—he was afraid.
226
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
VII
ELAI
227
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
228
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
GENEALOGY 178 CR
Gehenna Outpost [309]
229
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
i
178 CR, day 2
Cloud River Settlement
She was born into a world of towers, in the tallest of the Twelve Towers on the sandy Cloud, and the word went out by crier to the waiters below, huddled in their cloaks in a winter wind, that Ellai had an heir and the line went on.
Elai she was, in the new and simpler mode her mother had decreed— Elai, daughter of the heir to the Twelve Towers and granddaughter of the Eldest herself; and her mother, when her grandmother laid her red and squalling in her arms, clutched her with a tenderness rare in Ellai Ellai's-daughter—a kind of triumph after the first, stillborn, son.
Calibans investigated the new arrival in her cradle, the gray builders and the dignified browns, coming and going where they liked in the towers they had built. An ariel laid a stone in the cradle, for sun-warmth, as she did for her own eggs, of which she had a clutch nearby. A gray, realizing someone's egg had hatched, brought a fish, but a brown thoughtfully ate it and drove the gray away. Elai enjoyed the attention, the gentle nudgings of scaly jaws that could have swallowed her whole, which touched ever so carefully. She watched the flutter of ariel collars and the blink of huge amber eyes as something designed to amuse her.
When she walked, tottering between Ellai's hands and an earthen ledge of her mother's rooms, an ariel watched— and soon learned to scamper out of the way of baby feet. They played ariel games, put and take the stone, that sometimes brought squalls from Elai, until she learned to laugh at skillful theft, until her stones stayed one upon the other like the ariels'.
And the day her grandmother died, when she was hustled into the great topmost hall to put her small hand in Ellai Eldest's and bid her goodbye—
Scar got up and followed her out of the room, the great brown which was her grandmother's caliban— and never would return. It was a callous desertion: but calibans were different, that was all, and maybe Ellai Eldest 230
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
understood, or failed to know, sinking deeper into her final sleep, that her life's companion had gone away and traded allegiances.
But there was consternation in the Tower. Ellai's presumed heir, Ellai-almost-eldest, stood watching it. There was silence among the servants, deathly silence.
Ellai Eldest passed. The caliban Scar should have pined over its dead, or suicided after the manner of its kind, refusing food, or swimming out to sea. Instead it luxuriated, hugely curled about young Elai on the floor, bearing the stumbling awkwardness of young knees in its ribs and the slaps and roughness of infant play. It simply closed its eyes, head lifted, collar lowered, as if it basked in sunlight instead of infant pleasure. It was happy this evening. The child was.
Ellai-Now-Eldest reached beside her own chair and met the pebbly hide of her own great brown, Twig, which sat quite, quite alert, raising and lowering her collar. If Scar had felt no urge to die, then Scar should have come to her, driven Twig away and appropriated herself, the new eldest, First in First Tower. Her own Twig could not dominate this one. She knew. At that moment Ellai foresaw rivalry— that she would never wholly rule, because of this, so long as that unnatural bond continued. She feared Scar, that was the truth. Twig did. So did the rest. Digger, Scar had been named, until his forays with Ellai-now-deceased against the intruders from the Styx, coming as they would the roundabout way, through the hills; then he had taken that raking cut that marked his ribs and renamed him.
Scar was violence, was death, was power and already old in human years.
And he might at this moment drive Twig away as an inconsequence.
He chose the child, as if Ellai in her reign over the Twelve Towers was to be inconsiderable, and the servants and the rulers of the other eleven Towers could see it when they came in the morning.
There was nothing that Ellai could do. She considered it from every side, and there was no way to undo it. Even murder crossed her mind, and infanticide: but this was her posterity, her own line, and she could not depend on another living heir, or tolerate the whispers, or dare the calibans. It had to be accepted as it was, and the child treated with tenderness. She was dangerous otherwise.
231
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
Children.
A child of eight sat in power on the distant Styx, Jin 12, with the old man dead. And Scar took to Elai. The Styx would stay quiet for at least a decade or so. And then—
A chill afflicted her. Her hand still stroked the plated scales of Twig's beautiful skull.
Scar had simply bypassed her, this caliban whose occupation was conflict, as if all her reign was inconsequence, as if she were only preface. It portended peace, then, while children grew. A decade or so of peace. She would have that, and if she were wise, she would use it well, knowing what would come after her.
ii
184 CR, day 05
General Report, Gehenna Base to Alliance Headquarters
…The situation has remained stable over the past half decade. The detente between the Styx settlement and the Cloud River settlements continues in effect. Contacts with both settlements continue in an unprecedented calm.
A Stygian tower has risen on the perimeter of the Base. In accordance with established policy the Base has made no move to prohibit construction or movement.
