Elai waved a hand.
So a rider named Cloud did that, who had a caliban who was willing to go. They went off into the dark and the last of the starman matter was settled.
It was not what mattered, on the Cloud.
lvii
205 CR, day 168
Base Director’s Office
“…It’s down,” the secretary said, wild‑eyed and distressed, breathless from the other office, leaning on the desk forgetful of protocols. “The tower, sir–it’s down, just– fell. I looked up in the window one minute and it was going down–”
There were scattered red lights on the desk com. One was an incoming station message, on that reserved channel; more were flicking on.
“The Styx tower,” the director said, striving for calm.
“The face of it–just hung there a moment like gravity had gone, and then it went down in all this dust–”
The account went on, mild hysteria. The Director pushed the button for the fax from station.
“…Urgent: your attention soonest to accompanying survey pictures. Styx towers eight, six, two in collapse…”
The door was open. Security showed up, agitated and diffident, red‑faced in the doorway.
“You’ve seen it,” the man said.
“My secretary saw it go. What’s going on out there? Station says we’ve got more towers down. Maybe others going.”
“Try Genley again?”
The Director considered it, thought it through, the governing principle of all dealings across the wire. “Try any contact you like. But no one goes outside.”
“If there are injured out there–”
“No aid. No intervention. You’re sure about our own subground.”
“Systems are working.”
“Try McGee again. Keep trying–Get back to work,” he told the secretary, who went out a shaken man. He wanted a drink himself. He was not about to yield to that. He wanted the pills in his desk. He withheld the reassurance. The desk com was still full of red lights, not so many as before, but still a bloody profusion of them. Another winked out.
“Prepare a report,” he told Security. “I want a report. We’ve got observers coming in. I want this straightened up.”
“Yes, sir,” Security said, and took that for dismissal.
More of the lights were going out. His secretary was back at work. Things had to be set in order: there had to be reports with explanations. His hands were shaking. He began to think through the array of permissions he had given, the dispatch of agents. Those would be reviewed, criticized. There had to be answers ready, reasons, explanations. The Bureau abhorred enigmas.
McGee, he thought, cursing her, setting his hope in her, that all reports now indicated that the Cloud was unaffected.
One native site to show the visitors. One native site to showcase; and McGee could get access to it–surmising McGee was still alive.
He started composing messages to the field while the reports came in, one and the other of the Stygian towers going down.
Everywhere. There was death out there, wholesale. Optics picked up the movements of calibans. The two settlements went to war or something like a war and calibans went berserk and destroyed one side, overthrowing towers, burrowing through planted fields, everything, while the apparently solid earth churned and settled.
“There’s a rider coming to the wire,” they told him later that day, when he had sent message after message out. “He’s carrying someone.”
And later: “Sir, it’s Mannin.”
“What happened?” he asked, brushing past the medics, shocked at the emaciation, the slackjawed change in the man on the stretcher, there in the foyer of the med building. “Mannin?”
He got no sensible answer, nothing but babble of riversides and calibans.
“Where did you come from?” he asked again.
Mannin wept, that was all. And he deputed someone to listen and report; and came back later himself only when the report began to be coherent, news of going upriver, of seeing McGee, of Genley and Kim murdered in cold blood.
So he went to hear it, sat by the bedside of a man who had gone to bone and staring eyes, who looked the worse for being shaven and clipped and turned into something civilized.
“Going to shuttle you up to station,” he said when Mannin had done. “There’s a ship due. They’ll get you back to Pell.”
Maybe names like that no longer made sense to Mannin. He never even reacted to it.
lviii
Message: Base Director to E. McGee, in field.
Urgent that you report in: the Styx towers have all fallen. We see refugees but they do not come near the wire. We have recovered Dr. Genley’s notes, which shed new light on the situation. We assure you no punitive action is contemplated…
Message: Base Director to E. McGee, in field
Did you receive the last message? Please respond. The situation is urgent. Bureau is ferrying in an observer from Unionside, with documents that may bear on your studies. The situation for the mission is quite delicate, and I cannot urge strongly enough that you put yourself back in contact with this office at once, by whatever means.
lix
205 CR, day 172
Cloud Towers
“No,” Elai said. “No com.” And McGee did not dispute it, only frowned, sitting there in the hall of First Tower where Elai sat. Elai had a blanket wrapped about her. She had not combed her hair; it stuck out at angles, webbed like lint. Her eyes were terrible.
Her heir was there–Din, who crouched in the corner with his juvenile caliban, with his eyes as dreadful as Elai’s own–frightened little boy, who knew too much. Din had his knife. It was irony that he was here, an heir defending his elder; but this seven year old had the facts all in hand. This seven year old had an aunt ready to take him when she could, to her own tower, to what befell a seven year old heir to a line that had lasted long on the banks of the Cloud.
Scar was dying–had never come up to First Tower, but languished on the shore. Elai only waited for this, the way she had waited for days, eating nothing, drinking little.
Quiet steps came and went, Weirds, who tended Elai. Taem never came; the nurses had Cloud kept somewhere away, as much in danger, but ignorant. A baby. Likeliest catspaw for Paeia if Din came to grief.
There was Dain, always Dain, at the doors below. Dain’s sister Maeri. The Flanahans were loyal still; would die in that doorway if they must. They were armed–but so were all the riders. And so far one could come and go.
“MaGee,” said Elai, having wakened.
“First,” McGee murmured in respect.
“What would you advise?”
“Advise?” Perhaps Elai was delirious, perhaps not. Elai made no more patterns, sat with her arms beneath the blankets, alone. McGee shrugged uneasily. “I’d advise you eat something.”
Elai failed to react to that. Just failed. There was long silence. It went like this, through the hours.
“First,” McGee said, working her hands together, clenching them and unclenching. “First, let’s go…just use some sense and eat something, and you and I’ll just walk out of here. To the Wire, maybe, maybe somewhere else. You can just walk away. Isn’t that good advice?”
“I could make a boat,” Elai said, “and go to the islands.”
“Well, we could do that,” McGee said, half‑hoping, half‑appalled, shocked at once by Elai’s dry laugh. Elai slipped forth a hand, opened thin fingers in mockery, dropping imaginary stones. Forget that, old friend.
“Listen, I don’t intend to put up with this, Elai.”
Elai’s eyes more than opened, the least frownline creased her brow. But she said nothing.
“Styx towers are down,” McGee said. “What’s that going to mean in the world?”
A second throwing‑away gesture. “Should have made the boats,” Elai said. “But they’d have taken down our towers.”
“Who?” There was a cold wind up McGee’s back. “What do you mean they’d have taken down the towers? Calibans? Like Jin’s towers? Like they’re doing there? What are you talking about, First?”