Forty Thousand in Gehenna

Among the terms which have to be jettisoned or extensively modified when dealing with calibans: intelligence; culture; trait; language; civilization; symbiont.

Humans native to Gehenna have entered into a complicated communication with this lifeform which I believe to be pursuing a course of its own. All indications are that it is ultimately a peaceful course, though peace and war are human concepts and also to be questioned, presupposing government of some sort, of which calibans may prove biologically incapable.

I make this assertion advisedly. Calibans understand dominance. They apply sudden coercion. They commit suicide and have other maladies of an emotional nature. But what they are doing is not parallel to human ambitions. It goes off from it at such an angle that conflict between humans and calibans can only result from a temporary intersection of territorial objectives.

The term caliban itself is questionable in application, since the original application seems only to have been to the grays. Absolutely there should be no confusion of browns with grays. There has been some speculation that the grays are a sex or a life stage of the caliban. The humans who know them say that this is not the case. Grays and browns seem to be two separate species living in harmony and close association, and if one counts the ariels–there are three.

Further, ariels seem to perform an abstract function of pattern‑gathering. Not themselves intelligent, they are excellent mimes. If a bizarre analogy might be made, the calibans are technological: they use a sophisticated living computer, the ariels, to gather and store information which they themselves process and use in the direction of their heavy machinery, the grays.

I believe that the browns have long since developed beyond the limits of instinctual behavior, that they have learned not so much to manipulate their environment as to interact with it; and further, I believe, (and herein lies the only definition of intelligence applicable in lifeforms which are not analogous to humanity), they have proceeded to abstract purposes in their actions. The Styx and the Cloud are not their Tigris and Nile nor ever should be: we do not have to define them as civilized because such distinctions are outside their ambition, as perhaps ambition lies outside their understanding: in short, their purposes are at an angle to ours. They seem to pursue this abstract purpose collectively, but that should not encourage us to expect collective purpose as an essential part of the definition of intelligent species. The next sapience we encounter may well violate the new criteria we establish to include calibans.

This leads me to a further point, which makes the continuation of my studies absolutely critical at this juncture. This species whose basic mode of encounter is interactive, has begun to interact with humans. It may be possible to communicate to calibans that they may themselves wish to interdict further spread of this interaction. I believe that it is the kind of communication they are capable of understanding. It is the kind of “statement” that is expressible in their symbol system. I am not skilled enough to propose it to them. A six year old native child could phrase it to them–if that human child could comprehend the totality of the problem. If a native adult could. That is our dilemma. So is human ambition. We are very sure that that word is in ourvocabulary.

Which brings me to my most urgent concern.

The calibans Pattern a disturbance on the Styx. This Patterning is increasingly more urgent. That mound‑building which you are no doubt observing in orbital survey on the Cloud, is nothing less than a message, and a rampart, and a statement that danger comes this way.

I am perhaps objective enough to wonder of the two different human/caliban cooperations which have developed, which is the healthier in caliban terms. I think I know. On the Styx they eat grays.

Report, Dr. D. Hampton

…As for Dr. McGee’s assertions, the report is valuable for what may be read between the lines. With personal regret, however, and without prejudice, I must point out that the report is not couched in precise terms, that the effort of Dr. McGee to coin a new terminology does not present us with any precise information as to what calibans are, rather what they are not. A definition in negatives which attempts to tear down any orderly system of comparisons which has been built up in centuries of interspecies observations, including non‑human intelligence, is a flaw which seriously undermines the value of this report. More, the vague suggestions Dr. McGee makes of value structures and good and evil among the calibans leads to the suspicion that she has fallen into the most common error of such studies and begun to believe too implicitly what her informants believe, without applying impartial logic and limiting her statements to observable fact.

I fear that there is more of hypothesis here than substance.

xliii

205 CR, day 35

Styxside

The sun broke through and brought some cheer to the reedy waste about Parm Tower, glancing gold in the water, making black spears of the reeds. A caliban swam there. Genley watched it, a series of ripples in the sheeting gold. Other calibans sat along the bank, in that something‑wrong kind of pose that had been wrong all day.

Riders came in, scuffing along the road upriver. That was what the disturbance had been. Somehow the calibans had gotten it, worked it out themselves in that uncanny way they had.

The riders came. With them came lord Jin.

Every caliban in sight or smell reacted to lord Jin’s Thorn. It swept in like storm, the impression of sheer power that affected all the others and sent calibans and ariels alike into retreat or guard‑posture along the riverside. Jin arrived with his entourage, without word or warning, immaculate and the same as ever–the matter up north was settled, Genley reckoned. Settled. Over. Genley gathered himself up from his rock with the few fish he had speared and came hurrying in, splashing across the shallows and hastening alongside the scant cultivation Parm Tower afforded.

So their isolation was ended. Two months cut off in this relative desolation, two months of fishing and the stink of water and rot and mud and Parm all prickly with having outsiders in his hall. The lord Jin had deigned to come recover them.

Genley did not go running into Jin’s sight. He collected Kim and Mannin from their occupations, Kim at his eternal sketching of artifacts, Mannin from his notes.

“You know the way you have to be with him,” he warned them. “Firm and no backing up. No eagerness either. If we ask about that com equipment right off it’ll likely end up at the bottom of the Styx. You know his ways. And then he’ll be sorry tomorrow. Don’t bring that up. Hear?”

A surly nod from Kim. Mannin looked scared. It had not been an easy time. Kim had had little to say for the last two weeks, to either of them.

“Listen,” said Mannin. “There’s only one thing I want and that’s headed back to Base. Now.”

“We’ll send you back on r and r when we get the leisure,” Genley said. “You just don’t foul it up, you hear? You don’t do it. You muddle this up, I’ll let you get out of it any way you can.”

Mannin sniffed, wiped the perpetual runny nose he had had since they had gotten back to this place. Dank winter cold and clinging mists almost within sight and vastly out of reach of the Base; with the Styx between them and the pleasures of Green Tower, the high, dry land where winter would not mean marsh and bogs.

“Come on,” Genley said, and went off ahead of them.

Your problem, Jin had said once. These men of yours. Your problem.

They went, the three of them, where every other person of status in the community was going, to the Tower, to see what the news was.

xliv

205 CR, day 35

Parm Tower

The hall rustled with caliban movements, nervous movements. Thorn had made himself a place. Parm’s own Claw had moved aside, compelled by something it could not bluff, and below it, other calibans, of those which had come in, sorted themselves into an order of dominances. These had been fighting where they came from: violence was in their mood, and in the mood of their riders, and it was not a good time to have come in. Genley saw that now, but there was no way out. They stood there, against the wall, last to have come in; no caliban defended them. Scaly bodies locked and writhed and tails whipped in sweeps on the peripheries.

“Let’s get out of here,” Mannin said.

“Stay still,” Genley said, jerked at his arm. Mannin had no sense, no understanding what it meant even yet, to give up half a step, a gesture, a single motion in hunter‑company. He smelled of fear, of sweat; he was afraid of calibans. Not singly. En masse. “Use your head, man.”

“Use yours,” Kim said, at his other side. Kim left. Walked out.

Mannin dived after him, abject flight.

So Jin noticed him finally, from across the room where, heedless of it all, he was stripping off his leather shirt. Women of Parm’s band had brought water in a basin. Other men stood muddy as they were, attending the calibans. A scattering of Weirds insinuated themselves and brought some quiet, putting their hands on the calibans, getting matters sorted out.

Jin lifted his chin slightly, staring straight at him while the women washed his hands. Come here, that meant.

Genley crossed the recent battleground, weaving carefully around calibans who had settled into sullen watching of each other. It was a dangerous thing to do. But the Weirds were there. A man knew just how close to come. He did that, and stood facing Jin, who looked him up and down with seeming satisfaction. “Gen‑ley.” The eyes had their old force. But there was a new scar added to the others that were white and pink on Jin’s body. This was on the shoulder, near the neck, an ugly scabbed streak. There were others, already gone to red new flesh. He always forgot how small Jin was. The memory of him was large. Now the eyes held him, dark and trying to overawe him, trying him whether he could go on looking back, the way he tried every man he met.

Genley said nothing. Chatter got nowhere with Jin. It was not the hunters’ style. A lot passed with handsigns, with subtle moves, a shrug of the shoulders, the fix of eyes. There was silence round them now. He was only one of the number that waited on Jin, and some of those were mudspattered and shortfused.

