Текст книги "Forty Thousand in Gehenna"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Message from field: R. Genley

I thank the committee for the inclusion of the reports.

As for Dr. McGee’s assertion that I am selecting my data, I would be interested to see this presented in full, rather than in an inter‑office memo, if she has obtained any new data from the Cloud.

As for the earlier data I am of course familiar with it. It is not surprising that one of the communities has managed to cling to their ancestral ways and, in their unstressed river‑plain environment, lack the impetus to change. It is inconceivable that their ways would survive except for the circumstance of their origin which flung them into close community: they were, be it remembered, a settlement of refugees. They are not coping well. Their cultivated areas are small. They do not hunt widely, if at all. They are predominantly fishers, which is an occupation, at least as practiced on Gehenna, which does not require physical strength.

The critical difference is the necessity of physical strength in the hunter culture of the Styx, a difference which should be self‑evident given the biological realities of the human species.

Memo, E. McGee to Committee

Copy transmitted to R. Genley

It is a difficult task to extricate the observer from the observation. I do not believe we are out here at considerable expense to seek to reaffirm theories dearly held by our various disciplines, but to faithfully record what exists, and secondly to challenge, where appropriate, theories which become questionable in the light of observed fact.

It is possible that the entanglement of the observer with the observation throughout history, along with the sorrowful fact that in general only the winners write the accounts of wars, has tended to advance certain cultural values in the place of fact, when these values are confused with fact by the observer.

Fact: two ways of life exist on Gehenna.

Fact: more than one way of life has existed in humanity’s cradles of civilization.

I propose that, instead of arguing old theories which have considerable cultural content, we consider this possibility: that humanity develops a multiplicity of answers to the environment, and that if there must be a system of polarities to explain the structure around which these answers are organized, that the polarity does not in and of itself involve gender, but the relative success of the population in curbing those individuals with the tendency to coerce their neighbors. Some cultures solve this problem. Some do not, and fall into a pattern which exalts this tendency and elevates it, again by the principle that survivors and rulers write the histories, to the guiding virtue of the culture. It is not that the Cloud River culture is unnatural. It is fully natural. It is, unfortunately, threatened with extinction by the hand of the Styxsiders, who will need centuries to attain the level of civilization already possessed by the Cloud. Barbarians win because civilizations are inherently more fragile.

Message from the field: R. Genley

I again urge Dr. McGee to present her theories formally when she can reestablish sufficient contact with the culture she is describing to secure corroborative and specific observations.

xxii

190 CR

Unedited text of message

Dr. E. McGee to Alliance HQ

couriered by AS Pegasus

[Considering the personal difficulty of continuing in this position–]

[Considering the contribution which I feel I might make elsewhere and the personal disappointment]–

[Considering the–]

[Considering the unfortunate circumstances which have incurred, I suspect, some personal animosity on the part of the Cloud‑siders–]

Considering the difficulty of life on Gehenna and my personal health, I would like to make application for immediate transfer from the project. [I feel that my work here is at a standstill and that the–] At the present level of activity my assistants are fully competent to conduct my project and I would urge the Bureau to appoint Dr. Leroy H. Cooper to the post. He has shown himself to be a skilled and dedicated investigator. [I feel that a certain cultural and personal bias on the part of the–] I wish my application for transfer to cast no shadow on the mission or the staff here. My reasons are medical and personal, involving a sensitivity to certain irritants present in the area…

xxiii

191 CR, day 202

Message, Alliance HQ

to Dr. E. McGee, Gehenna Base

…with thorough sympathy for your medical difficulties, the Bureau still considers your presence in the project to be of overriding value, in view of the expense and difficulty of personnel adjustments. So it is with regret that we must reject your application for transfer…

…We have analysed the facilities available at Gehenna both on the Base and at the Station for alleviation of your difficulties and have made shipment of medicines which we feel will provide a wider range of treatment alternatives…

191 CR, day 205

Prescription, Base pharmacy

for Dr. E. McGee

…for insomnia, take one capsule at bedtime. ALCOHOL CONTRAINDICATED.

xxiv

200 CR, day 33

Field report: E. McGee

…rumor which I have picked up from the usual New Tower source indicates that the heir, Elai, has given birth to a second son. Due to the tenuous nature of my contact with these sources and the need for caution I cannot yet confirm…

xxv

200 CR, day 98

Styxside

“Genley,” Jin said, in the warmth of Parm Tower, in the closeness that smelled of brew and Calibans and smoke and men. A hand came out and rocked his shoulder, pressed with strong fingers. “You write about me. What do you write?”

