Текст книги "Forty Thousand in Gehenna"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Then her knees hit sand, and she hurled herself a lung‑wracking length further, sprawled on the shelf in shallow water, sucking air in great gulps and with her arms threatening to collapse and drown her in the shallows.

“Scar,” she managed to call, and struck the water with her palm the way she would to call him up, but there was not a ripple. She wept with strangling sobs for breath, wiped her salt‑stung eyes and nose, tried to walk and inched her way up the slope, flailing with swimming strokes while she could, crawling‑swimming in the extreme shallows because that was all she could do. She turned about again looking at the sea in panic.

Then a body broke the surface close in, and she sobbed for breath and tried to get up, but it was Scar rising out of the sea, his wedge‑shaped head coming closer until he could get his bowed legs under him and serpentine his weary way up the slope. He vomited water, but not the way he would coming out of fresh. His jaws trailed mucus and he dipped his head and washed himself, coughing in great wounded gasps. He snorted his nose clear and dipped his head again, suffering from the salt, pawing at his face in misery. There was a raking wound on his rump that wept clouds of blood. She got up in shaky haste and felt something wrong with herself, looked and saw the blood clouding away from her calf through the shallow water.

She cast a panicked look toward the shore, saw a human figure standing there. “Help,” she called out, thinking this one of the riders come hunting her. And then she thought not, because the outlines were wrong.

Scar was moving now, striding surely if slowly toward the shore. She joined him, limping, feeling the pain now, coughing and wiping her eyes and hurting in her chest. The blood leaked away too quickly. She moved with some fear because of it, and the figure was clearer in her eyes–no one from the Towers, not in that strange bright garb. It was a star‑man staring at her, witnessing all that had happened, and she stopped at the water’s edge ahead of Scar, bleeding into the sand, feeling the life leak out of her in one rush of sickness.

She had to sit down and did, examining the deep gash that ran a hand’s length across her thigh, deep into the muscle. It made her sick to see it. She tried to stop the blood with her fingers and then thought of her clothes far up the shore, which was all she had for bandages excepting her halter, and it was leaking out too fast, making her dizzy and sick.

Scar came up the beach, hissing. She looked up, saw the star‑man both closer and standing quite, quite still with Scar’s collar up like that and his tail tip flicking. Elai’s heart pounded and her head spun. They were stranger than Weirds, the star‑folk. Lately they came and went and just stood and watched the workers in the fields, but this one had something more in mind, and herself sitting here bleeding to death of her own stupidity.

“Can I help?” the star‑man called to her, at least that was what it sounded like, and Elai, sitting there and trying to hold her life inside with her bare fingers and her head none too clear, thought about it and gave a whistle that called Scar back, because the star‑man was carrying a pack that might have help in it of some kind. Scar hardly liked it, but the star‑man came cautiously closer and closer, standing over her finally and bending down out of the sunglare–a woman after all, with her hair silky fine and her clothes of stranger‑cloth and glittering with metal bits and wealth and colored patches. Elai frankly stared open‑mouthed as this apparition knelt down by her and opened her pack, taking out this and that.

“That’s bad,” the star‑man said, moving her fingers off the wound.

“Fix it,” Elai said sharply, because she was scared and it hurt; and because it seemed a star‑man who could make ships fly might do anything.

The star‑man took the tops off jars and unwrapped bandages, and hissed cold foam onto her leg, at which Elai winced. But very quickly it stopped hurting and the foam went pink and red and white, but the blood stopped too. Elai drew a great breath and let it go, relaxing back onto her hands in the confidence now that she was right and the star‑folk could fix whatever they had a mind to. The pain just stopped. At once. She felt in command of things again, while Scar put his big blunt head down closer to give everything a one‑sided examination. There was only a little queasiness in Elai’s stomach while she watched the star‑man work, while she put sticky stuff all over the wound somewhat the color of her leg. “Now you let that dry,” the star‑man said.

Elai nodded gravely, drew her leg back from the star‑man’s hands in the sudden conviction it was a little less than herself to be sitting here mostly naked and sandy and half drowned. She looked the other way, while Scar took up a protective posture, his head shading her from the sun.

“You think you can walk?” the star‑man asked.

Elai nodded, once and shortly. She pointed down the beach, where the point they had started from was out of sight. “My clothes are there.” Go get them, she meant. The star‑man seemed not to take the hint and Elai frowned, suspecting star‑folk of pride.

