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Please send:
Writing materials
All such operations apparatus as has been cleared for operations outside the wire, incl. recorder, etc.
4 changes clothing
pair boots
hygiene field kit (forgot mine)
soap!
field medical kit
Also and most important, 1 case (case!) broad spectrum antibiotics, class A, field; 1 case vitamin and mineral supplement; 1 case dietary supplement.
I realize this quantity is unusual, but due to my supply resting on local transport, and due to the possibility of being isolated from supply by circumstance beyond my prediction, I feel this request is only prudent on my part and of utmost urgency, due to close contact with unaccustomed population and drinking and eating unaccustomed food: as approved for Styx mission.
Thank you.
E. McGee
204 CR, day 42
Base Director’s Office
“I am going to approve this,” the Director said to the secretary.
“Sir,” the secretary said, tight‑lipped. “Sir, this is talking about cases. I checked with supply. A caseof antibiotics is one thousand 50 cc units. A box is one hundred. Dr. McGee undoubtedly meant–”
“Approved,” the Director said, “just as ordered. Case lots.”
“Yes, sir,” the secretary said, with thoughts passing behind his eyes.
“Any word from Dr. Genley?”
“Message.” The secretary keyed it up. “Non‑urgent. He’s gone back to the field.”
“He did receive the McGee transcript.”
The secretary hit more keys. “Oh, yes. He did get that copy. Was that a mistake? It wasn’t coded no‑dispersal.”
“No. It wasn’t a mistake. I want to be informed when anything comes in from outside. Or when any native comes to the wire. Personally. No matter what hour.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That load for McGee’s going to take a light transport. Make the order out. I’ll sign it,”
“What about Smith?”
“Smith.”
“McGee’s assistant. Does Smith go out again? He’s asking.”
“Does he want to go out?”
“He’s suggested he wants someone with him if he does.”
“Exactly what is he requesting?”
“Security. And supplies.” The secretary keyed up the request. “He wants a whole list of things.”
“Never mind Smith. Just put one of our Security people out there. I’ll sign that too. Someone who’s been outside the wire. But not anyone who’s worked in the Styx regions. They might be known. If information passes. Check all past assignments. I don’t want any nervous people out there. I don’t want an incident.”
204 CR, day 42
Memo, Base Director to Committee Members
I am approving new operations in the Cloud River area. New and promising contacts have opened. We are presented the opportunity to secure comparative data.
204 CR, day 42
Message, Base Director to E. McGee, in field
Sent in writing with supplies.
I am backing you on this. Hope that your health improves. Please remain in close contact.
xxxiii
204 CR, day 200
Cloud Towers
Elai laughed, laughed aloud, and it startled calibans, who shifted nervously; but not Scar, who merely shut his eyes and kept taking in the sun, there upon the roof of First Tower, with McGee, in the warm tail of summer days. And McGee went on telling her heir how his mother had tried to swim to the islands one day some years ago. Young Din’s eyes achieved amazement. He looked at his mother to see whether this were true, while his five year old sib played his silent games, put and take with ariels–silent, Taem was; he would always be one of the silent ones, lost to the line of Flanahans, but not without his use. There was three year old Cloud, who was noisy in his wandering about, who played wicked games, disrupting his brother Taem’s Patterns. But ariels retrieved his thefts, and nurses interfered when he grew too persistent.
There were the calibans, besides Scar: a halfgrown brown named Twostone, that was the heir’s; and a smaller, runt brown that had attached itself to Cloud. But Taem had no caliban in particular, owned nothing in particular. Taem was Taem. He never spoke, except with the stones, at which he had precocious skill.
“One in a house,” Elai had said of Taem, “that’s fine. I can stand that.”
“What if he were the only child?” McGee had asked.
“Usually it’s the youngers that go,” Elai had said. “I thought Cloud would go since Taem had. But I lost Marik in Cloud’s first year. Maybe that weighed some on Cloud.”
McGee had doubted this, but she listened to it all the same. Perhaps she had some influence on Din, who had begun to hang on her more than on his nurses. Din liked the tales she told.
“Did you?” Din asked now. “Did you swim out there?”
Elai pulled up her robe and showed the old scar. “That’s why I don’t walk so fast, young one. Would have bled everything I had onto that beach if MaGee hadn’t stopped the blood.”
“But what’s out there in the sea?” The young eyes were dusky like Elai’s, roiled with thoughts. Din’s brows were knit.
“Maybe,” McGee said, “things you haven’t seen.”
“Tell me!” Din said. His caliban came awake at that tone, came up on its legs. Scar hissed, a lazy warning.
“That’s enough stories,” Elai said. “Some things a boy has no need to know.”
“Maybe,” said McGee, “tomorrow. Maybe.”
“Go away,” said Elai. “I’m tired of boys.”
Din scowled. His caliban was still up and darting with its tongue, testing the air for enemies.
“Take your brothers with you,” said Elai. “Hey!”
Nurses came, the two old women, fierce and silent, half Weirds themselves. There was no escape for the boys. Rowdiness and loud voices near Scar were not wise. So they went away.
And Elai kept sitting in the sun, caliban‑like, basking on the ledge against the wall. All about the towers the fields were golding. Between them, like skirts, gardens remained green atop the odd mound‑houses of the fishers and workers; weirs sat on riverside like lopsided cages, and fish hung drying beside rows and rows of drying washing and drying fisher‑ropes and nets.
McGee smiled in the tight, quiet way of Tower‑folk, minor triumph. She knew what she did. Elai was well‑pleased, if one knew how to read Tower‑folk gestures. Her heir had come from silence to questions, from sullen disdain to a hurting need to know; and from disdain of Elai to–perhaps a curiosity and a new reckoning what his mother was; for quite unexpectedly since spring Elai had begun to flourish like a hewn tree budding, had put on weight: muscle was in the way Elai moved now. It might have been the exercises, the antibiotics against persistent lowgrade fever, the vitamins and trace‑minerals. McGee herself was not sure; but there were differences in diet on the Cloud, and she hammered them home to Elai.
“Fish guts,” Elai had said in disgust.
“Listen to me,” McGee had said. “Styxsiders eat grays. They get it that way. Grays eat all the fish. Fish eat other fish. Whole. You won’t eat grays, so you’ll have to do better with the fish. Net the little ones. Smoke them. They’re not bad.”
“I like the pills fine,” Elai said.
“Haven’t enough for everyone,” said McGee. “Want healthy people?”
So the nets. And soups and such. And fish dried against the wintertime when fishing was scant.
Interference, they would call it behind the Wire.
xxxiv
Notes, coded journal Dr. E. McGee
So I ask the boy questions. I tell him stories. The sulle
What I find here between Elai and her sons is strange. We talk in cultural terms about maternal instinct. It’s different here. I don’t say Elai doesn’t have any feeling for her sons. She talks with some disturbance of losing one baby, but I draw no conclusions whether the distress is at the discomfort without reward, at the failure, at some diminution of her self‑respect–or whether it’s what we take for granted is universal in human mothers.