“Things.”

“Like what, Genley?”

“The way you live, the things you do. Like your records. Like the things you write down.”

“You make the starmen know me.”

“They know you.”

Jin clapped his shoulder. They were mostly alone. There was only Parm and his lot drowsing in the corner. The hand fell from his arm. “That Mannin, that Kim, always scratching away–You know, Gen‑ley, they have fear. You know how I know they have fear? It’s in the eyes. They’re afraid. You watch them. They don’t look in my eyes. You do.”

Genley did, without flinching. Jin buffeted his arm and laughed when he had done it.

“You are my father,” Jin said.

Mannin would have taken notes on that. Asked questions: was it a common thing to say? Genley went on staring him in the eye, too solid for Jin to shake, in any sense.

“My father,” Jin said, still holding his arm. “Who asks me questions, questions, questions what I do. I learn from your questions, Gen‑ley. So I call you my father. Why doesn’t my father ask me gifts?”

“What should I ask for?”

“A man should have women. You want the women, Gen‑ley, you go down…anytime you like. Not hunter women: trouble, hunter women. But all the others. Anytime you like. You like that?”

200 CR, day 120

Field report: R. Genley

…The lord Jin has made considerable progress toward further stabilizing the government. The reports of dissent in the TransStyx have died down following a personal visit of one of his aides to that side and indications are that the chief of the opposition is now supporting his authority.

Memo, E. McGee to Base Director

Copy to R. Genley in field

The lordJin?…

xxvi

200 CR, day 203

Field report: R. Genley

…In all, Jin 12’s new programs are succeeding. Agriculture is up another 5 percent this year, for a total of 112% increase since his accession. Roadbuilding, a totally new development, has made possible the delivery of limestone to the hitherside tower, another of Jin’s ideas, gathered from observation, I surmise, of our own constructions inside the wire. The mission has continually observed the zero trade restriction and most carefully has withheld information, but it could be the mere presence of the Base is a goad to the energetic Styxside culture, accelerating their dissatisfaction with conditions as they are. Looking as they do through the wire at a permanent city, observing woven clothing and a wealth of metal, they are discontent with what they have. The lord Jin is particularly anxious for metal, but sees no present possibility of obtaining it. The choice which placed the colony in a fertile deep plain has ironically made that particular advancement difficult until explorations reach the mountainous southeast. The road to the quarries is part of a push in this direction, making possible, if not wheeled transport, the rapid transit of mounted traffic.

There has been another development, in the surprising invitation of the lord Jin for me to visit the farside settlements, an opportunity providing some hazards, but altogether attractive in terms of opening even wider contacts with this unprecedented culture. I have told the lord Jin that this will require some consultation and I hope for the Director’s consent…

200 CR, day 203

Message, Dr. E. McGee to R. Genley

…it seems to me that this extension of a quarry road and this interest you name as evidence of a progressive attitude could equally well be interpreted as a certain aggressiveness toward the south. The mountains lord Jin wants, as you put it, lie within the natural sphere of the Cloud‑siders.

200 CR, day 203

Message, Dr. R. Genley to E. McGee

I do not view that our duties include carving out “spheres of influence” or manifest destinies of our private protectorates. I do not urge the Styx settlements to any ambition and I trust that you maintain the same policy with the Cloud, in what contacts you have managed to secure with them.

200 CR, day 203

Message, Dr. E. McGee to R. Genley

Copy to Base Director

You have been taken in by a deceptive scoundrel and may be taken further if you accept this invitation to enter the transStygian settlements. I consider the potential hazard to peace to be unwarrantably great should advanced technology fall into the hands of this young warlord and I intend to object to your proposed operations across the Styx for that reason and for no private animosity.