“You can send someone to get them,” Elai said.

The star‑man frowned too. She had bright bronze hair, a dusting of freckles. “I don’t think I’d better do that. Maybe you’d better not talk about this much, umn?”

Elai picked up a handful of sand and patterned it aimlessly, commentary on the matter. “I’m Elai,” she said. “Ellai’s daughter.”

“ ThatEllai.”

Elai looked up, liking the surprise she caused, lifted her chin toward the sea. “We’d have crossed the sea, only the river comes out into the sea too strong.”

“You hit a current. But there was something else out there too.”

“The sea‑folk.” The memory assailed her confidence, made her think of Scar, hovering over her, and she got up, holding to him, and favoring her leg. Her head spun. She leaned against his ribs looking at the cut he had got. “Fix his too.”

“He might not like that.”

The star‑man was scared, that was what. Elai turned a wicked glance at her. “He won’t bite. Go on.”

The star‑man did it, taking up her medicines; and Scar flinched and hissed, but Elai patted him and stopped him from more than a whip of his tail and a ducking of his head. “Hai,” she said, “hai, hai, hai,” and Scar stood still for it. She reached as if to mount, which worked: Scar settled, flicking his tail and stirring up the sand, his collar jerking in ill temper. But her dizziness came back and she leaned there against Scar’s shoulder looking at the star‑man as she finished, and Scar put his head about, likewise looking after his one‑sided fashion.

“Going now,” Elai said, and set her foot to mount.

“You might fall off,” the star‑man said critically.

Elai just stared, letting the spinning‑feeling stop.

“I think I’d better walk back with you in case,” the star‑man said.

“I’m going after my clothes.” Elai climbed up, after which her head really spun, and she reeled badly when Scar rose up on his four legs at once. She caught her breath and focussed her eyes and started Scar back down the beach, out into the water where the rocks came down.

“Don’t do that,” the star‑man called, panting along after them, but over the rocks. “You’ll get the leg wet.”

She tucked that leg up behind Scar’s collar and gritted her teeth through his lurching about, his more‑than‑casual pace which sent him whipping along in serpentine haste, throwing her constantly to one point of balance and the other. He hated her to lock her legs because of his breathing. She gripped the bony plates with her hands, feeling the sweat break out on her, but eventually he clambered over the rocks to the place where she had left her breeches and her boots and the vest she wore over her halter.

She climbed off and got everything, and shrugged the vest on, wrapped the boots up in the breeches and just sat down a while until she could get her head to stop whirling and her heart to stop pounding. It seemed a very long way home now. There was the Seaward Tower, and the New Tower was closer, but she had no desire to show her face there, Ellai’s daughter, limping in half‑naked and half‑minded and not able to get her breeches on. She hauled herself up again and clutched her bundle to her as she crawled up and over Scar’s shoulder to set herself on his neck. He was patient now, understanding she was in trouble: he came up gently and searched back and forth for the easy ways up the slope, and meanwhile she held onto her clothes and onto him and let the sky and the grass and the distant view of the nearer two Towers pass in a giddy haze.

Suddenly there was a thumping and a panting and the star‑man came jogging to catch up with them from the side, having found her way up off the beach onto the grassy flats.

Scar looked askance at that. Elai tapped her bare toes at him and soothed him with her hand, blinked hazily as the star‑man caught up and strode along with them, jogging sometimes to stay even.

“What do you want?” Elai asked.

“To see you get home. To see you don’t fall off.” This between gasps.

She slowed Scar down. The star‑man plodded along with her pack, breathing hard and coughing.

“My name’s Elai,” Elai said again pointedly.

“You said that.”

“Elai,” she repeated, scowling at the rudeness of this concerned stranger.

“MaGee,” the star‑man said, whether duly reprimanded or only then figuring out what was due. “I really don’t want to make a stir about this, understand. I’ll just see you get where you’re going. What were you doing swimming out there?”

Elai considered sullenly. It was her dream, which she had never talked about to anyone, a private thing which had gone badly, humiliatingly wrong.

“I watched you,” MaGee said. “You chase one of your rafts out? Your river‑in‑the‑sea could just about drown you, hear?”

Elai lifted her head. “There was the seagoer out there. That was what stopped us, not the river.”

“A little outmatched, weren’t you?”

She was not sure, but it sounded insulting. “They’re big.”

