Forty Thousand in Gehenna (37 page)

“It still sounds very much like McGee’s theories.”

“There’s a critical difference. McGee thinks the calibans decide. They don’t. It’s human ambition based on status. And this Elai has a lot of status. They might miscalculate—psychological strength for military strength. A lot of people could die over that mistake. I’m talking about McGee’s precious Cloudsiders. And the Styx. They’ve got too much going to waste it all in war.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be miscalculation. On those terms you cite.”

“We’ve got roads built; agriculture increased. Unification of the Towers. We could lose a hundred years in a war right now.”

“A hundred years down whose course?”

Genley gave him a puzzled look, and the look became a frown.

“Maybe,” the Director said, “the calibans won’t permit a war. Or maybe they fight them for their own reasons. And humans just go along with it.”

“That’s more radical than McGee’s hypothesis. Sir.”

“One just thinks—sitting here behind the wire. No matter. We play it cautiously. Since McGee has the chance she can use it.”

“Or maybe they can use McGee. That’s what Jin thinks about it. I’m sure of that.”

“Well,” the Director said, “we just let it go along for now. Frankly, I don’t see much else that we could do about it, do you?”

204 CR, day 42
Message, E. McGee to Base
Couriered by Dain of the Flanahan line to the Wire
by order of Elai Eldest

Wish to report I am safe and well and have persuaded the new ruler of the Cloud Towers to have this couriered: to satisfy Security, my id number is 8097-989 and the holo on your desk is a Terran rose, so you’ll know this is all my idea.

Ellai has been succeeded peacefully at her death by Elai her daughter and designated heir. Elai took advantage of her accession to power over the Cloud to have one of her riders escort me to the Towers. I have been treated with all courtesy and am presently comfortable and content in my situation. This is a rare opportunity with the Cloud Towers and presages an era in which I believe the Cloud may be as productive in research as the Styx has been in recent years. I am not eager to break my stay here at this stage in which I believe much good can be accomplished in stabilizing mission relations with the Cloud.

I will need some equipment and supplies. Elai has agreed to this, and will send to my hut in seven days to collect the supplies which I hope will be there.

Please send:

Writing materials

All such operations apparatus as has been cleared for operations outside the wire, incl. recorder, etc.

4 changes clothing

pair boots

hygiene field kit (forgot mine)

soap!

field medical kit

Also and most important, 1 case (case!) broad spectrum antibiotics, class A, field; 1 case vitamin and mineral supplement; 1 case dietary supplement.

I realize this quantity is unusual, but due to my supply resting on local transport, and due to the possibility of being isolated from supply by circumstance beyond my prediction, I feel this request is only prudent on my part and of utmost urgency, due to close contact with unaccustomed population and drinking and eating unaccustomed food: as approved for Styx mission.

Thank you.
E. McGee

204 CR, day 42
Base Director’s Office

“I am going to approve this,” the Director said to the secretary.

“Sir,” the secretary said, tight-lipped. “Sir, this is talking about cases. I checked with supply. A
case
of antibiotics is one thousand 50 cc units. A box is one hundred. Dr. McGee undoubtedly meant—”

“Approved,” the Director said, “just as ordered. Case lots.”

“Yes, sir,” the secretary said, with thoughts passing behind his eyes.

“Any word from Dr. Genley?”

“Message.” The secretary keyed it up. “Non-urgent. He’s gone back to the field.”

“He did receive the McGee transcript.”

The secretary hit more keys. “Oh, yes. He did get that copy. Was that a mistake? It wasn’t coded no-dispersal.”

“No. It wasn’t a mistake. I want to be informed when anything comes in from outside. Or when any native comes to the wire. Personally. No matter what hour.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That load for McGee’s going to take a light transport. Make the order out. I’ll sign it,”

“What about Smith?”

“Smith.”

“McGee’s assistant. Does Smith go out again? He’s asking.”

“Does he want to go out?”

“He’s suggested he wants someone with him if he does.”

“Exactly what is he requesting?”

