Forty Thousand in Gehenna

“Why? The stone towers aren’t where you live.”

“I work for them.”

“You don’t now. Go down, MaGee. You can’t tell me no. I’m Eldest now. You have to remember that.”

“I need things. Elai–”

Elai hissed between her teeth. Scar rose up to his full height.

“All right,” McGee said. “I’m going down.”

It was a small room on the outer face of the tower. It was even, McGee decided, more comfortable than the hut–less drafty, with opaque shutters of some dried membrane in woodset panes. They opened, giving a view of the settlement; and a draft, and McGee chose the warmth.

Dry, clay walls, formed by some logic that knew no straight lines; a sloping access that led to the hall, with a crook in it that served for privacy instead of a door; a box of sand for a chamberpot–she had asked those that brought her.

They would bring food, she decided. And water. She checked her pockets for the c‑rations she always carried, about the fields, when a turned ankle could mean a slow trip home. There was that, if they forgot; but she kept it as an option.

Mostly she tucked herself up crosslegged on what must be a sleeping ledge, or a table, or whatever the inhabitant wanted it to be–tucked herself up in her coat and her good boots and was warm.

She had had to ask about the sand; she had no idea now whether she was to sit on the ledge or eat on it. She was the barbarian here, and knew it, asea in more waves than Elai had been that day, that su

But she was free, that was what. Free. She had seen enough with her trained eye to sit and think about for days, for months; and facts poured about her, instead of the years’ thin seepage of this and that detail. It was perhaps mad to be so well content. There was much to disturb her; and disturb her it would, come dark, with a door that was only a crookedness in the hall, in a room already scored with caliban claws. A Tower shaped by calibans.

The room acquired its ariel while she sat. She was not surprised at that. One had come sometimes to the hut, as they came everywhere outside the wire, insolent and frivolous.

This one dived out and in a little time a larger visitor came, a gray, putting his blunt head carefully around the bend of the accessway, a creature twice man‑sized. It came serpentining its furtive way up to look at her.

Browns, next, McGee thought, staying very still and tucked up as she was. O Elai, you’re cruel. Or aren’t we– who take our machines for granted?

It opened its jaws and deposited a stone on the floor, wet and shiny. It sat there contentedly, having done that.

The grays had no sense, Elai had told her once. It stayed there a while and then forgot or lost interest or had something else to do: it turned about and left with a whisk of its dragon tail.

The stone stayed. Like a gift. Or a barrier. She was not sure.

She heard someone or something in the doorway, a faint sound. Perhaps the caliban had set itself there. Perhaps it was something else. She did not go to see.

But the slithering was still outside when they brought her food, a plate of boiled fish and a slice of something that proved to be mush; and water to drink. Two old women brought these things. McGee nodded courteously to them and set the bowls beside her on the shelf.

No deference. Nothing cowed about these two sharp‑eyed old women. They looked at her with quick narrow glances and left, barefoot padding down the slope and out the crook of the entry in the gathering dark.

McGee ate and drank. The light faded rapidly once it had begun to go. After that she sat in her corner of the dark and listened to strange movings and slitherings that were part of the tower.

She kept telling herself that should some dragon come upon her in the dark, should some monster come through the doorway and nudge her with its jaws–that she should take it calmly, that Elairuled here; and Scar; and no caliban would harm Elai’s guest.

If that was what she was.

“Good morning,” said Elai, when Elai got around to her again, on the grayly‑sunlit crest of First Tower, on its flat roof beneath which stretched the Cloud, lost in light mist, the gardens, the fields, the fisher‑digs with their odd‑shaped windows and bladder‑panes shut against the chill. People and calibans came and went down at the base. McGee looked over, and beyond, at towers rising ghostlike out of the mist. And she delayed greeting Elai just long enough.

“Good morning,” she said as she would say long ago on the shore, when she had been put to waiting, or when child‑Elai had put her off somehow–a lift of the brow and an almost‑smile that said: my patience has limits too. Perhaps to vex Elai risked her life. Perhaps, as with Jin, it was a risk not to risk it. She saw amusement and pleasure in Elai’s face, and mutual warning, the way it had always been. “Where’s Scar?” McGee asked.

“Fishing, maybe.”

“You don’t go to the sea nowadays.”

“No.” For the moment there was a wistful look on the thin, fragile face.

“Or build boats.”

“Maybe.” Elai’s head lifted. Her lips set. “They think I’ll die, MaGee.”

“Who?”

Elai reached out her hand, openfingered, gesturing at all her world.

“Why did you send for me?” McGee asked.

Elai did not answer at once. She turned and gazed at an ariel which had clambered up onto the waisthigh wall. “Paeia my cousin–she’s got Second Tower; next is Taem’s line over at the New Tower. My heir’s six. That Jin on Styxside–he’ll come here.”

“You’re talking about who comes after you.”

Elai turned dark eyes on her, deepset and sullen. “You starmen, you know a lot. Lot of things. Maybe you help me stay alive. Maybe we just talk. I liked that. The boats. Now I could do them. Real ones. But who would go in them? Who would? Theynever talked to MaGee. But now you’re here. So my people can look at you and think, MaGee.”

McGee stood staring at her, remembering the child–every time she looked at her, remembering the child, and it seemed there was sand in all directions, and sea and sky and sun, not the fog, not this tired, hurt woman less than half her age.

“I’ll get things,” she said, deciding things, deciding once for all. “You let me send word to the base and I’ll get what I can. Everything they’ve given the Styxsiders. That, for a start.”

Elai’s face never changed. It seemed to have forgotten how. She turned and stroked the ariel, which flicked its collar fringes and showed them an eye like a green jewel, unwinking.

“Yes,” Elai said.

xxxi

204 CR, day 41

Base Director’s Office

“Dr. Genley’s here,” the secretary said through the intercom, and the Director frowned and pushed the button. “Send him in,” the Director said. He leaned back in his chair. Rain pattered against the window in vengeful spats, carried on the wind that whipped between the concrete towers. Genley had done some travelling to have gotten here this fast, from Styxside. But it was that kind of news.

Genley came in, a different man than he had sent out. The Director stopped in mid‑rock of his chair and resumed the minute rocking again, facing this huge, rawboned man in native leather, with hair gone long and beard ragged and lines windgraven into his face.

“Came to talk about McGee,” Genley said.

“I gathered that.”

“She’s in trouble. They’re crazy down on Cloudside.”

“McGee left a note.” The Director rocked forward and keyed the fax up on the screen.

“I heard.” Genley no more than glanced at it.

“Have the Styxsiders heard about it?”

“They got word. Someone got to them. Com wasn’t any faster at it.”

“You mean they found it out from some other source.”

“They know what goes on at the Cloud. I’ve reported that before.” Genley shifted on his feet, glanced toward a chair.