“I know they’re big. They have teeth, you know that?”

“Scar has teeth.”

“Not like those.”

“Where did you see one?”

MaGee’s face took on a careful look. “Just say I know, umn? Next boat you lose, you let it go.”

“Boat.”

“Raft.”

“Ship,” Elai concluded, and frowned. “You fly, MaGee?”

MaGee shrugged.

“How do you catch the wind?” Elai asked, suddenly on that track, with a star‑man at hand and answering questions. “How do you get the wind to blow the ships up?”

She thought she might be answered. There was of a sudden such a look in this MaGee’s pale eyes. “Maybe you’ll figure that out someday,” MaGee said, “when you’re grown.”

There was a sullen, nasty silence. Elai gnawed on it, and her leg was hurting again. She ignored it, adding it up in her mind that star‑man medicine was fallible. Like star‑men. “Your ships ever fall down?”

“I never saw one do it,” MaGee said. “I don’t hope to.”

“If my ships had the wind,” Elai said, “they could go anywhere.”

“They’re quite good,” MaGee said. “Who taught you?”

“I taught me.”

“I’ll bet not. I’ll bet someone told you.”

“I don’t tell lies.”

“I guess you don’t,” MaGee said after a moment of looking up at her as she walked along at Scar’s side. “They’re good ships.”

“Your medicine doesn’t work,” Elai said. “It hurts.”

“It’s going to if you keep hanging that leg down like that.”

“I haven’t got anywhere else to put it, have I?”

“I guess you don’t. But it’s going to hurt until you can lie down and get it level.”

“Huh,” Elai said, frowning, because she really wished the star‑man could do something. But she was mollified about the ships. Proud, even. A star‑man called them fine. “How did you know about the river?”

“The word is current. Like in the river. The sea has them. Really strong ones.”

Elai stored that away in her mind. “What makes them?”

MaGee shrugged again. “You do ask questions, don’t you?”

Elai thought about it. “Where do rivers start from, anyway?”

MaGee grinned, laughing at her, at which she frowned the harder.

“Someday,” Elai said, “Scar and I will just go up the Cloud and see.”

MaGee’s grin perished into something quite like belief. “I shouldn’t listen to your questions.”

“Why?”

“Why, why, and what? I’ll get you home, that’s what. And I’ll thank you if you don’t say I helped you.”

“Why? Don’t they like that?”

“Questions and questions.” MaGee hitched the pack up on her shoulder and plodded on, panting with the pace.

“What makes the ships fly?”

“I’m not going to answer your questions.”

“Ah. You know, then.”

MaGee looked up, sharp and quick, the distance to Scar’s back. “You talk to him, do you?”

“Scar?” Elai blinked, patted Scar’s shoulder. “We talk.”

“When you make Patterns on the ground, what do you do?”

Elai shrugged.

“So, there are some things you don’t talk about, aren’t there?”

Elai made the gesture of spirals. “Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“Depends on how Scar is and what he wants and what I want.”

“You mean the same thing means different things.”

Elai shrugged, blinked, confused.

“How do you know?” MaGee pursued.

“Tell me how the ships go.”

“How much does Scar understand? Like a man? Like that much?”

“Caliban things. He’s the biggest caliban in the Towers. He’s old. He’s killed Styx‑siders.”

“Is he yours?”

Elai nodded.

“But you don’t trade calibans, do you? You don’t own them.”

“He came to me. When my grandmother died.”

“Why?”

Elai frowned over that. She had never clearly thought that out, or she had, and it hurt her mother that Scar had not gone to her: that was not for saying out loud.

“That’s a very old caliban, isn’t he?” MaGee asked.

“Maybe he is.” Elai patted him again.

“How many years?”

“Where do star‑folk come from?”

MaGee grinned again, slowly, and Elai felt a little triumph, swaying lightheadedly this side and that. The Cloudside towers passed into view now. The precious time passed.

“Do you live at the Base, MaGee?”

“Yes.”

She thought a moment, and finally brought her dearest dream into the light. “Have you been to the mountains out there, the ones you see from the beach?”

“No.”

“Is that very far?”

“Is that what you sail your ships for?”

“Someday I’ll build a big one.”

Silence from MaGee.

“I’ll go there,” Elai said.

“That ship would have to be big,” MaGee allowed.

“How big?”

“Questions again.”

“Is it far, MaGee?”

