I lied about that, but I thought she would if she were not busy; but she said I should take care of her sons for her, so I guess it was in a way the truth.
* * *
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I talked to Cloud too, but that's nothing. Cloud's too young to know much.
And Taem knows— who knows what a Weird knows, but too much for any five year old, and too different to hear anything I could say. Scar talks to him. All the grays and ariels do. Presumably that's enough.
We're running out of time. We have to move. I won't take this book when we do. I'm burying it. In case.
They'll lend me a spear to use. Dain showed me how to hold it. I'm supposed to ride— one of the free calibans the Weirds have come up with on this side of the river, the kind that don't let themselves belong to anyone. I've seen it; we've looked each other in the eye. It's not particularly big. I patterned to it and it nosed my pattern but it wouldn't give me anything back. This is not a friendly one. But it's born to the Cloud River pattern. Dain says; and so I trust it doesn't hate me in particular, just the idea of being beast of burden.
That's a human thought. And then I remember that I'm sitting in a house they made, in a land they own. I'm sitting in a word of the Statement they've made about Cloud River, one of the folk who write in squares and angles, no less; and it's going to go where it pleases while I'm on its back, because I can't stop it; I can't defend it either, not with that spear. And it knows.
xlviii
205 CR, day 97
Upper Cloud
They rested, the sun lost among the trees, and cooked what they had of supper at the hunters' fires, mealcakes and boiled dried meat, and a bit of starchy root that grew wild. "I'm going off that stuff," Mannin said. He sat bent over, had gotten thin— some bowel complaint. "Maybe it's allergy."
"Come on," Genley said, "you've got to eat, man."
"It's the water," Kim said. "Told you. Man's been here long enough, letting sewage in the rivers, on the land. Mannin drinks the water—"
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"Shut up," Mannin said. He stayed bent over. His lips were clamped.
"Weak," a hunter said, and nudged him with his elbow. This was Hes, who had Mannin to carry, behind him on his caliban. "The Cloudsiders, they feed you to the calibans, starman."
Mannin got up and went beyond the firelight, riverward.
"Huh," Genley said. That was nothing unusual, not the last two days. He ate his meal, watched the hunters about the fire. It was a man's community, this. All hunters. Jin's own, scattered wide in many camps along the streamside.
How many? he had asked of Jin. Jin had shrugged, but he had added it himself, from the number that he could see, that it was a great number: thousands upon thousands. The station would have seen them move; the station would spot the fires tonight and count them; the station could sense their presence virtually everywhere. But it would do nothing. This barbarian lord, this Caesar on the Styx, had gambled— no, not gambled: had calculated what he could do. Would take the world while the Base and the station watched. Would deal with Base and station then, himself, literal master of the world.
Poor McGee, Genley thought. Poor bastards. He made a dry grimace, swallowed down the brew. It had gone sour in the skins, taken on flavors somewhere between old leather and corruption, but it was safe. Kim was right. Boil the water. Drink from skins. Man had loosed his plagues in Gehenna. Now it went the rest of the way.
Now the weak went under, that was all.
"Mannin," someone said. Men went off into the brush. "Hey," Kim said, anxious, and got to his feet, "hey, let him alone."
"He's all right," Genley said, and stood up. Suspicion. They were still strangers. He pointed, waved at Kim. "Get him— get him before there's trouble."
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"Stop them," Kim said, hesitating this way and that, pushed aside by the hunters. His eyes were wild. " You, you do something—"
There was laughter from the brush. A crashing of branches. Laughter and quiet then, but for breaking branches. So they brought Mannin back and set him down by the fireside.
"You," Kim said, "you talk to them, you've got the means—"
"Shut up." Genley squatted down, gave a scowling stare at the hunters, put a hand on Mannin's shoulder. Mannin was white. Sweat glistened on his face in the firelight. He shook at Mannin. "All right?"
Mannin's teeth were chattering. He sat hunched over, shook his head.
"Get the skin," Genley said.
