Текст книги "Forty Thousand in Gehenna"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

“Yes,” Elai said.

xxxi

204 CR, day 41

Base Director’s Office

“Dr. Genley’s here,” the secretary said through the intercom, and the Director frowned and pushed the button. “Send him in,” the Director said. He leaned back in his chair. Rain pattered against the window in vengeful spats, carried on the wind that whipped between the concrete towers. Genley had done some travelling to have gotten here this fast, from Styxside. But it was that kind of news.

Genley came in, a different man than he had sent out. The Director stopped in mid‑rock of his chair and resumed the minute rocking again, facing this huge, rawboned man in native leather, with hair gone long and beard ragged and lines windgraven into his face.

“Came to talk about McGee,” Genley said.

“I gathered that.”

“She’s in trouble. They’re crazy down on Cloudside.”

“McGee left a note.” The Director rocked forward and keyed the fax up on the screen.

“I heard.” Genley no more than glanced at it.

“Have the Styxsiders heard about it?”

“They got word. Someone got to them. Com wasn’t any faster at it.”

“You mean they found it out from some other source.”

“They know what goes on at the Cloud. I’ve reported that before.” Genley shifted on his feet, glanced toward a chair.

“Sit down, will you? Want something hot to drink?”

“Like it, yes. Haven’t stopped moving since last night.”

“Tyler.” The Director punched the button. “Two coffees.” He rocked back and looked at Genley. “It seems to be a new situation down there. This ruler of the Cloud Towers is apparently well‑disposed to McGee. And this office isn’t disposed to risk disturbing that.”

Genley’s face was flushed. Perhaps it was the haste with which he had come. “She needs communications down there.”

“We’ll be considering that.”

“Maybe some backup. Four or five staff to go in there with her.”

“If feasible.”

“I have to state my opposition to sending McGee in there without any help. I have experienced staff. Maybe they wouldn’t be accepted down there. But someone else ought to be in there.”

“Do I hear overtones in that?”

“Are we on the record?”

“Not for the moment.”

“I’m not sure McGee’s stable enough to be in there alone. I’m not sure anyone is.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means there are times that my staff and I have to get together and remind ourselves where we came from. And I don’t think McGee has the toughness to stand up to them alone. Mentally. It gets to you. It will. You have to start out tough and stay that way. The Weirds–you’ve read my report on the Weirds…”

“Yes.”

“That’s how strange human beings can get, living next to Calibans. And I’m afraid McGee’s primed to slip right over into it. She’s wanted this too long, too badly. I’m afraid she’s the worst candidate in the world to be sitting where she is.”

The Director considered the man, the leather, the stone ornaments, the unruly hair and beard. Genley brought a smell with him, not an unwashed smell, but something of earth and dry muskiness. Woodsmoke. Something else he could not put a name to. “Going native, you mean.”

“I think she went, as far as she knew how, years ago. I mean, no kid of her own, a woman, after all–Finding that kid on the beach. You know how that could be.”

The Director looked at Genley narrowly, at the clothes, the man. “You mean to say some people might find things they wanted outside the wire, mightn’t they? Something–psychologically needful.”

For some reason the ruddiness of Genley’s scowling face deepened.

“I haven’t any reason,” the Director said, “to question McGee’s professional motives. I know you and McGee have had your problems. I’ll trust you to keep them to a minimum. Particularly under the circumstances. And I won’t remind you how this office would view any leak of information on the Cloud to Styxside–and vice versa.”

The red was quite decisive now. It was rage. “I’ll trust that warning will likewise be transmitted to McGee. I can tell you–this Elai is understood as trouble.”

“On Styxside.”

“On Styxside.”

“McGee reports Elai’s health as fragile. This woman doesn’t sound like a threat.”

Genley’s lips compacted, worked a moment. “She’s got a mean caliban.”

“What’s that mean?”