200 CR, day 206

Memo, Base Director to E. McGee

The Board has taken your warning under consideration, but feels that the potential advantages outweigh the risk.

Message, Base Director to R. Genley

Arrangements for transStyx operation may be pursued with appropriate safeguards…

xxvii

201 CR, day 2

Field report, Dr. R. Genley

Green Tower: the transStyx district

…Lord Jin has been persuaded that Drs. Mannin and Kim might join me in the transStyx.

I have been afforded the signal honor of being given a high tower room for my comfort–a small one, to be sure, but decidedly dryer in the recent rains. Further, this has afforded me the chance to see the interactions of the upper tower folk at close hand.

Which brings me to a repeated request for the chance to bring vid recorders into the TransStyx. We are losing irreplaceable material. We do not believe that such highly complicated technology would pose any significant problem, since the people are well‑accustomed to our handling strange things, and there has never been any incidence of theft or attempt at theft: the lord Jin has us under his protection. Mannin and Kim might bring this equipment when they come.

xxviii

203 CR, day 45

Field report, Dr. E. McGee

The heir, Elai, was delivered of a fourth son. So the report runs among the outer towers. Ellai‑Eldest’s health is failing. I have heard that the heir is in fragile health following this birth and there is some alarm on this account. I am not sanguine about the future of the Cloud settlements should Elai die after succeeding Ellai, as now seems imminent. It is not out of all possibility that this community too could see a prolonged regency for Elai’s minor sons. Or the power might pass laterally to one Paeia, a cousin of some degree, who is of middle years, and ambitious. I urgently hope the Board will consider whether any protective measures could be taken, considering that we have, albeit indirectly, sustained the prestige and the power of the Stygian leader by accepting his contact. Whether this was correctly done or whether the continued and increasing presence of Base personnel in the TransStyx does not in fact create an indirect threat to the safety of the Cloud, I do not at this time argue.

I urgently advocate the establishment of a permanent base for study in the vicinity of the Cloud to balance any real or imagined support we may have given their enemies. In my judgement, the Cloud expects attack. By what reasoning they have arrived at this conclusion, I have no information. I even suspect information carried through the calibans.

203 CR, day 47

Message, R. Genley to the Base Director

…That Dr. McGee now descends to obscure arguments involving conspiracy among calibans does not deserve serious answer. I would support her request for assistance: her post has involved too much solitude, and perhaps some personal risk, recalling her injuries of some years past.

As for her suggestions of possible attack from the Styx, I can assure the Board that no such moves are underway.

And regarding calibans, their communication is assuredly an elementary symbol‑directional system with a system of reasoning which is far more concerned with purely caliban matters such as the availability of fish, the security of their eggs, and their access to the river than with any human activity, let alone the politics of succession.

I have of course read Dr. McGee’s paper on caliban‑human interaction in the Cloud Towers and am aware of her beliefs that the Cloud calibans are equal partners in Cloud Tower life: this is surely the basis of her remarkable assertion above. To the degree in which this so‑named partnership exists, the Cloud River society is, by data which she herself reports, an unhealthy society, suspicious, reclusive, clinging to the past, and in all, preoccupied with calibans to such an extent that it does not innovate in any traditional human pattern. The Cloud River settlement is an impenetrable maze on which Dr. McGee has spent her health and many years, in which regard I would personally be interested to see new blood introduced into that study, to make comparisons with Dr. McGee’s ongoing studies.

xxix

204 CR, day 34

Cloud River plain

The shelter by no means kept out the damp and the cold. Noon was murky after the fashion of winter days, and the help had gone scuttling back to the warmth of the Base under the pretext of supplies when the rascal saw the front coming. McGee wiped her nose and turned up the heater a bit–they let her have that modern convenience, but the latrine was a hole and a shovel to fill it and water was a rainbarrel outside in the muck because otherwise it was hauling two liter jugs the whole long distance from the wire. Her coveralls kept her warm: but her feet and hands were always cold because the cold got up from the ground; and her coat, on its wire hook on the centerpole, was drying out over the stove while her boots were baking in front of it. Warm socks, heated socks, were a luxury as wonderful as dry, fire‑warmed boots.

