in it as if something from a long time ago were back for a moment.

  O Elai, secrets. You loved this man, that's what. And you've got him puzzled now.

  Young Din was standing over against the wall with Twostone all this while, his little face all hard and scared. First born. I think he's in danger.

  If anyone in that hall would have knifed that man, Din might.

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  The thing is, with Taem's son gone among the Weirds, Taem Eldest is lost from the First Tower pattern, as if there had never been a son. That was the change in the pattern, I think, that let Taem in.

  And Paeia— lean and mean as they come, that old woman, always in riding leathers and always carrying a knife. Paeia was right by the door when Taem went outside again, back to his own riders across the river, and that sent the chills up my back. That woman rules Second Tower, and she's mateless at the moment; and there was thinking in that look she gave him.

  Solutions occur to me, that I don't like to write down. I know this Taem thought of them. "I don't have Jin's manners." Elai said. Meaning that she's thought about it. The affairs of princes. Old, old problems. I read the patterns the best I can and they scare me.

  Elai is the key, the peacemaker. Scar's rider— the only one who can dominate the others and hold Cloudside together, and if anything should happen to her now it'll fall, everything will come apart in chaos. Taem—

  he was challenging her the same way: See if you can hold the Seaward Towers without me. But likewise he knew, I think, he couldn't do without her. Neither can Paeia. Not in this moment.

  I look out the window and it's crazy out beyond the river. Calibans.

  Everywhere. And already the grays are reworking the Pattern out there, broadcasting it to anyone who's not Pattern-blind.

  xlvi

  Message, Station to Base Director

  Survey picks up increased activity on the Cloud, a frenzy of moundbuilding answering this advance of the Styxsiders from the upriver. It seems clear that Cloud River is aware what is happening, through spies, perhaps. The mounds suggest ramparts, but they are curiously placed as defense, and the lines change constantly. We observe no such activity on the part of the Styxsiders. They only camp and advance, averaging thirty kilometers a day.

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  It seems clear that there is a massing of calibans for defense or attack at the Cloud River settlement. These have come from the two seaside settlements and their numbers are being augmented hourly.

  …Observers in the field are at hazard….

  Message, Base Director to E. McGee in Field

  Genley and team are missing on Styxside. Do you know anything?

  Memo, Security to Base Director

  Agents in field are proceeding with utmost caution. War seems imminent.

  Field agents are reporting unusual aggressiveness on the part of calibans.

  Memo, Base Director to Security

  I don't think there's any question Genley, Kim, and Mannin are with that movement toward the Cloud. McGee is also out of touch. Don't take unwarranted risks in observation. Start pulling the teams back.

  xlvii

  205 CR, day 60

  Cloudside

  The corridors were unnaturally still, empty of calibans, of Weirds, unnaturally dusty, because no one was sweeping them, and that, thought McGee, was because of that gathering out on the riverside, that milling about of calibans. Fisher-nets got tangled; someone hauled in a gray by accident, but it survived. Something large surfaced in the river, just a great gray back, and no one saw it again— curiosity, someone said. They've noticed, but McGee had no notion who that they was, unless seafolk.

  Great calibans moved in that no one owned, just arrived— presumably from upriver, from the forest. There were giants among these newcomers, 353

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  but Weirds kept them to the Pattern across the river, and they tried none of the local calibans.

  Wild, McGee thought, or tame. There was no distinction. And they remained, harbingers of trouble up the Cloud, while Elai delayed to move.

  The riders fretted; the calibans seemed indecisive. It all seemed wrong.

  And the halls grew dusty with neglect, under the wear of feet both shod and clawed; the sun shafted through clouds within the inmost halls, dustmotes dancing.

  So she came on Din, in a little-used way, a shadow in the dustmotes. She had not looked to meet him.

  "Din," she said by way of greeting. "Haven't seen you." He had not come for stories. She missed that. He remained a shadow to her, mostly, with Twostone close against the wall, a caliban silhouette out of which the light picked tiny details, the color of a nose, a lambent eye too shadowed for color, staring at her.

  Din said nothing, but bowed his head and stood aside for her to pass.

  "Din— are you all right?" she asked.

  Notes, coded journal Dr. E. McGee

  I talked with Din today. I don't think he understood. He's seven. He's wiry, all elbows; you want to give his face a washing and comb his hair; and then you look into his eyes and you wouldn't dare. He's a boy that's thinking hard right now, how to stay alive. That's the way it is. He's not mature, not in all ways. He's growing and awkward and he took a stone when I was trying to talk with him and threw it. Like a child. He cried, trying not to let me see.

  I don't want to die. That's what that meant. He just threw the stone and it bounced off the wall and hit me. I never let on it did. I just stared at him the way you have to do with that boy to let him know he d
oesn't impress you; and he just broke into tears then and turned his face out of the light.

  "Jin scare you?" I asked.

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  "No," he said, and sniffed and wiped his eyes and tried to pretend he hadn't ever cried, all sullen and arrogant. "Not scared."

  "Look at the sea," I said. That puzzled him, us being inside, in the dark.

  "Look at the sea next time you're out."

  "Why?" He's a little boy, always ready to suspect someone's playing tricks on him.

  "You just do that." I started to talk about boats, which we had talked about before. He just made that stone-dropping move. I don't want to talk.

  "You be smart," I said. "You want to live to be a man?"

  That got his attention. So that was what he was thinking about.

  "Just be smart," I said, not knowing how to advise him, because it's not my world; it's his. "Your mother wants you alive, you know that? That's why she's got that Taem around; because what's coming up that river is mean and it's coming here, you know that?"

  He squatted there thinking about that, and then I figured out that scene on the roof, where he defied his mother; where his little caliban took on Scar, who makes ten of him. Scared. Just scared and full of fight, this boy. Elai's son. I tousled his hair; no one touches him much: it's not Cloudsider way.

  He set his jaw and ducked, but he looked pleased as that sullen little face of his does these days. Poor boy. Your mother loves you. I do.

  "I like you," I said then. He looked pleased. If he were a caliban his crest would have settled. That kind of look. His caliban moved up and nearly knocked him off his haunches, putting its head in our way. They know where the sunlight is. The attention. I don't know how they know, or how much they understand. "Fight," I said, "but be smart."

  "Elai say that?" he asked.