“As far as from the New Tower to the Base.”

“Do people live there?”

MaGee said nothing, but stopped, and pointed to the Towers. “That’s home, isn’t it?” MaGee said.

Elai dug her fingers into the softness of Scar’s hide beneath the collar, felt the power that was hers now, understood what was the star‑folk’s power, and felt something partly anger, partly loss. “Come to the beach tomorrow,” she said.

“I don’t think I can,” MaGee said. “But maybe.”

Elai memorized the face, the look of MaGee. If, she thought, I led thousands like this starman, I would take the islands, the Styx, the heavens everyone came from.

But MaGee kept the secrets to herself, and did not belong to her or to her mother.

“ Hai,”she yelled at Scar, and rode him off at a pace that sent jolting spears of pain through her leg, that had her swaying when she arrived in her own lands, to the solicitude of those that met her.

vi

188 CR, day 178

Memo, office of the Director to staff member Elizabeth McGee

Appreciating potential difficulties, the Director nevertheless considers this a prime opportunity for further study.

vii

The Cloud Towers

Elai lay fitfully that night, with Weirds to soothe Scar in his restlessness, with a firebowl boiling water for compresses they laid on her leg. Figures moved like nightmare about her, and Scar fretted and hissed, not trusting any of them. Even her mother came, asking coldly after her safety, questioning her what had happened.

“Nothing,” she said.

Ellai scowled at that; but Ellai’s Twig came no further than the outer passage of her room, fretting and hissing on her own. The temperature of the situation rose steadily so that–“See to her,” her mother snapped at those who tried, and went away, collecting Twig and getting no answers.

It was like that the next day and the next. The leg bothered her, and the small rides she could take in days after that turned up no sign of the star‑folk. No MaGee. No answers. Nothing.

She sat on Scar’s shoulders and stared out to sea, or at the river, or vented her moodishness on the Weirds, who said nothing and only did those services for Scar she was too tired to do.

And then one day MaGee was there–on the beach, watching her.

“MaGee,” Elai said, riding up to her, trying not to sound as if it mattered. She slid down from Scar–trying not to limp, but she did.

“How is that leg?” MaGee asked.

“Oh, not so bad.”

It was not what she wanted to discuss with MaGee. It was the world that mattered, and every question in it. Elai sat and Patterned idly while she asked and answered–she got very little, but that little she stored away, building and building.

“Help me make a ship,” she asked MaGee.

But MaGee smiled and said no. That was always the way of it.

And the days passed. Sometimes MaGee was there and sometimes not.

And then, day after bitter day, Magee was not there at all.

She rode Scar as far as the Wire, a great long distance, and slid down at the gate through which star‑folk came and went, in sight of a Styx‑tower in the far distance, which reminded her that there were those who rivaled the Cloud Towers to gain star‑brought secrets.

“I want to see MaGee,” she said to the guard at the gate, and all the while she was comparing the Cloud‑towers and this place, and thinking how strong and disturbingly regular it was. On the other side of the Wire, ships landed, and she hoped to see one, looking beyond the guard without seeming to stare–but there was none.

The guard wrote… wroteon a paper, at which performance Elai could not help but wonder. He sent his companion inside with that message, and she must stand and wait…trying in her discomfiture to talk to the guard, who looked down at her through the Wire, who talked to her in a strange accent worse than MaGee’s, and who made little of her, as if she was a child.

“My name’s Elai,” she said, pointing loftily back toward the Towers. “From First Tower.”

The guard refused to be impressed. Her face burned.

“Tell MaGee to hurry,” she said, but the man stood where he was.

Eventually the message came back, and the guard waved his hand at her, dismissing her. “The Director says no,” the guard said.

Elai mounted Scar and rode away. She had surrendered enough of her dignity, and it hurt. It hurt enough that she cried on the way home, but she was dry‑eyed and temperful when she came among her own, and never admitted where she had been, not to all the anxious questions.

viii

Memo, Base Director to staff member Elizabeth McGee

…commends you for excellent observations and requests you write up your reports in detail for transmission and publication. The Director feels that further investigation should extend in other directions and requests you hold yourself ready…

Memo, E. McGee to Base Director in the offices of Gehenna Base

…The Styxsiders have turned reluctant for contact. Genley’s report on my desk indicates a team member suffered injury as the team retreated from a caliban within the permitted zone of observation. The team is anxious to return to the Styx; I would discourage this while the Calibans show reluctance.

