Ursula Le Guin - Unlocking The Air

The streetlights had come on. Roukh Square was sparsely lighted by tall, old cast-iron standards with double globes that shed a soft light high in the air. Through that serene light, which seemed to darken the sky, came drifting small, dry flecks of snow.

The flecks melted to droplets on Stefana’s dark short hair and on the scarf Bruna had tied over her fair short hair to keep her ears warm. When Stefana stopped at last, Bruna stood up as tall as she could, and because they were standing on the highest edge of the Square, in front of the old dispensary, by craning, she could see the great crowd, the faces like snowflakes, countless. She saw the evening darkening, the snow falling, and no way out, and no way home. She was lost in the forest. The palace, whose few lighted windows shone dully above the crowd, was silent. No one came out, no one went in. It was the seat of government; it held the power. It was the powerhouse, the powder magazine, the bomb. Power had been compressed, jammed into those old reddish walls, packed and forced into them over years, over centuries, till if it exploded, it would burst with horrible violence, hurling pointed shards of stone, And out here in the twilight, in the open, there was nothing but soft faces with shining eyes, soft little breasts and stomachs and thighs protected only by bits of cloth. She looked down at her feet on the pavement. They were cold. She would have worn her boots if she had thought it was going to snow, if Fana hadn’t hurried her so. She felt cold, lost, lonely to the point of tears. She set her jaw and set her lips and stood firm on her cold feet on the cold stone. There was a sound, sparse, sparkling, faint, like the snow crystals. The crowd had gone quite silent, swept by low laughing murmurs, and through the silence ran that small, discontinuous silvery sound.

"What is that?" asked Bruna, beginning to smile. "Why are they doing that?"

Surely you don’t want me to describe a committee meeting? It meets as usual on Friday at I I in the morning in the basement of the Economics Building. At 11 on Friday night, however, it is still meeting, and there are a good many onlookers, several million, in fact, thanks to the foreigner with the camera, a television camera with a long snout, a one-eyed snout that peers and sucks up what it sees. The cameraman focuses for a long time on the tall dark-haired girl who speaks so eloquently in favor of a certain decision concerning bringing a certain man back to the capital. But the millions of onlookers will not understand her argument, which is spoken in her obscure language and is not translated for them. All they will know is how the eye snout of the camera lingered on her young face, sticking it.

Two hours later, the cameraman was long gone, but the committee was still meeting.

"No, listen," she said, "seriously, this is the moment when the betrayal is always made. Free elections, yes; but if we don’t look past that now, when will we? And who’ll do it? Are we a country or a client state changing patrons?"

"You have to go one step at a time, consolidating—"

"When the dam breaks? You have to shoot the rapids! All at once!"

"It’s a matter of choosing direction—"

"Exactly, direction. Not being carried senselessly by events."

"But all the events are sweeping in one direction."

"They always do. Back! You’ll see!"

"Sweeping to what, to dependence on the West instead of the East, like Fana said?"

"Dependence is inevitable-realignment, but not occupation—"

"The hell it won’t be occupation! Occupation by money, materialism, their markets, their values. You don’t think we can hold out against them, do you? What’s social justice to a color-TV set? That battle’s lost before it’s fought. Where do we stand?"

"Where we always stood. In an absolutely untenable position."

"He’s right. Seriously, we are exactly where we always were. Nobody else is. We are. They have caught up with us, for a moment, for this moment, and so we can act. The untenable position is the center of power. Now. We can act now."

"To prevent color-TVzation? How? The dam’s broken! The goodies come flooding in. And we drown in them."

"Not if we establish the direction, the true direction, right now—"

"But will Rege listen to us? Why are. we turning back when we should be going forward? If we—"

"We have to establish—"

"No! We have to act! Freedom can be established only in the moment of freedom—" They were all shouting at once in their hoarse, worn-out voices. They had all been talking and listening and drinking bad coffee and living for days, for weeks, on love. Yes, on love; these are lovers’ quarrels. It is for love that he pleads, it is for love that she rages. It was always for love. That’s why the camera snout came poking and sucking into this dirty basement room where the lovers meet. It craves love, the sight of love; for if you can’t have the real thing, you can watch it on TV, and soon you don’t know the real thing from the images on the little screen where everything, as he said, can be done in two seconds. But the lovers know the difference.

This is a fairy tale, and you know that in the fairy tale, after it says that they lived happily ever after, there is no after. The evil enchantment was broken; the good servant received half the kingdom as his reward; the king ruled long and well. Remember the moment when the betrayal is made, and ask no questions. Do not ask if the poisoned fields grew white again with grain. Do not ask if the leaves of the forests grew green that spring. Do not ask what the maiden received as her reward. Remember the tale of Koshchey the Deathless, whose life was in a needle, and the needle was in an egg, and the egg was in a swan, and the swan was in an eagle, and the eagle was in a wolf, and the wolf was in the palace whose walls were built of the stones of power. Enchantment within enchantment! We are a long way from the egg that holds the needle that must be broken so Koshchey the Deathless can die. And so the tale ends. Thousands and thousands of people stood on the slanting pavement before the palace. Snow sparkled in the air, and the people sang. You know the song, that old song with words like land, love, free, in the language you have known the longest. Its words make stone part from stone, its words prevent tanks, its words transform the world, when it is sung at the right time by the right people, after enough people have died for singing it. A thousand doors opened in the walls of the palace. The soldiers laid down then- arms and sang. The evil enchantment was broken. The good king returned to his kingdom, and the people danced for joy on the stones of the city streets.

And we do not ask what happened after. But we can tell the story over, we can tell the story till we get it right.

"My daughter’s on the Committee of the Student Action Council," said Stefan Fabbre to his neighbor Florens Aske as they stood in a line outside the bakery on Pradinestrade. His tone of voice was complicated. I know. Erreskar saw her on the television," Aske said.

"She says they’ve decided that bringing Rege here is the only way to provide an immediate, credible transition. They think the army will accept him."

They shuffled forward a step.

Aske, an old man with a hard brown face and narrow eyes, stuck his lips out, thinking it over.

"You were in the Rege government," Fabbre said. Aske nodded. "Minister of education for a week," he said, and gave a bark like a sea lion – owp! – a cough or a laugh.

"Do you think he can pull it off ?" Aske pulled his grubby muffler closer round his neck and said, "Well, Rege is not stupid. But he’s old. What about that scientist, that physicist fellow?"