One was Parm; and Parm’s band; one was Blue, mad‑eyed Blue, who was, if Jin had a band, chiefest of that motley group, excepting Jin. A big man, Blue, with half an ear gone, beneath the white‑streaked hair that came down past his shoulders. The hair was strings of mud now.

“How many more?” Parm asked, not signing: Jin’s shoulder was to him.

“I’ll talk to you about that.” Jin never looked at Parm. He gave a small jerk of his head at Blue. “Go on. Clean up–” The eyes came back to Genley. “You I’ll talk to. My father.”

“How did it go?” Genley asked.

“Got him,” Jin said, meaning a man was dead. Maybe more than one. A band would have gone with him. The women. Jin unlaced his breeches, sat down on the earthen ledge to strip off his muddy boots. Women helped him, took the boots away. He stood up and stripped off the breeches, gave them to the women too, and dipped up water in the offered basin, carrying it to his face. It ran down in muddy rivulets. He dipped up a second and a third double handful. The water pooled about his feet. More women brought another basin, and cloths, and dipped up water in cups while he stood there letting them wash the mud off, starting with his hair. It became a lake.

“You here for a while?” Genley asked.

Jin waved off further washing, reached for a blanket a woman held and wound it about himself.

“A bath’s ready,” Parm’s sister said.

He waved them off again. Held out his hand from beneath the blanket. A cup arrived in it; he never looked to see, but carried it to his lips and drank, looking up at Genley the while. He was not easy. Gen‑ley read that mood. Beyond him Thorn rested, only half relaxed.

“Like Parm Tower?” Jin asked him.

“It’s wet here.”

Jin failed to laugh. Just stared at him.

“Didn’t think it would take this long,” Genley ventured, still pushing, judging he had to push. And pay the young bastard a compliment, if he took it that way.

It halfway pleased Jin. Genley saw the blink. The mouth never changed. Jin gestured with the cup. Sit. Jin took the ledge. The floor was damp from what had not run down the slant to the drain. Genley ignored the invitation, not liking looking up, but stood easier, and that was all right: it had not been an order. Jin puffed his cheeks, let out a long, slow breath.

“The Styx is cold,” Jin said.

“Cold here too. No women here.”

Jin looked up, nonplussed.

“Didn’t have that matter taken care of here,” Genley said.

Jin blinked, blinked again, and a small wicked smile started at the corners of his mouth. “Forgot that. That old sod Parm.” It became a laugh, a silent shaking of the shoulders. “O my father, all this time. Poor Genley.” He wiped his eyes. “No women.” He laughed again, gestured with the cup. “We fix that.”

Genley regarded him with touchy humor. There were other things about Parm he would have wished to say, but a list seemed risky. He folded his arms and looked down at Jin. “Mostly,” he said, “I fished. Hunted a bit along the banks. In the bog. Didn’t hear anything, didn’t get any news. So you settled with that Mes bastard.”

“Yes.”

“Want to talk to you when you’ve got time.”

“About what?”

“When you’ve got time.”

The brows came down, instant frown. “But I always have time,” Jin said, “if its news.”

“Told you I had none of that. That’s what about. There’s a point past which the Base is going to be asking questions.”

“Let them ask.”

“They’ll know there was fighting up north. They see things like that. They’ll make up the answers.”

“Let them make them up. What will they do?”

“I don’t know what they’ll do.”

“But they don’t interfere outside the Wire.”

Genley thought about that suddenly, in sudden caution. That was a question, posed hunter‑style, flatly.

“Up to a point,” he hedged it. “I don’t know what they’d do. There’s no need to stir things up with them.”

“Tell me, Gen‑ley. Who are they like? You–or Mannin? Like Kim?”

Genley frowned, perceiving he was being pressed, backed up on this, step and step and step, and Jin was choosing the direction. “You’re asking what the Base might do about it if they didn’t hear from us.”

“Maybe we found that out?”

“What’s that mean?”

The dark eyes rested on him, redirected to the wall. Jin took a drink, pursed his lips. “They’re Mannins.”

“Some are. Some aren’t.” He squatted, arms on knees, to meet Jin’s eyes. “You listen to me. There’s a point past which. There always is. I tell you what’s good. You want advice, I give you advice. You’ve got the Styx in your hand; got roads; got stone; got ways to get yourself written down as the man that made this collection of towers into something star‑men have to respect, you hear me? You have it all in your hand. But you don’t deal with Base the way you deal with that petty tower lord up north. I’m telling you. Think of a tower as large as the whole Base, in the sky, over your head: that’s what the Station is, and it watches the whole world; it has other watching posts strung out round the world, so nothing moves but what they see it. Imagine beyond that a hundred towers like that, imagine half a dozen places as big as all Gehenna itself where millions of towers stand–you reckon in millions, Jin? That’s a lot more than thousands. Towers beyond counting. You pick a fight with Base, Jin, that’s what you’ve got. You want to deal with Base, they’ll deal, but not yet.”

Jin’s face was rigid. “When,” he said in a quiet, quiet voice, “when is the time?”

“Maybe next year. Maybe you go to the Wire. I’ll set it up. I’ll talk to them. It’ll take some time. But they’ll listen to me sooner or later if nothing happens to foul it up. We get them to talk. That first. Beyond that, we start making them understand that they have to deal with you. We can do that. But you don’t get anywhere by going against the Base. It’s not just the Base you see. There’s more of it you don’t see. They’re not weak. They know you’re not. You listen to me and they’ll hear of you all across the territories the starmen have. They’ll know you.”

Something glittered in the depth of Jin’s eyes, something dark. The frown gathered. He set the cup down, gathered the blanket between his knees and leaned forward. “Then why do they send MaGee?”

“MaGee doesn’t matter.”

“They send this woman. This woman. Ma‑Gee.” Jin drew a breath. It shuddered, going in. “ Talk, you say. Tell me this, Gen‑ley. What does this MaGee say to Elai down there on the Cloud? Tells her starmen will talk to her–is that what this MaGee says?”

“It doesn’t matter what McGee says. Elai’s nothing. They’ve got nothing to what you’ve got. Don’t lose it.”

“They make me a fool. They make me a fool, Gen‑ley.” The veins stood out on his neck, on his temples. “I gut one man, his band, his women–but there’s others. You know why, Gen‑ley? This woman. This woman on the Cloud. Wait, you say. Talk to the Base. My men say something else. My men have waited. They see me make roads, make fields–they hear their enemy gets stronger, that this MaGee is in First Tower, like you, here. Wait, you say. No, my father.”

“Don’t be a fool.” Wrong word. Genley caught it, seized Jin’s wrist in the hardest grip he had. “Don’t be one. You don’t let those women plan what you do, do you? McGee’s nothing. Elai’s not worth your time. Let them be. You can deal with Base without involving them. They don’t matter.”

“It’s you who are the fool, Genley. No. This MaGee, this Elai, there’s enough of them. It’s winter, my father.”

A chill came on him that had nothing to do with the weather. “Listen to me.”

“There are men coming,” Jin said, “from across the Styx. Thousands. What I did to Mes–will be double on the Cloud. Before this woman’s eyes.”

“You listen. This isn’t the way to settle this.”

“Yes, it is,” said Jin.

“Or to have the Base on your side.”

“I know where the Base is,” Jin said. “And you can go with me, Genley. You hear? You ride with us. You. Those men of yours. I want you with me.”

“No. I’m not getting into this.”

The dark eyes bore into his. “But you are. On my side. In case this MaGee has something. And your Base, they won’t interfere. They’ll deal with me, all the same. There won’t be anybody else to deal with. Will there?”

“Where’s the com?”

“Somewhere,” Jin said. “Not here. If you called them–what would they do?”

Nothing, Genley thought. He stood up, scowling, close to shaking, but that would never do. He jammed his hands into his belt.

“Nothing,” Jin said, leaning back. “Later is good enough.” He wrapped the blanket back about himself, looked up at him with a half lidded smile. “Go find yourself a woman. Do you good, Gen‑ley.”

xlv

205 CR, day 48

Cloud Towers

Something was amiss. Elai knew it. It had come in a great wave up the Cloudside, like the building of storm, like the sudden waft of change in the winter wind, like both these things, but this storm was in caliban minds, and moved constantly, so that each day the sun rose on something new in the patterns across the Cloud; so that mounds continually revised themselves and the soft earth churned, collapsed, rose and fell again. The Weirds patterned their distress; Tower‑work grew disorganized, the place grew untidy with neglect. There was winter‑work to do; and riders and craftsfolk tended to it alone, the little mendings of the walls after rain, the bracing‑up with stone.

