Which brings me to my most urgent concern.
The calibans Pattern a disturbance on the Styx. This Patterning is increasingly more urgent. That mound‑building which you are no doubt observing in orbital survey on the Cloud, is nothing less than a message, and a rampart, and a statement that danger comes this way.
I am perhaps objective enough to wonder of the two different human/caliban cooperations which have developed, which is the healthier in caliban terms. I think I know. On the Styx they eat grays.
Report, Dr. D. Hampton
…As for Dr. McGee’s assertions, the report is valuable for what may be read between the lines. With personal regret, however, and without prejudice, I must point out that the report is not couched in precise terms, that the effort of Dr. McGee to coin a new terminology does not present us with any precise information as to what calibans are, rather what they are not. A definition in negatives which attempts to tear down any orderly system of comparisons which has been built up in centuries of interspecies observations, including non‑human intelligence, is a flaw which seriously undermines the value of this report. More, the vague suggestions Dr. McGee makes of value structures and good and evil among the calibans leads to the suspicion that she has fallen into the most common error of such studies and begun to believe too implicitly what her informants believe, without applying impartial logic and limiting her statements to observable fact.
I fear that there is more of hypothesis here than substance.
xliii
205 CR, day 35
Styxside
The sun broke through and brought some cheer to the reedy waste about Parm Tower, glancing gold in the water, making black spears of the reeds. A caliban swam there. Genley watched it, a series of ripples in the sheeting gold. Other calibans sat along the bank, in that something‑wrong kind of pose that had been wrong all day.
Riders came in, scuffing along the road upriver. That was what the disturbance had been. Somehow the calibans had gotten it, worked it out themselves in that uncanny way they had.
The riders came. With them came lord Jin.
Every caliban in sight or smell reacted to lord Jin’s Thorn. It swept in like storm, the impression of sheer power that affected all the others and sent calibans and ariels alike into retreat or guard‑posture along the riverside. Jin arrived with his entourage, without word or warning, immaculate and the same as ever–the matter up north was settled, Genley reckoned. Settled. Over. Genley gathered himself up from his rock with the few fish he had speared and came hurrying in, splashing across the shallows and hastening alongside the scant cultivation Parm Tower afforded.
So their isolation was ended. Two months cut off in this relative desolation, two months of fishing and the stink of water and rot and mud and Parm all prickly with having outsiders in his hall. The lord Jin had deigned to come recover them.
Genley did not go running into Jin’s sight. He collected Kim and Mannin from their occupations, Kim at his eternal sketching of artifacts, Mannin from his notes.
“You know the way you have to be with him,” he warned them. “Firm and no backing up. No eagerness either. If we ask about that com equipment right off it’ll likely end up at the bottom of the Styx. You know his ways. And then he’ll be sorry tomorrow. Don’t bring that up. Hear?”
A surly nod from Kim. Mannin looked scared. It had not been an easy time. Kim had had little to say for the last two weeks, to either of them.
“Listen,” said Mannin. “There’s only one thing I want and that’s headed back to Base. Now.”
“We’ll send you back on r and r when we get the leisure,” Genley said. “You just don’t foul it up, you hear? You don’t do it. You muddle this up, I’ll let you get out of it any way you can.”
Mannin sniffed, wiped the perpetual runny nose he had had since they had gotten back to this place. Dank winter cold and clinging mists almost within sight and vastly out of reach of the Base; with the Styx between them and the pleasures of Green Tower, the high, dry land where winter would not mean marsh and bogs.
“Come on,” Genley said, and went off ahead of them.
Your problem, Jin had said once. These men of yours. Your problem.
They went, the three of them, where every other person of status in the community was going, to the Tower, to see what the news was.
xliv
205 CR, day 35
Parm Tower
The hall rustled with caliban movements, nervous movements. Thorn had made himself a place. Parm’s own Claw had moved aside, compelled by something it could not bluff, and below it, other calibans, of those which had come in, sorted themselves into an order of dominances. These had been fighting where they came from: violence was in their mood, and in the mood of their riders, and it was not a good time to have come in. Genley saw that now, but there was no way out. They stood there, against the wall, last to have come in; no caliban defended them. Scaly bodies locked and writhed and tails whipped in sweeps on the peripheries.
“Let’s get out of here,” Mannin said.
“Stay still,” Genley said, jerked at his arm. Mannin had no sense, no understanding what it meant even yet, to give up half a step, a gesture, a single motion in hunter‑company. He smelled of fear, of sweat; he was afraid of calibans. Not singly. En masse. “Use your head, man.”
“Use yours,” Kim said, at his other side. Kim left. Walked out.
Mannin dived after him, abject flight.
So Jin noticed him finally, from across the room where, heedless of it all, he was stripping off his leather shirt. Women of Parm’s band had brought water in a basin. Other men stood muddy as they were, attending the calibans. A scattering of Weirds insinuated themselves and brought some quiet, putting their hands on the calibans, getting matters sorted out.
Jin lifted his chin slightly, staring straight at him while the women washed his hands. Come here, that meant.
Genley crossed the recent battleground, weaving carefully around calibans who had settled into sullen watching of each other. It was a dangerous thing to do. But the Weirds were there. A man knew just how close to come. He did that, and stood facing Jin, who looked him up and down with seeming satisfaction. “Gen‑ley.” The eyes had their old force. But there was a new scar added to the others that were white and pink on Jin’s body. This was on the shoulder, near the neck, an ugly scabbed streak. There were others, already gone to red new flesh. He always forgot how small Jin was. The memory of him was large. Now the eyes held him, dark and trying to overawe him, trying him whether he could go on looking back, the way he tried every man he met.
Genley said nothing. Chatter got nowhere with Jin. It was not the hunters’ style. A lot passed with handsigns, with subtle moves, a shrug of the shoulders, the fix of eyes. There was silence round them now. He was only one of the number that waited on Jin, and some of those were mudspattered and shortfused.
One was Parm; and Parm’s band; one was Blue, mad‑eyed Blue, who was, if Jin had a band, chiefest of that motley group, excepting Jin. A big man, Blue, with half an ear gone, beneath the white‑streaked hair that came down past his shoulders. The hair was strings of mud now.
“How many more?” Parm asked, not signing: Jin’s shoulder was to him.
“I’ll talk to you about that.” Jin never looked at Parm. He gave a small jerk of his head at Blue. “Go on. Clean up–” The eyes came back to Genley. “You I’ll talk to. My father.”