Forty Thousand in Gehenna (39 page)

Daylight was ahead, a round source of sun. She went more slowly now, to accustom her eyes, and the gray went before her, a sinuous shape moving like a shadow into what proved twilight, a riot of color in the sky.

But we have left the Towers
, McGee thought, rubbing at her eyes. The river was before her. Somehow they had come out by the river, where caliban mounds were, beside the fisher nets.

I should find Elai, call the Base. How many days
?

Something overshadowed her, on the ridge. She looked about, blinking in the light, with tears running down her face. It was a great brown.

Her gray had stayed. It offered her a stone, laying it near. She saw a nest of ariels, a dozen dragon-shapes curled up in a niche in the bank, where stones had been laid. It was a strange moment, a stillness in the air. “Here I am,” she said, and the sound of her own voice dismayed her, who had not heard a voice in days. It intruded on the stillness.

An ariel wriggled out and offered her a stone. It stayed, flicking collar fringes, lifting its tiny spines.

She, squatted, took the stone and laid it down again.

It brought another, manic in its haste.

204 CR, day 300
Message, R. Genley from transStyx, to Base Director’s office.

I am not receiving McGee’s regular reports. Should I come in?

Message, Base Director to R. Genley

Negative. Dr. McGee is still on special assignment.

Memo, Base Director to Security Chief

Refer all inquiries about Dr. McGee to me.

I am more than a little concerned about this prolonged silence from McGee. Prepare a list of options in this case.

Message, Base Director to Gehenna Station.

Request close surveillance of the Cloud River settlement. Relay materials to this office…

transStyx: Green Tower

“My father,” Jin said, in the sunlight, in the winter sun, when the wide fields of Green Tower lay plowed and vacant. Forest stretched about them to the east, the marsh to the west. The wind lifted Jin’s dark hair, blew it in webs; the light shone on him, on Thorn, lazy beside the downward access. “My father.” His voice was low and warm and his hand that had rested on the walls rested on Genley’s shoulder, drew him close, faced him outward as he pointed, a sweep about the land. “This is mine. This is mine. All the fields. All the people. All they make. And do you know, my father, when I took it into my hands I had one tower. This one. Look at it now.
Look
, Gen-ley. Tell me what you see.”

There was a craziness in Jin sometimes. Jin played on its uncertainties, unnerved some men. Genley looked on him with one brow arched, daring to dare him back.

“Would you think,” Jin said, “that a man has tried to kill me today?”

It was not a joke. Genley saw that and the humor fell from his face. “When? Who?”

“Mes Younger sent this man. This was a mistake. Mes will learn.” Jin set both his hands on the rim of the wall, fists clenched. “It’s this woman, Gen-ley. This woman.”

“Elai.”

“
MaGee
.” Jin rounded on him, looked up at him, his face flushed with rage. “This conniving of women. This thing goes on. Jin is a fool, they say; he lets the starmen play with him. He listens to them while they talk to this Elai and this Elai learns anything she wants from MaGee. And if Jin is a fool, then fools can try him, can’t they?”

Genley took in his breath. “I’ve warned Base about this.”

“They don’t listen to you.”

“I’ll file a complaint with them if you’ve got something definite I can say to them. I’ll make them understand.”

Jin stared up at him, a shorter man. His veins swelled; his nostrils were white. “What would they like to hear?”

“What she’s doing. They don’t know where she is right now. Do you?”

“They don’t know where she is.
She’s with Elai
. That’s where she is.”

“Tell me what she’s doing and I’ll tell them.”

“
No!
” Jin flung his arm in a gesture half a blow, strode off toward Thorn. The caliban had risen, his collar erect. Jin turned back again, thrust out his arm. “No more com, Gen-ley.
My father
, who gives me advice. I’m sending you to Parm. You. This Mannin, this Kim.”

“Let’s talk about this.”

“No talk.” He flung the arm northward, an extravagant gesture. “I’m going north to kill this man. This man who thinks I’m a fool. You go to Parm Tower. You think, you
think
, Genley, what this woman costs.”