Report, R. Genley to Base Director transmitted from field

Dr. McGee is overcautious. The incident involved a sprained wrist as the team cleared the immediate vicinity of a caliban engaged in mound‑building. No Styxsider was present.

Message, E. McGee to R. Genley Copy to Base Director

The cooperation between calibans and humans is close enough to warrant alarm at this attack.

Message, R. Genley to Base Director transmitted from field

I do not agree with Dr. McGee’s hypothesis. We are under observation by Styxsiders. Retreat now would give an impression of fear. I object to McGee’s treatment of the data we transmit.

Base Director to R. Genley in field

Continue with caution. Measured risk seems justified.

Memo, E. McGee to Base Director

I am applying for a return to the field. We are losing an opportunity. We already have sufficient observations of calibans. Genley’s approach is producing no useful results. We should use the approaches we do have on the Cloud and draw the Styx into contact on their own initiative. The Styx is notpeaceful. This very silence is a danger signal. I am sending another personal advisement to Genley. All others have been disregarded. I am concerned. I urge the Board to act quickly to recall this mission before some serious incident occurs.

Message, E. McGee to R. Genley

Pull back. Conduct your investigations on this side. The Calibans’ moundbuilding is the equivalent of a wall. They are telling you you are not wanted there.

Message, R. Genley to Base Director

I have received another communication from Dr. McGee. Her theories are based on communication with a single minor child, and earnest as I am sure her concern is, and not based on any eagerness to advance her own studies, I do not feel that her theories, preliminary as they are, and drawn from such a source, ought to become the official standard for dealing with this culture. Independent assessment and cross‑check of observations is essential to this mission. Dr. McGee is making a basic error in applying her Cloud River study to the Styx: she assumes that the development here is the same, when by all evidence of dwelling‑patterns it is not.

I am frankly concerned that the Board has assigned Dr. McGee to the writing of reports based on my data. I would like to see these before they are sent.

Message, E. McGee to R. Genley transmitted from Base

You are committing a basic error in the assumption that calibans do not themselves constitute a single culture which lies at the foundations of both Cloud and Styx.

As for the reports, be assured that they will be written up with more professionalism than your suggestion contained.

Message, Base Director to R. Genley in the field

The Board will make assignments by its own consensus. The Board has every confidence in Dr. McGee.

Memo, Base Director to E. McGee

You are more valuable in your present assignment inside the Base. The Board will assess and determine the proper assignment of personnel. Where is the write‑up on the Styxside data? Documents is complaining about short schedules.

We have a shuttle due to make that Document pickup in four days.

ix

The Cloud Towers

She designed ships in her mind, great ones, which she intended to build when she was in Ellai’s place. She gave orders to the Weirds and experimented with her stick‑and‑leaf fliers off the very top of the First Tower.

Her tiny constructions wrecked themselves at the base of the Tower. And some of the fishers had the bad grace to laugh, while Ellai looked at her askance–not reprimanding her: Ellai never reprimanded her in things that might do her harm.

Her mother hoped, Elai thought obscurely, for accidents–to her person or to her pride. Sometimes she caught her mother with that look in her eyes. Like Twig, bluffing and blustering and making way for Scar because Scar had the power and all the world knew it.

It was not even hate. It was too reasonable for that. Like the calibans. They simply knew who was first.

“I met a starman,” Elai said to her mother, one more thing between them. “She stopped the bleeding when I hurt my leg. Like that. We talked about flying. And lots of things.”

“Stop throwing things off the Tower,” her mother said, precise in her counterattack. “People laugh at you.”

“I never hear them.”

“Keep at it and you will.”

x

188 CR

Report: Dr. Elizabeth McGee to Alliance Science Bureau

for Dr. R. Genley; Dr. E. McGee; Dr. P. Mendel; Dr. T. Galliano; Dr. T. Mannin; Dr. S. Kim

…The Cloud River settlement exists in a loose unity called, if they understand a name, the Cloud Towers.

The administrative organization is difficult to analyze at a distance. Each of the twelve Cloud Towers seems to have its hereditary ruler, male or female, with no clearly observed pattern of allegiances, while the First Tower seems to have the right to call up all the population in defense or attack–after what, if any, co‑deliberation is unclear, in their more or less perpetual distrust of the Styxdwellers. Presumably one Ellai daughter of Ellai, who seems to have no official title, has the hereditary right to give orders in the largest and oldest of the Towers, which gives her by extension the right to “give orders” (the language of my informant) to rulers of other towers in some but not all situations; and to individuals of her tower and other towers, but not in all situations.

