Текст книги "Forty Thousand in Gehenna"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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“You here for a while?” Genley asked.

Jin waved off further washing, reached for a blanket a woman held and wound it about himself.

“A bath’s ready,” Parm’s sister said.

He waved them off again. Held out his hand from beneath the blanket. A cup arrived in it; he never looked to see, but carried it to his lips and drank, looking up at Genley the while. He was not easy. Gen‑ley read that mood. Beyond him Thorn rested, only half relaxed.

“Like Parm Tower?” Jin asked him.

“It’s wet here.”

Jin failed to laugh. Just stared at him.

“Didn’t think it would take this long,” Genley ventured, still pushing, judging he had to push. And pay the young bastard a compliment, if he took it that way.

It halfway pleased Jin. Genley saw the blink. The mouth never changed. Jin gestured with the cup. Sit. Jin took the ledge. The floor was damp from what had not run down the slant to the drain. Genley ignored the invitation, not liking looking up, but stood easier, and that was all right: it had not been an order. Jin puffed his cheeks, let out a long, slow breath.

“The Styx is cold,” Jin said.

“Cold here too. No women here.”

Jin looked up, nonplussed.

“Didn’t have that matter taken care of here,” Genley said.

Jin blinked, blinked again, and a small wicked smile started at the corners of his mouth. “Forgot that. That old sod Parm.” It became a laugh, a silent shaking of the shoulders. “O my father, all this time. Poor Genley.” He wiped his eyes. “No women.” He laughed again, gestured with the cup. “We fix that.”

Genley regarded him with touchy humor. There were other things about Parm he would have wished to say, but a list seemed risky. He folded his arms and looked down at Jin. “Mostly,” he said, “I fished. Hunted a bit along the banks. In the bog. Didn’t hear anything, didn’t get any news. So you settled with that Mes bastard.”

“Yes.”

“Want to talk to you when you’ve got time.”

“About what?”

“When you’ve got time.”

The brows came down, instant frown. “But I always have time,” Jin said, “if its news.”

“Told you I had none of that. That’s what about. There’s a point past which the Base is going to be asking questions.”

“Let them ask.”

“They’ll know there was fighting up north. They see things like that. They’ll make up the answers.”

“Let them make them up. What will they do?”

“I don’t know what they’ll do.”

“But they don’t interfere outside the Wire.”

Genley thought about that suddenly, in sudden caution. That was a question, posed hunter‑style, flatly.

“Up to a point,” he hedged it. “I don’t know what they’d do. There’s no need to stir things up with them.”

“Tell me, Gen‑ley. Who are they like? You–or Mannin? Like Kim?”

Genley frowned, perceiving he was being pressed, backed up on this, step and step and step, and Jin was choosing the direction. “You’re asking what the Base might do about it if they didn’t hear from us.”

“Maybe we found that out?”

“What’s that mean?”

The dark eyes rested on him, redirected to the wall. Jin took a drink, pursed his lips. “They’re Mannins.”

“Some are. Some aren’t.” He squatted, arms on knees, to meet Jin’s eyes. “You listen to me. There’s a point past which. There always is. I tell you what’s good. You want advice, I give you advice. You’ve got the Styx in your hand; got roads; got stone; got ways to get yourself written down as the man that made this collection of towers into something star‑men have to respect, you hear me? You have it all in your hand. But you don’t deal with Base the way you deal with that petty tower lord up north. I’m telling you. Think of a tower as large as the whole Base, in the sky, over your head: that’s what the Station is, and it watches the whole world; it has other watching posts strung out round the world, so nothing moves but what they see it. Imagine beyond that a hundred towers like that, imagine half a dozen places as big as all Gehenna itself where millions of towers stand–you reckon in millions, Jin? That’s a lot more than thousands. Towers beyond counting. You pick a fight with Base, Jin, that’s what you’ve got. You want to deal with Base, they’ll deal, but not yet.”

