Forty Thousand in Gehenna

And later: “Sir, it’s Ma

“What happened?” he asked, brushing past the medics, shocked at the emaciation, the slackjawed change in the man on the stretcher, there in the foyer of the med building. “Ma

He got no sensible answer, nothing but babble of riversides and calibans.

“Where did you come from?” he asked again.

Ma

So he went to hear it, sat by the bedside of a man who had gone to bone and staring eyes, who looked the worse for being shaven and clipped and turned into something civilized.

“Going to shuttle you up to station,” he said when Ma

Maybe names like that no longer made sense to Ma

lviii

Message: Base Director to E. McGee, in field.

Urgent that you report in: the Styx towers have all fallen. We see refugees but they do not come near the wire. We have recovered Dr. Genley’s notes, which shed new light on the situation. We assure you no punitive action is contemplated…

Message: Base Director to E. McGee, in field

Did you receive the last message? Please respond. The situation is urgent. Bureau is ferrying in an observer from Unionside, with documents that may bear on your studies. The situation for the mission is quite delicate, and I ca

lix

205 CR, day 172

Cloud Towers

“No,” Elai said. “No com.” And McGee did not dispute it, only frowned, sitting there in the hall of First Tower where Elai sat. Elai had a blanket wrapped about her. She had not combed her hair; it stuck out at angles, webbed like lint. Her eyes were terrible.

Her heir was there–Din, who crouched in the corner with his juvenile caliban, with his eyes as dreadful as Elai’s own–frightened little boy, who knew too much. Din had his knife. It was irony that he was here, an heir defending his elder; but this seven year old had the facts all in hand. This seven year old had an aunt ready to take him when she could, to her own tower, to what befell a seven year old heir to a line that had lasted long on the banks of the Cloud.

Scar was dying–had never come up to First Tower, but languished on the shore. Elai only waited for this, the way she had waited for days, eating nothing, drinking little.

Quiet steps came and went, Weirds, who tended Elai. Taem never came; the nurses had Cloud kept somewhere away, as much in danger, but ignorant. A baby. Likeliest catspaw for Paeia if Din came to grief.

There was Dain, always Dain, at the doors below. Dain’s sister Maeri. The Flanahans were loyal still; would die in that doorway if they must. They were armed–but so were all the riders. And so far one could come and go.

“MaGee,” said Elai, having wakened.

“First,” McGee murmured in respect.

“What would you advise?”

“Advise?” Perhaps Elai was delirious, perhaps not. Elai made no more patterns, sat with her arms beneath the blankets, alone. McGee shrugged uneasily. “I’d advise you eat something.”

Elai failed to react to that. Just failed. There was long silence. It went like this, through the hours.

“First,” McGee said, working her hands together, clenching them and unclenching. “First, let’s go…just use some sense and eat something, and you and I’ll just walk out of here. To the Wire, maybe, maybe somewhere else. You can just walk away. Isn’t that good advice?”

“I could make a boat,” Elai said, “and go to the islands.”

“Well, we could do that,” McGee said, half‑hoping, half‑appalled, shocked at once by Elai’s dry laugh. Elai slipped forth a hand, opened thin fingers in mockery, dropping imaginary stones. Forget that, old friend.

“Listen, I don’t intend to put up with this, Elai.”

Elai’s eyes more than opened, the least frownline creased her brow. But she said nothing.

“Styx towers are down,” McGee said. “What’s that going to mean in the world?”

A second throwing‑away gesture. “Should have made the boats,” Elai said. “But they’d have taken down our towers.”

“Who?” There was a cold wind up McGee’s back. “What do you mean they’d have taken down the towers? Calibans? Like Jin’s towers? Like they’re doing there? What are you talking about, First?”

“Don’t know, MaGee. Don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe so.”

“They’ll kill. Like at the Styx towers.”

“The strong ones’ll come this way,” Elai said. She was hoarse. This talk tired her. She made an impatient gesture. “All those Styxside men, too mean; all those women, too stupid–Life would kill them, here. Land will kill them. Most. Maybe not all.” The frown reappeared between her brows. “Or maybe Styxside way just grows up again. Don’t know.”

Somewhere at the depth of her McGee was shocked. “You mean these Styxsiders did something the calibans didn’t like. That thatwas what killed them.”

Elai shrugged. “They ate grays.”

“For years, Elai–”

“It got worse, didn’t it? They went on and on; they got themselves the likes of Jin; he pushed.” Elai made a motion of her fingers, indicating boundaries. “Calibans aren’t finished with this pattern, MaGee, here on the Cloud. Cloud stands. That’s what it meant, out there.”

“And they’d have stopped your ships the same way?”

“Maybe.” Elai heaved a breath. “Maybe not. Old Scar would swim. Maybe he thought the same as me. That old sea‑folk, he was just bigger than Scar, that’s all. Or maybe that was ourlimit and he was saying so.”

McGee saw pictures in her mind, squatting there with her fist against her lips: saw every caliban on Gehe

She looked at Din, at the boy huddled in the corner with his caliban. The hall was eerily vacant. Only a single ariel lurked in the shadows. Of all the communications that had once flowed from this place, one small green watcher. There was always one.

McGee hugged her knees and thought and thought, the patterns that had been since they had come home, lines and mounds across the river, beyond her to read.

And Scar dying on the shore, slowly, snapping now and again at grays who came too close.

She could not bear it longer. She got up and walked out, down the access, down the corridors in the dark, where voices were hushed, where desertions had begun, deep below, calibans and Weirds at their work, which might be undermining or shoring up, either one.

Dain gave her a curious look as she passed the lower door; a handful more of the riders had joined him, armed with spears; so no one got into First Tower yet. It seemed sure that they would. Everything was at a kind of rest, Paeia plotting in her tower, Taem’s in uproar, non‑communicant, now that Taem was dead, heirless; and other towers turned secretive. The fishers still plied their trade; folk went out to farm. But they did so carefully, disturbing as little as they could; and strange calibans had come: they saw them in the river, refugees from the battle, maybe Styxside calibans, maybe calibans that had never come near humans before. If anyone knew, the Weirds might, but Weirds kept their own counsel these days.

She stood there looking out to the shore, where Scar still sat like some rock under the sun.

“Still alive,” said Dain. His own caliban was about, not with him, not far either. She spied it with its collar up, just watching.

She started walking, walked all the way out past the nets where Scar sat. The place stank, a dry fishy stench like stagnant water, like caliban and rot. Not dead yet. But his skin hung like bits of old paper, and his ribs stuck out through what whole skin there was as if it were laid over a skeleton. The eyes were still alive, still blinked. He moved no more than that.