Ursula Le Guin: Dancing to Ganam

“Power is the great drumming,” Aketa said. “The thunder. The noise of the waterfall that makes the electricity. It fills you till there’s no room for anything else.”

Ket poured a few drops of water onto the ground, murmuring, “Drink, traveler.” She sprinkled pollen meal over the ground, murmuring, “Eat, traveler.” She looked up at Iyananam, the mountain of power. “Maybe he only listened to the thunder, and couldn’t hear anything else,” she said. “Do you think he knew what he was doing?”

“I think he knew what he was doing,” Aketa said.

Since the successful though problematic transilience of the Shoby to and from a nasty little planet called M-60-340-nolo, a whole wing of Ve Port had been given over to churten technology. The originators of churten theory on Anarres and the engineers of transilience on Urras communicated constantly by ansible with the theorists and engineers on Ve, who set up experiments and investigations designed to find out what, in fact, happened when a ship and its crew went from one place in the universe to another without taking any time at all to do so. “You cannot say ‘went,’ you cannot say ‘happened,’” the Cetians chided, “It is here not there in one moment and in that same moment it is there not here. The non-interval is called, in our language, churten.”

Interlocking with these circles of Cetian temporalists were circles of Hainish psychologists, investigating and arguing about what, in fact, happened when intelligent life-forms experienced the churten. “You cannot say ‘in fact,’ you cannot say ‘experienced,’” they chided. “The reality point of ‘arrival’ for a churten crew is obtained by mutual perception-comparison and adjustment, so that for thinking beings construction of event is essential to effective transilience,” and so on, and on, for the Hainish have been talking for a million years and have never got tired of it. But they are also fond of listening, and they listened to what the crew of the Shoby had to tell them. And when Commander Dalzul arrived, they listened to him.

“You have to send one man alone,” he said. “The problem is interference. There were ten people on the Shoby . Send one man. Send me.”

“You ought to go with Shan,” Betton said.

His mother shook her head.

“It’s dumb not to go!”

“If they don’t want you, they don’t get me,” she said.

The boy knew better than to hug her, or say anything much. But he did something he seldom did: he made a joke. “You’d be back in no time,” he said.

“Oh, get along,” Tai said.

Shan knew that the Hainish did not wear uniforms and did not use status indicators such as “Commander.” But he put on his black-and-silver uniform of the Terran Ekumen to meet Commander Dalzul.

Born in the barracks of Alberta in the earliest years of Terra’s membership in the Ekumen, Dalzul took a degree in temporal physics at the University of A-Io on Urras and trained with the Stabiles on Hain before returning to his native planet as a Mobile of the Ekumen of the Worlds. During the sixty-seven years of his near-lightspeed journey, a troublesome religious movement escalated into the horrors of the Unist Revolution. Dalzul got the situation under control within months, by a combination of acumen and tactics that won him the respect of those he worked for, and the worship of those he had worked against—for the Unist Fathers decided he was God. The worldwide slaughter of unbelievers devolved into a worldwide novena of adoration of the New Manifestation, before devolving further into schisms and sects intent mainly on killing one another. Dalzul had defused the worst resurgence of theocratic violence since the Time of Pollution. He had acted with grace, with wit, with patience, reliability, resilience, trickiness, and good humor, with all the means the Ekumen most honored.

As he could not work on Terra, being prey to deification, he was given obscure but significant tasks on obscure but significant planets; one of them was Orint, the only world from which the Ekumen had yet withdrawn. They did so on Dalzul’s advice, shortly before the Orintians destroyed sentient life on their world by the use of pathogens in war. Dalzul had foretold the event with terrible and compassionate accuracy. He had set up the secret, last-minute rescue of a few thousand children whose parents were willing to let them go; Dalzul’s Children, these last of the Orintians were called.

Shan knew that heroes were phenomena of primitive cultures; but Terra’s culture was primitive, and Dalzul was his hero.

Tai read the message from Ve Port with disbelief. “What kind of crew is that?” she said. “Who asks parents to leave their kid?”

Then she looked up at Shan, and saw his face.

“It’s Dalzul,” he said. “He wants us. In his crew.”

“Go,” Tai said.

He argued, of course, but Tai was on the hero’s side. He went. And for the reception at which he was to meet Dalzul, he wore the black uniform with the silver thread down the sleeves and the one silver circle over the heart.

The commander wore the same uniform. When he saw him Shan’s heart leaped and thudded. Inevitably, Dalzul was shorter than Shan had imagined him: he was not three meters tall. But otherwise he was as he should be, erect and lithe, the long, light hair going grey pulled back from a magnificent, vivid face, the eyes as clear as water. Shan had not realized how white-skinned Dalzul was, but the deformity or atavism was minor and could even be seen as having its own beauty. Dalzul’s voice was warm and quiet; he laughed as he talked to a group of excited Anarresti. He saw Shan, turned, came straight to him. “At last! You’re Shan, I’m Dalzul, we’re shipmates. I am truly sorry your partner couldn’t be one of us. But her replacements are old friends of yours, I think—Forest and Riel.”

Shan was delighted to see the two familiar faces, Forest’s an obsidian knife with watchful eyes, Riel’s round and shining as a copper sun. He had been in training on Ollul with them. They greeted him with equal pleasure. “This is wonderful,” he said, and then, “So we’re all Terrans?”—a stupid question, since the fact was obvious; but the Ekumen generally favored mixing cultures in a crew.

“Come on out of this,” Dalzul said, “and I’ll explain.” He signaled a mezklete, which trotted over, proudly pushing a little cart laden with drinks and food. They filled trays, thanked the mezklete, and found themselves a deep windowseat well away from the noisy throng. There they sat and ate and drank and talked and listened. Dalzul did not try to hide his passionate conviction that he was on the right track to solve the “churten problem.”

“I’ve gone out twice alone,” he said. He lowered his voice slightly as he spoke, and Shan began naively, “Without—?” and stopped.

Dalzul grinned. “No, no. With the permission of the Churten Research Group. But not really with their blessing. That’s why I tend to whisper and look over my shoulder. There are still some CRG people here who make me feel as if I’d stolen their ship—scoffed at their theories—violated their shifgrethor—peed on their shoes—even after the ship and I round-tripped with no churten problems, no perceptual dissonances at all.”

“Where?” Forest asked, blade-sharp face intent.

“First trip, inside this system, from Ve to Hain and back. A bus trip. Everything known, expectable. It was absolutely without incident—as expected. I’m here: I’m there. I leave the ship to check in with the Stabiles, get back in the ship, and I’m here. Hey presto! It is magic, you know. And yet it seems so natural. Where one is, one is. Did you feel that, Shan?”