Jin’s face was rigid. “When,” he said in a quiet, quiet voice, “when is the time?”

“Maybe next year. Maybe you go to the Wire. I’ll set it up. I’ll talk to them. It’ll take some time. But they’ll listen to me sooner or later if nothing happens to foul it up. We get them to talk. That first. Beyond that, we start making them understand that they have to deal with you. We can do that. But you don’t get anywhere by going against the Base. It’s not just the Base you see. There’s more of it you don’t see. They’re not weak. They know you’re not. You listen to me and they’ll hear of you all across the territories the starmen have. They’ll know you.”

Something glittered in the depth of Jin’s eyes, something dark. The frown gathered. He set the cup down, gathered the blanket between his knees and leaned forward. “Then why do they send MaGee?”

“MaGee doesn’t matter.”

“They send this woman. This woman. Ma‑Gee.” Jin drew a breath. It shuddered, going in. “ Talk, you say. Tell me this, Gen‑ley. What does this MaGee say to Elai down there on the Cloud? Tells her starmen will talk to her–is that what this MaGee says?”

“It doesn’t matter what McGee says. Elai’s nothing. They’ve got nothing to what you’ve got. Don’t lose it.”

“They make me a fool. They make me a fool, Gen‑ley.” The veins stood out on his neck, on his temples. “I gut one man, his band, his women–but there’s others. You know why, Gen‑ley? This woman. This woman on the Cloud. Wait, you say. Talk to the Base. My men say something else. My men have waited. They see me make roads, make fields–they hear their enemy gets stronger, that this MaGee is in First Tower, like you, here. Wait, you say. No, my father.”

“Don’t be a fool.” Wrong word. Genley caught it, seized Jin’s wrist in the hardest grip he had. “Don’t be one. You don’t let those women plan what you do, do you? McGee’s nothing. Elai’s not worth your time. Let them be. You can deal with Base without involving them. They don’t matter.”

“It’s you who are the fool, Genley. No. This MaGee, this Elai, there’s enough of them. It’s winter, my father.”

A chill came on him that had nothing to do with the weather. “Listen to me.”

“There are men coming,” Jin said, “from across the Styx. Thousands. What I did to Mes–will be double on the Cloud. Before this woman’s eyes.”

“You listen. This isn’t the way to settle this.”

“Yes, it is,” said Jin.

“Or to have the Base on your side.”

“I know where the Base is,” Jin said. “And you can go with me, Genley. You hear? You ride with us. You. Those men of yours. I want you with me.”

“No. I’m not getting into this.”

The dark eyes bore into his. “But you are. On my side. In case this MaGee has something. And your Base, they won’t interfere. They’ll deal with me, all the same. There won’t be anybody else to deal with. Will there?”

“Where’s the com?”

“Somewhere,” Jin said. “Not here. If you called them–what would they do?”

Nothing, Genley thought. He stood up, scowling, close to shaking, but that would never do. He jammed his hands into his belt.

“Nothing,” Jin said, leaning back. “Later is good enough.” He wrapped the blanket back about himself, looked up at him with a half lidded smile. “Go find yourself a woman. Do you good, Gen‑ley.”

xlv

205 CR, day 48

Cloud Towers

Something was amiss. Elai knew it. It had come in a great wave up the Cloudside, like the building of storm, like the sudden waft of change in the winter wind, like both these things, but this storm was in caliban minds, and moved constantly, so that each day the sun rose on something new in the patterns across the Cloud; so that mounds continually revised themselves and the soft earth churned, collapsed, rose and fell again. The Weirds patterned their distress; Tower‑work grew disorganized, the place grew untidy with neglect. There was winter‑work to do; and riders and craftsfolk tended to it alone, the little mendings of the walls after rain, the bracing‑up with stone.

The Weirds abdicated, mostly; and calibans grew restive; children fretted, sulked, retreated, reading patterns too. Cloud grew irritable; Taem kept much to himself; Din went back and forth between the roof and the depths, a frown between his brows.