Genley thought about the answer. The Director watched him. “It’s a perception the natives have; I’ve mentioned this before in the reports–That the social position of humans relates to caliban dominance. Those that have the meanest and the toughest stand highest.”

“Where do you stand? Where are you without one? What’s it mean, if the calibans aren’t together to fight it out.”

“It affects attitude. That woman down on the Cloud has an exaggerated idea of herself, that Elai, inherited this caliban when she was young–that’s what they say.”

“So they expect she’ll move on them.”

“They reckon she’ll push. One way or the other.”

“Tell me, you’re not backing McGee’s assertions, are you, that we’re dealing with calibans as well as humans out there.”

“No.” That answer was firm. “Absolutely not. Except as the Cloud‑siders may do some kind of augury whereby they thinkthe calibans have an opinion. The old Romans, they used to plan their days by the behavior of geese. The flight of birds. Must have worked at least as well as calibans. They got by.”

“Different brain size, geese and calibans.”

“Biologists can argue that point. Look at the Weirds. There’s a good example of humans that talk to calibans. They crawl around underground, let the gray fishers feed them, don’t talk, don’t interact with the rest of humankind except to take orders and shove dirt around. You want the caliban vote, ask a Weird and see if you get any answer. Sir. McGee will learn that pretty quick if she wants to do some honest work out there.”

“I’m aware of your differences of opinion. Is it possible this is a difference of the cultures you’re observing?”

“I doubt it.”

“But you don’t draw conclusions.”

“Absolutely not. I’m simply waiting for data out of McGee. And in sixteen years, there’s been nothing new out of her but speculation. Maybe this will prove matters once for all. But for the record I want to caution the committee that this move is very serious–that with observers inside both cultures, we could embroil ourselves in local problems. Or worsen them. Or push these two cultures into conflict. It’s waiting to happen.”

“Because of a caliban. Because it’s as you say…mean.”

“It means this Elai has a higher status than her situation warrants. That she has a higher confidence than it warrants. She didn’t hesitate to snatch McGee in defiance of the Base. That’s worth thinking on.”

“It still sounds very much like McGee’s theories.”

“There’s a critical difference. McGee thinks the calibans decide. They don’t. It’s human ambition based on status. And this Elai has a lot of status. They might miscalculate–psychological strength for military strength. A lot of people could die over that mistake. I’m talking about McGee’s precious Cloudsiders. And the Styx. They’ve got too much going to waste it all in war.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be miscalculation. On those terms you cite.”

“We’ve got roads built; agriculture increased. Unification of the Towers. We could lose a hundred years in a war right now.”

“A hundred years down whose course?”

Genley gave him a puzzled look, and the look became a frown.

“Maybe,” the Director said, “the calibans won’t permit a war. Or maybe they fight them for their own reasons. And humans just go along with it.”

“That’s more radical than McGee’s hypothesis. Sir.”

“One just thinks–sitting here behind the wire. No matter. We play it cautiously. Since McGee has the chance she can use it.”

“Or maybe they can use McGee. That’s what Jin thinks about it. I’m sure of that.”

“Well,” the Director said, “we just let it go along for now. Frankly, I don’t see much else that we could do about it, do you?”

xxxii

204 CR, day 42

Message, E. McGee to Base

Couriered by Dain of the Flanahan line to the Wire

by order of Elai Eldest

Wish to report I am safe and well and have persuaded the new ruler of the Cloud Towers to have this couriered: to satisfy Security, my id number is 8097‑989 and the holo on your desk is a Terran rose, so you’ll know this is all my idea.

Ellai has been succeeded peacefully at her death by Elai her daughter and designated heir. Elai took advantage of her accession to power over the Cloud to have one of her riders escort me to the Towers. I have been treated with all courtesy and am presently comfortable and content in my situation. This is a rare opportunity with the Cloud Towers and presages an era in which I believe the Cloud may be as productive in research as the Styx has been in recent years. I am not eager to break my stay here at this stage in which I believe much good can be accomplished in stabilizing mission relations with the Cloud.