There were such things as heated boots, to be sure, and thermcloth and all sorts of wonderful luxuries, but somehow, in the labyrinth of communications with HQ, Gehenna could never make it understood that, temperate climate notwithstanding, the requisitions were needed. A few items arrived. Seniority snatched them up. Medical priorities got them. Outside‑the‑wire operations got plain boots and cold feet. Advanced technology, the Director called it, and interdicted it for the field. The Director had thermal boots for his treks across the concrete Base quad or out about his rounds for the hours he was out.

A plague on all Directors. McGee sneezed again and wiped her nose and sat down on her bunk by the heater, brushed the dust off her frigid right sole and eased into a heated sock and into a warmer boot, savoring the sensation. Then the other foot. There was never a time when all of her was warm, that was the trouble. One got the feet or the backside or the hands or the front but the other side was always away from the heat. And baths were shivering misery.

She got to her report, on a tablet propped on her lap, scribbling the latest notes.

A sound grew into her attention, a distant whisper and fall that brought her pen to a stop and had her head up. Caliban. And moving as calibans rarely moved in the open grassland. She laid the pen and tablet aside, then thought better of that and dumped both into the safe‑box that no Cloud‑sider could hope to crack.

It came closer. She had no weapons. She went to the flimsy door, peering out through the plastic spex into the mist.

A caliban materialized. It had a rider on its back, and it came to a stop outside with a whipping of its tail that made its own sibilance in the grass. It was a gray bulk in the fog. The rider was no more than a silhouette. She heard a whistle, like calling a caliban from its sleep, and she took her coat from its hook, shrugged it on and went out to face the situation.

“Ma‑Gee,” the young man said stiffly. This was no farmer, this; no artisan. There was a class of those who rode the big browns and carried lances such as this fellow had resting against the brown’s flattened collar.

“I’m McGee.”

“I’m Dain from First Tower. Ellai is dead. The heir wants you to come. Now.”

She blinked in the mist, the tiny impact of rain on her face. “Did the heir say why?”

“She has First Tower now. She says you’re to come. Now.”

“I have to get a change of clothes.”

The young man nodded, in that once and assured fashion the Cloud‑siders had. That was permission. McGee collected her wits and dived back into the shelter, rummaged wildly, then thought and opened the safebox, her hands shaking.

Ellai dead, she wrote for the help when he should get back. A messenger calling me to First Tower for an interview with Elai. I’m not threatened. I haven’t tried refusing. I may be gone several days.

She locked it back inside. She stuffed extra linens into her pockets and a spare shirt into her coat above the belt. She remembered to turn the heater off, and to put the lock on the flimsy door.

The caliban squatted belly on the ground. The young man held out his lance, indicating the foreleg. She was expected to climb aboard.

She went, having done this before, but not in a heavy coat, but not after sixteen years. She was awkward and the young man pulled her up into his lap by the coatcollar, like so much baggage.

xxx

204 CR, day 34

Cloud River

The child had become a woman, darkhaired, sullen‑faced–sat in Ellai’s chair in the center of the tower hall, and Scar curled behind that chair like a humped brown hill, curled his tail beside her feet and his head came round to meet it from the other direction, so he could eye the stranger and the movement in the hall.

Then the elation McGee had felt on the way was dimmed. It had been dimming all the way into the settlement and reached its lowest ebb now, facing this new ruler on the Cloud, this frowning stranger. Only the caliban Scar gave her hope, that the head stayed low, that he turned his head to look at her with one gold, round‑pupilled eye and had the collar‑crest lifted no more than halfway. They were surrounded by strangeness, with other calibans, with other humans, many of the shave‑headed kind, crouching close beside calibans. And weapons. Those were there too, in the hands of leather‑clad men and women. Elai wore a robe, dull red. Like the shave‑skulls. She was thin as the shave‑skulls. A robe lay across her lap. Her hands were all bone. Her face was hollowed, febrile.