“Security. And supplies.” The secretary keyed up the request. “He wants a whole list of things.”

“Never mind Smith. Just put one of our Security people out there. I’ll sign that too. Someone who’s been outside the wire. But not anyone who’s worked in the Styx regions. They might be known. If information passes. Check all past assignments. I don’t want any nervous people out there. I don’t want an incident.”

204 CR, day 42
Memo, Base Director to Committee Members

I am approving new operations in the Cloud River area. New and promising contacts have opened. We are presented the opportunity to secure comparative data.

204 CR, day 42
Message, Base Director to E. McGee, in field
Sent in writing with supplies.

I am backing you on this. Hope that your health improves. Please remain in close contact.

204 CR, day 200
Cloud Towers

Elai laughed, laughed aloud, and it startled calibans, who shifted nervously; but not Scar, who merely shut his eyes and kept taking in the sun, there upon the roof of First Tower, with McGee, in the warm tail of summer days. And McGee went on telling her heir how his mother had tried to swim to the islands one day some years ago. Young Din’s eyes achieved amazement. He looked at his mother to see whether this were true, while his five year old sib played his silent games, put and take with ariels—silent, Taem was; he would always be one of the silent ones, lost to the line of Flanahans, but not without his use. There was three year old Cloud, who was noisy in his wandering about, who played wicked games, disrupting his brother Taem’s Patterns. But ariels retrieved his thefts, and nurses interfered when he grew too persistent.

There were the calibans, besides Scar: a halfgrown brown named Twostone, that was the heir’s; and a smaller, runt brown that had attached itself to Cloud. But Taem had no caliban in particular, owned nothing in particular. Taem was Taem. He never spoke, except with the stones, at which he had precocious skill.

“One in a house,” Elai had said of Taem, “that’s fine. I can stand that.”

“What if he were the only child?” McGee had asked.

“Usually it’s the youngers that go,” Elai had said. “I thought Cloud would go since Taem had. But I lost Marik in Cloud’s first year. Maybe that weighed some on Cloud.”

McGee had doubted this, but she listened to it all the same. Perhaps she had some influence on Din, who had begun to hang on her more than on his nurses. Din liked the tales she told.

“Did you?” Din asked now. “Did you swim out there?”

Elai pulled up her robe and showed the old scar. “That’s why I don’t walk so fast, young one. Would have bled everything I had onto that beach if MaGee hadn’t stopped the blood.”

“But what’s out there in the sea?” The young eyes were dusky like Elai’s, roiled with thoughts. Din’s brows were knit.

“Maybe,” McGee said, “things you haven’t seen.”

“Tell me!” Din said. His caliban came awake at that tone, came up on its legs. Scar hissed, a lazy warning.

“That’s enough stories,” Elai said. “Some things a boy has no need to know.”

“Maybe,” said McGee, “tomorrow. Maybe.”

“Go away,” said Elai. “I’m tired of boys.”

Din scowled. His caliban was still up and darting with its tongue, testing the air for enemies.

“Take your brothers with you,” said Elai. “Hey!”

Nurses came, the two old women, fierce and silent, half Weirds themselves. There was no escape for the boys. Rowdiness and loud voices near Scar were not wise. So they went away.

And Elai kept sitting in the sun, caliban-like, basking on the ledge against the wall. All about the towers the fields were golding. Between them, like skirts, gardens remained green atop the odd mound-houses of the fishers and workers; weirs sat on riverside like lopsided cages, and fish hung drying beside rows and rows of drying washing and drying fisher-ropes and nets.

McGee smiled in the tight, quiet way of Tower-folk, minor triumph. She knew what she did. Elai was well-pleased, if one knew how to read Tower-folk gestures. Her heir had come from silence to questions, from sullen disdain to a hurting need to know; and from disdain of Elai to—perhaps a curiosity and a new reckoning what his mother was; for quite unexpectedly since spring Elai had begun to flourish like a hewn tree budding, had put on weight: muscle was in the way Elai moved now. It might have been the exercises, the antibiotics against persistent lowgrade fever, the vitamins and trace-minerals. McGee herself was not sure; but there were differences in diet on the Cloud, and she hammered them home to Elai.

