The Left Hand Of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4) - Ursula K. Le Guin Page 0,115
of the moon, e.g. Getheny, ‘darkness’, Arhad, ‘first crescent’, etc. The prefix od- used in the second halfmonth is a reversive, giving a contrary meaning, so that Odgetheny might be translated as ‘undarkness’.) The Karhidish names of the days of the month:
1. Getheny
14. Odgetheny
2. Sordny
15. Odsordny
3. Eps
16. Odeps
4. Arhad
17. Odarhad
5. Netherhad
18. Onnetherhad
6. Streth
19. Odstreth
7. Berny
20. Obberny
8. Orny
21. Odorny
9. Harhahad
22. Odharhahad
10. Guyrny
23. Odguyrny
11. Yrny
24. Odyrny
12. Posthe
25. Opposthe
13. Tormenbod
26. Ottormenbod
The Hour.
The decimal clock used in all Gethenian cultures converts as follows, very roughly, to the Terran double-twelve-hour clock (Note: This is a mere guide to the time of day implied by a Gethenian ‘Hour’; the complexities of an exact conversion, given the fact that the Gethenian day contains only 23.08 Terran Standard Hours, are irrelevant to my purpose):
First Hour
…
noon to 2:30 p.m.
Second Hour
…
2:30 to 5:00 p.m.
Third Hour
…
5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Fourth Hour
…
7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Fifth Hour
…
9:30 to midnight
Sixth Hour
…
midnight to 2:30 a.m.
Seventh Hour
…
2:30 to 5:00 a.m.
Eighth Hour
…
5:00 to 7:00 a.m.
Ninth Hour
…
7:00 to 9:30 a.m.
Tenth Hour
…
9:30 to noon
COMING OF AGE IN KARHIDE
By Sov Thade Tage em Ereb, of Rer,
in Karhide, on Gethen.
I live in the oldest city in the world. Long before there were kings in Karhide, Rer was a city, the marketplace and meeting ground for all the Northeast, the Plains, and Kerm Land. The Fastness of Rer was a center of learning, a refuge, a judgment seat fifteen thousand years ago. Karhide became a nation here, under the Geger kings, who ruled for a thousand years. In the thousandth year Sedern Geger, the Unking, cast the crown into the River Arre from the palace towers, proclaiming an end to dominion. The time they call the Flowering of Rer, the Summer Century, began then. It ended when the Hearth of Harge took power and moved their capital across the mountains to Erhenrang. The Old Palace has been empty for centuries. But it stands. Nothing in Rer falls down. The Arre floods through the street-tunnels every year in the Thaw, winter blizzards may bring thirty feet of snow, but the city stands. Nobody knows how old the houses are, because they have been rebuilt forever. Each one sits in its gardens without respect to the position of any of the others, as vast and random and ancient as hills. The roofed streets and canals angle about among them. Rer is all corners. We say that the Harges left because they were afraid of what might be around the corner.
Time is different here. I learned in school how the Orgota, the Ekumen, and most other people count years. They call the year of some portentous event Year One and number forward from it. Here it’s always Year One. On Getheny Thern, New Year’s Day, the Year One becomes one-ago, one-to-come becomes One, and so on. It’s like Rer, everything always changing but the city never changing.
When I was fourteen (in the Year One, or fifty-ago) I came of age. I have been thinking about that a good deal recently.
It was a different world. Most of us had never seen an Alien, as we called them then. We might have heard the Mobile talk on the radio, and at school we saw pictures of Aliens – the ones with hair around their mouths were the most pleasingly savage and repulsive. Most of the pictures were disappointing. They looked too much like us. You couldn’t even tell that they were always in kemmer. The female Aliens were supposed to have enormous breasts, but my mothersib Dory had bigger breasts than the ones in the pictures.
When the Defenders of the Faith kicked them out of Orgoreyn, when King Emran got into the Border War and lost Erhenrang, even when their Mobiles were outlawed and forced into hiding at Estre in Kerm, the Ekumen did nothing much but wait. They had waited for two hundred years, as patient as Handdara. They did one thing: they took our young king offworld to foil a plot, and then brought the same king back sixty years later to end her wombchild’s disastrous reign. Argaven XVII is the only king who ever ruled four years before her heir and forty years after.
The year I was born (the Year One, or sixty-four-ago) was the year Argaven’s second reign began. By the time I was noticing anything beyond my own toes, the war was over, the West Fall was part of Karhide again, the capital was back in Erhenrang, and most of the damage done to Rer during the Overthrow of Emran had