The Left Hand Of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4) - Ursula K. Le Guin Page 0,15

The Ekumen is not a kingdom, but a co-ordinator, a clearing-house for trade and knowledge; without it communication between the worlds of men would be haphazard, and trade very risky, as you can see. Men’s lives are too short to cope with the time-jumps between worlds, if there’s no network and centrality, no control, no continuity to work through; therefore, they become members of the Ekumen … We are all men, you know, sir. All of us. All the worlds of men were settled, eons ago, from one world, Hain. We vary, but we’re all sons of the same Hearth …’

None of this caught the king’s curiosity or gave him any reassurance. I went on a bit, trying to suggest that his shifgrethor, or Karhide’s, would be enhanced, not threatened by the presence of the Ekumen, but it was no good. Argaven stood there sullen as an old she-otter in a cage, swinging back and forth, from foot to foot, back and forth, baring his teeth in a grin of pain. I stopped talking.

‘Are they all as black as you?’

Gethenians are yellow-brown or red-brown, generally, but I had seen a good many as dark as myself. ‘Some are blacker,’ I said; ‘we come all colours,’ and I opened the case (politely examined by the guards of the Palace at four stages of my approach to the Red Hall) that held my ansible and some pictures. The pictures – films, photos, paintings, actives, and some cubes – were a little gallery of Man: people of Hain, Chiffewar, and the Cetians, of S and Terra and Alterra, of the Uttermosts, Kapteyn, Ollul, Four-Taurus, Rokanan, Ensbo, Cime, Gde and Sheashel Haven … The king glanced at a couple without interest. ‘What’s this?’

‘A person from Cime, a female.’ I had to use the word that Gethenians would apply only to a person in the culminant phase of kemmer, the alternative being their word for a female animal.

‘Permanently?’

‘Yes.’

He dropped the cube and stood swinging from foot to foot, staring at me or a little past me, the firelight shifting on his face. ‘They’re all like that – like you?’

This was the hurdle I could not lower for them. They must, in the end, learn to take it in their stride.

‘Yes. Gethenian sexual physiology, so far as we yet know, is unique among human beings.’

‘So all of them, out on these other planets, are in permanent kemmer? A society of perverts? So Lord Tibe put it; I thought he was joking. Well, it may be the fact, but it’s a disgusting idea, Mr. Ai, and I don’t see why human beings here on earth should want or tolerate any dealings with creatures so monstrously different. But then, perhaps you’re here to tell me I have no choice in the matter.’

‘The choice for Karhide, is yours, sir.’

‘And if I send you packing, too?’

‘Why, I’ll go. I might try again, with another generation …’

That hit him. He snapped, ‘Are you immortal?’

‘Not, not at all, sir. But the time-jumps have their uses. If I left Gethen now for the nearest world, Ollul, I’d spend seventeen years of planetary time getting there. Timejumping is a function of travelling nearly as fast as light. If I simply turned around and came back, my few hours spent on the ship would, here, amount to thirty-four years; and I could start all over.’ But the idea of timejumping, which with its false hint of immortality had fascinated everyone who listened to me, from the Horden Island fisherman on up to the Prime Minister, left him cold. He said in his shrill harsh voice, ‘What’s that?’ – pointing to the ansible.

‘The ansible communicator, sir.’

‘A radio?’

‘It doesn’t involve radio waves, or any form of energy. The principle it works on, the constant of simultaneity, is analogous in some ways to gravity—’ I had forgotten again that I wasn’t talking to Estraven, who had read every report on me and who listened intently and intelligently to all my explanations, but instead to a bored king. ‘What it does, sir, is produce a message at any two points simultaneously. Anywhere. One point has to be fixed, on a planet of a certain mass, but the other end is portable. That’s this end. I’ve set the coordinates for the Prime World, Hain. A NAFAL ship takes 67 years to go between Gethen and Hain, but if I write a message on that keyboard it will be received on Hain at the same moment as I write it. Is