There was no staying from the roof: Elai went up to see what was written on the world, compulsively, throughout the day. Others did. And so she found MaGee, staring outward from the rim.

Riders–Dain, and Branch, had paused in their work, bare to the waist and sweating in the unseasonal sun, muddy‑armed from their wall‑mending. Two of her sons were there, Taem and Cloud. The nurses stood forgetting Cloud, while Taem–Taem sat beside an aged Weird, only sat, his naked arms about his knees, in the shelter of the rim.

Elai looked out, past MaGee, with the sun at her back, her shadow falling long over the baked‑clay roof, the irregular tiles scored by generations of caliban claws, eroded by winter rains. A drowsing ariel noticed it was beshadowed and moved aside, sunseeking. Everywhere on the roof ariels shifted, and then calibans moved, for Scar came up from the access, thrust himself to her side, and lumbered to the rim, rising up on one scaly clawed foot to survey the world, then sinking down again, walking the rim, trampling the riders’ new tile‑work, dislodging what they had done.

“Something’s happened,” MaGee said, pointing outward. “The Styx‑pattern. Something’s come out from it.”

“Yes,” Elai said. The wind stirred at her robes, pulled at them, at her hair and MaGee’s.

“What’s going on?” MaGee asked. And when she was silent: “Has something moved from the Styx?”

Elai shrugged. For all the warmth of the day, the wind was chill.

“First,” Dain appealed to her, at her right, with Branch and the others. First, as if she could mend it. She did not look that way. She walked up beside MaGee, rested her hands on the rim, staring outward at the world.

“ Have they moved?” MaGee persisted.

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, MaGee, they’ve moved.”

“They’re coming here.”

Elai looked at her, and a strange sad sweetness came to her. O MaGee, she thought. She had waited for this thing all her life. Now that it was here there was someone it truly horrified. “MaGee, my friend.” She smiled then, not so distraught as she should have been. “You are simple.” But to make it lighter she laid a hand on MaGee’s shoulder, then turned and walked away to the downwards entry, ignoring the eyes of all the rest.

“ First,”she heard MaGee call after her. “ Elai!”

So she stopped, curiously tranquil in this day.

“I have to warn the Base,” MaGee said.

“No. No com.”

“Are they in danger?” MaGee asked.

She stared at MaGee. There were other things to think of. Other folk had begun to arrive from below. Din was one. Twostone was with him. Beside them all stood Dain and Branch, still waiting. “First,” said Dain, fretting at her. “Do what, First?”

Three of the elders had come up, their white hair blowing in the wind. There was Din, her son, who stood with his hands behind him, whose brown had its crest up and advanced stiffly on its legs, very near to Scar.

Whhhhhsssss!Scar moved, seized up the young caliban in his great jaws, and nothing moved on that rooftop for the space of a long‑held breath, until Scar decided to let Twostone go.

So much for juvenile ambition, borne on the moment’s possibilities. Wait your turn, Elai thought with a cold, cold stare at her son, and turned her shoulder in disdain, not even bothering to address her anger to the boy.

This was cruel. After a moment she heard him flee the daylight, a scraping of claws, a patter of naked boyish feet vanishing down into the tower, while Scar’s crest lowered in satisfaction. There was a second, slower retreat, Cloud with his nurses; but Taem, when she looked his way, had stayed, small, bare‑kneed boy, with a Weird’s cool observance of what had passed between her and Din. So she knew this morning that Taem was gone for good, and that hit her unpleasantly, and completed her anger at the world.

That was what it was to be First. From the time that she was small, when Scar had come to her and made her what she was; and now that pathetic brown of Din’s, young yet, and not likely to get older–

Wisest to kill the rivals, with such a winnowing coming. It was not alone that Styxsider she fought. It was far more general a matter than that. Kill the rivals, unite the Towers. That was what Jin had been doing, one by one.

