The Left Hand Of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4) - Ursula K. Le Guin Page 0,40
this basis of material stability Orgoreyn had gradually built up a unified and increasingly efficient centralized state. Now Karhide was to pull herself together and do the same; and the way to make her do it was not by sparking her pride, or building up her trade, or improving her roads, farms, colleges, and so on; none of that; that’s all civilization, veneer, and Tibe dismissed it with scorn. He was after something surer, the sure, quick, and lasting way to make people into a nation: war. His ideas concerning it could not have been too precise, but they were quite sound. The only other means of mobilizing people rapidly and entirely is with a new religion; none was handy; he would make do with war.
I sent the Regent a note in which I quoted to him the question I had put to the Foretellers of Otherhord and the answer I had got. Tibe made no response. I then went to the Orgota Embassy and requested permission to enter Orgoreyn.
There are fewer people running the offices of the Stabiles of the Ekumen on Hain than there were running that embassy of one small country to another, and all of them were armed with yards of soundtapes and records. They were slow, they were thorough; none of the slapdash arrogance and sudden deviousness that marked Karhidish officialdom. I waited, while they filled out their forms.
The waiting got rather uneasy. The number of Palace Guards and city police on the streets of Erhenrang seemed to multiply every day; they were armed, and they were even developing a sort of uniform. The mood of the city was bleak, although business was good, prosperity general, and the weather fair. Nobody wanted much to do with me. My ‘landlady’ no longer showed people my room, but rather complained about being badgered by ‘people from the Palace’, and treated me less as an honoured sideshow than as a political suspect. Tibe made a speech about a foray in the Sinoth Valley: ‘Brave Karhidish farmers, true patriots’, had dashed across the border south of Sassinoth, had attacked an Orgota village, burned it, and killed nine villagers, and then dragging the bodies back had dumped them into the Ey River, ‘such a grave’, said the Regent, ‘as all the enemies of our nation will find’! I heard this broadcast in the eating-hall of my island. Some people looked grim as they listened, others uninterested, others satisfied, but in these various expressions there was one common element, a little tic or facial cramp that had not used to be there, a look of anxiety.
That evening a man came to my room, my first visitor since I had returned to Erhenrang. He was slight, smooth-skinned, shy-mannered, and wore the gold chain of a Foreteller, one of the Celibates. ‘I’m a friend of one who befriended you,’ he said, with the brusqueness of the timid, ‘I’ve come to ask you a favour, for his sake.’
‘You mean Faxe—?’
‘No. Estraven.’
My helpful expression must have changed. There was a little pause, after which the stranger said, ‘Estraven, the traitor. You remember him, perhaps?’
Anger had displaced timidity, and he was going to play shifgrethor with me. If I wanted to play, my move was to say something like, ‘I’m not sure; tell me something about him.’ But I didn’t want to play, and was used to volcanic Karhidish tempers by now. I faced his anger deprecatingly and said, ‘Of course I do.’
‘But not with friendship.’ His dark, down-slanted eyes were direct and keen.
‘Well, rather with gratitude, and disappointment. Did he send you to me?’
‘He did not.’
I waited for him to explain himself.
He said, ‘Excuse me. I presumed; I accept what presumption has earned me.’
I stopped the stiff little fellow as he made for the door. ‘Please: I don’t know who you are, or what you want. I haven’t refused, I simply haven’t consented. You must allow me the right to a reasonable caution. Estraven was exiled for supporting my mission here—’
‘Do you consider yourself to be in his debt for that?’
‘Well, in a sense. However, the mission I am on overrides all personal debts and loyalties.’
‘If so,’ said the stranger with fierce certainty, ‘it is an immoral mission.’
That stopped me. He sounded like an Advocate of the Ekumen, and I had no answer. ‘I don’t think it is,’ I said finally; ‘the shortcomings are in the messenger, not the message. But please tell me what it is you want me to do.’