Ursula LeGuin: Rocannon ' s world

It was full night; she raised her eyes joyfully to the stars and the single moon shining, little Heliki brightening in the west. But the Clay-folk were all about her still, making her climb now into some new kind of cart or cave, she did not know which. It was small, full of little blinking lights like rushlights, very narrow and shining after the great dank caverns and the starlit night. Now another needle was stuck hi her, and they told her she would have to

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

be tied down hi a sort of flat chair, tied down head and hand and foot. "I will not,"

said Semley.

But when she saw that the four daymen who were to be her guides let themselves be tied down first, she submitted. The others left. There was a roaring sound, and a long silence; a great weight that could not be seen pressed upon her. Then there was no weight; no sound; nothing at

all.

"Am I dead?" asked Semley.

"Oh no, Lady," said a voice she did not

like.

Opening her eyes, she saw the white face bent over her, the wide lips pulled back, the eyes like little stones. Her bonds had

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

fallen away from her, and she leaped up. She was weightless, bodiless; she felt herself only a gust of terror on the wind.

"We will not hurt you," said the sullen voice or voices. "Only let us touch you, Lady. We would like to touch your hair. Let us touch

your hair."

The round cart they were in trembled a little. Outside its one window lay blank night, or was it mist, or nothing at all? One long night, they had said. Very long. She sat motionless and endured the touch of their heavy gray hands on her hair. Later they would touch her hands and feet and arms, and one her throat: at that she set her teeth and stood up, and they drew

back.

"We have not hurt you, Lady," they said.

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

She shook her head.

When they bade her, she lay down again in the chair that bound her down; and when light flashed golden, at the window, she would have wept at the sight, but

faulted first.

"Well," said Rocannon, "now at least we

know what she is."

"I wish there were some way of knowing who she is," the curator mumbled. "She wants something we've got here in the Museum, is that what the trogs say?"

"Now, don't call 'em trogs," Rocannon said conscientiously; as a hilfer, an ethnologist of the High Intelligence Life Forms, he was supposed to resist such words. "They're not pretty, but they're Status C Allies. I

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

wonder why the Commission picked them to develop? Before even contacting all the HILF species? I'll bet the survey was from Centaurus—Centaurans always like nocturnals and cave-dwellers. I'd have backed Species II, here, I think."

The troglodytes seem to be rather in awe

of her."

"Aren't you?"

Ketho glanced at the tall woman again, then reddened and laughed. "Well, in a way. I never saw such a beautiful alien type in eighteen years here on New South Georgia. I never saw such a beautiful woman anywhere, in fact. She looks like a goddess." The red now reached the top of his bald head, for Ketho was a shy curator, not given to hyperbole. But Rocannon

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

nodded soberly, agreeing.

"I wish we could talk to her without those tr—Gdemiar as interpreters. But there's no help for it." Rocannon went toward their visitor, and when she turned her splendid face to him he bowed down very deeply, going right down to to the floor on one knee, his head bowed and his eyes shut. This was what he called his All-purpose Intercultural Curtsey, and he performed it with some grace. When he came erect again the beautiful woman smiled and

spoke.

"She say, Hail, Lord of Stars," growled one of her squat escorts in Pidgin-Galactic.

"Hail, Lady of the Angyar," Rocannon replied. "In what way can we of the Museum serve the lady?"

Across the troglodytes' growling her voice

ran like a brief silver wind.

"She say, Please give her necklace which treasure her blood-kin-forebears long

long."

"Which necklace?" he asked, and understanding him, she pointed to the central display of the case before them, a magnificent thing, a chain of yellow gold, massive but very delicate in workmanship, set with one big hot-blue sapphire. Rocannon's eyebrows went up, and Ketho at his shoulder murmured, "She's got good taste. That's the Fomalhaut Necklace—famous bit of work."

She smiled at the two men, and again spoke to them over the heads of the troglodytes.

"She say, O Starlords, Elder and Younger Dwellers in House of Treasures, this treasure her one. Long long time. Thank

you."

"How did we get the thing, Ketho?"

"Wait; let me look it up in the catalogue. I've got it here. Here. It came from these trogs—trolls—whatever they are: Gdemiar. They have a bargain-obsession, it says; we had to let 'em buy the ship they came here on, an AD-4. This was part payment.

It's their own handiwork."

"And I'll bet they can't do this kind of work anymore, since they've been steered to

Industrial."

"But they seem to feel the thing is hers, not theirs or ours. It must be important, Rocanno, or they wouldn't have given up this time-span to her errand. Why, the objective lapse between here and Fomalhaut must be considerable!"

"Several years, no doubt," said the hilfer, who was used to starjumping. "Not very far. Well, neither the Handbook nor the Guide gives me enough data to base a decent guess on. These species obviously haven't been properly studied at all. The little fellows may be showing her simple courtesy. Or an interspecies war may depend on this damn sapphire. Perhaps her desire rules them, because they consider themselves totally inferior to her. Or despite appearances she may be then: prisoner, their decoy. How can we tell? . . . Can you give the things away, Ketho?"

"Oh yes. All the Exotica are technically on loan, not our property, since these claims come up now and then. We seldom argue. Peace above all, until the War comes."

"Then I'd say give it to her."

Ketho smiled. "It's a privilege," he said. Unlocking the case, he lifted out the great golden chain; then, in his shyness, he held it out to Rocannon, saying, "You give it to

her."

So the blue jewel first lay, for a moment, in

Rocannon's hand.

His mind was not on it; he turned straight to the beautiful, alien woman, with his handful of blue fire and gold. She did not raise her hands to take it, but bent her head, and he slipped the necklace over

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

her hair. It lay like a burning fuse along her golden-brown throat. She looked up from it with such pride, delight, and gratitude in her face that Rocannon stood wordless, and the little curator murmured hurriedly in his own language, "You're welcome, you're very welcome." She bowed her golden head to him and to Rocannon. Then, turning, she nodded to her squat guards—or captors?—and, drawing her worn blue cloak about her, paced down the long hall and was gone. Ketho and Rocannon stood looking after her.

"What I feel." Rocannon began.

"Well?" Ketho inquired hoarsely, after a

long pause.

"What I feel sometimes is that I. meeting these people from worlds we know so little

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

of, you know, sometimes. that I have as it were blundered through the corner of a legend, of a tragic myth, maybe, which I do

not understand. ."

"Yes," said the curator, clearing his throat. "I wonder. I wonder what her name is."

Sernley the Fair, Semley the Golden, Semley of the Necklace. The Clayfolk had bent to her will, and so had even the Starlords in that terrible place where the Clay-folk had taken her, the city at the end of the night. They had bowed to her, and given her gladly her treasure from amongst their own.