Orbiting survey shows the Styxside column advancing under cover of the woods headed toward the Cloud 200 km east of the Cloudside settlement. The Cloudsiders have advanced 75 km at a very leisurely pace and appear to have stopped in a place where the river offers some natural defense…
Message: Base director to Station
Negative on query regarding whereabouts of four observers. Com is inactive. We suspect the presence of observers with the columns but we are not able to confirm this without risking other personnel and possibly risking the lives of the observers themselves in the warlike movements of both groups.
Request round the clock monitoring of base environs. We are presently discovering increased caliban activity on our own perimeters, both along the riverside and in burrowing. This, combined with the sudden massive aggression we are witnessing outside, is, in the consensus of the staff, a matter of some concern.
205 CR, day 109, 0233 hours
Engineering to Base Director
We have an attempt at undermining in progress, passing the fence at marker 30.
0236 hours Base Director to Security
…Stage one defense perimeter marker 30…
0340 hours Message, Base Director to Station
The defense systems were effective at primary level in turning back the intrusion. We are maintaining round the clock surveillance. We are advising agents still in the field of this move. Since caliban violence seems generally directed toward structures and not toward individuals some staff members have suggested that those agents in open country are not likely to be the objects of aggression, and may be safer where they are than attempting to approach the base. Agents are being advised to use their own discretion in this matter but to tend at once toward high stony ground where feasible.
More extensive report will follow.
l
205 CR, day 112
Cloud River
“Calibans,” Elai said, “have tried the Base.”
“Yes,” McGee said, sitting crosslegged in their camp, among others who sat near Elai and Scar, but her brown had deserted her when she dismounted. It always did, moving off alone to the river though other calibans stayed by their riders; and she was downcast, having read what she had read in the stones this morning, the small things ariels did, copying the greater Patterns current in the world. The little messengers. Mindless. Making miniature the world. They said the Base had held. They said that too.
They said that Jin was near.
“What do they do,” Elai asked, “to turn back calibans?”
McGee worked numb hands, her heart beating fast with notions of heroism, of refusing to say, but it was Elai asking, friend, First, her First, who had made her one of them.
There was a great silence about her. Elai simply waited, Gehennan‑fashion, would wait long as a caliban could wait for that answer.
“They put a thing into the ground; it smells bad; it goes in under pressure. Calibans won’t like it. But there’s worse that they could do. A lot worse. There’s ships.”
Some looked skyward. Elai did not. She looked frail in the firelight, looked gaunt, her beaded braids hanging by her face. There was Paeia by her, Paeia’s son, a man full grown. On Elai’s other side sat Taem, silent, as Taem usually was.
“They won’t,” said Elai.
McGee shook her head.
“Why?” Taem asked.
“To see what Pattern we make,” Elai said quietly. “So we’ll show them.”
“Huh,” said Taem, and stared into the fire. He was methodically seeing to his darts, to the tiny wrappings of thread, in case the rain had gotten at them.
Something splashed in the river, a diving caliban. Sometimes there were other sounds, the scrape of claws on earth. The Pattern went on about them. There was no fear of ambush, of something breaking through. McGee understood this Word in which they travelled. Cloud, it said; and nothing alien got into it. A mound was between them and the Stygians. It would not be breached quietly.
McGee went back to her notes.
…It’s quiet tonight. It’s a strange way to fight a war. We know where they are. And it’s just as sure they’re not moving yet. Tomorrow, maybe. We heard about an assault on the Wire. That’s Styxside calibans, I think, not Cloud. They’re a different kind; and not different. I wish I understood that point…why two ways exist, so different, even among calibans.
Nations? But that’s thinking human‑style again.
Are wethe difference?
I don’t even know who’s at war out here…us or the calibans. Mine puts up with me. I don’t know why. A wild caliban takes a human onto his back. No training. Nothing. It’s all its idea. I don’t even pretend to control it.
As for order in the march, as for any sense of discipline–there’s none. Calibans wander when and where they like and we sit around the fire with no sentries posted.
But there are. Calibans.
She looked up. Close by her couples moved through the camp, going the way couples went these last few evenings while they had leisure, while this strange peace obtained.
Taem took Elai’s hand. Looked at her. So they had passed the night before. They rose, went off together. Paeia got up in pique, dusted herself, found one of her own riders. So did her son.
There are pairings in the camp. It’s a strange thing, as if all the barriers of Tower loyalty were down. As if there were a sense of time being short. There’s a fondness among these people–the way they’ve left everything behind, the way calibans that normally won’t tolerate each other have gotten unnaturally patient.
But it’s territory: the Cloud. Maybe they see it that way, that all of a sudden they all belong to the same territory.
Elai and Taem have paired up. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it portends any longer bond. If we get out of this alive–
Maybe it’s only politic. Maybe it’s something else. I’m sitting here alone. They’ve all left, as if. there were nothing else–
A shadow fell. Dain sat down by her, just sat on his haunches as she looked up. The fire shadowed his face. His long hair hung about his leathered shoulders. He wore beads hanging from a braid at the side of his head, among the rest of his locks. He was very fine, she thought, very fine. Any woman had to notice when Dain sat down that close to her: a lot had, so that Dain was never without partners. She had Dain in her notes, how this was; how the women courted him as he courted them, so it was a joke in the camp, one Dain liked as well as the tellers of it.
He just sat there looking at her. Nodded his head finally toward the dark. Toward what others did. He wanted her hand, holding his out.
He’s crazy, she thought. What is this? Me?
Still the outheld hand. She put her papers down, thinking she was mistaken and might embarrass herself. He took her hand–friendship, she reckoned; he just wanted to talk to her, and she was wrong.
But he pulled her to her feet and kept drawing her along, going off to the dark.
She was afraid, then, putting this together with the attack on the Base, with Elai’s questions. She thought of betrayal, of factions, of Elai off with Taem.
But outside the firelight he pulled her down with him, this best of Elai’s riders, this Dain Flanahan–“Why?” she asked late, “why me?”–preparing herself for wounds.
He laughed as if that question surprised him, and they stayed that way till dawn, wrapped up in each other, the way she had had the Weird in the dark, in the depths, the same terms.
For friendship, then; she reckoned how she had been by the fire night after night; and no one had asked, and finally Dain took it on himself. He was kind, this young man. She had always known that.
li
205 CR, day 113
Cloud River
There was no coherency about it; the Cloudside patterns were confused–sudden advance and then this dawdling along the banks–“They’re crazy,” Blue said, with shaking of his head. “They’re farmers,” said Parm.