Read Online The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Ursula K. Le Guin
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and relax, pulse out, draw inâwould begin again, first one vague figure then another. A soft, soft sound accompanied the movements, a wordless rhythmic murmur, breath-music seemingly without source. Across the room one figure grew slowly up and up, whitish, undulant: a man or woman was afoot, making the arm gestures while bending forward or back or sideways from the waist. Two or three others rose in the same bonelessly supple way and stood reaching and swaying, never lifting a foot from the ground, more than ever like rooted sea creatures, anemones, a kelp forest, while the almost inaudible, ceaseless chanting pulsed like the sea swell, lifting and sinking...
Light, noiseâa hard, loud, white blast as if the roof had been blown off. Bare square bulbs glared dangling from dusty vaultings. Sutty sat aghast as all around her people leapt to their feet and began to prance, kick, do jumping jacks, while a harsh voice shouted, "One! Two! One! Two! One! Two!" She stared round at Iziezi, who sat on her bench, jerking like a marionette, punching the air with her fists, one, two, one, two. The one-legged man next to her shouted out the beat, slamming his crutch against the bench in time.
Catching Sutty's eye, Iziezi gestured, Up!
Sutty stood up, obedient but disgusted. To achieve such a beautiful group meditation and then destroy it with this stupid muscle buildingâwhat kind of people were these?
Two women in blue and tan were striding down the ramp after a man in blue and tan. The Monitor. His eyes went straight to her.
She stood among the others, who were all motionless now, except for the quick rise and fall of breath.
Nobody said anything.
The ban on servile address, on greetings, goodbyes, any phrase acknowledging presence or departure, left holes in the texture of social process, gaps crossed only by a slight effort, a recurrent strain. City Akans had grown up with the artificiality and no doubt did not feel it, but Sutty still did, and it seemed these people did too. The stiff silence enforced by the three standing on the ramp put the others at a disadvantage. They had no way to defuse it. The one-legged man at last cleared his throat and said with some bravado, "We are performing hygienic aerobic exercises as prescribed in the
Health Manual for Producer-Consumers of the Corporation.
"
The two women with the Monitor looked at each other, bored, sour, I-told-you-so. The Monitor spoke to Sutty across the air between them as if no one else were there: "You came here to practice aerobics?"
"We have very similar exercises in my homeland," she said, her dismay and indignation concentrating itself on him in a burst of eloquence. "I'm very glad to find a group here to practice them with. Exercise is often most profitable when performed with a sincerely interested group. Or so we believe in my homeland on Terra. And of course I hope to learn new exercises from my kind hosts here."
The Monitor, with no acknowledgment of any kind except a moment's pause, turned and followed the blue-and-tan women up the ramp. The women went out. He turned and stood just inside the doors, watching.
"Continue!" the one-legged man shouted. "One! Two! One! Two!" Everybody punched and kicked and bounced furiously for the next five or ten minutes. Sutty's fury was genuine at first; then it boiled off with the silly exercises, and she wanted to laugh, to laugh off the shock.
She pushed Iziezi's chair up the ramp, found her shoes among the row of shoes. The Monitor still stood there. She smiled at him. "You should join us," she said.
His gaze was impersonal, appraising, entirely without response. The Corporation was looking at her.
She felt her face change, felt her eyes flick over him with dismissive incredulity as if seeing something small, uncouth, a petty monster. Wrong! wrong! But it was done. She was past him, outside in the cold evening air.
She kept hold of the chair back to help Iziezi zigzag bumpily down the street and to
Light, noiseâa hard, loud, white blast as if the roof had been blown off. Bare square bulbs glared dangling from dusty vaultings. Sutty sat aghast as all around her people leapt to their feet and began to prance, kick, do jumping jacks, while a harsh voice shouted, "One! Two! One! Two! One! Two!" She stared round at Iziezi, who sat on her bench, jerking like a marionette, punching the air with her fists, one, two, one, two. The one-legged man next to her shouted out the beat, slamming his crutch against the bench in time.
Catching Sutty's eye, Iziezi gestured, Up!
Sutty stood up, obedient but disgusted. To achieve such a beautiful group meditation and then destroy it with this stupid muscle buildingâwhat kind of people were these?
Two women in blue and tan were striding down the ramp after a man in blue and tan. The Monitor. His eyes went straight to her.
She stood among the others, who were all motionless now, except for the quick rise and fall of breath.
Nobody said anything.
The ban on servile address, on greetings, goodbyes, any phrase acknowledging presence or departure, left holes in the texture of social process, gaps crossed only by a slight effort, a recurrent strain. City Akans had grown up with the artificiality and no doubt did not feel it, but Sutty still did, and it seemed these people did too. The stiff silence enforced by the three standing on the ramp put the others at a disadvantage. They had no way to defuse it. The one-legged man at last cleared his throat and said with some bravado, "We are performing hygienic aerobic exercises as prescribed in the
Health Manual for Producer-Consumers of the Corporation.
"
The two women with the Monitor looked at each other, bored, sour, I-told-you-so. The Monitor spoke to Sutty across the air between them as if no one else were there: "You came here to practice aerobics?"
"We have very similar exercises in my homeland," she said, her dismay and indignation concentrating itself on him in a burst of eloquence. "I'm very glad to find a group here to practice them with. Exercise is often most profitable when performed with a sincerely interested group. Or so we believe in my homeland on Terra. And of course I hope to learn new exercises from my kind hosts here."
The Monitor, with no acknowledgment of any kind except a moment's pause, turned and followed the blue-and-tan women up the ramp. The women went out. He turned and stood just inside the doors, watching.
"Continue!" the one-legged man shouted. "One! Two! One! Two!" Everybody punched and kicked and bounced furiously for the next five or ten minutes. Sutty's fury was genuine at first; then it boiled off with the silly exercises, and she wanted to laugh, to laugh off the shock.
She pushed Iziezi's chair up the ramp, found her shoes among the row of shoes. The Monitor still stood there. She smiled at him. "You should join us," she said.
His gaze was impersonal, appraising, entirely without response. The Corporation was looking at her.
She felt her face change, felt her eyes flick over him with dismissive incredulity as if seeing something small, uncouth, a petty monster. Wrong! wrong! But it was done. She was past him, outside in the cold evening air.
She kept hold of the chair back to help Iziezi zigzag bumpily down the street and to
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