Calibans write on the world. They write the world in microcosm and they keep changing it, and they don’t have tech. Technology can’t matter to them. Cities can’t. Or civilization. They aren’t men. But that big brain is processing the world and putting it out again; it added me to the Cloud Towers. It stood there staring past me with an eye too big to see me the way I see and all of a sudden I was awed–that’s not a word I use much. Really awed. I wanted to cry because I had gone non‑verbal and I couldn’t get it out and couldn’t take it in because my eyes and my brain aren’t set up for what I was seeing.
And now I’m scared. I’m writing up a report and they’ll think I’m crazy. I can hear what Genley will say: “Now they write. Pull McGee in. She’s been out too long.”
But I get up on the top of the Tower–how calibans must have loved the idea of towers! Their eyes are fit for that. And then I think of the square concrete Base we’ve built and I don’t feel comfortable. We bring our big earthmovers to challenge the grays and we build things with angles.
All over the world calibans build spirals. But here on Cloud and Styx they’ve gone to towers. And human gardens. We’re like the ariels. The grays. Part of the ecumene. Capacity was there. God knows if we touched it off or if we ourselves are an inconsequence to what they’ve been doing all this time, spreading over all the planet, venturing here and there–speaking the same language, writing the same patterns on every rivervalley in the world. But not the same. The spirals vary. They’re saying different things.
Like Styx and Cloud. Like isolate towers and grouped towers.
Two different Words for the world.
xlii
204 CR, day 355
Memo, Director’s office to R. Genley
This office finds it of some concern that reports from your group have become infrequent and much devoted to routine. You are requested to come in for debriefing. There is news concerning Dr. McGee’s effort.
204 CR, day 356
Memo, Base Director to Chief of Field Operations
Genley has failed response to a report. He may be temporarily out of contact, but considering the delicate relations of the two communities and the McGee situation I think we ought to view this silence with alarm. I am transmitting another recall to McGee. I do not think it will produce results, whether she is being held by force or that her refusal is genuine; but it seems one avenue of approach to the Genley matter. I do not consider it wise to inform McGee that Genley’s group is not reporting; we cannot rely on that report remaining secure, in any of several possibilities.
I am furthermore requesting orbiting observation be stepped up.
Advise all observers in the field to observe unusual caution.
Likewise, run a thorough check of all base detection and warning systems. Winter is on us.
205 CR, day 20
Excerpt, Director’s annual report, transmitted to Gehenna Station
…We will be sending up a great quantity of data gathered in the past year. We have enjoyed considerable successes this year in gathering data which still remains to be interpreted… We are still out of touch with the Styx mission and this remains a cause of some concern; and based on Dr. McGee’s study, that concern is increasing, although the chance still remains that Dr. Genley and his staff may have entered into an area of observation which is too sensitive to allow free use of communications…
The reprimand given Dr. McGee has been rescinded due to extraordinary mitigating circumstances. Special note should be made of this fact in all communication with the Bureau.
Her report, which we have placed next in sequence, is a document with which many of the staff take strong issue. Those contrary opinions will follow. But the Committee attaches importance to the report, historically significant in the unique situation of the observer, and containing insights which may prove useful in future analysis.
Report: Dr. E. McGee
…With some difficulty I have succeeded in penetrating the caliban communication system which makes impossible the withholding of any information between Styx and Cloud.
…I have noted that there is a tendency to use Gehennan as a designation for native‑born humans and caliban as distinct from this. This may be incorrect.
The communication mode employed by calibans is, with some significant exceptions, similar to the simple communications used by insects. It is assimplistic to compare the two directly as it would be to compare the vocalizations of beasts to human speech on the grounds that they are similarly produced. The caliban system is of such complexity that I have only been able to penetrate the surface of it, for the communication of such simple concepts as directions and desire for food…
…Part of my reluctance to report has been the difficulty of assimilating and systematizing such data; but more than this is the dismay that I have felt in increasing conviction that the entire body of assumptions and procedures on which my field of xenology is founded has to be challenged.
Among the terms which have to be jettisoned or extensively modified when dealing with calibans: intelligence; culture; trait; language; civilization; symbiont.
Humans native to Gehenna have entered into a complicated communication with this lifeform which I believe to be pursuing a course of its own. All indications are that it is ultimately a peaceful course, though peace and war are human concepts and also to be questioned, presupposing government of some sort, of which calibans may prove biologically incapable.
I make this assertion advisedly. Calibans understand dominance. They apply sudden coercion. They commit suicide and have other maladies of an emotional nature. But what they are doing is not parallel to human ambitions. It goes off from it at such an angle that conflict between humans and calibans can only result from a temporary intersection of territorial objectives.
The term caliban itself is questionable in application, since the original application seems only to have been to the grays. Absolutely there should be no confusion of browns with grays. There has been some speculation that the grays are a sex or a life stage of the caliban. The humans who know them say that this is not the case. Grays and browns seem to be two separate species living in harmony and close association, and if one counts the ariels–there are three.
Further, ariels seem to perform an abstract function of pattern‑gathering. Not themselves intelligent, they are excellent mimes. If a bizarre analogy might be made, the calibans are technologicaclass="underline" they use a sophisticated living computer, the ariels, to gather and store information which they themselves process and use in the direction of their heavy machinery, the grays.
I believe that the browns have long since developed beyond the limits of instinctual behavior, that they have learned not so much to manipulate their environment as to interact with it; and further, I believe, (and herein lies the only definition of intelligence applicable in lifeforms which are not analogous to humanity), they have proceeded to abstract purposes in their actions. The Styx and the Cloud are not their Tigris and Nile nor ever should be: we do not have to define them as civilized because such distinctions are outside their ambition, as perhaps ambition lies outside their understanding: in short, their purposes are at an angle to ours. They seem to pursue this abstract purpose collectively, but that should not encourage us to expect collective purpose as an essential part of the definition of intelligent species. The next sapience we encounter may well violate the new criteria we establish to include calibans.
This leads me to a further point, which makes the continuation of my studies absolutely critical at this juncture. This species whose basic mode of encounter is interactive, has begun to interact with humans. It may be possible to communicate to calibans that they may themselves wish to interdict further spread of this interaction. I believe that it is the kind of communication they are capable of understanding. It is the kind of “statement” that is expressible in their symbol system. I am not skilled enough to propose it to them. A six year old native child could phrase it to them–if that human child could comprehend the totality of the problem. If a native adult could. That is our dilemma. So is human ambition. We are very sure that that word is in ourvocabulary.