If this seems confusing, it seems to reflect a power structure generally controlled by seniority, heredity, lines of descent, and traditions and divisions of responsibility which are generally understood by the community, but which may not be codified or clearly worked out. Another source of confusion may be the level of understanding of my informant, due to her youth, but to my observation, this youth understands the system far better than she is willing or able to communicate.

By far the largest number of individuals in the Cloud Towers are fishers or farmers, most of the latter operating in cooperatives, although again, this system seems to vary from tower to tower in a fashion which suggests a loose amalgamation or federation of independent traditions of rule…

Concerning the fisheries, the fishing technique seems to involve the calibans, who do the fishing in partnership with humans who derive the benefit: generally the gray calibans fish, although some browns do so… There is trade among the towers, in the form of barter… Another caliban/human cooperation exists in construction: evidently the calibans rear the towers and humans do the modifications or supervise the modifications. Both humans and calibans of all types inhabit the towers, including also the ariels…

A typical tower population includes the underground shelters of fishers and farmers and artisans who may, however, live in subterranean shelters skirting the towers or as part of the spiral which culminates in the crest: there seems to be as much of a tower extended underground and round about as in the tower‑structure itself.

The inhabitants of each upper tower seem to be the ruler, the elders, a number of riders, persons of some hereditary importance, a number of Calibans who come and go at will, and another class about which I have been able to gather only limited information, which seems linked to the care of the Calibans…

…Elai herself… The girl has an amazing precocity. There were times that I wondered whether she derived some of her inquisitiveness and above all her use of forms and techniques more advanced than what is practiced elsewhere, from some record or restricted educational system to which she might have access as Ellai’s heir. But I have watched her approach a new situation and discover an answer with a facility which makes me believe completely that this precocity is genuine.

I confess to a certain awe of this ten year old. I think of a young da Vinci, of an Eratosthenes, a naive talent perhaps tragically limited by Gehenna. And then I recall that this is the heir who may live to direct the Cloud Towers.

Concerning Dr. R. Genley’s (attached) photographic analysis of the towers of the Styxsiders, the Twelve Towers of the Cloud may offer some useful comparison.

The Cloud Towers (considering the two anomalous seaward towers as a village unto themselves, partially separate in politics) seem by the description of my informant to be comparable to a polis, an urban center in which there is much interaction among the Towers. The Styx Towers, each surrounded by tracts of cultivated land, are, at least in situation, reminiscent of feudal castles, while the Cloud Towers seem to maintain both a system of small gardens within their group and wide grainfields surrounding the Towers as a whole. When I asked my informant who works in the fields she said farmers work there, but everyone works at harvest…

I asked my informant why the towers do not suffer in the rainy season. She said that there is always damage, but indicated, as we have observed in the construction of the Styx tower, that the walls are composed not only of earth but of rock and timber and kiln‑fired tile. In spite of her age she seemed certain of her observation and indicated that repair and building are a constant activity carried on by gray calibans as well as the human inhabitants, and that the aristocratic‑seeming riders and the class she calls Weirds do a great deal of this repair. I asked whether she was a rider. She answered that she was. Does the heir work? I asked. She laughed at the question and said that everyone had to work…

In the matter of the new Styx construction my informant offered the opinion, contrary to the reports of Drs. Genley and Kim, hereto appended, that the recent construction of the Stygian tower near the Base, is less concerned with watching the Base than with providing a staging area for further hostilities against the Cloud River.

The power structures among Stygians as among Cloudsiders seem indistinct, although the external observations of the long silence from the Styx, combined with the Cloud River informant’s statements that the Styx ruler is young, seem to indicate a hereditary authority which may have been awaiting the majority of the young Stygian ruler. Precisely what manner of social organization or power structure is in effect during this period is therefore a guess.

xi

188 CR, day 344

Cloudside

It had begun slowly, a tenderness about the wound, and that had been going on for weeks. Maybe, Elai thought, it was the cold. Old Cloud limped worse with his old wounds when it rained, and complained a great deal. But whenever she complained it meant not going outside and it meant having the nurses hovering about her, so she kept from limping.