conversation, and beer, and there might be music, the vigorous music of Karhide, melodically simple but rhythmically complex, always played extempore. One night two Indwellers danced, men so old that their hair had whitened, and their limbs were skinny, and the downward folds at the outer eye-corners half hid their dark eyes. Their dancing was slow, precise, controlled; it fascinated eye and mind. They began dancing during Third Hour after dinner. Musicians joined in and dropped out at will, all but the drummer who never stopped his subtle changing beat. The two old dancers were still dancing at Sixth Hour, midnight, after five Terran hours. This was the first time I had seen the phenomenon of dothe – the voluntary, controlled use of what we call ‘hysterical strength’ – and thereafter I was readier to believe tales concerning the Old Men of the Handdara.
It was an introverted life, self-sufficient, stagnant, steeped in that singular ‘ignorance’ prized by the Handdarata and obedient to their rule of inactivity or non-interference. That rule (expressed in the word nusuth, which I have to translate as ‘no matter’) is the heart of the cult, and I don’t pretend to understand it. But I began to understand Karhide better, after a half-month in Otherhord. Under that nation’s politics and parades and passions runs an old darkness, passive, anarchic, silent, the fecund darkness of the Handdara.
And out of that silence inexplicably rises the Foreteller’s voice.
Young Goss, who enjoyed acting as my guide, told me that my question to the Foretellers could concern anything and be phrased as I liked. ‘The more qualified and limited the question, the more exact the answer,’ he said. ‘Vagueness breeds vagueness. And some questions of course are not answerable.’
‘What if I ask one of those?’ I inquired. This hedging seemed sophisticated, but not unfamiliar. But I did not expect his answer: ‘The Weaver will refuse it. Unanswerable questions have wrecked Foretelling groups.’
‘Wrecked them?’
‘Do you know the story of the Lord of Shorth, who forced the Foretellers of Asen Fastness to answer the question What is the meaning of life? Well, it was a couple of thousand years ago. The Foretellers stayed in the darkness for six days and nights. At the end, all the Celibates were catatonic, the Zanies were dead, the Pervert clubbed the Lord of Shorth to death with a stone, and the Weaver … He was a man named Meshe.’
‘The founder of the Yomesh cult?’
‘Yes,’ said Goss, and laughed as if the story was very funny, but I didn’t know whether the joke was on the Yomeshta or on me.
I had decided to ask a yes-or-no question, which might at least make plain the extent and kind of obscurity or ambiguity in the answer. Faxe confirmed what Goss had said, that the matter of the question could be one of which the Foretellers were perfectly ignorant. I could ask if the hoolm crops would be good this year in the northern hemisphere of S, and they would answer, having no previous knowledge even of the existence of a planet called S. This seemed to put the business on the plane of pure chance divination, along with yarrow stalks and flipped coins. No, said Faxe, not at all, chance was not involved. The whole process was in fact precisely the reverse of chance.
‘Then you mindread.’
‘No,’ said Faxe, with his serene and candid smile.
‘You mindread without knowing you’re doing it, perhaps?’
‘What good would that be? If the asker knew the answer he wouldn’t pay our price for it.’
I chose a question to which I certainly lacked the answer. Only time could prove the Foretelling right or wrong, unless it was, as I expected, one of those admirable professional prophecies applicable to any outcome. It was not a trivial question; I had given up the notion of asking when it would stop raining, or some such trifle, when I learned that the undertaking was a hard and dangerous one for the nine Foretellers of Otherhord. The cost was high for the asker – two of my rubies went to the coffers of the Fastness – but higher for the answerers. And as I got to know Faxe, if it became difficult to believe that he was a professional faker it became still more difficult to believe that he was an honest, self-deluded faker; his intelligence was as hard, clear, and polished as my rubies. I dared set no trap for him. I asked what I most wanted to know.
On Onnertherhad, the 18th