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A smaller, gray caliban serpentined its way to the clear center of the floor with a stone in its jaws and laid it purposely on the floor. Another followed, placing a second beside it, while the first retrieved another rock. It was crazy. The craziness in the place sent a shiver over McGee’s skin, an overwhelming anxiety to be out of this tower, a remembrance that the way out was long and dark.
A third stone, parallel to the others, and a fourth, dividing her from Ellai.
“The way is open now,” Ellai said.
Go, that was again, last warning. McGee turned aside in disarray, stopped an instant looking straight at Elai, appealing to the one voice that might make a difference.
Elai’s hand was on Scar’s side. She dropped it and walked a few paces forward–walked with a limp, as if to demonstrate it. Elai was lame. Even that had gone wrong.
McGee went, through the dark spirals, out into the unfriendly sun.
xx
189 CR, day 43
Report, E. McGee
…I succeeded in direct contact; further contacts should be pursued, but cautiously…
189 CR, day 45
Memo, office of the Director to E. McGee
Your qualification of the incident as a limited success seems to this office to be unfounded optimism.
xxi
189 CR, day 114
Styxside
Genley looked about him at every step along the dusty road, taking mental notes: Ma
Before them the hitherside tower loomed, massive, solid in their eyes. They had seen this at distance, done long‑range photography, observed these folk as best they could. But this one was within their reach, with its fields, its outbuildings. Women labored in the sun, bare‑backed to the gentle wind, the mild sun, weeding the crops. They stopped and looked up, amazed at the apparition of starmen.
189 CR, day 134
Field Report: R. Genley
…The hitherside tower is called Parm Tower, after the man who built it. The estimates of tower population are incorrect: a great deal of it extends below, with many of the lower corridors used for sleeping. Parm Tower holds at least two thousand individuals and nearly that number of Calibans: I think about fifty are browns and the rest are grays.
The division of labor offers a working model of theories long held regarding early human development and in the degree to which Gehe
Women have turned to agriculture and do all ma
Only hunters, as I have observed, own a particular caliban and give it a name. It should also be mentioned that one is born a hunter, and hunter marriages are arranged within towers after a curious polyandrous fashion: a woman marries her male relatives’ hunting comrades as a group; and her male relatives are married to their hunting comrades’ female sibs. Younger sisters usually marry outside the tower, thus minimizing inbreeding; they are aware of genetics, though, curiously enough, they have reverted to or reinvented the old term “blood” to handle the concept. There is no attempt to distinguish full brother‑sister relationship from half. In that much the system is matrilineal. But women of hunter class are ornaments, doing little labor but the making of clothes and the group care of children in which they are assisted by women relieved from field work. All important decisions are the province of the men. I have observed one exception to this rule, a woman of about fifty who seems to have outlived all her sibs and her band. She wears the leather clothing of a rider, has a caliban and carries a knife. She sits with the men at meals and has no association with the wives.
Crafts and fisher‑class women work in the fields with their daughters. Male children can strive for any class, even to be a hunter, although should a lower class male succeed in gaining a caliban he may have to fight other hunters and endure considerable harassment. There is one such individual at Parm Tower. His name is Matso. He is a fisher’s son. The women are particularly cruel to him, apparently resenting the possibility of his bringing some fisher‑sib into their society should he join a hunter‑group.
Over all of this of course is Jin himself. This is a remarkable man. Younger than most of his council, he dominates them. Not physically tall, he is still imposing because of the energy which flows from him. The calibans react to him with nervousness‑displays, a reaction in which his own plays some part: this is a beast named Thorn, which is both large and aggressive. But the most of it is due to Jin’s own force of personality. He is a persuasive speaker, eloquent, though unlettered: he is a hunter, and writing is a craft: he will not practice it.
He has survived eight years of guardianship to seize power for himself at sixteen, effectively deposing but not killing his former guardian Mes of the River Tower, from what I hear. He is inquisitive, loves verbal games, loves to get the better hand in an argument, is generous with gifts–he bestows ornaments freehandedly in the ma
We apparently have the freedom to come and go with the escort of one or the other hunters. Jin himself has entertained us in Parm Tower hall and given us gifts which we are hard put to reciprocate.
The people are well‑fed, well‑clothed and in all have a healthy look. Jin enumerates his plans for more fields, more towers, wider range of his hunters to the north…
Memo, E, McGee to Committee
It seems to me that it is a deceptively easy assumption that these Styxsiders are recapitulating some naturalcourse of human society. This is selective seeking‑out of evidence to fit the model Dr. Genley wishes to support. He totally ignores the contrary evidence of the Cloud Towers, who have grown up in a very different pattern.
Message from field: R. Genley
I thank the committee for the inclusion of the reports.
As for Dr. McGee’s assertion that I am selecting my data, I would be interested to see this presented in full, rather than in an inter‑office memo, if she has obtained any new data from the Cloud.