I will need some equipment and supplies. Elai has agreed to this, and will send to my hut in seven days to collect the supplies which I hope will be there.

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 sullenness is gone. Used to look at me like I was something too vile to think on. Used to look at his mother the same way, but there’s respect when he talks to her now.

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.

Here is an instance where we have adjusted data to fit the desire, since it is ourselves we measure. The human species is full of examples of motherhood without feeling. Can a researcher impugn motherhood? Or have we been wrong because it was as a species safer to construct this fantasy?

How many such constructs has the species made?

Or is it the attribute of an advanced mind, to make such constructs of an abstract nature in its folklore when its genetic heritage doesn’t contain the answer? Folklore as an impermanent quasi‑genetics? Do all advanced species do such things? No. Not necessarily.

Or I am wrong in what I see.

They are Union; they came out of labs.

Two hundred years ago. There’s been a lot of babies born since then.

Elai’s sons had different fathers. Some Cloud Tower folk pair for what seems permanence. Most don’t. I asked Elai if she chose the fathers. “Of course,” she said. “One was Din, one was Cloud, one was Taem. And Marik.”

So the boys have the father’s name. I haven’t met the mates. Or we haven’t been introduced. Elai said something that shed some light on it: about Taem: “That man’s from New Tower. Scar and that caliban were trouble; he ran. Got rid of that one.”

“Killed him?” I asked, not sure whether she was talking about the caliban or the man.

“No,” she said, and I never did find out which one.

But Taem rules what they call the New Tower over by the sea. And I think it’s the same Taem. Relations seem cordial at least at a distance.

I say Elai has no motherhood. I found the relationship between herself and her sons chilling, like a rivalry, one in which the dominancy of the Calibans seemed to have some bearing; and Taem’s lack of one, his silence–Elai’s resignation, no, her acceptance of his condition. (Humans bearing children to give to calibans?)

But today I picked up something I hadn’t realized: that Elai treats her heir as an adult. Cloud can run about being a baby; Weirds take care of him, and those two old women. Taem–no one knows what Taem needs, but the Weirds see he gets it, I suppose. Only this six year old is no child. God help us, I haven’t seen a child in twenty years excepting natives, but that’s no six year old of any mindset I’m used to.

He’s like Elai was, quiet, grownup‑like.

Is even childhood one of our illusions? Or is this forced adulthood what’s been done to us out here?

Us. Humans. They are still human; their genes say so.

But how much do genes tell us and how much is in our culture, that precious package we brought from old Earth?

What will we become?

Or what have they already begun to be?

They look like us. But this researcher is losing perspective. I keep sending reassurances to Base. That’s all I know to do.

I think they accept me. As what, I’m far from sure.

xxxv

204 CR, day 232

Cloud Towers

Ma‑Gee, they called her in the camp. A woman had come from another tower carrying a river‑smoothed stone the size of those only the big browns moved, and laid it at McGee’s feet, in the gathering of First Tower.

“What does that mean?” McGee had asked Elai afterward.

“Nest‑stone,” Elai had said. “Brings warmth from the sun. Baby‑gift. That’s thanks.”

“What do I do?” McGee had asked.

“Nothing,” Elai said. “No, let it be. Some caliban will take it when it wants one.”

Notes, coded journal Dr. E. McGee

Every time I think I understand they do something I can’t figure.

A woman dropped a stone at my feet. It was warm from the sun. Calibans do that to hatch the eggs. It represented a baby somehow, that was important to her. She didn’t cry. Cloud River folk don’t, that I’ve ever seen. But she was very intense about what she did. I think she gave up status doing it.

Mother love?

Do they love?

How do I end up asking such a question? Sometimes I know the answer. Sometimes I don’t.

Elai has some feeling for me. My friend, she says. We talk–we talk a great deal. She listens to me. Maybe it was her health that made her what I saw, that separated her from her sons.