She walked and looked about her, and calibans and ariels shifted, a scaly wave, a refixing of gold and sea‑green eyes all set on her. She looked about her from the Tower rim, to the Patterns, the river, the towers, the bright sea to which the river ran. Go bring, she signed abruptly, facing Dain; aloud: “Paeia.” Dain started away in grim haste. “Taem,” she added, which command turned Dain about at the entry with bewilderment on his face.

“Bring him too,” she said. “Tell him mind his manners. He knows.”

She hoped he did. She seldom felt Taem active in the Patterns. The New Towers were isolate; and for Taem the Twelve Towers calibans made a whorl with a silent center. Paeia they made as sunward, full of activity; but Taem was silence, like his son.

“Bring them,” Dain echoed her, as if he could have mistaken it. “And if they won’t come?”

Taem, he meant. If Taem won’t come.

She gave Dain no answer. Dain went. Perhaps her son had read it all too; perhaps he read his death out there, patterned on the shore.

Violence, his caliban had signalled. Desperate, not comic, a young caliban, too young for such a challenge. Mother, I want to live.

She had waited for this all her life. So had her son. She wanted to be alone now, only with MaGee, and Scar, not under these staring eyes that looked on her now with estimations–whether she would die now, whether that was what she meant by calling in those most dangerous to her life. She was frail; she limped. She ached when it rained. And her heirs were under twelve.

Will you die? their stares asked her. Some might think that safest. But her riders had cause to dread it, having been too loyal, serving her too closely. Change seemed in the wind, hazardous to them.

Give me sand, she asked of the aged Weird; it was Taem that brought it, a small leather sack, and crouched beside her as she stooped and Patterned with it. Others gathered about her, shadowing her from the sun, cutting off the wind.

She made the river for them, recalling the great Pattern on the shore. She made the whorls and mounds with sand streaming from her hand, so, so quickly, and signified Paeia and Taem coming in; their unified advance. Ariels nosed in past human feet, interfering in her work, trying mindlessly to put it back the way it was Patterned on the shore. Futures distressed them: they were never ready to make the shift, being occupied with now. She picked up the most persistent; it went stiff as a stick and she set it roughly back. It came to life again, scuttled off to watch. A gray nosed in, thigh‑high to the watchers.

So she built it, with Taem crouched elbows‑on‑knees beside her; and the Weird who was her son would pattern it to the browns, and the ariel and the gray would spread it too. She returned the challenge Jin had made. She had just insulted him, remaking the pattern that was the Styx.

She stood up, dusting off her hands, rose without needing Branch’s offered hands. Someone added a handful of stones to what she had done, embellishing the insult. There was laughter at that.

But it was nervous laughter. And afterward, she thought, they would be whispering aloud within the Tower, talking with voices, not daring Pattern what they thought where calibans might read.

Elai is finished.

If she goes herself, she’ll not come back.

If Jin comes here, there’ll be revenge; only fishers might survive– only might.

But if she steps aside– we have no stability.

“Go away,” she said, and they went. Their going let the wind come at her pattern and blow the sand in streamers across the stone, as if the wind were patterning back at her and mocking her folly.

MaGee stayed. Only MaGee and Scar. Even Taem and the other Weird had gone. The solitary gray retreated with other calibans and ariels, a retreating skein of lithe bodies and tails flowing down the entry to the Tower.

Shall I go? MaGee signed.

“I want to ask you something.”

“Ask,” MaGee said.

“If we should fall–will the starfolk do anything?”

“No,” MaGee said slowly, “no, I don’t think they will. They only watch what happens.”

“Does this amuse them?”

“They want to see–they’ve waited all these years to see what Pattern you’ll make. You. The Styx. No. They won’t intervene.”

This was a thunderclap of understanding. She saw the look Magee had, like a caliban well‑fed and dreaming in the sun. MaGee knew what she had said, had meant to let that slip. Elai spread her fingers at MaGee like the lifting of a crest.

“Yes,” MaGee acknowledged the curse. “The absolute truth, old friend. That’s what they’ve been up to all these years.”

