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“How did they?”
Elai thought again, frowning, opened her hand palm up. “Can’t say it so you’d understand. It’s Patterns.”
Notes, coded journal Dr. E. McGee
There are a thousand gestures that have meaning among Cloud River folk, gestures which I think are the same for Styxside. Often they actually use stones, which some folk carry in their pockets or in small bags; but particularly the riders have a way of expressing themselves in sign, pretending the fingers are dropping pebbles. Or picking them up. There’s no alphabetic system in this. The signs are true signs, having a whole meaning in the motion.
But they do write. Counting both sign and writing there’s considerable education among these people, no mean feat considering the diversity of the systems.
Concerning communication with the calibans, there are some concepts that pass back and forth. A caliban can ‘ask’ a human a direction and basic intentions. I can get old Scar to respond to me as far as I want to go up, meaning to the roof. Or down.
There are the Weirds. There are always the Weirds. They care for the children and they function somewhere between priesthood and janitorial duties. They keep the burrows clean. The calibans seem to take pleasure in being touched by them. Most Weirds are thin: high activity, a diet more of fish and less of grain, a lack of sunlight. But in general they seem healthy physically. In any human society off Gehe
Hypothesis: this is a mental disorder uniquely produced by Gehe
Hypothesis: this is a specialized and successful adaptation of humankind to Gehe
Hypothesis: Weirds cantalk to calibans.
xxxvii
204 CR, day 293
Cloud Towers, the top of First Tower
“You mean you can’t say it in words.”
“It’s not a word thing.” Elai laughed strangely and made a scattering gesture. “Oh, MaGee, I could tell it to Din and he’d know. I can’t figure how to do it.”
“Teach me to Pattern.”
“Teach you.”
“At least as much as the boy knows.”
“So you tell the stone towers? So they know if we got underneath the Wire? There was a time the towers fell. More than once. There was a time the whole Base sank in. We remember too.” Scar had stirred, putting himself between them and the ariel, which cleared the wall in a great hurry. Elai scratched the scaly jaw, looked at her beneath her brows. “They’re building them a new tower this year, the Styxsiders, closer to the Wire.”
“You think the Base is in danger?”
“Styx is trouble. Always is. You tell the stone towers that with your com.” She nodded toward the river, up it, toward the forested horizon. “Our riders move up there. They kill a few this year, I think. Maybe next. That’s in the Patterns.”
“How?” McGee asked. “Elai, how do you mean–in the Patterns?”
Elai stretched out her hand, swept it at all the horizon. “You write on little things. Calibans, they write large, they write mountains and hills and the way things move.”
A chill was up McGee’s back. “Teach me,” she said again. “Teach me.”
Elai stroked Scar’s jaw again, thoughts passing behind her eyes. “Calibans could make one mouthful of you.”
“Human beings?”
“Been known. I send you down with them–you could be in bad trouble.”
“I didn’t ask to go anywhere with calibans. I asked you to teach me. Yourself.”
“I’ve showed you all the things I can show. The things you want, MaGee–you got to go down to them. You can talk and talk to me; I can show you upand downand stopand such. But you really want to talk the Patterns, you got to talk to him.”One vast eye stared at her, gold and narrow‑pupilled in the light, a round of iris bigger than the sun. Scar was looking at her, sidelong, in his way.
“All right,” McGee said, scared enough to fall down where she was, but she put her hands in her pockets and looked casual as she could. “They smell fear?”
There was humor in Elai’s eyes, but it was Elai‑Eldest’s face, implacable. “You go down,” Elai said. “You go down and down as far as you can. I think Scar will go. I could be wrong.”
“How long will I be there? What will I eat?”
“They’ll tell you that. There’ll be the Weirds. They’ll take care of you. Be a child again, MaGee.”
204 CR, day 203
Message, E. McGee to Base Director, transmitted from field
Expect to be out of touch for a number of days due to rare study opportunity.
Notes, coded journal Dr. E. McGee
I made a tentative trip down to the depths. It is, predictably, dark down there. It’s full of calibans and Weirds, either one of which makes me nervous. No. I’m scared. I think–personally afraid in a way I’ve never been afraid of anything. Not even dying. This is being alone with the utterly alien. Vulnerable to it. Isn’t that an odd thing for a xenologist to fear most in all the world? Maybe that’s why I had to go into this work. Or why I got myself into this. Like climbing mountains. Because it’s there. Because I have to know. Maybe that has to do with fear.
Or craziness.
I think they would let me go if I asked. At least back upstairs. But I’ve got myself into one. Elai would say she told me so; but this is a thing–I don’t think there’s any going back from this, having asked for this chance. I can’t just be an outsider now. I just closed the door to that. If I go ru
So I don’t see anything else to do.
xxxviii
?
Cloud Tower: the lower section
There was food. McGee went to it by the smell, in the dark, not needing the calibans to guide her. But one was there. She had touched it, knew by the size, guessed by the texture of the skin that it was one of the grays.
Shepherds, she thought of them. She had been terrified at first, of the claws, the hard, bony jaws, the sinuous force of them. They had knocked her down, repeatedly, until she learned to use her ears.
There were other things in the dark: ariels. They skittered here and there and of them she had never been afraid, had kept them close when she could, because they seemed friendly.
There was a big brown hereabouts; she had felt the smoothness on his side. It was Scar, and Elai had lent him. She was grateful, and stayed close to him when she could.
Even of the Weirds she had lost her awe. They were strange, but gentle, and touched her with their spidery fingers, embraced her, held her when she was most afraid.
Once in this fathomless dark, in this waking sleep, she had been intimate with one, and more than once: that was the thing that she had most trouble to reckon with, that the thing she had dreaded most had happened, and that she had (perhaps) been the aggressor in it, having forgotten all she was, with some faceless man, a Weird, a voiceless priest of calibans.
She had lain listless for a long time after, for she had lost her objectivity, and she was compassless in more than the robbery of her senses.
Then: McGee, she thought, you did that. That was you. Not their fault. What if it had been? Get up, McGee.
And in one part of her mind: He’ll know me, outside this place. But I won’t know him.