Ursula LeGuin - Rocannon ' s world

Rocannon's puzzled ethnological enthusiasm revived. These people were master builders. Every surface in the vast building was smooth and every joint precise; the conception was splendid and the execution faultless. Only a high culture could have achieved this. But never had he met a highly-cultured race so unresponsive. After all, why, had they brought him and the others here? Had they, in their silent angelic arrogance, saved the wanderers from some danger of the night? Or did they use other species as slaves? If so, it was queer how they had ignored his apparent immunity to their paralyzing agent. Perhaps they communicated entirely without words; but he inclined to believe, in this unbelievable palace, that the explanations might lie in the fact of an intelligence that was simply outside human scope. He went on, finding

in the inner wall of the torus-passage a third door, this time very low, so that he had to stoop, and a Winged One must

have to crawl.

Inside was the same warm, yellowish, sweet-smelling gloom, but here stirring, muttering, susurrating with a steady soft murmur of voices and slight motions of innumerable bodies and dragging wings. The eye of the dome, far up, was golden.

A long ramp spiraled at a gentle slant around the wall clear up to the drum of the dome. Here and there on the ramp movement was visible, and twice a figure, tiny from below, spread its wings and flew soundlessly across the great cylinder of dusty golden air. As he started across the hall to the foot of the ramp, something fell from midway up the spiral, landing with a

Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD

hard dry crack. He passed close by it. It was the corpse of one of the Winged Ones. Though the impact had smashed the skull, no blood was to be seen. The body was small, the wings apparently not

fully formed.

He went doggedly on and started up the

ramp.

Ten meters or so above the floor he came to a triangular niche in the wall in which Winged Ones crouched, again short and small ones, with wrinkled wings. There were nine of them, grouped regularly, three and three, and three at even intervals, around a large pale bulk that Rocannon peered at a while before he made out the muzzle and the open, empty eyes. It was a windsteed, alive, paralyzed.

Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD

The little delicately carved mouths of nine Winged Ones bent to it again and again,

kissing it, kissing it.

Another crash on the floor across the hall. This Rocannon glanced at as he passed at a quiet run. It was the drained withered

body of a barilo.

He crossed the high ornate torus-passage and threaded his way as quickly and softly as he could among the sleep-standing figures in the hall. He came out into the courtyard. It was empty. Slanting white sunlight shone on the pavement. His companions were gone. They had been dragged away from the larvae, there in the

domed hall, to suck dry.

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ROCANNON'S KNEES gave way. He sat down on the polished red pavement, and tried to repress his sick fear enough to think what to do. What to do. He must go back into the-dome and try to bring out Mogien and Yahan and Kyo. At the thought of going back in there among the tall angelic figures whose noble heads held brains degenerated or specialized to the level of insects, he felt a cold prickling at the back of his neck; but he had to do it. His friends were in there and he had to get them out. Were the larvae and their nurses in the dome sleepy enough to let him?' He quit asking himself questions. But first he must check the outer wall all the way around, for if there was no gate, there was no use. He could not carry his friends over

a fifteen-foot wall.

There were probably three castes, he thought as he went down the silent perfect street: nurses for the larvae in the dome, builders and hunters in the outer rooms, and in these houses perhaps the fertile ones, the egglayers and hatchers. The two that had given water would be nurses, keeping the paralyzed prey alive till the larvae sucked it dry. They had given water to dead Raho. How could he not have seen that they were mindless? He had wanted to think them intelligent because they looked so angelically human. Strike

Species? 4, he told his drowned Handbook, savagely. Just then, something dashed across the street at the next crossing—a low, brown creature, whether large or small he could not tell in the unreal perspective of identical housefronts.

It clearly was no part of the city. At least the angel-insects had vermin infesting their fine hive. He went on quickly and steadily through the utter silence, reached the outer wall, and turned left along it.

A little way ahead of him, close to the jointless silvery base of the wall, crouched one of the brown animals. On all fours it came no higher than his knee. Unlike most low-intelligence animals on this planet, it was wingless. It crouched there looking terrified, and he simply detoured around it, trying not to frighten it into defiance, and

Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD

went on. As far as he could see ahead there was no gate in the curving wall.

"Lord," cried a faint voice from nowhere.

"Lord!"

"Kyo!" he shouted, turning, his voice clapping off the walls. Nothing moved. White walls, black shadows, straight lines,

silence.

The little brown animal came hopping toward him. "Lord," it cried thinly, "Lord, O come, come. O come, Lord!"

Rocannon stood staring. The little creature sat down on its strong haunches in front of him. It panted, and its heartbeat shook its furry chest, against which tiny black hands were folded. Black, terrified eyes looked up at him. It repeated in quavering

Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD

Common Speech, "Lord..."

Rocannon knelt. His thoughts raced as he regarded the creature; at last he said very gently, "I do not know what to call you."

"O come," said the little creature, quavering. "Lords—lords. Come!"

"The other lords—my friends?"

"Friends," said the brown creature. "Friends. Castle. Lords, castle, fire, windsteed, day, night, fire. O come!"

"I'll come," said Rocannon.

It hopped off at once, and he followed. Back down the radial street it went, then one side-street to the north, and in one of the twelve gates of the dome. There in the red-paved court lay his four companions

Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD

as he had left them. Later on, when he had time to think, he realized that he had come out from the dome into a different courtyard and so missed them.

Five more of the brown creatures waited there, in a rather ceremonious group near Yahan. Rocannon knelt again to minimize his height and made as good a bow as he could. "Hail, small lords," he said.

"Hail, hail," said all the furry little people. Then one, whose fur was black around the

muzzle, said, "Kiemhrir."

"You are the Kiemhrir?" They bowed in quick imitation of his bow. "I am Rokanan Olhor. We come from the north, from Angien, from Hallan Castle."

"Castle," said Blackface. His tiny piping

Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD

voice trembled with earnestness. He pondered, scratched Ms head. "Days, night, years, years," he said. "Lords go. Years, years, years. Kiemhrir ungo." He looked hopefully at Rocannon.

"The Kiemhrir. stayed here?" Rocannon

asked.

"Stay!" cried Blackface with surprising volume. "Stay! Stay!" And the others all murmured as if in delight, "Stay."

"Day," Blackface said decisively, pointing up at this day's sun, "lords come. Go?"

"Yes, we would go. Can you help us?"

"Help!" said the Kiemher, latching onto the word in the same delighted, avid way.