Read Online The wind's twelve quarters - vol 2 by Ursula K. Le Guin - Free Book Online
Authors: Ursula K. Le Guin
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helpless man in a trap. Perhaps, like Tomiko, they had seen that
the trap itself, his crass and cruel egotism, was their own construction, not
his. They had built the cage and locked him in it, and like a caged ape he
threw filth out through the bars. If, meeting him, they had offered trust, if
they had been strong enough to offer him love, how might he have appeared to
them?
None
of them could have done so, and it was too late now. Given time, given
solitude, Tomiko might have built up with him a slow resonance of feeling, a
consonance of trust, a harmony; but there was no time, their job must be done.
There was not room enough for the cultivation of so great a thing, and they
must make do with sympathy, with pity, the small change of love. Even that much
had given her strength, but it was nowhere near enough for him. She could see
in his flayed face now his savage resentment of their curiosity, even of her
pity.
'Go
lie down, that gash is bleeding again,' she said, and he obeyed her.
Next
morning they packed up, melted down the sprayform hangar and living quarters,
lifted Gum on
mechanical drive and took her halfway round World 4470, over the red and green
lands, the many warm green seas. They had picked out a likely spot on Continent
G: a prairie, twenty thousand square kilos of windswept graminiformes. No
forest was within a hundred kilos of the site, and there were no lone trees or
groves on the plain. The plant-forms occurred only in large species-colonies,
never intermingled, except for certain tiny ubiquitous saprophytes and
spore-bearers. The team sprayed holomeld over structure forms, and by evening
of the thirty-two-hour day were settled in to the new camp. Eskwana was still
asleep and Porlock still sedated, but everyone else was cheerful. 'You can
breathe here!' they kept saying.
Osden
got on his feet and went shakily to the doorway; leaning there he looked
through twilight over the dim reaches of the swaying grass that was not grass.
There was a faint, sweet odor of pollen on the wind; no sound but the soft,
vast sibilance of wind. His bandaged head cocked a little, the empath stood
motionless for a long time. Darkness came, and the stars, lights in the windows
of the distant house of Man. The wind had ceased, there was no sound. He
listened.
In
the long night Haito Tomiko listened. She lay still and heard the blood in her
arteries, the breathing of sleepers, the wind blowing, the dark veins running,
the dreams advancing, the vast static of stars increasing as the universe died
slowly, the sound of death walking. She struggled out of her bed, fled the tiny
solitude of her cubicle. Eskwana alone slept. Porlock lay straitjacketed,
raving softly in his obscure native tongue. Olleroo and Jenny Chong were
playing cards, grim-faced. Poswet To was in the therapy niche, plugged in.
Asnanifoil was drawing a mandala, the Third Pattern of the Primes. Mannon and
Harfex were sitting up with Osden.
She
changed the bandages on Osden's head. His lank, reddish hair, where she had not
had to shave it, looked strange. It was salted with white, now. Her hands shook
as she worked.
Nobody
had yet said anything.
'How
can the fear be here too?' she said, and her voice rang flat and false in the
terrific silence.
'It's
not just the trees; the grasses too...'
'But
we're twelve thousand kilos from where we were this morning, we left it on the
other side of the planet.'
'It's
all one,' Osden said. 'One big green thought. How long does it take a thought
to get from one side of your brain to the other?'
'It
doesn't think. It isn't thinking,' Harfex said, lifelessly. 'It's merely a
network of processes. The branches, the epiphytic growths, the roots with those
nodal junctures between individuals: they must all be capable of transmitting
electrochemical impulses. There are no individual plants, then, properly
speaking. Even the pollen is part of the linkage, no doubt, a sort of windborne
sentience, connecting overseas. But it is not
the trap itself, his crass and cruel egotism, was their own construction, not
his. They had built the cage and locked him in it, and like a caged ape he
threw filth out through the bars. If, meeting him, they had offered trust, if
they had been strong enough to offer him love, how might he have appeared to
them?
None
of them could have done so, and it was too late now. Given time, given
solitude, Tomiko might have built up with him a slow resonance of feeling, a
consonance of trust, a harmony; but there was no time, their job must be done.
There was not room enough for the cultivation of so great a thing, and they
must make do with sympathy, with pity, the small change of love. Even that much
had given her strength, but it was nowhere near enough for him. She could see
in his flayed face now his savage resentment of their curiosity, even of her
pity.
'Go
lie down, that gash is bleeding again,' she said, and he obeyed her.
Next
morning they packed up, melted down the sprayform hangar and living quarters,
lifted Gum on
mechanical drive and took her halfway round World 4470, over the red and green
lands, the many warm green seas. They had picked out a likely spot on Continent
G: a prairie, twenty thousand square kilos of windswept graminiformes. No
forest was within a hundred kilos of the site, and there were no lone trees or
groves on the plain. The plant-forms occurred only in large species-colonies,
never intermingled, except for certain tiny ubiquitous saprophytes and
spore-bearers. The team sprayed holomeld over structure forms, and by evening
of the thirty-two-hour day were settled in to the new camp. Eskwana was still
asleep and Porlock still sedated, but everyone else was cheerful. 'You can
breathe here!' they kept saying.
Osden
got on his feet and went shakily to the doorway; leaning there he looked
through twilight over the dim reaches of the swaying grass that was not grass.
There was a faint, sweet odor of pollen on the wind; no sound but the soft,
vast sibilance of wind. His bandaged head cocked a little, the empath stood
motionless for a long time. Darkness came, and the stars, lights in the windows
of the distant house of Man. The wind had ceased, there was no sound. He
listened.
In
the long night Haito Tomiko listened. She lay still and heard the blood in her
arteries, the breathing of sleepers, the wind blowing, the dark veins running,
the dreams advancing, the vast static of stars increasing as the universe died
slowly, the sound of death walking. She struggled out of her bed, fled the tiny
solitude of her cubicle. Eskwana alone slept. Porlock lay straitjacketed,
raving softly in his obscure native tongue. Olleroo and Jenny Chong were
playing cards, grim-faced. Poswet To was in the therapy niche, plugged in.
Asnanifoil was drawing a mandala, the Third Pattern of the Primes. Mannon and
Harfex were sitting up with Osden.
She
changed the bandages on Osden's head. His lank, reddish hair, where she had not
had to shave it, looked strange. It was salted with white, now. Her hands shook
as she worked.
Nobody
had yet said anything.
'How
can the fear be here too?' she said, and her voice rang flat and false in the
terrific silence.
'It's
not just the trees; the grasses too...'
'But
we're twelve thousand kilos from where we were this morning, we left it on the
other side of the planet.'
'It's
all one,' Osden said. 'One big green thought. How long does it take a thought
to get from one side of your brain to the other?'
'It
doesn't think. It isn't thinking,' Harfex said, lifelessly. 'It's merely a
network of processes. The branches, the epiphytic growths, the roots with those
nodal junctures between individuals: they must all be capable of transmitting
electrochemical impulses. There are no individual plants, then, properly
speaking. Even the pollen is part of the linkage, no doubt, a sort of windborne
sentience, connecting overseas. But it is not
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