…The two settlements are undergoing rapid expansion in which some see an indication that humanity on Gehenna has passed a crisis point. The historical pattern of conflict has proceeded through the forested area outside Base observation, minor if constant encounters between Stygians and Cloud River settlers involving some loss of life, but never threatening the existence of either, excepting the severe and widespread hostilities of CR 124125, when flood and crop failure occasioned raids and widespread destruction. The current tranquil period, with its growth in population and food supply, is without precedent. In view of this historical pattern, and with careful consideration of longrange objectives, the Base respectfully requests permission to take advantage of this opportunity to establish 232
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
subtle and non-interfering ties with both sides in the hope that this peaceful period may be lengthened. This modified and limited intervention seems justified in the hope of establishing Gehenna as a peaceful presence in the zone.
iii
185 CR, day 200
Message, Alliance HQ to Gehenna Base
…extend all cooperation to the Bureau agents arriving with this message, conducting extensive briefings and seminars on the Gehenna settlements….
…While the Bureau concurs that conditions warrant direct observation and increased contact, the Bureau cautions the Mission that prohibitions against technological imports and trade continue. In all due consideration of humanitarian concerns, the Bureau reminds the Mission that the most benign of interventions may result in premature technological advances which may harm or misdirect the developing culture….
iv
185 CR, day 201
Gehenna Base, Staff Meeting
"…meaning they're more interested in the calibans than in human life,"
Security said glumly.
"In the totality," the Director said. "In the whole."
"They want it preserved for study."
"We could haul the Gehennans in by force," the Director said, "and hunt them wherever they exist, and feed them tape until they're model citizens.
But what would they choose, umn? And how many calibans would we have to kill and what would we do to life here? Imagine it— a world 233
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
where every free human's in hid
ing and we've dismantled the whole economic system—"
"We could do better for them than watch them."
"Could we? It's an old debate. The point is, we don't know what we'd be doing. We take it slow. You newcomers, you'll learn why. They're different. You'll learn that too."
There were guarded looks down the table, sensitive outworlder faces.
" Different, on Gehenna," the Director said, "isn't a case of prejudice. It's a fact of life."
"We've studied the culture," the incoming mission chief said. "We understand the strictures. We're here to review them."
"Different," the Director said again. "In ways you won't understand by reading papers or getting tape."
"The Bureau appreciates the facts behind the designation. Union… is interested. Surveillance is being tightened for that reason. The quarantine makes them nervous. They wonder. Doubtless they wonder. Perhaps they've begun to have apprehensions of something beyond their intentions here. There will be negotiations. We'll be making recommendations in that regard too. This difference will have its bearing on policy."
"Union back on Gehenna—"
"That won't be within our recommendations. Release of data is another matter. A botched alien contact, happening in some other Union recklessness, might not limit its effects so conveniently to a single world.
Release of the data is a possibility… educating Union to what they did here."
There were frowns. The Director's was deepest. "Our concern is human life here. Now. Our reason for the request—"
"We understand your reasons."
234
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
"We have to do something with this generation or this settlement may take abrupt new directions."
"Fears for your own security?"
"No. For what this is becoming."
"The difference you noted."
"There's no time," the Director said, "that I can see any assimilation of Gehenna into Alliance… without the inclusion of humans who think at an angle. You can tape them. You can try to change them. If you don't understand what they are now, how do you understand them when they've come another hundred years, another two hundred on the same course? If you don't redirect them— what do you do with them? Perpetual quarantine— into the millennia? Governments change. Policies change.
Someday somebody will take them in… and what they take in… is being shaped in these first centuries. We have a breathing space. A little peace.
The chance of contact."
"We understand that. That's what we're here to determine."
"A handful of years," the Director said, "may be all we have."
v
188 CR, day 178
Cloud River Settlement
There was land across the saltwater and Elai dreamed of it— a pair of peaks lying hazily across the sea.
"What's there?" she had asked Ellai-Eldest. Ellai had shrugged and finally said mountains. Mountains in the sea.
"Who lives there?" Elai had asked. And, No one, Ellai had said. No one, unless the starships come there. Who else could cross the water?
235
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
So Elai set her dreams there. If there was trouble where she was, the mountains across the sea were free of it; if there was dullness in the winter days, there was mystery in the mist-wreathed isle across the waves. If there was No, Elai, and Wait, Elai, and Be still, Elai— on this side of the waves, there was adventure to be had on that side. The mountains were for taking and the unseen rivers were for swimming, and if there were starships holding them, then she would hide in burrows till they took their leave and she and a horde of brave adventurers would go out and build their towers so the strangers could not argue with their possession. Elai's land, it would be. And she would send to her mother and her cousin Paeia, offering them the chance to come if they would mind her rules. The Styxsiders could never reach them there. The rivers there would never flood and the crops would never fail, and behind those mountains would be other mountains to be taken, one after the other.
Forever and forever.