The Weirds abdicated, mostly; and calibans grew restive; children fretted, sulked, retreated, reading patterns too. Cloud grew irritable; Taem kept much to himself; Din went back and forth between the roof and the depths, a frown between his brows.

There was no staying from the roof: Elai went up to see what was written on the world, compulsively, throughout the day. Others did. And so she found MaGee, staring outward from the rim.

Riders–Dain, and Branch, had paused in their work, bare to the waist and sweating in the unseasonal sun, muddy‑armed from their wall‑mending. Two of her sons were there, Taem and Cloud. The nurses stood forgetting Cloud, while Taem–Taem sat beside an aged Weird, only sat, his naked arms about his knees, in the shelter of the rim.

Elai looked out, past MaGee, with the sun at her back, her shadow falling long over the baked‑clay roof, the irregular tiles scored by generations of caliban claws, eroded by winter rains. A drowsing ariel noticed it was beshadowed and moved aside, sunseeking. Everywhere on the roof ariels shifted, and then calibans moved, for Scar came up from the access, thrust himself to her side, and lumbered to the rim, rising up on one scaly clawed foot to survey the world, then sinking down again, walking the rim, trampling the riders’ new tile‑work, dislodging what they had done.

“Something’s happened,” MaGee said, pointing outward. “The Styx‑pattern. Something’s come out from it.”

“Yes,” Elai said. The wind stirred at her robes, pulled at them, at her hair and MaGee’s.

“What’s going on?” MaGee asked. And when she was silent: “Has something moved from the Styx?”

Elai shrugged. For all the warmth of the day, the wind was chill.

“First,” Dain appealed to her, at her right, with Branch and the others. First, as if she could mend it. She did not look that way. She walked up beside MaGee, rested her hands on the rim, staring outward at the world.

“ Have they moved?” MaGee persisted.

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, MaGee, they’ve moved.”

“They’re coming here.”

Elai looked at her, and a strange sad sweetness came to her. O MaGee, she thought. She had waited for this thing all her life. Now that it was here there was someone it truly horrified. “MaGee, my friend.” She smiled then, not so distraught as she should have been. “You are simple.” But to make it lighter she laid a hand on MaGee’s shoulder, then turned and walked away to the downwards entry, ignoring the eyes of all the rest.

“ First,”she heard MaGee call after her. “ Elai!”

So she stopped, curiously tranquil in this day.

“I have to warn the Base,” MaGee said.

“No. No com.”

“Are they in danger?” MaGee asked.

She stared at MaGee. There were other things to think of. Other folk had begun to arrive from below. Din was one. Twostone was with him. Beside them all stood Dain and Branch, still waiting. “First,” said Dain, fretting at her. “Do what, First?”

Three of the elders had come up, their white hair blowing in the wind. There was Din, her son, who stood with his hands behind him, whose brown had its crest up and advanced stiffly on its legs, very near to Scar.

Whhhhhsssss!Scar moved, seized up the young caliban in his great jaws, and nothing moved on that rooftop for the space of a long‑held breath, until Scar decided to let Twostone go.

So much for juvenile ambition, borne on the moment’s possibilities. Wait your turn, Elai thought with a cold, cold stare at her son, and turned her shoulder in disdain, not even bothering to address her anger to the boy.

This was cruel. After a moment she heard him flee the daylight, a scraping of claws, a patter of naked boyish feet vanishing down into the tower, while Scar’s crest lowered in satisfaction. There was a second, slower retreat, Cloud with his nurses; but Taem, when she looked his way, had stayed, small, bare‑kneed boy, with a Weird’s cool observance of what had passed between her and Din. So she knew this morning that Taem was gone for good, and that hit her unpleasantly, and completed her anger at the world.

That was what it was to be First. From the time that she was small, when Scar had come to her and made her what she was; and now that pathetic brown of Din’s, young yet, and not likely to get older–

Wisest to kill the rivals, with such a winnowing coming. It was not alone that Styxsider she fought. It was far more general a matter than that. Kill the rivals, unite the Towers. That was what Jin had been doing, one by one.

She walked and looked about her, and calibans and ariels shifted, a scaly wave, a refixing of gold and sea‑green eyes all set on her. She looked about her from the Tower rim, to the Patterns, the river, the towers, the bright sea to which the river ran. Go bring, she signed abruptly, facing Dain; aloud: “Paeia.” Dain started away in grim haste. “Taem,” she added, which command turned Dain about at the entry with bewilderment on his face.

“Bring him too,” she said. “Tell him mind his manners. He knows.”

She hoped he did. She seldom felt Taem active in the Patterns. The New Towers were isolate; and for Taem the Twelve Towers calibans made a whorl with a silent center. Paeia they made as sunward, full of activity; but Taem was silence, like his son.

“Bring them,” Dain echoed her, as if he could have mistaken it. “And if they won’t come?”

Taem, he meant. If Taem won’t come.

She gave Dain no answer. Dain went. Perhaps her son had read it all too; perhaps he read his death out there, patterned on the shore.

Violence, his caliban had signalled. Desperate, not comic, a young caliban, too young for such a challenge. Mother, I want to live.

She had waited for this all her life. So had her son. She wanted to be alone now, only with MaGee, and Scar, not under these staring eyes that looked on her now with estimations–whether she would die now, whether that was what she meant by calling in those most dangerous to her life. She was frail; she limped. She ached when it rained. And her heirs were under twelve.

Will you die? their stares asked her. Some might think that safest. But her riders had cause to dread it, having been too loyal, serving her too closely. Change seemed in the wind, hazardous to them.

Give me sand, she asked of the aged Weird; it was Taem that brought it, a small leather sack, and crouched beside her as she stooped and Patterned with it. Others gathered about her, shadowing her from the sun, cutting off the wind.

She made the river for them, recalling the great Pattern on the shore. She made the whorls and mounds with sand streaming from her hand, so, so quickly, and signified Paeia and Taem coming in; their unified advance. Ariels nosed in past human feet, interfering in her work, trying mindlessly to put it back the way it was Patterned on the shore. Futures distressed them: they were never ready to make the shift, being occupied with now. She picked up the most persistent; it went stiff as a stick and she set it roughly back. It came to life again, scuttled off to watch. A gray nosed in, thigh‑high to the watchers.

So she built it, with Taem crouched elbows‑on‑knees beside her; and the Weird who was her son would pattern it to the browns, and the ariel and the gray would spread it too. She returned the challenge Jin had made. She had just insulted him, remaking the pattern that was the Styx.

She stood up, dusting off her hands, rose without needing Branch’s offered hands. Someone added a handful of stones to what she had done, embellishing the insult. There was laughter at that.

But it was nervous laughter. And afterward, she thought, they would be whispering aloud within the Tower, talking with voices, not daring Pattern what they thought where calibans might read.

Elai is finished.

If she goes herself, she’ll not come back.

If Jin comes here, there’ll be revenge; only fishers might survive– only might.

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?”

“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. 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?”

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?”

“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.”

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 Cloud’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 manis trouble.

“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 tot 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.

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. Thatwas 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 mound‑building 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.

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 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 theywas, unless seafolk.

Great calibans moved in that no one owned, just arrived–presumably from upriver, from the forest. There were giants among these newcomers, 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 doesn’t impress you; and he just broke into tears then and turned his face out of the light.

“Jin scare you?” I asked.

“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.

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.

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–”

“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 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 the strangers. He pointed, waved at Kim. “Get him–get him before there’s trouble.”

“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.”

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, Gen‑ley. 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.”

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 McGee 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 halfhearted 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, 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 itin 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 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.

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…

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.

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.

Nations? But that’s thinking human‑style again.

Are wethe 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. No training. Nothing. It’s all its idea. I don’t even pretend to control it.

As for order in the march, as for any sense of discipline–there’s none. Calibans wander when and where they like and we sit around the fire with no sentries posted.

But there are. Calibans.

She looked up. Close by her couples moved through the camp, going the way couples went these last few evenings while they had leisure, while this strange peace obtained.