He disappeared down the access. Thorn delayed, a cold, caliban eye turned to the object of the anger, then whipped after Jin.

Genley stood there drawing deep breaths, one after the other.

204 CR, day 321
Cloud Towers

“MaGee,” said Elai.

The star-man looked at her, met her eyes, and Elai felt the stillness there. The stillness spread over all the room and into her bones. Her people were there. There were calibans. They brought MaGee to her, this thin, hard stranger with loose, tangled hair, who wore robes and not the clothes she had worn, who could have worn nothing and lost none of that force she had.

But MaGee was not MaGee of the seashore, of the summer; and she was not the child.

“Go,” Elai said, to the roomful of her people. “All but MaGee. Go.”

They went, quietly, excepting Din.

“Out,” said Elai, “boy.”

Din went out. His caliban followed. Only Scar remained. And the grays.

“A man came from behind the wire,” said Elai. “Four days ago. We sent him away. He asked how you were.”

“I’ll have to call the Base,” MaGee said.

“And tell them about Calibans?”

MaGee was silent a long while. It became clear she would not answer. Elai opened her hand, dismissing the matter, trusting the silence more than assurances.

“No words,” said MaGee finally, in a hoarse, strange voice. “You knew that.”

Elai gestured yes, a steadiness of the eyes.

And MaGee picked it up. Every tiny movement. Or at least—enough of them.

“I want to go back to my room,” MaGee said. “There’s too much here.”

Go
, Elai signed in mercy. In tenderness. MaGee left, quietly, alone.

204 CR, day 323
Message, E. McGee to Base Director

Call off the dogs. Reports of my death greatly exaggerated. Am writing report on data. Will transmit when complete.

204 CR, day 323
Message, Base Director to E. McGee

Come in at once with full accounting.

204 CR, day 323
Message, E. McGee to Base Director

Will transmit when report is complete.

204 CR, day 326
Notes, coded journal Dr. E. McGee

I’ve had trouble starting this again. I’m not the same. I know that. I know—

204 CR, day 328
Cloud Tower

Security had sent him. Kiley. A decent man. McGee had heard about him, or at least that something was astir, and then that it was Outsider; and when she heard that she knew.

She had put on her Outsider-clothes. Cut her hair. Perfumed herself with Outsider-smells. She went there, to the hall, where the riders would bring the Outsider.

“Kiley,” she said, when Elai said nothing to this intruder.

He was one of the old hands. Stable. His eyes kept measuring everything because that was the way he was trained. He would know when someone was measuring him.

“Good to see you, doctor,” Kiley said. “The Director’d like to see you. Briefly. Sent me to bring you.”

“I’m in the middle of something. Sorry.”

“Then I’d like to talk to you. Collect your notes, take any requests for supplies.”

“None needed. You don’t have to send me signals. I can say everything I have to say right here. I don’t need supplies and I don’t need rescue. Any trouble at the Base?”

“None.”

“Then go tell them that.”

“Doctor, the Director gave this as an order.”

“I understand that. Go and tell him I have things in progress here.”

“I’m to say that you refused to come in.”

“No. Just what I said.”

“Could you leave if you wanted to?”

“Probably. But I won’t just now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kiley said tautly.

“Let someone take him outside the Towers,” McGee said. “This man is all right.”

Elai made a sign that was plain enough to those that knew, and Maet, an older rider, bestirred himself and gave Kiley a nod.

Later:

You stay here
, Elai said, not with words, but she made it clear as it had always been.

Notes, coded journal Dr. E. McGee

I can write again. It’s hard. It’s two ways of thinking. I have to do this.

There’s a lot—

No. Maybe I’ll write it someday. Maybe not. No one needs to know that. I’ve talked to calibans. A couple of ideas. Finally.

It’s not too remarkable, talking
to
calibans. They pick up a lot of what we do.