She made canopies for passengers on her most elaborate constructions, and did straw-dolls to ride, and put on pebbles for supplies and put them out to sea. But the surge toppled the stones and swept off the dolls and the raft came back again, so she made sides so the passengers should stay, carved her rafts with a precious bone knife old Dal had made her, and set them out with greater success.
If she had had a great axe such as the woodcutters used, then she might build a real one: so she reckoned. But she tried her bone knife on a sizeable log and made little progress at it, until a rain swept it all away.
So she sat on the shore with Scar, bereft of her work, and thought how unfair it was, that the starships came and went so powerfully into the air.
She had tried that too, made ships of wood and leafy wings that fell like stones, lacking the thunderous power of the machines. One dreamed. At least her sea-dreams floated.
The machines, she had thought, made wind to drive them. If only the wind which battered at the shore could get all into one place and drive the ships into the sky. If only.
236
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
She saw leaves sail, ever so much lighter on the river's face, whirling round and about. If she could make the ships lighter. If she could make them like the leaves… If they could be like the fliers that spread wings and flew… She made wings for her sea-borne ships, pairs of leaves, and stuck them up on twigs, and to her delight the ships did fly, if crazily, lurching over the water and the chop until they crashed on rocks.
If she had a woodcutter's skill, if she could build something bigger still—a great sea-ship with wings—
She sailed her carved ships at least to the rocks an easy wade offshore, and imagined those rocks as mountains.
But always the real, the true mountains were across the wider sea, promising and full of dreams.
She watched the last of her ships wreck itself and it all welled up in her, the desire, the wishing, that she could be something more than ten years old and superfluous to all the world. She could order this and that about her life— she had what she wanted in everything that never mattered. She could have gone hungry: she was willing to go hungry in her adventures, which seemed a part of war: she had heard the elders talking. She was willing to sleep cold and get wounds (Cloud Oldest had dreadful scars) and even die, with suitable satisfaction for it— the fireside tales were full of that, a great deal better than her grandmother who had slept out her end (but it was her youngly dead uncle they told the best stories of)— in all she could have done any of these things, imagining herself the subject of tales. But she had no axe and her knife was fragile bone.
She did have Scar, that she relied on for consolation, for near friendship, for pride. He had fought the Styx-folk. When she climbed up to his back she was something more than ten. He played games with her. He was adult and powerful and very, very dangerous, so that Ellai herself had taken her aside and lectured her severely about responsibility. She could feel the power of him, that she could lie on and be rough with and laugh at boys who were still playing at stones with ariels, who teased her with their adolescent manhood and retreated in real fear when Scar shouldered his way into any imagined threat they posed. Then they remembered what he was— and Scar was ever so coy about it, giving way to lesser browns 237
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
belonging with the elders: biding his time, that was what, only biding his time until his rider grew up to him.
Scar knew her. Only the rest of the world misapprehended what she was.
She waited for this revealing with a vast discontent, and the least gnawing doubt, looking at the great brown lump sunning himself with a caliban smirk, among the rocks above the beach.
She whistled, disconsolate with her shipwreck. One lamplike eye opened, the tongue flickering. Scar heaved himself up on his legs in one sinuous rise and l
ooked at her, lifting his collar. He was replete with fish. Satisfied.
But because she wanted he came down, lazy with the sun, presenting his bony side jaws for a scratching, the soft underjaw for a stroking.
She touched him, so, and he sank down on his full belly and heaved a sigh.
She reached up behind the collar for that bony ridge which helped her mount, planted a bare sandy foot on his foreleg and swung up astride. Her boots and breeches were up there on the rocks: they had had their swim in the saltwater and the seat of her scant undergarments was still wet from a recent wade among the rocks for vantage. Scar's pebbly hide was hardly comfortable to bare legs and partly bare bottom, but she tapped her foot and headed him for the sandy part of the shore, to cool them both in the sea, to salve her melancholy in games.
They went onto the shelf of sand, a great smooth ripple spreading out around them, a twisting motion to which she swayed as Scar used his tail and hit that buoyant stride that was the freest thing in the world, she reckoned, short of flying. Scar did not take this water into his nose: it was too bitter for him and too salt. He kept his head aloft and paddled now, soaking her.
And then this madness came on her as she looked at the mountains beyond the sea, clearer than ever on this warm day.
She whistled softly, nudged him with her toes and heels, patted him with her hands. He turned, first his head and then the rest of him down to his tail, so that she felt the shift of him, every rippling of muscle, taking this new direction. The waves splashed up and broke about Scar's face, so that 238
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
he lifted his head still higher and fought the harder, great driving thrusts of his body. Salt was in her mouth and it was hard to see with the sting of it in her eyes, hard to keep her grip with the lurching whip of Scar's body through the waves, the constant working of his shoulders. In a salt-hazed blink she realized they were beyond the rocks, well beyond, and of a sudden they were being carried aside from their course. She used her heel, she urged at Scar: he twisted his whole body trying to fight it, and still they were losing against the rush of water.