Taem took Elai’s hand. Looked at her. So they had passed the night before. They rose, went off together. Paeia got up in pique, dusted herself, found one of her own riders. So did her son.

There are pairings in the camp. It’s a strange thing, as if all the barriers of Tower loyalty were down. As if there were a sense of time being short. There’s a fondness among these people–the way they’ve left everything behind, the way calibans that normally won’t tolerate each other have gotten unnaturally patient.

But it’s territory: the Cloud. Maybe they see it that way, that all of a sudden they all belong to the same territory.

Elai and Taem have paired up. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it portends any longer bond. If we get out of this alive–

Maybe it’s only politic. Maybe it’s something else. I’m sitting here alone. They’ve all left, as if. there were nothing else–

A shadow fell. Dain sat down by her, just sat on his haunches as she looked up. The fire shadowed his face. His long hair hung about his leathered shoulders. He wore beads hanging from a braid at the side of his head, among the rest of his locks. He was very fine, she thought, very fine. Any woman had to notice when Dain sat down that close to her: a lot had, so that Dain was never without partners. She had Dain in her notes, how this was; how the women courted him as he courted them, so it was a joke in the camp, one Dain liked as well as the tellers of it.

He just sat there looking at her. Nodded his head finally toward the dark. Toward what others did. He wanted her hand, holding his out.

He’s crazy, she thought. What is this? Me?

Still the outheld hand. She put her papers down, thinking she was mistaken and might embarrass herself. He took her hand–friendship, she reckoned; he just wanted to talk to her, and she was wrong.

But he pulled her to her feet and kept drawing her along, going off to the dark.

She was afraid, then, putting this together with the attack on the Base, with Elai’s questions. She thought of betrayal, of factions, of Elai off with Taem.

But outside the firelight he pulled her down with him, this best of Elai’s riders, this Dain Flanahan–“Why?” she asked late, “why me?”–preparing herself for wounds.

He laughed as if that question surprised him, and they stayed that way till dawn, wrapped up in each other, the way she had had the Weird in the dark, in the depths, the same terms.

For friendship, then; she reckoned how she had been by the fire night after night; and no one had asked, and finally Dain took it on himself. He was kind, this young man. She had always known that.

li

205 CR, day 113

Cloud River

There was no coherency about it; the Cloudside patterns were confused–sudden advance and then this dawdling along the banks–“They’re crazy,” Blue said, with shaking of his head. “They’re farmers,” said Parm.

“Cloudsiders,” Jin muttered, still anxious, scowling, because he saw his men making light of it, because he saw his own camp less ordered than he liked. His men grew quiet, reading his mood. They were wise, the men nearest him, at least to duck their heads. But he suspected–in the least, niggling way suspected, that he was too cautious in their eyes, that there would be whispers if they dared. “This Elai,” he said, not for the first time, “this Elai’s nothing. But this isn’t one tower. There’s numbers. You keep thinking on that. Hear?”

They faced him across the fire, men he had won, tower by tower, themselves. He had his starman by him. Genley. Genley sat at his left hand, to do what he wanted, to tell him what he asked. The Cloud Towers…that had waited settling too long; there was MaGee; and that woman; and women worth the having; workers for the fields; these caliban‑riders to deal with at his leisure, to teach the others what defying him was worth, any of them they got alive…far from the sight of the Wire. These women that played at war. There would be scores settled. Indeed, scores settled.

“Tomorrow,” he said, having thought it out, “we go by them.”

“Past?” echoed Blue.

“We go out from the shore.” He signed it as he spoke, frowning to himself, to no one in particular, satisfied, well‑satisfied now he had mapped it out. “We come at them from the south. Let these Cloudsiders have the water at their backs. We drive them off the shore. Caliban matter then. All caliban.”

There were grins, figuring how it would be, darts for what riders remained astride, Calibans coming up from below, seizing legs, embattled calibans lashing the water to froth–it was not a way to get caught, in that kind of action. This woman, gullible, continued on the shore, going where calibans wanted to go–of course wanted to go, where the ground was soft, where they could throw up mounds to ring their camps, where there was fish abundant to satisfy caliban appetites.

Fish. On so small a thing, to lose a war.

There were voices, too loud, at the edge of the camp.

“What’s that?” he asked, vexed. He stood up. Genley started off from him. “What is that?”

“I’ll see,” Genley said.

Mannin. The starmen were in that direction; another matter with the starmen. Genley was running, crossing the ground. He went more slowly, overtook Genley where Genley came up against Vil and his lot: it was the starmen. Voices were raised. Genley shoved; Vil shoved back, and Vil’s band had weapons.

“Where?” Jin asked directly, thrusting an arm between Vil and Genley, levering them apart. Blue moved in, got Vil’s attention with a spearshaft. “ Where?”

“Don’t know where,” someone said.

Genley ran, riverward. The spear was quick, coming from the side.

Jin stood there a moment, seeing this, seeing Genley down, writhing on the spear. The hunter pulled it out. Jin drew a breath, just held out his hand.

Blue gave him what he asked for. The smooth wood filled his hand. He walked forward and swung the spear up; the hunter blocked it, instinct, but this was a dead man. He whirled the spear and thrust it up, under the jaw, whipped round with it ready for Vil, for the rest of them. One looked apt to try, but did nothing.

“Gen‑ley,” he said, not looking at him, watching kinsmen’s eyes. There was no answer. He had expected none, not the way that spear had hit. He stood there the space of several breaths. “I want Mannin,” he said very quietly, “I want Kim– Blue,”he said, “where’s Parm?” They were Parm’s men, these.

Parm came. Stood quietly. Jin saw him unfocused, to the side; his eyes were all for Vil, who had not yet said a word. All about the camp, everywhere, men were on their feet, weapons ready. He found himself shaking, voiceless in the vastness of his suspicions: Parm Tower, Parm, which had harbored a grudge of which the starmen were the center. Parm, defying him.

Parm, who was allied with Green Tower, had a Green Tower woman; Green had Parm’s.

The silence went on. It was Vil’s to speak. Or Parm’s himself. The calibans were off at hunt. From the river came splashes, grunts. There would be one already to deal with, its rider dead, when it discovered it.

“I’ll settle it,” Parm said.

It would not be safe. There would be Parm to watch. Parm knew that. They all did. But the structure was too fragile.

“Want those starmen back,” Jin said quietly. “Want this settled with Vil.”

“He’ll get them.”

“You be careful,” Jin said. He spared a slight shift of his eye to Parm. “You get this man out of my way. Hear?”

There was a slow sorting‑out, slow movements everywhere. Already an ariel had come to investigate the bodies. It tugged at one of Genley’s fingers.

Jin drove his spear through it, pinned it wriggling to the ground. Genley’s face still had its look of shock. “River,” Jin said. Burying was too much work. There was war to fight. He flung the spear down uncleaned, walked away to the fire, took up the skin of drink and had enough to settle his belly. He took a bit more. Tears welled up in his eyes, dammed up there, unsheddable.

Men came and went around him, moving softfooted. He sat there still, with his mind busy, ignoring the rage that had him near to trembling. There was Parm to reckon round now. This man would have to be killed. There were the calibans. When the dead man’s came in, that was to settle; kill the beast, before it spread. Let Vil make amends if he would; kill this man too, like killing infection, before it spread.

A tower had to fall over this. No, there was no stopping it. Unless Parm could die in battle. He considered this, more and more thinking of it.

“This Parm,” he said to Blue, who sat close by him. “Tomorrow.” He made a tiny sign.

Blue’s eyes lighted with satisfaction. He closed his fingers in a circle: band.

Jin met Blue’s gaze and smiled with the eyes only. Yes. Decimate the band. Blue would find a way, tomorrow, in battle: put Parm and his lads–Vil too–where they could die.

It would save a tower. Save the unity of the towers.

Thorn came in. So other calibans came, to the scent of blood, to the rumor of ariels. Thorn swung his head, swept the ground with his tail. “Hsss,” Jin said, leaning back when that great head thrust itself into his way. He grasped the soft wattle skin and pulled, distracting the caliban, but it wandered off, to walk stifflegged about the camp, just in case.

So he was whole again. Blue’s came. The pattern took shape again, men shifting to his side, gathering all about hisfire and not to Parm’s, not joining the search that Parm and his men made.

