Forty Thousand in Gehenna

by C. J. Cherryh

  Elai waved a hand.

  So a rider named Cloud did that, who had a caliban who was willing to go.

  They went off into the dark and the last of the starman matter was settled.

  It was not what matttered, on the Cloud.

  lvii

  205 CR, day 168

  Base Director's Office

  "…It's down," the secretary said, wild-eyed and distressed, breathless from the other office, leaning on the desk forgetful of protocols. "The tower, sir— it's down, just— fell. I looked up in the window one minute and it was going down—"

  There were scattered red lights on the desk com. One was an incoming station message, on that reserved channel; more were flicking on.

  "The Styx tower," the director said, striving for calm.

  "The face of it— just hung there a moment like gravity had gone, and then it went down in all this dust—"

  The account went on, mild hysteria. The Director pushed the button for the fax from station.

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  "…Urgent: your attention soonest to accompanying survey pictures. Styx towers eight, six, two in collapse…."

  The door was open. Security showed up, agitated and diffident, red-faced in the doorway.

  "You've seen it," the man said.

  "My secretary saw it go. What's going on out there? Station says we've got more towers down. Maybe others going."

  "Try Genley again?"

  The Director considered it, thought it through, the governing principle of all dealings across the wire. "Try any contact you like. But no one goes outside."

  "If there are injured out there—"

  "No aid. No intervention. You're sure about our own subground."

  "Systems are working."

  "Try McGee again. Keep trying— Get back to work," he told the secretary, who went out a shaken man. He wanted a drink himself. He was not about to yield to that. He wanted the pills in his desk. He withheld the reassurance. The desk com was still full of red lights, not so many as before, but still a bloody profusion of them. Another winked out.

  "Prepare a report," he told Security. "I want a report. We've got observers coming in. I want this straightened up."

  "Yes, sir," Security said, and took that for dismissal.

  More of the lights were going out. His secretary was back at work. Things had to be set in order: there had to be reports with explanations. His hands were shaking. He began to think through the array of permissions he had given, the dispatch of agents. Those would be reviewed, criticized. There 387

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  had to be answers ready, reasons, explanations. The Bureau abhorred enigmas.

  McGee, he thought, cursing her, setting his hope in her, that all reports now indicated that the Cloud was unaffected.

  One native site to show the visitors. One native site to showcase; and McGee could get access to it— surmising McGee was still alive.

  He started composing messages to the field while the reports came in, one and the other of the Stygian towers going down.

  Everywhere. There was death out there, wholesale. Optics picked up the movements of calibans. The two settlements went to war or something like a war and calibans went berserk and destroyed one side, overthrowing towers, burrowing through planted fields, everything, while the apparently solid earth churned and settled.

  "There's a rider coming to the wire," they told him later that day, when he had sent message after message out. "He's carrying someone."

  And later: "Sir, it's Mannin."

  * * *

  "What happened?" he asked, brushing past the medics, shocked at the emaciation, the slackjawed change in the man on the stretcher, there in the foyer of the med building. "Mannin?" He got no sensible answer, nothing but babble of riversides and calibans.

  "Where did you come from?" he asked again.

  Mannin wept, that was all. And he deputed someone to listen and report; and came back later himself only when the report began to be coherent, news of going upriver, of seeing McGee, of Genley and Kim murdered in cold blood.

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  So he went to hear it, sat by the bedside of a man who had gone to bone and staring eyes, who looked the worse for being shaven and clipped and turned into something civilized.

  "Going to shuttle you up to station," he said when Mannin had done.

  "There's a ship due. They'll get you back to Pell."

  Maybe names like that no longer made sense to Mannin. He never even reacted to it.

  lviii

  Message: Base Director to E. McGee, in field

  Urgent that you report in: the Styx towers have all fallen. We see refugees but they do not come near the wire. We have recovered Dr. Genley's notes, which shed new light on the situation. We assure you no punitive action is contemplated….

  Message: Base Director to E. McGee, in field

  Did you receive the last message? Please respond. The situation is urgent.

  Bureau is ferrying in an observer from Unionside, with documents that may bear on your studies. The situation for the mission is quite delicate, and I cannot urge strongly enough that you put yourself back in contact with this office at once, by whatever means.

  lix

  205 CR, day 172

  Cloud Towers

  "No," Elai said. "No com." And McGee did not dispute it, only frowned, sitting there in the hall of First Tower where Elai sat. Elai had a blanket wrapped about her. She had not combed her hair; it stuck out at angles, webbed like lint. Her eyes were terrible.

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  Her heir was there— Din, who crouched in the corner with his juvenile caliban, with his eyes as dreadful as Elai's own— frightened little boy, who knew too much. Din had his knife. It was irony that he was here, an heir defending his elder; but this seven year old had the facts all in hand.

  This seven year old had an aunt ready to take him when she could, to her own tower, to what befell a seven year old heir to a line that had lasted long on the banks of the Cloud.

