Forty Thousand in Gehenna

Silence from MaGee.

“I’ll go there,” Elai said.

“That ship would have to be big,” MaGee allowed.

“How big?”

“Questions again.”

“Is it far, MaGee?”

“As far as from the New Tower to the Base.”

“Do people live there?”

MaGee said nothing, but stopped, and pointed to the Towers. “That’s home, isn’t it?” MaGee said.

Elai dug her fingers into the softness of Scar’s hide beneath the collar, felt the power that was hers now, understood what was the star‑folk’s power, and felt something partly anger, partly loss. “Come to the beach tomorrow,” she said.

“I don’t think I can,” MaGee said. “But maybe.”

Elai memorized the face, the look of MaGee. If, she thought, I led thousands like this starman, I would take the islands, the Styx, the heavens everyone came from.

But MaGee kept the secrets to herself, and did not belong to her or to her mother.

“ Hai,”she yelled at Scar, and rode him off at a pace that sent jolting spears of pain through her leg, that had her swaying when she arrived in her own lands, to the solicitude of those that met her.

vi

188 CR, day 178

Memo, office of the Director to staff member Elizabeth McGee

Appreciating potential difficulties, the Director nevertheless considers this a prime opportunity for further study.

vii

The Cloud Towers

Elai lay fitfully that night, with Weirds to soothe Scar in his restlessness, with a firebowl boiling water for compresses they laid on her leg. Figures moved like nightmare about her, and Scar fretted and hissed, not trusting any of them. Even her mother came, asking coldly after her safety, questioning her what had happened.

“Nothing,” she said.

Ellai scowled at that; but Ellai’s Twig came no further than the outer passage of her room, fretting and hissing on her own. The temperature of the situation rose steadily so that–“See to her,” her mother snapped at those who tried, and went away, collecting Twig and getting no answers.

It was like that the next day and the next. The leg bothered her, and the small rides she could take in days after that turned up no sign of the star‑folk. No MaGee. No answers. Nothing.

She sat on Scar’s shoulders and stared out to sea, or at the river, or vented her moodishness on the Weirds, who said nothing and only did those services for Scar she was too tired to do.

And then one day MaGee was there–on the beach, watching her.

“MaGee,” Elai said, riding up to her, trying not to sound as if it mattered. She slid down from Scar–trying not to limp, but she did.

“How is that leg?” MaGee asked.

“Oh, not so bad.”

It was not what she wanted to discuss with MaGee. It was the world that mattered, and every question in it. Elai sat and Patterned idly while she asked and answered–she got very little, but that little she stored away, building and building.

“Help me make a ship,” she asked MaGee.

But MaGee smiled and said no. That was always the way of it.

And the days passed. Sometimes MaGee was there and sometimes not.

And then, day after bitter day, Magee was not there at all.

She rode Scar as far as the Wire, a great long distance, and slid down at the gate through which star‑folk came and went, in sight of a Styx‑tower in the far distance, which reminded her that there were those who rivaled the Cloud Towers to gain star‑brought secrets.

“I want to see MaGee,” she said to the guard at the gate, and all the while she was comparing the Cloud‑towers and this place, and thinking how strong and disturbingly regular it was. On the other side of the Wire, ships landed, and she hoped to see one, looking beyond the guard without seeming to stare–but there was none.

The guard wrote… wroteon a paper, at which performance Elai could not help but wonder. He sent his companion inside with that message, and she must stand and wait…trying in her discomfiture to talk to the guard, who looked down at her through the Wire, who talked to her in a strange accent worse than MaGee’s, and who made little of her, as if she was a child.

“My name’s Elai,” she said, pointing loftily back toward the Towers. “From First Tower.”

The guard refused to be impressed. Her face burned.

“Tell MaGee to hurry,” she said, but the man stood where he was.

Eventually the message came back, and the guard waved his hand at her, dismissing her. “The Director says no,” the guard said.

Elai mounted Scar and rode away. She had surrendered enough of her dignity, and it hurt. It hurt enough that she cried on the way home, but she was dry‑eyed and temperful when she came among her own, and never admitted where she had been, not to all the anxious questions.

viii

Memo, Base Director to staff member Elizabeth McGee

…commends you for excellent observations and requests you write up your reports in detail for transmission and publication. The Director feels that further investigation should extend in other directions and requests you hold yourself ready…

Memo, E. McGee to Base Director in the offices of Gehe