And when Parm brought the starmen back, he was obliged to cross the camp with his prisoners, to bring them to him, like an offering…offering it was. A placation. The starmen–muddy, wet, bedraggled–“Genley,” Mannin kept asking, looking about. “Genley?”–with fear in his voice. This was a nuisance, this man. To all of them. A small voice, while Parm looked at him and reckoned his chances, how much time this bought.

“Vil will pay for his mistake,” Parm said, having added up, it seemed, this silence in the camp.

Jin looked elsewhere, not willing to be appeased. The bands had made their judgement, silently, ranged themselves with him. The calibans were at hand, quiet on the fringes of the light.

“I will see to it,” Parm persisted, further abasement.

“Do that.” Jin looked at him. There was no reprieve. The man had lost his usefulness; now he lost his threat as well. Jin breathed easier still, assumed an easier expression; but Parm knew him. This was a frightened man. And would die before he recovered from it. Jin rose and dusted off his breeches, looked at the starmen.

Mannin snuffled. Kim stared, with dark, measuring eyes.

“These caused the trouble,” Jin said, snapped his fingers and pointed at Kim. “Kill that one.”

Kim started to his feet. A knife was in his back before he made it. He tumbled backward, and hit the ground the while Mannin simply stared, on his knees, stared and hugged himself and trembled.

“Now you see how it is,” Jin said, squatting down, face to face with Mannin. “Genley’s dead. Now you’re what I have.” He stood up again, looked round him at the hunters. “This man’s sick. Don’t you see? Keep him warm, put him near the fire. He’ll want something to eat. He’ll know not to run again. And you’ll know how to treat what’s mine.”

Faces met his, settled faces, things secure again, men certain they had taken the stronger side. He walked away to the other fire, to let Blue deal with smaller things, like being rid of Kim.

A waste, that. And not a waste. They did not mistake him now. Perhaps the killing of Genley was no accident. Perhaps Parm misjudged, how important starmen were to him, or where in matters they fitted.

There was respect around him. He was sure of it again.

“In the morning,” he muttered, for those who stood by to hear. “ In the morning,”others echoed, and it went through the camp–enough delay, enough of waiting on Elai’s coyness.

In the morning, revenge, blood, promises kept: no real opposition. He would not sleep this night; he wanted to see this thing done at last, Cloud put under his feet, Parm most deftly scotched.

Genley my father.

He mourned. His mourning confounded itself with his rage. He clenched his hands and thought on killing, on killing so thorough none of Cloudside would survive. They would tell tales of him, the things that he had done.

“Jin,” a man said, bringing him a thing, a sodden mass of pages. Genley’s. He had seen it often. He looked at it, the crawling marks that made no sense to him, dim in firelight and in the fading. His history.

“Give this to Mannin,” he said. “Tell him it’s his.”

lii

205 CR, day 114

Cloudside

Calibans moved, running through the camp in the dark before the dawn, a sound of heavy tread, of whispering of scales through brush. “ Hai, hey,”a voice yelled.

Riders scrambled for weapons. McGee collected her spear, her kit.

“Up!” Elai was calling to them; “up!”

They ran, confused in the dark; calibans nosed past riders. Dain doused the embers of the nightfire: the tumult ran down and down the shore, a murmur of voices in the night, the hisses of calibans as if some strange sea were breaking at their backs. “Hup, hai!” someone cried, near at hand, a man’s voice. “Up, up, up!” There were splashes from the river–not attack: McGee had gained a sense of this–it was another sudden move. But something was close. She clutched at her clothes, hurried for the shore in the dark, skipped as ariels flowed like water about her feet, avoided stepping on one somehow.

“Brown,” she called; it was all the name it had. Brown, don’t leave me here! She whistled as best she could in panic. Riders were moving out, in the dark, no sense or order in it. “Hey!”

A shape came toward her, a tongue quested, found her. A head‑butt followed, and that was Brown, all slick with water–had to be Brown. McGee clambered doggedly up with a ruthless spring onto Brown’s foreleg the way the riders did it, her spear in her hand and her bag of belongings slung about her with her precious notes. Brown started to move along with the others, confused as the others, shouldering others in haste–

Going where? McGee wondered, clinging in the dark, clinging to the spear, the casual way the riders carried it: she had learned to ride with it, balanced herself with it when Brown was in a hurry, with that sinuous rocking fore and back, side to side in a rhythm that had its highs and lows, its pitches into which the riders settled as if they were born to it.

But this was real. This was the last move, the last plunge into dark and war and no one was ordering this thing, except that Elai was up ahead with Taem, with Paeia by her side, no less her enemies in potential… Dain would go to Elai’s side: Dain’s caliban went where Dain told it, and he would get himself to the fore, while Brown–

I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared, she told herself to the rhythm of their moving. This is no way to fight a war. There ought to be lines, generals, orders; someone ought to set this thing up. We’ll all be killed.

They climbed through brush, making noise, breaking branches, caring nothing that they were heard. Treelimbs raked her; she fended with a leathered arm, kept the spear along Brown’s side.

I’m going to use this thing. She flexed her fingers on it, the smooth wood: the head was venomed; an ugly thing, to counter other weapons bound to come her way. Panic gave way to certainty, like some long, long dive which had its own logic, its own morality. Life seemed precious and trifling at once. Dain. Elai sent him. Her messenger, after all. She laid her heels to Brown, clutching the spear the tighter, half crazed, drawing great breaths and anxious only to get on with it.

Life, she kept thinking, like a talisman, to keep herself alive.

Dain– Hardly started in his life. The rest of us– all caliban‑bait. The thought enraged her, and the spear was like her arm, an extension of herself. The sky was going lighter, the shapes of calibans more definite, the rhythm of Brown’s strides more certain.

Kill them, kill them, kill them. That’s what’s left to do.

liii

Message Alliance HQ to Gehenna Station

Couriered by AS Phoenix

…inform you that pursuant to the agreement worked out in the commercial exchange treaty a limited access will be extended Union observers for several worlds of the Gehenna Reach, specifically to the reserve on Gehenna and the study program there. Gehenna is required and requested to provide such documented personnel access to quarantined areas, specific operations to be approved by the Base Director. Union observers will at all times be accompanied by Bureau personnel.

In the spirit of detente and in pursuit of mutual interests, a reciprocity has been arranged in the opening of Union records…

liv

205 CR, day 114

Cloudside

The morning came up gold and placid as they moved among the trees, beside the river, in the changes calibans had made in the land. Ridges hove up, freshly dug and showing the roots of overturned trees, the hollows between them pocked with seepage from the river, and Elai read the patterns through which they moved, shaped them with her mind.

Jin is this way, they said. So she knew the time they would meet. Ahead lies the alien. We surround you, go beneath you in harmony,

Cloud‑towers‑clustered‑Hillers

well‑ordered toward the

Green‑nest‑aggression

It spiralled off into gilded distances, the wreckage, the patterns building about them for days.

Where? she had tried to ask of Scar last night; but Scar ignored the stones, ignored her, as if he had said it all. When?

They moved when it was time; and calibans knew that time when they saw it, when the Pattern shaped itself, that was all.

Cloud against Styx.

One way against another.

There was logic in it. It had compelled Paeia, brought Taem to her side. Perhaps Weirds on both sides had shaped this confrontation: there were hints of this in the patterns…that Weirds knew no tower‑loyalty.

There was herself; there was Jin.

Two kinds; and calibans brought them both, here, to this place, long‑appointed. She had her spear in hand, her darts slung to her side. Her mates, her rivals were by her, joined with her, like Taem, who had said nothing of why he came, not the deep reasons: only he was there, and the pattern agreed with that, shaping no other way for him to go. They were Cloudside; and the whole Cloudside pattern was being shoved at now.

Not a matter now of driving them off a time. She read that too, the way she read the land. Jin took the high ground, to push. She knew what he would do, and by that what they would do, surely as the sun came up–if flesh was strong enough.

She put forward her spear in the dim dawn, in the quickening of Scar’s pace. There was no time now to order things. She gave a fleeting thought to MaGee and wished that she had had Dain put her somewhere, but MaGee would fare as they all fared, and there was no helping it. Pattern against pattern. The calibans had made MaGee part of it: part of her; that was the way of it. Grays joined them, plowed the earth like the currents of the sea. Their powerful claws found places to probe in the mounds: they dived in earth and surfaced again, hissing and whistling, but the long‑striding browns scrambled across soft ground, four‑footed and stable, bridging the gaps with the reach of their limbs, treading the grays down with grand disdain, in silent haste.

