Ursula Le Guin - Paradises Lost

“Surely the Plenary Council is not the place to quibble over linguistic and intellectual theories?” Ferris said with mild deprecation, turning to the Chair.

“An allegation of religious manipulation is more than a quibble, Councillor,” Uma said. “I will discuss this matter with my advisory council. It will be on the agenda of the next meeting.”

“Well,” Bingdi said, “we have certainly put the turd in the soupbowl.”

They were running the track. Bingdi had done twenty laps. Luis had done five. He was slowing down and breathing hard. “Soup of bliss,” he panted.

Bingdi slowed down. Luis gasped and stopped. He stood awhile and wheezed. “Damn,” he said.

They walked to the bench for their towels.

“What did Hsing say when you talked to her?”

“Nothing.”

After a while Bingdi said, “You know, that bunch on the Bridge and Uma’s advisory council, they’re as tight as the archangels. They talk to each other and nobody else. They’re a faction, as much as the archangels.”

Luis nodded. “Well, so, we’re the third faction,” he said. “The turd faction. The soup thickens. Ancient history repeats itself.”

Two days after the Plenary Council announced the formation of a Committee on Religious Manipulation to investigate ideological bias in educational curricula and the suppression and destruction of information in the Records and Archives, Patel Inbliss called for a Great Rejoicing.

The Temenos was packed. Everybody said, “It must have been like this when 0-Kim died.”

The old man stood up at the lectern. His face, dark, unwrinkled, the bones showing through the fragile skin, loomed on every screen in every homespace. He raised his arms in blessing.

The great crowd sighed, a sound like wind in a forest, but they did not know that; they had never heard the sound of wind in a forest; they had never heard any sigh, any voice but their own and the voices of machines.

He talked for nearly an hour. At first he spoke of the importance of learning and following the laws of life laid down in the Constitution and taught in the schools. He asserted with passion that only scrupulous observance of these rules could assure justice, peace, and happiness to all. He talked about cleanliness, about recycling, about parenthood, about athletics, about teachers and teaching, about specialized studies, about the importance of unglamorous professions such as labwork, soilwork, infant care. Speaking of the happiness to be found in what he called “the modest life,” he looked younger; his dark eyes shone. “Bliss is to be found everywhere,” he said.

That became his theme: the ship called “discovery,” the ship of life, that travels across the void of death: the vehicle of bliss.

Within the ship, rules and laws and ways are provided by which each mortal being may, by learning to live in mortal harmony and happiness, learn also the way to the True Destination.

“There is no death,” the old man said, and again that sigh ran through the forest of lives crowded in the round hall. “Death is nothing. Death is null, death is void. Life is all. Mortal life voyages onward, ever onward, straight and true on its course to everlasting life, and light, and joy. Our origin was in darkness, in pain, in suffering. On that black ground of evil, in that terrible place, our ancestors in their wisdom saw where true life, true freedom was. And they sent us, their children, forth, free of darkness, earth, gravity, negativity, to travel forever into the light.”

He blessed them again, and some thought his sermon was done, but as if given new energy by his words he was speaking on: “Do not mistake the goal of our discovery, the purpose of our lives! Do not mistake symbol and metaphor for reality! Our ancestors did not send us on this great voyage only to return to where it began. They did not free us from gravity only to sink again into gravity. They did not free us from Earth to doom us to another earth! That is literalism—scientific fundamentalism—a dreadful mental myopia. Our origin was on a planet, in darkness and misery, yes, but that is not our destination! How could it be?

“Our ancestors spoke of the Destination as a world, because they knew nothing else. They had lived only in darkness, in filth, in fear, dragged down by gravity. When they tried to imagine bliss, they could only imagine a better, brighter world, and so they called it a ‘new earth.’ But we can see the meaning of that obscure symbol, and translate it into truth: not a planet, a world, a place of darkness, fear, pain, and death—but the bright journey of mortal life into endless life, the unceasing, everlasting pilgrimage into unceasing, everlasting bliss. O my fellow angels! our voyage is sacred, and it is eternal!”

“Ahh,” sighed the forest leaves.

“Ah!” said Luis, watching and listening in his homespace with Bingdi and several friends, known among themselves as the Turd Group.

“Hah!” said Hiroshi, watching and listening in his homespace with Hsing.

“Diamant asked me yesterday about an anomaly he noticed in the acceleration figures. He’s been following up on it for a couple of tendays.”

“Lead him astray,” Hiroshi said, comparing two sets of figures.

“I will not.”

After some minutes he said, “What will you do?”

“Nothing.”

His hands were flickering over the workboard. “Leaving it to me.”

“If you choose.”

“I have no choice.”

He worked on. Hsing worked on.

She stopped working and said, “When I was about ten I had a terrible dream. I dreamed I was in one of the cargo bays, wandering around, and I realised that there was a little hole in the wall, in the skin of the ship. A hole in the world. It was very small. Nothing was happening, but I knew what had to happen was that all the air would rush out the hole, because outside was vacuum. The nothing outside the ship. So I put my hand over the hole. My hand covered it. But if I took my hand away, I knew the air would begin to rush out. I called and called, but nobody was near. Nobody heard. And finally I thought I had to go get help, and tried to take my hand off the hole, but I couldn’t. It was held there. By the nothing outside.”

“A terrible dream,” Hiroshi said. As she spoke he had turned from the workboard and sat facing her with his hands on his knees, straight-backed, expressionless. “Do you recall it because you feel yourself in a similar position now?”

“No. I see you in that position.”

He considered this awhile. “And do you see a way out of that position?”

“Shout for help.”

He shook his head very slightly.

“Hiroshi, one or another of the students or the engineers is going to find out what you’ve been doing and talk about it before you can mislead, or co-opt, or silence them. In fact, I think it’s already happening. Diamant’s been going after this as if he’s trying to prove something. He’s very bright and extremely anti-authoritarian—I was in classes with him. He will not be easy to mislead or co-opt.”

He made no reply.

“As I was,” she added, dryly but without rancor.

“What do you mean by ‘shout for help’?”

“Tell him the truth.”

“Only him?”

She shook her head. She said in a low voice, “Tell the truth.”

“Hsing,” he said, “I know you think our tactics are mistaken. I’m grateful to you for bringing up your disagreement so seldom, and only with me. I wish we could agree on what is right. But I cannot put the power to change our course into the hands of the cultists until it is literally too late for them to do so.”