But after all that time I was sitting there playing put and take with ariels and making no sense at all—they’re not at all bright, the ariels. You can put and take with them a long time, and then they get to miming your game; and then you don’t know who you’re playing with, yourself or it, because they pick up the way you do things. And the calibans just watching. Until the grays get to moving stones around. And then you know what they’ll do. You know what their body-moves mean; and that this is a tower, and how they circle that, building it, protecting it. The grays say only simple things. Their minds aren’t much. It’s almost all body language. And a few signs like
warning
and
stop here
and
tower
. And more I can’t read. This gray shoved dirt around as well as stones. It seemed to play or it was stupider than I thought then; it would come up with dirt sitting on its nose and blink to clear its eyes and dive down again and move more dirt until it built a ridge; and when it would stop, old Scar would come down off that mound and get it moving again, it and others, about three others, I don’t know how many. Maybe more.

And that circle was around me. It wasn’t threatening. It was like protection. It went this way and that, tendrils spiraling off from it, the way the ariels do.

I got brave. I tried putting a stone out in front of Scar, a sun-warmed one. And that wasn’t remarkable. You can get something out of ariels with that move. But then he came down—stood there staring at me and I stood there staring back into an eye bigger than my head, so big he could hardly see me at that range, and then it dawned on me what his vision is like, that those eyes see in larger scale than I am. I’m movement to him. A hazy shape, maybe.

I got him to say a simple thing to me. He walked round me now that my Place was established; he told me there was trouble toward the northeast: he told me with body language, and then I could see how the spirals were, that the grays had made, that they were mapping the world for me. Conveying their land-sense to smaller scale- Or his land-sense. Or it was all feeding in, even the ariels.

Calibans write on the world. They write the world in microcosm and they keep changing it, and they don’t have tech. Technology can’t matter to them. Cities can’t. Or civilization. They aren’t men. But that big brain is processing the world and putting it out again; it added me to the Cloud Towers. It stood there staring past me with an eye too big to see me the way I see and all of a sudden I was awed—that’s not a word I use much. Really awed. I wanted to cry because I had gone non-verbal and I couldn’t get it out and couldn’t take it in because my eyes and my brain aren’t set up for what I was seeing.

And now I’m scared. I’m writing up a report and they’ll think I’m crazy. I can hear what Genley will say: “Now they
write
. Pull McGee in. She’s been out too long.”

But I get up on the top of the Tower—how calibans must have loved the idea of towers! Their eyes are fit for that. And then I think of the square concrete Base we’ve built and I don’t feel comfortable. We bring our big earthmovers to challenge the grays and we build things with angles.

All over the world calibans build spirals. But here on Cloud and Styx they’ve gone to towers. And human gardens. We’re like the ariels. The grays. Part of the ecumene. Capacity was there. God knows if we touched it off or if we ourselves are an inconsequence to what they’ve been doing all this time, spreading over all the planet, venturing here and there—speaking the same language, writing the same patterns on every rivervalley in the world. But not the same. The spirals vary. They’re saying different things.

Like Styx and Cloud. Like isolate towers and grouped towers.

Two different Words for the world.

204 CR, day 355
Memo, Director’s office to R. Genley

This office finds it of some concern that reports from your group have become infrequent and much devoted to routine. You are requested to come in for debriefing. There is news concerning Dr. McGee’s effort.

204 CR, day 356
Memo, Base Director to Chief of Field Operations

Genley has failed response to a report. He may be temporarily out of contact, but considering the delicate relations of the two communities and the McGee situation I think we ought to view this silence with alarm. I am transmitting another recall to McGee. I do not think it will produce results, whether she is being held by force or that her refusal is genuine; but it seems one avenue of approach to the Genley matter. I do not consider it wise to inform McGee that Genley’s group is not reporting; we cannot rely on that report remaining secure, in any of several possibilities.

I am furthermore requesting orbiting observation be stepped up.

Advise all observers in the field to observe unusual caution.

Likewise, run a thorough check of all base detection and warning systems. Winter is on us.