The sun arrived, spread its rays through the ruin of a forest before them, where the trees had been cast down, undermined. They plunged over this, like a living torrent, with hissings and scramblings; but greater were the rocks down by the sea that she had climbed on Scar. Grays, not their own, vacated the Pattern and fled before the browns, through the brush, over the ridges, among trees still standing.

Scar’s collar flashed up. Taem’s brown plunged ahead. The hisses of browns broke like water hitting hot metal.

Her riders surged about her. Whistles split the air; younger calibans took their riders to the fore as they climbed the mounds, refusing the patterns they met now.

Elai clamped her knees taut as they met soft ground where grays were at work and Scar lurched down and up again, past the roots of overthrown trees, past brush that raked harmlessly on her leather‑clad legs.

“Hai!” She caught the fever and shouted with her young men’s cries, with the high‑pitched yelps of the young women as they came down the banks among grays that froze under the browns’ scrabbling claws, confused and immobile. She couched her spear, held her seat, for now other shapes hove up, rider‑bearing calibans, shapes bristling with raised collars, with spears in human hands. Darts flew, struck her leathered arm.

She shouted, not knowing what she yelled, but all at once the fear was gone, every dread was gone. “ Ellai!” she was yelling at the last, which was her mother’s name; and “ Cloud!”

More darts; she shook them off; they struck Scar in vain, useless on his hide. Lesser browns fled Scar’s approach, bearing their riders out of his path. Scar trod others down, mounted over them, clawing their riders heedlessly underfoot, with riders yelling and calibans lurching this way and that through the ruin of trees.

Scar lurched, taxed her weak leg. She held as the earth opened, and grays came up, some calibans losing their riders as they slid into the undermining, and over all the hisses and the screams.

But she knew where she was going. Paeia was beside her, was delayed by one of the Styxsiders so that she lost that guard; but then came a clearing of bodies, a withdrawing except for the rider coming toward her, a caliban larger than the rest.

Jin.

Scar lurched aside, almost unseated her. One of her riders rushed by in the whirl of day and trees and plunging bodies. Her spearshaft cracked hard against another, and Scar bore her out of the path of that attack as another of her riders took it. Taem was out there, Taem’s brown trying Jin’s, circling.

“Scar!” she yelled, her spear tucked again beneath her arm. She drove with her heels, less to Scar’s tough hide than the darts that spattered about them. “Scar!”

Scar moved, shied off as Jin overrode Taem, kept retreating, retreating, disordering their lines.

Jin’s brown scrambled forward, lunged low as Scar shied off, presenting his belly. Elai fought for balance, dug with her heel and rammed the spear at the Styxsider; but Scar was still rising, up and over the collar crest of Jin’s caliban.

The lame leg betrayed her as Scar twisted, as he reared up with the Styxsider in his jaws and the Styxside caliban lunging and clawing at his gut. She hit the ground, winded, tucked low as a tail skimmed her back, melded herself in the gouged earth as it came back again, as the battle rolled over her. She spat mud from her mouth and scrambled for her life as the feet came near, as the rolling mass lashed the ground and calibans raked each other.

She fell again, legs too shaken to bear her weight, used the spear to lever herself up, sorted caliban from caliban in the mass and the one with the throat‑grip had a starlike scar shining on his side. She rammed the spear into the soft spot of the other’s neck, heaved her weight against it, and the mass all came her way: a tail hit her, but she was already going down, half‑senseless as calibans poured over her, to the sharing of the kill.

She scrambled out of the mire–wild, blind struggle: hands seized her, pulled her to safety, and she leaned on offered arms–Dain was one. They pulled her further, away from the heaving mass that had become a ball of calibans, huge browns biting and rolling like ariels about a prize. She could not see Scar.

“They’ve run,” Maeri said, one of her own. “First, they’re down.”

There was chaos everywhere, no rider able to stay mounted, calibans pursuing fugitives, fighting each other, humans in pursuit of humankind, the earth thundering to the impacts of the massed bodies in that knot before them. She saw Scar pull free of it, saw him seize another throat in his jaws and plunge into the mass.

Alive, then, alive. And Jin was under that. She began to shiver, unable to stand.

They brought her an accounting of the dead: Taem was one; but she had known that. There were other names. “MaGee?” she asked. “Where’s Paeia?”

“Paeia’s hunting,” the man told her, kin of Paeia; and with a grin: “MaGee fell off way back. Must be safe.”

“Find her,” Elai said, never taking her eyes from the feeding that had begun on this hillside above the Cloud.

There were other things to do, but the calibans would tend to them; and the most of her young folk would not go so far as the Styx. Some would, to be sure the Pattern there shaped the way it should. Most would come back to her, here, in good time.

She gave a whistle, trying to retrieve Scar; but that was useless yet. It would be useless until there was nothing left but bones. So she sat there on the trampled hill to wait, numb and cold and aching when she moved. They brought her drink; they brought her the prizes of Jin’s camp: she took little interest in these things.

But they found MaGee, finally; and MaGee sat down near her in the dim morning with the calibans dragging the bones toward the river, leaving the trampled ground.

She offered MaGee her hand. MaGee’s eyes were bruised‑looking, her face scratched and battered. Her hair hung loose from its braids, caked with mud.

So was her own, she reckoned.

“You’re all right,” MaGee said.

“All right,” she said, too weary to move an arm. She motioned with her eyes. “Got him chewed down to bone, that Thorn.”

Something distressed MaGee, the blood maybe, or getting thrown. Her mouth shook. “What happened?”

“Got him.” Elai drew a hard breath. Her ribs hurt. Clearly MaGee failed to understand much at all. She whistled up Scar, levering herself up again with the spear, because there was something starting on that bank, a new altercation among calibans–some of the Styxside lot, that might be, or some of their own from Cloudside, testing out who had the right to shove and who had to take. She was anxious. She wanted Scar out of there, but calibans were snapping and lashing at one another and she did not want the quarrel moved their way either. She could see Scar among the others; could see Paeia’s big brown throwing her weight around, sweeping lessers out of the way with her tail. The sniping attacks went on, lessers’ jaws closing on a hind or forelimb, dragging at the skin, worrying them from this side and that–

He’s old, Elai thought. Her fists were clenched. That Thorn got him in the belly. She saw Scar bowl a rival over and get him belly up, after which the rival ran away, but others worried at him: he swept them with his tail, whirled and snapped. It went on.

“Is he all right out there?” MaGee asked.

“Of course he’s all right.” Elai whistled again. Others called their mounts, and some of the quarrelling quieted. But there was no recalling them, not yet. She turned, motioned with her spear downriver, and others gained their feet, of the elders.

“What now?” MaGee asked.

“Nothing now,” Elai said, looking at her in bewilderment. “Don’t you know? That’s Jin down there. We’ve won.”

lv

Message: Gehenna Station to Base Director

Survey notes two movements this morning–one on a broad front toward the Styx and a second, smaller and more compact movement up the Cloud. The Styxward movement is of greater speed. Survey suggests contrary to expectations that the invasion may have been routed…

lvi

205 CR, day 215

Cloudside

Someone whistled, to the rear of the column, and heads turned: McGee looked, the while she limped beside Elai over the sand beside the Cloud: the calibans had come, swimming effortlessly down the current.

“Do we ride?” McGee asked. It seemed madness that they had left the calibans behind; or not madness: for her own part she had taken one fall, and that was enough for her bones. One fall; one nightmare of Brown trampling down a man. But no one said anything; they had left the calibans behind and walked at Elai’s order, as if it were sane; and she was not sure of that, was sure of nothing now.

Still the silence. Elai said little on the walk, nothing but monosyllables, stayed lost in her own thoughts, unlike a woman who had just won the world entire, who held all Gehenna in her hands.

The calibans paced them in the river, that was all.

“No,” Maeri answered her question, Dain’s sister of First Tower. “Don’t think so.”

They walked further. The calibans dived and surfaced, not coming in, but at last Scar did, strode out on the shore ahead of them.

Riverweed, McGee thought at first. But it was his skin, hanging in rags about his belly, about his limbs. He walked with his collar down, his tail inscribing a serpentine in the sand.

Elai whistled then; and Scar stopped. He’s hurt, McGee opened her mouth to ask, to protest; but she stood still, watched with dismay as Elai approached him, touched him, climbed up to her place despite the hanging skin.