  Scar was dying— had never come up to First Tower, but languished on the shore. Elai only waited for this, the way she had waited for days, eating nothing, drinking little.

  Quiet steps came and went, Weirds, who tended Elai. Taem never came; the nurses had Cloud kept somewhere away, as much in danger, but ignorant. A baby. Likeliest catspaw for Paeia if Din came to grief.

  There was Dain, always Dain, at the doors below. Dain's sister Maeri. The Flanahans were loyal still; would die in that doorway if they must. They were armed— but so were all the riders. And so far one could come and go.

  "MaGee," said Elai, having wakened.

  "First," McGee murmured in respect.

  "What would you advise?"

  "Advise?" Perhaps Elai was delirious, perhaps not. Elai made no more patterns, sat with her arms beneath the blankets, alone. McGee shrugged uneasily. "I'd advise you eat something."

  Elai failed to react to that. Just failed. There was long silence. It went like this, through the hours.

  "First," McGee said, working her hands together, clenching them and unclenching. "First, let's go… just use some sense and eat something, and you and I'll just walk out of here. To the Wire, maybe, maybe somewhere else. You can just walk away. Isn't that good advice?"

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  "I could make a boat," Elai said, "and go to the islands."

  "Well, we could do that," McGee said, half-hoping, half-appalled, shocked at once by Elai's dry laugh. Elai slipped forth a hand, opened thin fingers in mockery, dropping imaginary stones. Forget that, old friend.

  "Listen, I don't intend to put up with this, Elai."

  Elai's eyes more than opened, the least frownline creased her brow. But she said nothing.

  "Styx towers are down," McGee said. "What's that going to mean in the world?"

&nbs
p; A second throwing-away gesture. "Should have made the boats," Elai said.

  "But they'd have taken down our towers."

  "Who?" There was a cold wind up McGee's back. "What do you mean they'd have taken down the towers? Calibans? Like Jin's towers? Like they're doing there? What are you talking about, First?"

  "Don't know, MaGee. Don't know. Maybe not. Maybe so."

  "They'll kill. Like at the Styx towers."

  "The strong ones'll come this way," Elai said. She was hoarse. This talk tired her. She made an impatient gesture. "All those Styxside men, too mean; all those women, too stupid— Life would kill them, here. Land will kill them. Most. Maybe not all." The frown reappeared between her brows.

  "Or maybe Styxside way just grows up again. Don't know."

  Somewhere at the depth of her McGee was shocked. "You mean these Styxsiders did something the calibans didn't like. That that was what killed them."

  Elai shrugged. "They ate grays."

  "For years, Elai—"

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  "It got worse, didn't it? They went on and on; they got themselves the likes of Jin; he pushed." Elai made a motion of her fingers, indicating boundaries. "Calibans aren't finished with this pattern, MaGee, here on the Cloud. Cloud stands. That's what it meant, out there."

  "And they'd have stopped your ships the same way?"

  "Maybe." Elai heaved a breath. "Maybe not. Old Scar would swim. Maybe he thought the same as me. That old sea-folk, he was just bigger than Scar, that's all. Or maybe that was our limit and he was saying so."

  McGee saw pictures in her mind, squatting there with her fist against her lips: saw every caliban on Gehenna in every river valley making mounds much alike, except on Styx and Cloud. "Boundaries," she said, and looked up, at Elai. But Elai had shut her eyes again, closing her out.

  She looked at Din, at the boy huddled in the corner with his caliban. The hall was eerily vacant. Only a single ariel lurked in the shadows. Of all the communications that had once flowed from this place, one small green watcher. There was always one.

  McGee hugged her knees and thought and thought, the patterns that had been since they had come home, lines and mounds across the river, beyond her to read.

  And Scar dying on the shore, slowly, snapping now and again at grays who came too close.

  She could not bear it longer. She got up and walked out, down the access, down the corridors in the dark, where voices were hushed, where desertions had begun, deep below, calibans and Weirds at their work, which might be undermining or shoring up, either one.

  Dain gave her a curious look as she passed the lower door; a handful more of the riders had joined him, armed with spears; so no one got into First Tower yet. It seemed sure that they would. Everything was at a kind of rest, Paeia plotting in her tower, Taem's in uproar, noncommunicant, now that Taem was dead, heirless; and other towers turned secretive. The 392

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  fishers still plied their trade; folk went out to farm. But they did so carefully, disturbing as little as they could; and strange calibans had come: they saw them in the river, refugees from the battle, maybe Styxside calibans, maybe calibans that had never come near humans before. If anyone knew, the Weirds might, but Weirds kept their own counsel these days.

  She stood there looking out to the shore, where Scar still sat like some rock under the sun.

  "Still alive," said Dain. His own caliban was about, not with him, not far either. She spied it with its collar up, just watching.

  She started walking, walked all the way out past the nets where Scar sat.

  The place stank, a dry fishy stench like stagnant water, like caliban and rot. Not dead yet. But his skin hung like bits of old paper, and his ribs stuck out through what whole skin there was as if it were laid over a skeleton. The eyes were still alive, still blinked. He moved no more than that.

