Ursula Le Guin - Dancing to Ganam

Shan went into mime, dancing a waterfall, imitating the motion of wheels, the hum and buzz of the little dynamo up on the volcano. The two women stared at him as he roared, turned, hummed, buzzed, and crackled, shouting “Kenes?” at intervals like a demented chicken. But Aketa’s smile broadened. “Soha, kenes,” he agreed, and mimicked the leap of a spark from one fingertip to another. “Todokyu nkenes ebegebyu.”

“The scepter signifies, symbolizes electricity! It must mean something like—if you take up the scepter you’re the Electricity Priest—like Aketa’s the Library Priest and Agot’s the Calendar Priest—right?”

“It would make sense,” Forest said.

“Why would they pick Dalzul straight off as their chief electrician?” Riel asked.

“Because he came out of the sky, like lightning!” said Shan.

“Did they pick him?” Forest asked.

There was a pause. Aketa looked from one to the other, alert and patient.

“What’s ‘choose’?” Forest asked Riel, who said, “Sotot.”

Forest turned to their teacher. “Aketa: Dazu…ntodok…sotot?”

Aketa was silent for some time and then said, gravely and clearly, “Soha. Todok nDazu oyo sotot.”

“‘Yes. And also the scepter chooses Dalzul,’” Riel murmured.

“Aheo?” Shan demanded—why? But of Aketa’s answer they could understand only a few words: priesthood or vocation, sacredness, the earth.

“Anam,” Riel said—“Ket? Anam Ket?”

Aketa’s pitch-black eyes met hers. Again he was silent, and the quality of his silence held them all still. When he spoke it was with sorrow. “Ai Dazu!” he said. “Ai Dazu kesemmas!”

He stood up, and knowing what was expected, they too rose, thanked him quietly for his teaching, and filed out. Obedient children, Shan thought. Good pupils. Learning what knowledge?

That evening he looked up from his practice on the little Gaman finger-drum, to which Abud liked to listen, sitting with him on the terrace, sometimes singing a soft chant when he caught a familiar beat.

“Abud,” he said, “metu?”—a word?

Abud, who had got used to the inquiry in the last few days, said, “Soha.” He was a humorless, even-natured young man; he tolerated all Shan’s peculiarities, perhaps, Shan thought, because he really hardly noticed them.

“‘Kesemmas,’” Shan said.

“Ah,” said Abud, and repeated the word, and then went off slowly and relentlessly into the incomprehensible. Shan had learned to watch him rather than trying to catch the words. He listened to the tone, saw the gestures, the expressions. The earth, down, low, digging? The Gaman buried their dead. Dead, death? He mimed dying, a corpse; but Abud never understood his charades, and stared blankly. Shan gave up, and pattered out the dance rhythm of yesterday’s festival on the drum. “Soha, soha,” said Abud.

“I’ve never actually spoken to Ket,” Shan said to Dalzul.

It had been a good dinner. He had cooked it, with considerable assistance from Abud, who had prevented him just in time from frying the fezuni. Eaten raw, dipped in fiery pepperjuice, the fezuni had been delicious. Abud had eaten with them, respectfully silent as he always was in Dalzul’s presence, and then excused himself. Shan and Dalzul were now nibbling tipu seeds and drinking nut beer, sitting on little carpets on the terrace in the purple twilight, watching the stars slowly clot the sky with brilliance.

“All men except the chosen king are taboo to her,” Dalzul said.

“But she’s married,” Shan said—“isn’t she?”

“No, no. The princess must remain virgin until the king is chosen. Then she belongs only to him. The sacred marriage, the hierogamy.”

“They do practice polyandry,” Shan said uncertainly.

“Her union with him is probably the fundamental event of the kingship ceremonial. Neither has any real choice in the matter. That’s why her defection is so troubling. She’s breaking her own society’s rules.” Dalzul took a long draft of beer. “What made me their choice in the first place—my dramatic appearance out of the sky—may be working against me now. I broke the rules by going away, and then coming back, and not coming back alone. One supernatural person pops out of the sky, all right, but four of them, male and female, all eating and drinking and shitting like everybody else, and asking stupid questions in baby talk all the time? We aren’t behaving in a properly sacred manner. And they respond by impropriety of the same order, rule-breaking. Primitive worldviews are rigid, they break when strained. We’re having a disintegrative effect on this society. And I am responsible.”

Shan took a breath. “It isn’t your world, sir,” he said. “It’s theirs. They’re responsible for it.” He cleared his throat. “And they don’t seem all that primitive—they make steel, their grasp of the principles of electricity is impressive—and they are literate, and the social system seems to be very flexible and stable, if what Forest and—”

“I still call her the princess, but as I learn the language better I’ve realized that that’s inaccurate,” Dalzul said, setting down his cup and speaking musingly. “Queen is probably nearer: queen of Ganam, of the Gaman. She is identified as Ganam, as the soil of the planet itself.”

“Yes,” Shan said. “Riel says—”

“So that in a sense she is the Earth. As, in a sense, I am Space, the sky. Coming alone to this world, a conjunction. A mystic union: fire and air with soil and water. The old mythologies enacted yet again in living flesh. She cannot turn away from me. It dislocates the very order of things. The father and the mother are joined, their children are obedient, happy, secure. But if the mother rebels, disorder, distress, failure ensue. These responsibilities are absolute. We don’t choose them. They choose us. She must be brought back to her duty to her people.”

“As Forest and Riel understand it, she’s been married to Aketa for several years, and her second husband is the father of her daughter.” Shan heard the harshness of his voice; his mouth was dry and his heart pounding as if he was afraid, of what? of being disobedient?

“Viaka says he can bring her back to the palace,” Dalzul said, “but at risk of retaliation from the pretender’s faction.”

“Dalzul!” Shan said. “Ket is a married woman! She went back to her family. Her duty to you as Earth Priestess or whatever it is is done. Aketa is her husband, not your rival. He doesn’t want the scepter, the crown, whatever it is!”

Dalzul made no reply and his expression was unreadable in the deepening twilight.

Shan went on, desperately: “Until we understand this society better, maybe you should hold back—certainly not let Viaka kidnap Ket—”

“I’m glad you see that,” Dalzul said. “Although I can’t help my involvement, we certainly must try not to interfere with these people’s belief systems. Power is responsibility, alas! Well, I should be off. Thank you for a very pleasant evening, Shan. We can still sing a tune together, eh, shipmates?” He stood up and patted the air on the back, saying, “Good night, Forest; good night, Riel,” before he patted Shan on the back and said, “Good night and thanks, Shan!” He strode out of the courtyard, a lithe, erect figure, a white glimmer in the starlit dark.

“I think we’ve got to get him onto the ship, Forest. He’s increasingly delusional.” Shan squeezed his hands together till the knuckles cracked. “I think he’s delusional. Maybe I am. But you and Riel and I, we seem to be in the same general reality—fiction—are we?”

Forest nodded grimly. “Increasingly so,” she said. “And if kesemmas does mean dying, or murder—Riel thinks it’s murder, it involves violence…I have this horrible vision of poor Dalzul committing some awful ritual sacrifice, cutting somebody’s throat while convinced that he’s pouring out oil or cutting cloth or something harmless. I’d be glad to get him out of this! I’d be glad to get out myself. But how?”