They began to walk again, in Scar’s tracks on the shore, at Elai’s back, no more cheerful than Scar himself, while the calibans sported in the river.

They would know, back in Cloud Towers, who had won, McGee reckoned; the calibans would get there before them: ariels would pattern it, grays would build it for the people to see, out beyond the rows of dry fishnets.

But she looked at Elai riding ahead of them, at bowed shoulders, both rider and caliban hurting.

She was afraid then, the way she had been afraid before the battle; in a way that wiped out nightmares of what had been.

What’s happening? she wondered. She stalked Dain, walked beside him in hope of answers, but he had none, only trudged along like the rest.

They camped early; more calibans became tractable and came in, seeking out their riders. Scar sulked alone, down by the riverside, and Elai huddled by the fire.

“Is everything all right?” McGee asked at last, crouching there.

“Jin’s dead,” said Elai tonelessly. “Styx towers will fall now.”

“You mean that’s where the others went.” McGee pursued the matter, knowing it was fragile ground. Elai held out her hand and opened the fingers. End of the matter. McGee sat and hugged her knees against her chest, in the fire warmth, surer and surer that something had been lost.

Scar, she kept thinking in growing chill, and restrained herself from a glance toward the river; she knew what she would see: an old caliban on the last of his strength, a caliban who had done well to survive his last battle. Some other caliban could take him now. Any other. If one were inclined to try.

Paeia–off hunting still. Paeia would come. Maybe others.

She lowered her head against her arms, feeling all her aches, a nagging sense that all the ground she relied on was undermined.

Other riders came before the dawn, quietly, bringing Styxsider prisoners who came and sat down across the fire, a handful of youths, sober and terrified. Elai thought about them a long time.

Speak up for them, McGee thought; it was outsider‑instinct. And then she clenched her fist in front of her mouth as she sat there and pressed her fist against her lips to hold herself from talking. I could get Elai killed with wrong advice.

But it was Elai let the boys live after all, with a gesture of her hand, and they sat there and shivered, all tucked up looking lost and scared and knowing that (if Elai told truth) there was nothing left to run to.

So other riders brought other prisoners. One ran: Parm was his name, at whose name the riders hissed…he took off running and the Calibans got him, down by the river in the dark.

McGee sat there and shivered, the same way she had sat through the rest, as if some vital link had been severed. She betrayed nothing, had no horror left.

It’s cold, she told herself. That’s all.

She had learned to be practical about death, in these days, to deal it out, to watch it. It was like any other thing, to listen to a man die, a little sound, a little unpleasantness. A small, lost sound, compared to the battle on the shore, the earth shaking to the fall of the great browns. The air filled with their hisses. Soon done. Forgettable.

But they brought Mannin in, and that was different… “Found one of the starmen,” Paeia said, who had come with that group. And what they brought was a leather‑clad, draggled man who did nothing but cough and shiver and tucked himself up like the teenaged boys. This thing–this wretched thing–she stared at him: it was only the dark hair, the height, that told her which it was.

“Let him live,” she said to Elai, in a voice gone hoarse and hard. So she discovered the measure of herself, that she could bear the death of natives, but not of her own kind. She was ashamed of that.

“He’s yours,” Elai said.

“Give him food and water,” McGee said, never moving from where she sat, never moving her fist from her chin, her limbs from the tightness that kept them warm. She never looked closely at Mannin, not being interested any longer. It was a horror she did not want, at the moment, to consider, how she had come to sit here passing life and death judgments, in the mud and the stink and the Calibans milling about ready for the kill.

It did not seem likely then that she could ever go back to white, clean walls, that she could unlearn what she knew, or be other than MaGee. MaGee. Healer. Killer. Dragon‑rider left afoot. She saw the sunlit beach, there in the night, herself young, Elai a child, old Scar in his prime again, his hide throwing back the daylight.

Here was dark, and fire, and they collected the leavings of the war.

Perhaps they would find the rest, Genley; Kim.

“Ask him,” she asked one of the riders at last, “where the other star‑men are.”

“He says,” that rider reported back to her, “that this Jin killed the rest.”

“Huh,” she said, and the dried fish she was eating went dryer yet in her mouth and unpalatable. She found another depth of herself, that she could still harbor a resentment toward the dead. But she did. She wished in a curious division of her thoughts that even Mannin would try to run; that the whole matter might be tidy. And that horrified her.

“Someone should take Mannin to the Wire,” she said, for Elai’s hearing.

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 mattered, 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.

“…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 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.

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.

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?”

“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?”

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 thatwas what killed them.”

Elai shrugged. “They ate grays.”

“For years, Elai–”

“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 ourlimit 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, non‑communicant, now that Taem was dead, heirless; and other towers turned secretive. The 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.

“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 riverand for going up, for dwelling‑placeand sunwarmth, for food/fishand again for warmthand 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.

“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 elsewhere, 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.

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. The calibans are in debate. I think they must be. Patterns rise and fall incomplete. There’s no reason in it that makes sense yet. They reform the old pattern and then tear it up again in new elaborations, and they do things I don’t make sense of.

Paeia’s been forestalled. This is no time to upset the calibans.

lxii

Message: station to Base

AS Wyverninbound from Cyteen. Visitors aboard.

lxiii

Cloudside

There was restlessness that night. McGee heard it starting in the depths, vague echoes of movements, stirrings and slitherings down below, and she shivered, lying on her bed, on the earthen ledge in her own quarters, wrapped in her rough blankets.

It grew. Her heart began beating in a panic like night fears, and she scrambled up, threw on her clothes without seeking any light: she went blind as she had learned to do, running up the spiral turns of the hall–So others came, men and women running either way, some down toward the exit from the tower, some few up, as she ran, up toward the hall where they kept firelight these last nights, since it had become Elai’s refuge.

Elai was there, awake. Dain was; and young Din; and Maeri, and others, pale and distressed faces. They brought no weapons; their calibans had deserted them, save for Din’s.

The access gave up a flood of ariels, like a plague of vermin scrabbling across the floor, like the first feeling outward of some vast beast; in that flood a few grays hove up through the access pit, up the ramp, casting their heads about, putting out their tongues.

What came then was huge, was bigger than Scar had been, a caliban that, up on his legs, was halfway to the ceiling–No one’s, that brown. The riders gave back from it, even Dain; McGee stood sweating, out of its convenient path, lacking the courage to fling herself for a mouthful in its direct route to Elai.

Elai sat still, image‑like in her wooden chair. Her hands were in her lap. It put out a tongue, leaned forward, leaned, put out a foot and made that a step and a second pace, that closed the distance. The tongue investigated, barely touched Elai’s robes; and other calibans were coming, invading all the halls, a noisy scrabbling flood below.

We’ll fall, McGee thought, imagined First Tower in collapse, them dying in a cascade of earth at the same time as every other human on the Cloud, the Base under attack, Styx going under yet again.

The big brown’s collar crest went down. He turned himself, his long tail sweeping their circle wider, but that was a settling at Elai’s side, half up on his forelegs. The crest went up again.

“Dear God,” McGee breathed, when she remembered to breathe, but they were half the hall deep in calibans now, and there was hissing and snapping as the calibans defined territory, as Dain’s brown moved in clearing rivals, and Maeri’s showed up, and young Din scrambled for cover in McGee’s arms, the young brown Twostone hissing and lashing its tail in front of them, holding its ground against larger ones.

There was order made. Elai put out a hand and appropriated the big brown. His crest flicked, in something like pleasure.

McGee caught another breath. Her chest hurt. She clenched Din in her arms and the boy struggled. She let him go, remembering he was Cloudsider, and at most times independent. No one moved beyond that for a very long time, until calibans had stopped milling and crests were down.

A gray came to the middle of the floor and spat up a fish. The big brown leaned forward and ate it. The gray got out of the way in haste.

“Paeia will be disappointed,” Elai said, and looking at McGee: “So, MaGee?”

McGee ignored her limbs which still felt dissolved and the sweat that was running on her skin, lifted her chin and managed a grand indifference. “You had old Scar a long time; you never figured he wasn’t important of his kind? He picked you from way back. You’re not a warleader. If they wanted one they’d have had Jin just as easy. They wanted you, First, for some reason.”

Elai just stared at her, her hand resting on the big brown’s shoulder. Jaw set, eyes hard. The First of First Tower was not prone to displays.