  She picked up a rock. Laid it down. Went and gathered another, caliban sized. She struggled with it, and set it onto the other. Of smaller ones she built the rest of a spiral, and the small spur that gave direction. An ariel came and helped her, trying to change the pattern to what was; she pitched a pebble at it and it desisted. She wiped her brow, wiped tears off her face and kept building, and saw others had come, Dain and his folk. They stared, reading the pattern, First Tower built taller than the rest, the uncomplex thread that went from it toward a thing she had made square and alien.

  Dain invaded the pattern, severed the line with his spearbutt, defying her.

  Scar moved: his collar fringe went up. Dain looked at that and stayed still.

  No Cloudsider moved.

  McGee hunted up more rocks. Her clothes were drenched with sweat. The wind came cold on her. There were more and more watchers, riders and calibans of First Tower.

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  "Paeia will come," Dain said. "MaGee— don't do this."

  She gave him a wild look, lips clamped. He stepped back at that. The crowd grew, and there was unearthly quiet. A gray moved in and tried to change the pattern. Scar hissed and it retreated to the fringes again, only waiting. McGee worked, more and more stones. Bruised ribs ached. She limped, sweated, kept at it, making her statement that was not in harmony with anything ever written in the world.

  Dain handed another man his spear then and carried stone for her, leaving her to place it where she would; and that made it swifter, the building of this pattern. She built and built, lines going on to a settlement by the Styx, going outward into the sea, going south to rivers she remembered— Elai, the statement was: expansion. Links to the starmen. The starmen— She built for creatures who had never seen the stars, whose eyes were not made for looking at them, made the sign for river and for going up, for dwelling-place and sunwarmth, for food/fish and again for warmth and multitude, all emanating from the Base.

  A fisher came into the pattern, bringing more stones; so others came, bringing more and more. Growing things, one patterned. A woman added a Nesting-stone. Ariels invaded the structures, clambered over them, poked their heads into crevices between stones, put out their tongues to test the air and the madness of these folk.

  McGee lost track of the signs; some she did not know. She tried to stop some, but now there were more and more; and Weirds watching on the side. It was out of control, going off in directions she had never planned.

  "Stop!" she yelled at them, but they went on building the starman theme, wider and wider.

  She sat down, shaking her head, losing sight of the patterns, of what they did. She wiped her face, hugged herself, and just sat there, more scared than she had been in the war.

  She looked up in a sudden silence and saw Elai there, in a place the crowd had made— Elai, arriving like an apparition, her person still in disarray, Din and his smallish caliban trailing in her wake.

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  "MaGee," Elai said; it was a whipcrack of a voice, thin as it was. There was rage.

  "MaGee's crazy," McGee said. She stood up. "Don't the Weirds have the right to say anything they like?"

  "You want them to take us down, MaGee, like they took Jin?"

  Scar hissed and turned his head, one plate-sized eye turned toward Elai.

  That was all. Then he wandered off, avoiding the pattern, while humans scrambled from his path.

  He went to the river. McGee saw him going in, turned to watch Elai's face, but Elai gave no sign of grief, nothing.

  "You're a fool," Elai said in a weak voice, and started back again.

  Paeia was in her way, astride her big brown, with armed Second Tower riders at her side.

  Elai stopped, facing that. Everything stopped for a moment, every movement. Then Elai walked around to the side. They exacted that of her, but they stood still and let her do it.

  They stood there surveying the pattern. They stood there for a long time, and eventually the crowd found reasons to be elsewher
e, one by one.

  McGee went when those nearest her went, limping and feeling the wind cold on her sweat-drenched clothes.

  A lance brushed her when she passed Paeia on her way back. She looked up, at Paeia's grim, weathered face, at eyes dark and cold as river stones.

  "Fool," Paeia said.

  "That's two that have told me," McGee said, and backed off from the speartip and walked away, expecting it in her back. But they let her pass.

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  lx

  Message: Base Director to E. McGee

  Repeat: Urgent you report: we have Bureau representatives incoming.

  They're bringing Unionside observers. There will be data essential to your work….

  lxi

  Notes, coded journal Dr. E. McGee

  Elai's no worse. No better. Paeia hasn't come through the door. I did one thing, at least, with my meddling— They're waiting. They're just waiting to know what the calibans are going to do now that I've done what I did.

  I didn't think it through. I tried to tell the calibans they couldn't lose Elai, that was all, tried explaining she could make the Base itself rational—

  tried to explain starmen. Tried to tell them about their world and what they were missing, and O dear God, I did something no one's ever done: I went and did a human pattern in terms they could read. I tried to say there was good in starmen, that there's life outside— and they took it away from me, the Cloudsiders, they started telling it their way, their own legends—

  they were talking about themselves.

  No one's moving. The calibans have gone off— most of them. Elai's eating again, at least I got her to take a little soup this morning; that was a triumph. Dain helped. Everyone's going about quiet, really quiet.

  And across the river there's building going on, within sight of the towers.