The Left Hand Of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4) - Ursula K. Le Guin Page 0,41
rents and debts, which I was able to collect from the wreck of my friend’s fortune. Hearing that you were about to go to Orgoreyn, I thought to ask you to take the money to him, if you find him. As you know, it would be a punishable offence to do so. It may also be useless. He may be in Mishnory, or on one of their damnable Farms, or dead. I have no way of finding out. I have no friends in Orgoreyn, and none here I dared ask this of. I thought of you as one above politics, free to come and go. I did not stop to think that you have, of course, your own politics. I apologize for my stupidity.’
‘Well, I’ll take the money for him. But if he’s dead or can’t be found, to whom shall I return it?’
He stared at me. His face worked and changed, and he caught his breath in a sob. Most Karhiders cry easily, being no more ashamed of tears than of laughter. He said, ‘Thank you. My name is Foreth. I’m an Indweller at Orgny Fastness.’
‘You’re of Estraven’s clan?’
‘No. Foreth rem ir Osboth: I was his kemmering.’
Estraven had had no kemmering when I knew him, but I could rouse no suspicion of this fellow in myself. He might be unwittingly serving someone else’s purpose, but he was genuine. And he had just taught me a lesson: that shifgrethor can be played on the level of ethics, and that the expert player will win. He had cornered me in about two moves. – He had the money with him and gave it to me, a solid sum in Royal Karhidish Merchants’ notes of credit, nothing to incriminate me, and consequently nothing to prevent me from simply spending it.
‘If you find him …’ He stuck.
‘A message?’
‘No. Only if I knew …’
‘If I do find him, I’ll try to send news of him to you.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, and he held out both hands to me, a gesture of friendship which in Karhide is not lightly made. ‘I wish success to your mission, Mr. Ai. He – Estraven – he believed you came here to do good, I know. He believed it very strongly.’
There was nothing in the world for this man outside Estraven. He was one of those who are damned to love once. I said again, ‘Is there no word from you that I might take him?’
‘Tell him the children are well,’ he said, then hesitated, and said quietly, ‘Nusuth, no matter,’ and left me.
Two days later I took the road out of Erhenrang, the northwest road this time, afoot. My permission to enter Orgoreyn had arrived much sooner than the clerks and officials of the Orgota Embassy had led me to expect or had themselves expected; when I went to get the papers they treated me with a sort of poisonous respect, resentful that protocol and regulations had, on somebody’s authority, been pushed aside for me. As Karhide had no regulations at all about leaving the country, I set straight off. Over the summer I had learned what a pleasant land Karhide was for walking in. Roads and inns are set for foot-traffic as well as for powered vehicles, and where inns are wanting one may count infallibly on the code of hospitality. Townsfolk of Co-Domains and the villagers, farmers, or lord of any Domain will give a traveller food and lodging, for three days by the code, and in practice for much longer than that; and what’s best is that you are always received without fuss, welcomed, as if they had been expecting you to come.
I meandered across the splendid slanting land between the Sess and the Ey, taking my time, working out my keep a couple of mornings in the fields of the great Domains, where they were getting the harvest in, every hand and tool and machine at work to get the golden fields cut before the weather turned. It was all golden, all benign, that week of walking; and at night before I slept I would step out of the dark farmhouse or firelit Hearth-Hall where I was lodged and walk a way into the dry stubble to look up at the stars, flaring like far cities in the windy autumn dark.
In fact I was reluctant to leave this land, which I had found, though so indifferent to the Envoy, so gentle to the stranger. I dreaded starting all over, trying to repeat my news