Ursula Le Guin - Paradises Lost

She did not answer his first message, and when he got through to her she was busy, sorry, things are so busy just now, I just can’t get away from work…She could not possibly have become self-important. Canaval was self-important, not without justification. But Hsing pompous, Hsing evasive? No. Busy. Why so busy? What kind of work kept one from answering a friend? Probably she was still afraid of him. That grieved him, but it was not a new grief. And since it was herself she feared, not him, it really was her problem, not his. So he insisted. He refused to be put off. “I will come tomorrow at ten,” and at ten he was at the door of her homespace. She was there; Canaval was not. She was brusque, awkward. They sat down facing each other on the biltin couch. “Is something wrong, Luis?”

“I need to tell you what I’ve learned about the angels.”

It was a strange thing to say after half a year of silence between them, he knew that; still, he found her response even stranger. She looked amazed, dismayed. She covered her shock, began to speak, stopped, and finally, with what seemed suspicion, said, “Why me?”

“Who else?”

“What do you think I have to do with anything to do with them?”

Circuitous! Luis thought. He said only, “Nothing. And that’s getting to be rare. This is important, and I need to talk it over with you. I want to know what you think about it. Your judgment. I’ve always thought best when I talked with you.”

She did not loosen up at all. Tense, wary, she nodded grudgingly. She said, “Do you want tea?”

“No, thank you. I’ll talk as fast as I can. Please interrupt if I’m not clear. Tell me if what I say is credible.”

“I don’t find much incredible lately,” she said, dry, not looking at him. “Go ahead, then. I do have to be on the Bridge at ten-forty. I’m sorry.”

“Half an hour will do.”

In half that time he told her what he had to tell. He began with his realisation that the education committees and councils had been controlled for at least twenty years by a large, steady majority of angels. It was now impossible to find what curriculum the Zero Generation had originally planned for the Sixth. Those plans had evidently been deleted—possibly even from the Archives.

Every time he considered that possibility it still shocked Luis, and he did not try to minimise his concern. Hsing continued to conceal any reaction she felt. He began to wonder if she already knew everything he was telling her. If so, she wasn’t admitting that either. He went on.

The elementary and high school curriculum had been scarcely altered since Hsing’s and Luis’s schooldays. The most striking change was a decrease in information and discussion concerning both Dichew and Shindychew. Children now in school spent very little time learning about the planets of origin and destination. Language concerning them was vague, with a curiously remote tone. In two recent texts Luis had found the phrase, “the planetary hypothesis.”

“But in 43.5 years we will arrive at one of these hypotheses,” Luis said. “What are we going to make of it?”

Hsing looked stricken again—frightened. He didn’t know what to make of that, either. He went on.

“I’ve been trying to understand the elements in angelic theory or belief that lead them to deny the importance—the fact—of our origin on one planet and our destination on another. Bliss is a coherent system of thought that makes almost perfect sense in itself and as a belief-system for people living as we live. In fact, that’s the problem. Bliss is a self-contained proposition, a closed system. It is a psychic adaptation to our life—ship life—an adaptation to a self-contained system, an unvarying artificial environment providing all necessities at all times. We of the middle generations have no goal except to stay alive and keep the ship running and on course, and to achieve it all we have to do is follow the rules—the Constitution. The Zeroes saw that as an important duty, a high obligation, because they saw it as an element of the whole voyage—the means glorified by the end. But for those who won’t see the end, there’s not much glory being the means. Self-preservation seems self-centered. The system’s not only closed, but stifling. That was Kim Terry’s vision—how to glorify the means, the voyage—how to make following the rules an end in itself. As he saw it, our true journey is not only to a material world outside in space, but also to a spiritual world of bliss—which we will attain, by living rightly here .”

Hsing nodded.

“Over the last decades Patel Inbliss has gradually changed the emphasis of this vision. Here is all. There’s nothing outside the ship—literally nothing, spiritually nothing. Origin and destination are now metaphors. They have no reality. Journey is the sole reality. The voyage is its own end.”

She was still impassive, as if he was telling her nothing she didn’t know; but she was alert.

“Patel isn’t a theorist. He’s an activist. Acting on his vision through his archangels and their disciples. I believe that in the last ten or fifteen years, angels have been making many of the decisions in Council, and most of the decisions about education.”

Again she nodded, but warily.

“The schools teach almost nothing about the original purpose of the interstellar voyage—to study and perhaps settle a planet. The texts and programs still have information about the cosmos—starcharts, stellar types, planet formation, all that stuff we had in Tenth—but I’ve been talking to teachers and they tell me they skip most of it. The children ‘aren’t interested,’ they ‘find these old material-science theories confusing.’ You realise that almost all school administrators and about 65 percent of the teachers—90 percent in Quad One—are members of Bliss?”

“So many?”

“At least that many. My impression is that some angels conceal their beliefs, deliberately, to keep their dominance from becoming too plain.”

Hsing looked uneasy, disgusted, but said nothing.

“Meanwhile in the archangelic teachings, ‘outside’ is equated with danger, physical and spiritual—sin, evil—and with death. Nothing else. There is nothing good outside the ship. Inside is positive, outside negative. Pure dualism.—Not many young angels are going into dermatology these days, but there are some older ones who do eva. As soon as they’re through the airlocks, they undergo a ritual of purification. Did you know that?”

“No,” she said.

“It’s called decontamination. An old material-science-theory word with a new meaning. The soul is contaminated by the silent black outside…Well, that aside. Angels are eager to follow the rules, because our life lived well leads us directly to eternal happiness. They are eager for us all to follow the rules. We live in the Vehicle of Bliss. We can’t miss bliss. Unless we break the one new rule. The big one: The ship can’t stop.”

He stopped. Hsing looked angry, as she always did when she was worried, troubled, or scared.

His gradual discovery of the change in the angelic teachings and the extent of angelic control over various councils had alarmed but not frightened him. He had seen it as a problem, a serious problem, that must be addressed. The way to solve it was to bring it out into the open, forcing the angels to explain their policies and making the non-angels aware that Patel Inbliss was trying to change the rules, and exerting clandestine power to do so. When they saw that, they’d react against it. There need be no crisis.

“We’ve got 43.5 years,” he said. “Plenty of time to talk it over. It’s a matter of getting things back in proportion. The more radical angels will have to agree that we do have a destination, that people are going to do eva there, and that they’ll need to be trained to do eva, not to look on it as a sin.”