“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.
“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.”