"I'm not your bloody servant," Kim hissed. "You don't give me orders."
" Get the skin. You take care of him, you bloody take care of him, hear me?" Jin had come; Genley saw it, gathered himself up in haste, drew a deep breath.
Jin stared at the hunter-leader; at him, at one and the other, hands on his hips. It was not a moment for arguing. Not an audience that would appreciate it. After a moment Jin gave a nod of his head toward the second, the smaller circle of hunters. "Genley," he said.
Genley came aside, hands in his belt, walked easily beside Jin, silent as Jin walked, on soft hide soles, crouched down by the fireside as Jin sat, one of them, a leader with his own band, however poor it was. He had his beads, had his braids, had his knife at his side. Like the rest. Moved like them, silent as they. He had learned these things.
"This Mannin," Jin said with displeasure.
"Sick," Genley said. "Bad gut."
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Jin thrust out his jaw, reached out and clapped a hand on his knee. "Too much patience. All starmen have this patience?"
"Mannin's got his uses."
"What? What, my father?" Jin reached to the fire's edge and broke off a bit of a cake baking on a stone. "For this bad gut, no cure. It's his mind, Genley. It's his mind wants to be sick. It's fear."
"So he's not a hunter. He's other things. Like Weirds."
Jin looked up from under his brow. "So. A Weird."
"We're a lot of things."
"Yes," Jin said in that curious flat way of his, while the eyes were alive with thoughts. "So I give him to you. This Kim; this Mannin. You take care of them… Lord Gen-ley."
He drew in a breath, a long, slow one. Perhaps it was Jin's humor at work.
Perhaps it meant something else.
"You know weapons, Gen-ley?"
Genley shrugged. "Starman weapons. Don't have any. They don't let them outside the Wire."
Jin's eyes lightened with interest.
Mistake. Genley looked into that gaze and knew it. "All right," he said,
"yes, they've got them. But the secret to it is up there. Up. " He made a motion of his eyes skyward and down again; it was not only Jin listening, it was Blue and others. It was the Tower-lords. "First steps first, lord Jin.
None before its time."
" MaGee. "
"She's got none."
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Jin's lips compacted into a narrow grimace something like a smile.
"You put McGee in my keeping," Genley said. He had worked for this, worked hard. It was close to getting, close to it, to get this concession.
Save what he could. Do what he could, all rivalries aside. "You want Cloudside in your hand, hear, that woman knows what there is to know.
You give her to me."
"No." There was no light of reason there, none at all in the look Jin turned on him. "Not that one."
He felt a tightening of the gut. So, McGee, I tried. There was nothing more to do. No interference. Just ride out the storm. Gather pieces if there were pieces left. No place for a woman. She might get common sense at the last, run for it, get back to the Wire. It was the best to hope for now.
If Elai let her run.
205 CR, day 98
Cloud Towers
They gathered in the dawn, in the first pale light along the Cloud, and Mc
Gee clutched her spear and hurried along the shore. The leathers felt strange, like a second, unfamiliar skin at once binding and easy; she felt embarrassed by the spear, kept the head canted up out of likelihood of sticking anyone with it as calibans brushed by her carrying riders on their backs, tall, disdainful men and women who knew their business and were going to it in this dusty murk. God help me, she kept thinking over and over, God help me. What am I doing here?— as a scaly body shouldered her and its tail rasped against her leg in its passing, weight of muscle and bone enough to break a back in a half-hearted swing.
A Weird found her, among the thousands on the move, waved her arm at her. She followed through the press of moving bodies, of calibans hissing like venting steam, of claw-footed giants and insistent grays that could as easily knock a human down, of ariels skittering in haste. She lost her guide, but the Weird waited on the shore where she had known to go, 360
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where her caliban waited, indistinct in the dusty dawn. Hers, the only one unridden, the only one which would be waiting on the shore.
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 361
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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.
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xlix
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….
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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.
l
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.
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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.
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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.
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