A wider spread of the fingers.

MaGee lifted her head, blinked lazily as Scar could do. Defiant, as Scar could be, defying her in a way that was silent and more subtle than her son. “You can’t keep much secret from Jin, can you?” MaGee asked.

“No.” Pattern‑blind starfolk could keep their movements secret from each other. Cloudsiders swam in the knowledge of patterns like a sea. What she had done this morning flowed across the river; and the word would flow back again to Jin like a rebounding wave. I’m coming, man‑who‑wants‑the‑world. I’m bringing all that ever escaped Green’s hands. I’ll take your towers, I’ll erase you and all you are.

“MaGee,” she said, suddenly, thinking on this, “you’re not in the Pattern. Not really. Tell me in words what you’d do if you were me. Maybe it would confuse them.”

For a moment then MaGee looked less than confident. “No.”

“Then you do know something.”

“What would I know? What would I know that calibans don’t? Oh, I’d confuse things. Maybe not in a way you’d like. Don’t make me do that.”

“My rivals would take you,” Elai said, “Jin, Taem, Paeia–They’d want you to use. Taem and Paeia’d treat you all right. But Jin’s another matter. They have different ways on Styxside. Do you want that? Give me advice.”

MaGee set her jaw and ducked her head, then looked up. “First thing, I’d get the conflict out of here. Away from the Towers and the fields. But that, you’re going to do.”

“Calibans say that much.”

“What else do they say?”

“We’ll meet upriver.”

“What kind of war is that,” MaGee exclaimed, “when you know where you’ll meet? That’s not war, that’s an appointment. They’ll kill you, Elai, you know that?”

Elai felt a chill. “Come with me. Come with me to meet with Jin, my friend.”

“Up the Cloud? To fight a war?”

Elai made the affirmative. MaGee thrust out her lip, a pensive look as if it were just some ordinary venture she were considering.

“Oh, well,” MaGee said, “sure.”

And then, from nowhere: “You should have built your ships, Elai.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You should have, that’s all.”

“You think I’ll die?”

“What would you leave behind you?”

MaGee had a way of walking ground others knew better than to tread. Elai lifted her head and stared at her like some drowsing old caliban. “Don’t know that. No one does, do they?” She walked away, beside Scar’s huge length, stopped near his tail‑tip. “Never wore leathers myself. Got some, though. Wished I could, now and then, just take Scar and go.”

“Ships,Elai .”

She stared at this insistent starman. “Was that what I was supposed to do? Was that what you were waiting for?” She recalled a day on the beach, the launching of her boats, a starman watching from the shore. “Of course,” she said softly when MaGee answered only with silence. Her heart plummeted. Of course. Scar had chosen her for one reason; of course starmen also came equipped with reasons. She was the creature of others. That was what it was to be First. She was self‑amused and pained.

And she walked toward the wall, stood there looking seaward. “Give Jin ships?” she asked Magee. “If I’d made them, he’d have built them too. He’d have patterned how they are. We talk to each other–have for years, back and forth. Takes days. But I always know where he is. And what he’s doing. And he knows me. Hates me, MaGee. Hates me. Hates what got from the fingers of the Styxsiders. Ships. That could be something. He wants the world, he does. Wants the world. He’ll break those men.”

“Who? Genley?”

“Don’t know their names. Three of them. His starmen.”

“How do you know these things?”

There was dismay in MaGee’s voice, in her eyes when Elai turned around. “Calibans talk to you,” Elai said quietly. “But you don’t hear all they say. You don’t know everything, starman. Friend.”

“I’ve got to warn the Base, Elai.”

“You keep quiet with that com. They’d do nothing, you say. That true?”

“I think it’s so.”

Elai looked her up and down. “You’ve gotten thin, MaGee. Leathers might fit you. You come with me, you keep that com quiet. You’re mine, you hear?”

MaGee thought about it. “All right,” she said.