And the child looked out at her from Elai’s face, with eyes cold as the calibans’.

“Elai,” said McGee when the silence went on and on, “there wasn’t any other way for me to come. Or I would have.”

The sullenness darkened further. “Ellai is dead. Twig has swum to sea. I sent for you, MaGee.”

“I’m glad you sent,” she said, risking her death; and knew it.

For a moment everything was still. A gray moved, putting itself between them.

Scar lunged with a hiss like water on fire, jaws gaping, and seized the hapless gray, holding it, up on his own four legs, towering beside the chair. Thoughtfully he held it. It was stiff as something dead. He dropped it then. It bounced up on its legs and scurried its sinuous way to the shadows, where it turned and darted out its tongue, licking scaly jaws. Scar remained statue‑like, towering, on his four bowed legs. The crest was up, and McGee’s heart was hammering in her ears.

An ariel came wandering between Scar’s thick‑clawed feet, and set a stone between them, a single pebble. Scar ignored it.

“MaGee,” said Elai, “what does it say?”

“That I should be careful.”

Laughter then, laughter startling on that thin face, an echo of the child. “Yes. You should.” It died then into a frown as if the laughter had been surprised out of her, but a trace of it remained, a liveliness in the eyes. Elai waved a thin arm at all about her. “Out! Out, now! Let me talk to this old friend.”

They moved, some more reluctantly than others. Perhaps it was ominous that many of the calibans stayed. Silence fell in the retreat of steps down the well in the center of the floor, the shifting of scaly bodies. Scar continued to dominate the hall, still curled round the chair. But he settled, flicking his collar‑crest, running his thick dark tongue round his jaws.

“Ellai is dead,” said Elai again, with all that implied.

“So everything is changed.”

Elai gathered herself up. The laprobe fell aside. She was stick‑thin. She limped like an old woman in the few steps she took away from the chair. An ariel retreated from her feet. For a moment Elai gazed off into nothing, somewhere off into the shadows, and it was a deathshead that stared so, as if she had forgotten the focus of her thoughts, or gathered them from some far place.

“Sixteen years, MaGee.”

“A long time for me too.”

Elai turned and looked at her. “You look tired, MaGee.”

The observation surprised her, coming from what Elai had become. As if a little weathering counted on her side, a fraying of herself in the sun and wind and mists. “Not used to riding,” she said, turning it all away.

Elai stared, with an irony the child could never have achieved. It went to sour laughter. She walked over and patted Scar on his side. The lamplike eyes blinked, one and then the other.

“I’m Elai‑eldest,” she said, a hoarse, weary voice. “You mustn’t forget that. If you forget that you might die, and I’d be sorry, MaGee.”

“What do I call you?”

“Elai. Should that change?”

“I wouldn’t know. Can I ask things?”

“Like what?”

Her pulse sped with fear. She thought about it a moment more, then shrugged. “Like if there’s anything I can do to help you. Can I ask that?”

The stare was cold. Laughter came out, as suddenly as the first time. “Meaning can you notice what you see? No, MaGee my friend. You can not. My heir is six. My oldest. They have nearly killed me, those boys. The last died. Did you hear?”

“I heard. I didn’t report it. I figured that Jin knows enough.”

“Oh, he’ll know, that one. The calibans will say.”

McGee looked at her. Calibans, she thought. Her skin felt cold, but she felt the heat in the room. Sweat ran at her temples. “Mind if I shed the jacket? Am I staying that long?”

“You’re staying.”

She started to unzip. She looked up again as the tone got through in its finality. “How long?”

Elai opened her hand, fingers stiff and wide, a deliberate, chilling gesture. “Did I teach you that one, MaGee?”

All stones dropped. An end of talk. “Look,” McGee said. “You’d better listen. They’ll want me back.”

“Go down. They know a place for you. I told them.”

“Elai, listen to me. There could be trouble over this. At least let me send a message to them. Let one of your riders take it back to the hut. They’ll look there. I don’t mind staying. Look, I wantto be here. But they have to know.”

“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 sunny faraway day when Elai tried for islands and boundaries.

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.