It was not even hate. It was too reasonable for that. Like the calibans. They simply knew who was first.
“I met a starman,” Elai said to her mother, one more thing between them. “She stopped the bleeding when I hurt my leg. Like that. We talked about flying. And lots of things.”
“Stop throwing things off the Tower,” her mother said, precise in her counterattack. “People laugh at you.”
“I never hear them.”
“Keep at it and you will.”
x
188 CR
Report: Dr. Elizabeth McGee to Alliance Science Bureau
for Dr. R. Genley; Dr. E. McGee; Dr. P. Mendel; Dr. T. Galliano; Dr. T. Mannin; Dr. S. Kim
…The Cloud River settlement exists in a loose unity called, if they understand a name, the Cloud Towers.
The administrative organization is difficult to analyze at a distance. Each of the twelve Cloud Towers seems to have its hereditary ruler, male or female, with no clearly observed pattern of allegiances, while the First Tower seems to have the right to call up all the population in defense or attack–after what, if any, co‑deliberation is unclear, in their more or less perpetual distrust of the Styxdwellers. Presumably one Ellai daughter of Ellai, who seems to have no official title, has the hereditary right to give orders in the largest and oldest of the Towers, which gives her by extension the right to “give orders” (the language of my informant) to rulers of other towers in some but not all situations; and to individuals of her tower and other towers, but not in all situations.
If this seems confusing, it seems to reflect a power structure generally controlled by seniority, heredity, lines of descent, and traditions and divisions of responsibility which are generally understood by the community, but which may not be codified or clearly worked out. Another source of confusion may be the level of understanding of my informant, due to her youth, but to my observation, this youth understands the system far better than she is willing or able to communicate.
By far the largest number of individuals in the Cloud Towers are fishers or farmers, most of the latter operating in cooperatives, although again, this system seems to vary from tower to tower in a fashion which suggests a loose amalgamation or federation of independent traditions of rule…
Concerning the fisheries, the fishing technique seems to involve the calibans, who do the fishing in partnership with humans who derive the benefit: generally the gray calibans fish, although some browns do so… There is trade among the towers, in the form of barter… Another caliban/human cooperation exists in construction: evidently the calibans rear the towers and humans do the modifications or supervise the modifications. Both humans and calibans of all types inhabit the towers, including also the ariels…
A typical tower population includes the underground shelters of fishers and farmers and artisans who may, however, live in subterranean shelters skirting the towers or as part of the spiral which culminates in the crest: there seems to be as much of a tower extended underground and round about as in the tower‑structure itself.
The inhabitants of each upper tower seem to be the ruler, the elders, a number of riders, persons of some hereditary importance, a number of Calibans who come and go at will, and another class about which I have been able to gather only limited information, which seems linked to the care of the Calibans…
…Elai herself… The girl has an amazing precocity. There were times that I wondered whether she derived some of her inquisitiveness and above all her use of forms and techniques more advanced than what is practiced elsewhere, from some record or restricted educational system to which she might have access as Ellai’s heir. But I have watched her approach a new situation and discover an answer with a facility which makes me believe completely that this precocity is genuine.
I confess to a certain awe of this ten year old. I think of a young da Vinci, of an Eratosthenes, a naive talent perhaps tragically limited by Gehenna. And then I recall that this is the heir who may live to direct the Cloud Towers.
Concerning Dr. R. Genley’s (attached) photographic analysis of the towers of the Styxsiders, the Twelve Towers of the Cloud may offer some useful comparison.
The Cloud Towers (considering the two anomalous seaward towers as a village unto themselves, partially separate in politics) seem by the description of my informant to be comparable to a polis, an urban center in which there is much interaction among the Towers. The Styx Towers, each surrounded by tracts of cultivated land, are, at least in situation, reminiscent of feudal castles, while the Cloud Towers seem to maintain both a system of small gardens within their group and wide grainfields surrounding the Towers as a whole. When I asked my informant who works in the fields she said farmers work there, but everyone works at harvest…
I asked my informant why the towers do not suffer in the rainy season. She said that there is always damage, but indicated, as we have observed in the construction of the Styx tower, that the walls are composed not only of earth but of rock and timber and kiln‑fired tile. In spite of her age she seemed certain of her observation and indicated that repair and building are a constant activity carried on by gray calibans as well as the human inhabitants, and that the aristocratic‑seeming riders and the class she calls Weirds do a great deal of this repair. I asked whether she was a rider. She answered that she was. Does the heir work? I asked. She laughed at the question and said that everyone had to work…
In the matter of the new Styx construction my informant offered the opinion, contrary to the reports of Drs. Genley and Kim, hereto appended, that the recent construction of the Stygian tower near the Base, is less concerned with watching the Base than with providing a staging area for further hostilities against the Cloud River.
The power structures among Stygians as among Cloudsiders seem indistinct, although the external observations of the long silence from the Styx, combined with the Cloud River informant’s statements that the Styx ruler is young, seem to indicate a hereditary authority which may have been awaiting the majority of the young Stygian ruler. Precisely what manner of social organization or power structure is in effect during this period is therefore a guess.
xi
188 CR, day 344
Cloudside
It had begun slowly, a tenderness about the wound, and that had been going on for weeks. Maybe, Elai thought, it was the cold. Old Cloud limped worse with his old wounds when it rained, and complained a great deal. But whenever she complained it meant not going outside and it meant having the nurses hovering about her, so she kept from limping.
It was healing, she reckoned. By spring it would be well. A little discomfort was only natural.
But the scar went red and the place went hot and finally she could not help but limp.
So the nurses noticed; and they brought old Karel to look at it. And Karel got out his knives.
They gave her bitterweed boiled up to kill the pain, but the tea made her sick at her stomach and left her only doubly miserable. She clamped her jaws and never yelled, only a scant moaning while old Karel hunted away in the wound he had made; and the sweat went cold on her. “Let me go,” she said to the riders who had come to help Karel hold her still; and mostly they did, except when the knife went deep and the sweat broke out on her and she threw up.
Karel held up a bit of something like a small bone. Her mother Ellai came to see.
“Seafolk spine,” Karel said. “Left in the wound. Whoever wrapped that leg up, never looked to see. Never should have left it that way.”