“Fish guts,” Elai had said in disgust.

“Listen to me,” McGee had said. “Styxsiders eat grays. They get it that way. Grays eat all the fish. Fish eat other fish. Whole. You won’t eat grays, so you’ll have to do better with the fish. Net the little ones. Smoke them. They’re not bad.”

“I like the pills fine,” Elai said.

“Haven’t enough for everyone,” said McGee. “Want healthy people?”

So the nets. And soups and such. And fish dried against the wintertime when fishing was scant.

Interference, they would call it behind the Wire.

Notes, coded journal Dr. E. McGee

So I ask the boy questions. I tell him stories. The sullenness is gone. Used to look at me like I was something too vile to think on. Used to look at his mother the same way, but there’s respect when he talks to her now.

What I find here between Elai and her sons is strange. We talk in cultural terms about maternal instinct. It’s different here. I don’t say Elai doesn’t have any feeling for her sons. She talks with some disturbance of losing one baby, but I draw no conclusions whether the distress is at the discomfort without reward, at the failure, at some diminution of her self-respect—or whether it’s what we take for granted is universal in human mothers.

Here is an instance where we have adjusted data to fit the desire, since it is ourselves we measure. The human species is full of examples of motherhood without feeling. Can a researcher impugn motherhood? Or have we been wrong because it was as a species safer to construct this fantasy?

How many such constructs has the species made?

Or is it the attribute of an advanced mind, to make such constructs of an abstract nature in its folklore when its genetic heritage doesn’t contain the answer? Folklore as an impermanent quasi-genetics? Do all advanced species do such things? No. Not necessarily.

Or I am wrong in what I see.

They are Union; they came out of labs.

Two hundred years ago. There’s been a lot of babies born since then.

Elai’s sons had different fathers. Some Cloud Tower folk pair for what seems permanence. Most don’t. I asked Elai if she chose the fathers. “Of course,” she said. “One was Din, one was Cloud, one was Taem. And Marik.”

So the boys have the father’s name. I haven’t met the mates. Or we haven’t been introduced. Elai said something that shed some light on it: about Taem:
“That man’s from New Tower. Scar and that caliban were trouble; he ran. Got rid of that one.”

“Killed him?” I asked, not sure whether she was talking about the caliban or the man.

“No,” she said, and I never did find out which one.

But Taem rules what they call the New Tower over by the sea. And I think it’s the same Taem. Relations seem cordial at least at a distance.

I say Elai has no motherhood. I found the relationship between herself and her sons chilling, like a rivalry, one in which the dominancy of the Calibans seemed to have some bearing; and Taem’s lack of one, his silence—Elai’s resignation, no, her acceptance of his condition. (Humans bearing children to give to calibans?)

But today I picked up something I hadn’t realized: that Elai treats her heir as an adult. Cloud can run about being a baby; Weirds take care of him, and those two old women. Taem—no one knows what Taem needs, but the Weirds see he gets it, I suppose. Only this six year old is no child. God help us, I haven’t seen a child in twenty years excepting natives, but that’s no six year old of any mindset I’m used to.

He’s like Elai was, quiet, grownup-like.

Is even childhood one of our illusions? Or is this forced adulthood what’s been done to us out here?

Us. Humans. They are still human; their genes say so.

But how much do genes tell us and how much is in our culture, that precious package we brought from old Earth?

What will we become?

Or what have they already begun to be?

They look like us. But this researcher is losing perspective. I keep sending reassurances to Base. That’s all I know to do.

I think they accept me. As what, I’m far from sure.

204 CR, day 232
Cloud Towers

Ma-Gee
, they called her in the camp. A woman had come from another tower carrying a river-smoothed stone the size of those only the big browns moved, and laid it at McGee’s feet, in the gathering of First Tower.

“What does that mean?” McGee had asked Elai afterward.

“Nest-stone,” Elai had said. “Brings warmth from the sun. Baby-gift. That’s thanks.”