“His name’s Sun,” she said.

Message: Base Director to E. McGee

Repeat: urgent you respond. We have a shuttle landing. We have a Dr. Ebhardt, Unionside, with aides, coming in. This is an official instruction: this office is taking the position that some damage to the com must have occurred and therefore no reprimand will be lodged. I add to this an earnest personal plea: I am concerned with your welfare and urge you to consider your professional and personal interests and to respond to this message by whatever means may be accessible to you. Dr. Mannin’s brief report of you indicates that you are well and in a position to have gathered valuable material. I am sure that the arriving mission will make every effort to accommodate you within its policies and I am sure will not wish to interfere in your work. It would, however, be of great help if we could have your direct input.

lxiv

Message: E. McGee to Base Director

transmitted from Cloud River

This is not a time or place for interference. I regret the misfortune of the Styx River mission. Keep your observers at a distance. Calibans are very uneasy just now. Report follows.

lxv

205 CR, day 298

Cloudside

The thing grew on the riverside, taking shape out of the reeds they had floated down. Calibans had nudged it this way and that, still prowled round it of nights to see what new thing it was becoming, with their tying and their braiding, not an easy matter; but MaGee had unbent enough to give some advice, being less pure a starman than she had been. The sun came up on a new thing every morning; and Elai watched this business of boatbuilding from the crest of First Tower with a certain forlorn distress.

Dain would try this thing. MaGee persuaded her the First of First Tower was too important to be laughed at if it was a little cranky at the start; and when it was proved, then she would try it.

She looked out over all the land, toward the horizon this morning; and saw a thing before any sentry saw it.

Metal flashed in the sun, in the sky. It was a ship from the Base, but not going up. Coming their way. It had gone crazy, was going to fall. She could hear the sound of it now, a sound like distant thunder.

Work stopped on the shore. Folk looked up, everywhere.

It was coming their way. Elai’s heart turned over in her, but she stood her ground (the First of First would not run, would not show fear) with her fists clenched on the rim of the tower, her eyes fixed on this visitor.

It was coming down, carefully, not falling. Elai became sure of that. She turned, whistled to Sun, passed her distressed offspring who had dropped their game of tag with the calibans.

“ MaGee!” she shouted in anger, on her way down. “ MaGee–”

They kept to their side of the river, these intruders. Elai had a closer view of the ship as Sun carried her up and out of the river, the water rolling off her leathers, off his hide. Out of the tail of her eye she saw MaGee with Dain and a dozen others of her riders. They were all armed. She was. The spear she had in hand seemed futile, but she carried it all the same, to make these strange starmen figure where was their limit.

She tapped Sun, making him understand that she meant to stop. Sun took his time about it. The other riders drew even with her. And one of the starmen came out from the shadow of that shining ship–not much larger than her boat, this ship. It had flattened the grass in a circle about it. It was quiet now. The thunder had stopped. And they wanted to talk: that was clear too.

“MaGee,” she said, “see what they want.” And: “MaGee,” she added, making MaGee stop after she had slid down from behind Dain: “You don’t go with them.”

“No,” MaGee agreed, and walked out to that man, looking like a rider herself, lean and leather‑clad, her graying hair, her fringes blowing in the wind that whipped at them, that made the fine blue cloth the starman wore do strange small flutters, showing how soft it was. They were rich, the starmen. They had everything. They brought their ship to show what they could do, overshadowing the boat there on the shore. To impress. They could have come afoot. They had done that before. Or in their crawlers, that they used sometimes, that made noise and disturbed the ariels for days.

It was all show, theirs against hers.

She waited, spear held crosswise. Paeia was one who had come out, with her heir, grim and disapproving, waiting for mistakes. And MaGee went out to this starman and talked a while, just talked; after a time MaGee folded her arms and shifted her weight and seemed not to fear attack, but she looked down much and seldom at the starmen, saying things with the way she stood that seemed uneasy.

Then she came back, and looked up at her on Sun. “First,” she said, “they want to talk to you. To tell you they’re wanting to talk trade.”

Elai frowned.

“It’s this new lot,” MaGee said carefully, “they want some things changed. Trade would mean medicines. Maybe metal. You need that.”

“What do they want back?”

“You,” MaGee said. Elai’s eyes met hers and locked, honest and urgent. “I’ll tell you what: they want to make sure you grow the right way, starman‑like. To be sure you’re something they can deal with someday. When you’re like them.” Her eyes slid aside, back again. “That dark one–that’s Dr. Myers; from the Base; the light one’s Ebhardt–from Union. From Cyteen.”

“Is thata Unioner?” Elai had heard of these strangers, these folk of the ship that never came. Her books had them in them. She looked with narrowed eyes on these visitors. “Hssst– Sun.”

Sun moved forward, a sudden long stride. The starmen fell back in disorder and recovered themselves. “You,” Elai said, “you’re from Cyteen, are you? From outside?”

“Maybe McGee’s told you,” Ebhardt began.

“You want trade? Give you what, starman?”

“What you have too much of. What we don’t have. Maybe carvings. Maybe fish.”

“Bone’s ours,”Elai said. The starman was insolent as she had thought; she tapped Sun in his soft skin, beneath the collar, and the collar went up. They retreated yet again, and beyond them another figure mounted half up the access to their ship. “But fish, maybe. Maybe things you want to know, starman. Maybe you’d like that better. Maybe you sit behind that Wire and ask your questions. This land’s mine. Cloud’s mine. All this–” She swept her arm about, a pass of her spear. “My name’s Elai, Ellai’s daughter, line of the first Cloud, the first Elly; of Pia, line of the first Jin when they made the world. And you’re on my land.”

They backed up from her. “McGee,” one said.

“I’d move,” MaGee said equably, from somewhere to the rear. “The First just told you she’d trade, and where; and you don’t want an incident, you really wouldn’t want an incident at the foundation of the world. I’d really advise you pack up and get this machinery out of here.”

There was some thinking about it. “First,” one said then, and both of them made a downcast gesture and began a retreat with more dignity than their last.

They took the ship away. The calibans just stood and looked up at it with curious tilts of their heads, and Elai did, sitting on Sun–waved her spear at them, adding insult to the matter. Her riders jeered at them. Paeia looked impressed for once, she and her heir.

“Come on,” Elai said to MaGee, touching Sun to make him put his leg out. “Ride behind me.”

VIII

OUTWARD

i

Year CR 305, day 33

Fargone Station

Union Space

One saw all sorts dockside, military, merchanters, stationers, dockers, the rare probe‑ship crewman. This was new, and the dock crew stared, not unlike other crews, all along the long, long metal curve, in the echoing high spaces that smelled of otherwhere and cold.

“What’s that?” someone wondered, too loud, and the young man turned and gave them back the stare, just for a moment, stranger estimating stranger: but this one looked dangerous…tall, and lean, and long‑haired, wearing fringed leather and white bone beads of intricate carving. He had a knife, illegal on the docks or anywhere else onstation. That they saw too, and no one said anything further or moved until he had gone his way ghostlike down the line.

“That,” said Dan James, dockman boss, “that’s Gehennan.”

“Heard there was something strange came in,” another man said, and ventured a look at a safely retreating back.

“Got his dragon with him,” James said; the docker swore and straightened up, satisfying effect.

“They let that thing loose?”

“Hey, they don’t letit anywhere. That thing’s human, it is. Leastwise by law it is.”

There were anxious looks. “You mean that,” one said.

The place was like other such places he had seen–he, Marik, son of Cloud son of Elai. He explored it in slow disdain, gathering information, which he would go home again to tell; and all the same he was excited by this knowledge, that they could travel so far and still find stations like Gehenna Station, that the universe was so large. He was wary in it. Cloud had taught him how to deal with strangers, not letting them tell him where he ought to go and where not, and what he ought to see and what he should be blind to.

Only he left Walker in her hold, where there was warmth. She would not like this cold; it would make her restless; and the sounds would irritate her, and besides, enough people came to her. Walker was not bored, at least, and had gotten used to strangers, enough to give them the lazy stare they deserved and to go on with her Pattern, figuring this trip out. He told her what he could. She was working on it.

Some things he was still working on himself. Like what the universe was like. Or what starmen wanted.

There was a problem, they said, a world that they had found. There was life on it, and it made no sense to them.

A Gehennan sees things a different way, they said. Just go and look–you and Walker.

So they would go and see.