The Left Hand Of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4) - Ursula K. Le Guin Page 0,101

way. The Ice seems to drop off slowly, and will be rotten and crevassed all the way. If we could see, we could make it: but not in unshadow.’

‘But then how do we get down on to the Shenshey Bogs?’

‘Well, if we keep east again instead of trending south, we might be on sound ice clear to Guthen Bay. I saw the Ice once from a boat on the Bay in summer. It comes up against the Red Hills, and feeds down in ice-rivers to the Bay. If we came down one of those glaciers we could run due south on the sea-ice to Karhide, and so enter at the coast rather than the border, which might be better. It will add some miles to our way, though – something between twenty and fifty, I should think. What’s your opinion, Genry?’

‘My opinion is that I can’t go twenty more feet so long as the white weather lasts.’

‘But if we get out of the crevassed area …’

‘Oh, if we get out of the crevasses I’ll be fine. And if the sun ever comes out again, you get on the sledge and I’ll give you a free ride to Karhide.’ That was typical of our attempts at humour, at this stage of the journey; they were always very stupid, but sometimes they made the other fellow smile. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ I went on, ‘except acute chronic fear.’

‘Fear’s very useful. Like darkness; like shadows.’ Estraven’s smile was an ugly split in a peeling, cracked brown mask, thatched with black fur and set with two flecks of black rock. ‘It’s queer that daylight’s not enough. We need the shadows, in order to walk.’

‘Give me your notebook a moment.’

He had just noted down our day’s journey and done some calculation of mileage and rations. He pushed the little tablet and carbon-pencil around the Chabe stove to me. On the blank leaf glued to the inner back cover I drew the double curve within the circle, and blacked the yin half of the symbol, then pushed it back to my companion. ‘Do you know that sign?’

He looked at it a long time with a strange look, but he said, ‘No.’

‘It’s found on Earth, and on Hain-Davenant, and on Chiffewar. It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness … how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself, Therem. Both and one. A shadow on snow.’

The next day we trudged northeast through the white absence of everything until there were no longer any cracks in the floor of nothing: a day’s haul. We were on 2/3 ration, hoping to keep the longer route from running us right out of food. It seemed to me that it would not matter much if it did, as the difference between little and nothing seemed a rather fine one. Estraven, however, was on the track of his luck, following what appeared to be hunch or intuition, but may have been applied experience and reasoning. We went east for four days, four of the longest hauls we had made, eighteen to twenty miles a day, and then the quiet zero weather broke and went to pieces, turning into a whirl, whirl, whirl of tiny snow-particles ahead, behind, to the side, in the eyes, a storm beginning as the light died. We lay in the tent for three days while the blizzard yelled at us, a three-day-long, wordless, hateful yell from the unbreathing lungs.

‘It’ll drive me to screaming back,’ I said to Estraven in mind-speech, and he, with the hesitant formality that marked his rapport: ‘No use. It will not listen.’

We slept hour after hour, ate a little, tended our frostbites, inflammations, and bruises, mindspoke, slept again. The three-day shriek died down into a gabbling, then a sobbing, then a silence. Day broke. Through the opened door-valve the sky’s brightness shone. It lightened the heart, though we were too rundown to be able to show our relief in alacrity or zest of movement. We broke camp – it took nearly two hours, for we crept about like two old men – and set off. The way was downhill, an unmistakable slight grade; the crust was perfect for skis. The sun shone. The thermometer at midmorning showed –10°. We seemed to get strength from going, and we went fast and easy. We went that day till the stars came out.

For dinner Estraven served out full rations. At that rate, we had enough