Later that day, Paeia came, grim and frowning–came, quite tamely, into hall, her caliban behind her. She had not brought her heir, came armed with only a knife; and stood there in front of the chair she had stood behind so often when Ellai had ruled.

“You’ve read how it is,” Elai said, from the authority of that chair. “I’m going upriver. You too.”

Elai watched Paeia draw a breath, a long, slow one. Paeia folded her arms and stared. Her face might have been stone, seamed and weathered as it was. She had braided her grizzled hair, with beads in the strands. Had taken her own time about coming, to look her best. Had thought long about coming, maybe–whether it was a trap, whether she might die.

“With you,” Paeia said.

“I’m no fool,” said Elai. “I don’t want us weak. You tell me you’ll be by me, I don’t ask any other promises.”

Paeia went on thinking a moment. “I’ll be there,” Paeia said. And truth, there were no other promises she could have asked. Both of them knew that.

“Taem’s coming,” Elai said.

“Then, First, you are a fool.”

Elai frowned at that. She had to, being First; and smiled after, bleak and cool, amused at Paeia warning her. “But he’s coming,” she said. “I asked him to.”

Taem took three days, with the pattern growing worse each one of them. But come he did, with his riders across the Cloud, enough to raise the dust, to veil the shore in amber clouds.

He crossed the Cloud alone then, just himself with his caliban.

“Been a while,” Taem said when he stood in hall where Paeia had stood.

It had. He had not changed. The presence was the same. But it added up differently. There was no son. And she herself had changed. She met his eyes, saw him for what he was worth in the daylight as well as dark. He was straight and tall. Ambitious. Why else had he wanted her, in those years? She had no grace, was not fine to look on. He was.

Din’s father–he had come too, and stood by her now, one of her riders, nothing more. Din was there, against the wall; and Paeia stood close by her side. And Cloud and Cloud’s father, one of the long line of Cloud, same as Paeia, but of Windward Tower–he had come. So all her men were here, and their kin; and two of her sons.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” Taem asked her outright. And that was like him too.

205 CR, day 51

Notes, coded journal Dr. E. McGee

Elai has called the seaward towers to her aid, brought in this former mate of hers… Taem’s father. Taem Eldest of New Tower. He’s dangerous. You can see the way the calibans behave, up on their four legs, crests up. His caliban is trouble, Elai said once. I see what she means This manis trouble.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” he asked her right there in hall, and everyone seemed to be asking himself that question. I think he was insulted she hadn’t tried. He came with all his riders, all of them just across the river, but he came into First Tower alone, and that took nerve, the kind of craziness Calibans instill. I think he was reading Patterns all the way, that he could get away with it. That he had to come because she wouldn’t come out to him; that he had to swallow the fish’s tail, they say on the Cloud, when they mean that’s all you’ve got left for choices. It galled him.

Elai just looked at him, never getting up from her chair, and made some sign I couldn’t read all of, but it was something like dismissing him as a threat, which didn’t please him. “This isn’t Styx,” she said then. “I don’t have Jin’s manners.” It was absolute arrogance; and his caliban bristled up and Scar bristled up, and those two calibans sucked air and stared at each other like two rocks determined to go on staring nose to nose forever.

“How’s the boy?” Taem asked then.

“He’s well,” she said. Taem had to know about his son, that Elai’s Taem had gone down to the Weirds; too much news travels unspoken, everywhere. But news about the Weirds, that have no name–well, that could be different. “I saw him this morning,” Elai said.

He’s a handsome man, this Taem. I see what attracted Elai to him in spite of other troubles. He’s none so old, this Taem Eldest: good‑looking, straight and mean and trim; wears his hair braided at the crown, and a tot of ornament: he’s rich as a Cloudsider can, be, and those riders of his are part of it. I never saw a man move like that, like he owned whatever space he was in.

“When do we go?” he asked, not patterning this: it was himself and Elai talking, two humans, that was all, and there was something electric in it as if something from a long time ago were back for a moment.

