Ursula Le Guin - Paradises Lost

“Well, maybe we can’t, but we do have a job to do,” Luis said. “They sent us to learn about that earth. And to tell them what we learn. Learning was important to them. Discovery. They named our ship Discovery .”

“Exactly! The discovery of bliss! Learning the True Way! The archangels are sending back what we’ve learned all the time, you know, Luis. We’re teaching them the way—just as they hoped we would. The goal is a spiritual goal. Don’t you see, we’ve attained the Destination? Why do we have to stop our beautiful voyage at some evil, terrible, earthen place and do eva?”

5-Nova Luis was elected Chair of the Plenary Council. The general trust he had earned as a conciliator, negotiator, and peacemaker during the troubles of the past half-year made his election inevitable, and popular even among the angels. His year in office was indeed one of reconciliation and healing.

At the age of eighty-seven, 4-Patel Inbliss suffered a massive stroke and began to die, amid a continuous frenzy of tearful prayer, song, and rejoicing. For thirteen days the celebrants occupied all the corridors surrounding the Kim homespace in Quadrant One, where Inbliss was born and had lived all his life. As his dying went on and on, weariness and tension grew among the mourner-rejoicers. People feared an outbreak of hysteria and violence like that which had followed the announcement of Arrival. Many non-angel occupants of the quadrant went to stay with friends or relatives in other quads.

When at last an archangel announced that the Father had passed to Eternal Bliss, there was much weeping in the corridors, but no violence, except for a man in Quad Four named 5-Garr Joyful who beat his wife and her daughter to death “so that they could enter Eternal Bliss with the Father,” he said; he omitted, however, to kill himself.

The Temenos was filled solid for the funeral of Patel Inbliss. There were many speeches, but their tone was subdued. He had no child to deliver the final speech. The archangel Van Wing sang the dark devotional, “Eye, what do you see?” to end the ceremony. The crowd dispersed in the silence of exhaustion. The corridors that night were empty.

5-Canaval Hiroshi’s child was born to his wife 5-Liu Hsing, and was given the name 6-Canaval Alejo by his father.

Though Nova Luis was not practicing medicine during his term as council chair, Hsing had asked him to attend the birth, and he did so. It was an entirely uneventful delivery.

When he came the next day to see his patients, he sat for a while with them. Hiroshi was on the Bridge. Hsing’s milk had not come in yet, but the baby was rooting diligently at her breast or anything else that offered itself. “What did you want me for?” Luis said. “You obviously know how to have a baby a lot better than I do.”

“I guess I found out,” she said. “ Learn by doing! —remember Teacher Mimi in third grade?” She was sitting up in bed, still looking tired, triumphant, flushed, and soft. She looked down at the small head covered with very fine black hair. “It’s so tiny, I can’t believe it’s the same species,” she said. “What do you call this stuff I’m leaking?”

“Colostrum. It’s the only thing his species eats.”

“Amazing,” she said, very softly touching the black fuzz with the back of a finger.

“Amazing,” Luis agreed soberly.

“Oh Luis, it was so—To have you here. I did need you.”

“It was my pleasure,” he said, still soberly.

The baby went through some spasms, and was discovered to have had a miniature bowel movement. “Well done, well done. He’ll be a member of the Turd Group yet,” Luis said. “Give him here, I’ll clean him up. Well, will you look at that? A bobwob! A veritable bobwob! A fine specimen, too.”

“It’s a gowbondo,” Hsing whispered. He looked up at her and saw she was in tears.

He laid the baby, swallowed up by its clean diaper, in her arms; she went on crying. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“New mothers cry, flatface.”

She wept very bitterly for a moment, gasping, then got control.

“Luis, what is—have you noticed anything about Hiroshi—”

“As a doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

He said nothing for a while, then, “He won’t go to a physician, so you’re asking me for a spot diagnosis—is that it?”

“I guess so. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. Has he been particularly tired?”

She nodded. “He fainted twice last week,” she said in a whisper.

“Well, my guess would be congestive heart failure. I know a good deal about it because as an asthmatic I’m liable to it myself, though I haven’t managed to achieve it yet. You can live with it for a long time. There are medicines he can take, various treatments and regimes. Send him to Regis Chandra at the Hospital.”

“I’ll try,” she whispered.

“Do it.” Luis spoke sternly. “Tell him that he owes his son a father.”

He stood up to leave. Hsing said, “Luis—”

“Take it easy, don’t worry. It’ll be all right. This fellow will see to it.” He touched the baby’s ear.

“Luis, when we land, will you go outside?”

“Of course I will, if we can. What do you think I’m insisting on all this education and training for? To watch a bunch of evajocks running around in space suits on a vidscreen?”

“It seems like so many people want to stay here.”

“Well, we’ll find out when we get there. It’s going to be interesting. It already is interesting. We found out what a whole section in Storage D is. We thought it was very heavy protective clothing, but the pieces were too large. It’s temporary livingspaces. You prop them up somehow and live inside them. And there are inflatable toruses which Bose thinks are meant to float on water. Ships . Imagine enough water to float a ship on! No. I wouldn’t miss it for the world…I’ll look in tomorrow.”

In the first quarter of Year 163, all people over sixteen were required to declare Intent Upon Arrival in an open registry on the innet. They could change their declaration any time, and it would not be binding upon them until a moment of ultimate decision, to be announced after investigations of the habitability of the planet were complete and had been fully tested.

They were asked:

If the planet proved habitable, would you be willing to be part of a team visiting the surface to gather information?

Would you be willing to live on the planet while the ship remained in orbit?

If the ship left, would you be willing to stay on the planet as colonists?

They were asked to state their opinion:

How long should the ship stay in orbit as a support to the people on the planet?

And finally, if the planet was not accessible or not habitable, or if you chose to stay on the ship and not visit or colonise the planet:

If and when the ship left, should it return to the planet of origin, or continue on into space?

A return journey to Earth, according to Canaval and others, might take as little as seventy-five years if the whiplash effect of the gravity sink could be repeated. Some engineers were skeptical, but the navigators were confident that Discovery could return to Earth within a lifetime or two. This assertion met with little enthusiasm except among the navigators.

The open registry of Intent Upon Arrival, accessible on the innet at all times, went through interesting fluctuations. At first the number of people willing to visit the planet or live on it while the ship stayed in orbit—Visitors, they were dubbed—was pretty large. Very few, however, said they would be willing to stay there when the ship left. These diehards got tagged Outsiders, and accepted the name.