The calibans swim to sea when their people die. One didn’t. It died on the shore today. People came and skinned it. Other calibans ate it. What it died of I don’t know.

It took all day to disappear. The people collected the bones. They make things out of bone. It’s their substitute for metal. They consider it precious as we might value gold. They’re always carved things, things to wear. They have wood for other things. A few really old iron blades: they take care of those. But they have caliban bone for treasure.

They have native fiber for cloth; but leather is precious as the bone. Only riders have all leather clothes. They get patched. They don’t ever throw them away, I’d guess. It’s like the bone. A treasure. This colony was set where it had no metals, had no domestic animals, no resources except their neighbors. I think they would choose another way if they had one. But they do what they can. They won’t hunt; not calibans, at least, and there’s nothing else to hunt, on land.

They’re digging on the bank again. The calibans are. Across the river. Elai says they may have some new tower in mind, but that it looks to her like more burrows.

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

But Elai wouldn’t say.

I’m sure orbiting survey has picked it up. I’ve put it in my report as indeterminate construction. They’ll want some interpretation.

I’m not sure Elai knows.

xxxvi

204 CR, day 290

Cloud Towers

On the summit of First Tower, under a dying summer sun:

“MaGee, what is it like to fly?”

Elai asked questions again, questions, and questions. But now she thought of ships.

“Like sitting on something that shakes,” McGee said. “You weigh a little more than usual sometimes, sometimes less: it makes your stomach feel like it’s floating. But up there the river would look like a thread. The sea looks flat, all smoothed out and shining like the river at dawn; the mountains look like someone dropped a wrinkled cloth; the forests like waterweed.”

Elai’s eyes rested on hers. That spark was back behind them, that thing that adulthood had crushed. Sadness then. “I won’t ever see these things,” she said.

“I haven’t,” McGee said, “in a good many years. Maybe I won’t again. I don’t think so.”

For a long while Elai said nothing. The frown deepened moment by moment. “There is a Wire in the sky.”

“No.”

“So you could go when you like.”

McGee thought about that one, not sure where it led.

“Could we?” Elai asked. “We say that the Wire keeps your stone towers safe. But is that so, MaGee? The ships come and go from inside there to outside. I think that Wire keeps us away from ships. My boats, MaGee, what could they find, but places like this one? They couldn’t find where we came from. We’d just go back and forth, back and forth, on rivers and on seas, and find more islands. But we couldn’t go up. You watch us from the sky. How small, you say. How small. What did we do, MaGee, to be shut away?”

McGee’s heart was beating very fast. “Nothing. You did nothing. How do you know all this, Elai? Did you figure it?”

“Books,” Elai said finally. “Old books.”

“Could I,” asked McGee, and her heart was going faster still, “could I see these books?”

Elai thought about it and looked at her very closely. “You think something might be important to you in these books? But you know where we came from. You know everything there is to know–don’t you, MaGee?”

“I know the outside. Not the inside. Not things I’d like to know.”

“Like what?”

“Calibans. Like how you know what they’re saying.”

“Books won’t tell you that. Books tell about us, where the lines started. How we got to the Cloud and how it was then. How the Styx‑siders began.”

“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 Gehenna their sanity would be in question. It is uncertain whether this is a mental aberration peculiar to the culture, as certain human cultures historically have spawned certain disorders with more frequency than others, or come up with completely unique maladies.

Hypothesis: this is a mental disorder uniquely produced by Gehennan culture with its reliance on calibans. Humans identify completely with the creatures on whom all humans rely for survival, and receive a certain special status which confirms them in their state.

Hypothesis: this is a specialized and successful adaptation of humankind to Gehenna, growing out of the azi culture which was left here in ignorance.

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 running now–it’ll be McGee, who failed. McGee, who was afraid. It would mark what Elai is, and where I can’t reach her, and I’d live here as something neither fish nor fowl.