O Elai, secrets. You loved this man, that’s what. And you’ve got him puzzled now.

Young Din was standing over against the wall with Twostone all this while, his little face all hard and scared. First born. I think he’s in danger. If anyone in that hall would have knifed that man, Din might.

The thing is, with Taem’s son gone among the Weirds, Taem Eldest is lost from the First Tower pattern, as if there had never been a son. Thatwas the change in the pattern, I think, that let Taem in.

And Paeia–lean and mean as they come, that old woman, always in riding leathers and always carrying a knife. Paeia was right by the door when Taem went outside again, back to his own riders across the river, and that sent the chills up my back. That woman rules Second Tower, and she’s mateless at the moment; and there was thinking in that look she gave him.

Solutions occur to me, that I don’t like to write down. I know this Taem thought of them. “I don’t have Jin’s manners,” Elai said. Meaning that she’s thought about it. The affairs of princes. Old, old problems. I read the patterns the best I can and they scare me.

Elai is the key, the peacemaker, Scar’s rider–the only one who can dominate the others and hold Cloudside together, and if anything should happen to her now it’ll fall, everything will come apart in chaos. Taem–he was challenging her the same way: See if you can hold the Seaward Towers without me. But likewise he knew, I think, he couldn’t do without her. Neither can Paeia. Not in this moment.

I look out the window and it’s crazy out beyond the river. Calibans. Everywhere. And already the grays are reworking the Pattern out there, broadcasting it to anyone who’s not Pattern‑blind.

xlvi

Message, Station to Base Director

Survey picks up increased activity on the Cloud, a frenzy of mound‑building answering this advance of the Styxsiders from the upriver. It seems clear that Cloud River is aware what is happening, through spies, perhaps. The mounds suggest ramparts, but they are curiously placed as defense, and the lines change constantly. We observe no such activity on the part of the Styxsiders. They only camp and advance, averaging thirty kilometers a day.

It seems clear that there is a massing of calibans for defense or attack at the Cloud River settlement. These have come from the two seaside settlements and their numbers are being augmented hourly.

…Observers in field are at hazard…

Message, Base Director to E. McGee in Field

Genley and team are missing on Styxside. Do you know anything?

Memo, Security to Base Director

Agents in field are proceeding with utmost caution. War seems imminent. Field agents are reporting unusual aggressiveness on the part of calibans.

Memo, Base Director to Security

I don’t think there’s any question Genley, Kim, and Mannin are with that movement toward the Cloud. McGee is also out of touch. Don’t take unwarranted risks in observation. Start pulling the teams back.

xlvii

205 CR, day 60

Cloudside

The corridors were unnaturally still, empty of calibans, of Weirds, unnaturally dusty, because no one was sweeping them, and that, thought McGee, was because of that gathering out on the riverside, that milling about of calibans. Fisher‑nets got tangled; someone hauled in a gray by accident, but it survived. Something large surfaced in the river, just a great gray back, and no one saw it again– curiosity, someone said. They’ve noticed, but McGee had no notion who that theywas, unless seafolk.

Great calibans moved in that no one owned, just arrived–presumably from upriver, from the forest. There were giants among these newcomers, but Weirds kept them to the Pattern across the river, and they tried none of the local calibans.

Wild, McGee thought, or tame. There was no distinction. And they remained, harbingers of trouble up the Cloud, while Elai delayed to move. The riders fretted; the calibans seemed indecisive. It all seemed wrong. And the halls grew dusty with neglect, under the wear of feet both shod and clawed; the sun shafted through clouds within the inmost halls, dustmotes dancing.

So she came on Din, in a little‑used way, a shadow in the dustmotes. She had not looked to meet him.

“Din,” she said by way of greeting. “Haven’t seen you.” He had not come for stories. She missed that. He remained a shadow to her, mostly, with Twostone close against the wall, a caliban silhouette out of which the light picked tiny details, the color of a nose, a lambent eye too shadowed for color, staring at her.