A Fisherman of the Inland Sea: Stories (14 page)

A long, softly throbbing pause, and another voice.

“They went from world to world, and each time they lost the world they left, lost it in time dilation, their friends getting
old and dying while they were in NAFAL flight. If there were a way to live in one’s own time, and yet move among the worlds,
they wanted to try it….”

“Staking everything on it,” the next voice took up the story, “because nothing works except what we give our souls to, nothing’s
safe except what we put at risk.”

A while, a little while; and a voice.

“It was like a game. It was like we were still in the
Shoby
at Ve Port just waiting before we went into NAFAL flight. But it was like we were at the brown planet too. At the same time.
And one of them was just pretend, and the other one wasn’t, but I didn’t know which. So it was like when you pretend in a
game. But I didn’t want to play. I didn’t know how.”

Another voice.

“If the churten principle were proved to be applicable to actual transilience of living, conscious beings, it would be a great
event in the mind of his people—for all people. A new understanding. A new partnership. A new way of being in the universe.
A wider freedom…. He wanted that very much. He wanted to be one of the
crew that first formed that partnership, the first people to be able to think this thought, and to … to relate it. But also
he was afraid of it. Maybe it wasn’t a true relation, maybe false, maybe only a dream. He didn’t know.”

It was not so cold, so dark, at their backs, as they sat round the fire. Was it the waves of Liden, hushing on the sand?

Another voice.

“She thought a lot about her people, too. About guilt, and expiation, and sacrifice. She wanted a lot to be on this flight
that might give people—more freedom. But it was different from what she thought it would be. What happened—What
happened
wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was that she came to be with people who gave
her
freedom. Without guilt. She wanted to stay with them, to be crew with them…. And with her son. Who was the first human being
to set foot on an unknown world.”

A long silence; but not deep, only as deep as the soft drum of the ship’s systems, steady and unconscious as the circulation
of the blood.

Another voice.

“They were thoughts in the mind; what else had they ever been? So they could be in Ve and at the brown planet, and desiring
flesh and entire spirit, and illusion and reality, all at once, as they’d always been. When he remembered this, his confusion
and fear ceased, for he knew that they couldn’t be lost.”

“They got lost. But they found the way,” said another voice, soft above the hum and hushing of the ship’s systems, in the
warm fresh air and light inside the solid walls and hulls.

Only nine voices had spoken, and they looked for the tenth; but the tenth had gone to sleep, thumb in mouth.

“That story was told and is yet to be told,” the mother said. “Go on. I’ll churten here with Rig.”

They left those two by the fire, and went to the
bridge, and then to the hatches to invite on board a crowd of anxious scientists, engineers, and officials of Ve Port and
the Ekumen, whose instruments had been assuring them that the
Shoby
had vanished, forty-four minutes ago, into non-existence, into silence. “What happened?” they asked. “What happened?” And
the Shobies looked at one another and said, “Well, it’s quite a story….”

“Power is the great drumming,” Aketa said. “The thunder. The noise of the waterfall that makes the electricity. It fills you
till there’s no room for anything else.”

Ket poured a few drops of water onto the ground, murmuring, “Drink, traveler.” She sprinkled pollen meal over the ground,
murmuring, “Eat, traveler.” She looked up at Iyananam, the mountain of power. “Maybe he only listened to the thunder, and
couldn’t hear anything else,” she said. “Do you think he knew what he was doing?”

“I think he knew what he was doing,” Aketa said.

Since the successful though problematic transilience of the
Shoby
to and from a nasty little planet called M-60-340-nolo, a whole wing of Ve Port had been given over to churten technology.
The originators of churten theory on Anarres and the engineers of transilience on Urras communicated constantly by ansible
with the theorists and engineers on Ve, who set up experiments and investigations designed to find out what, in fact, happened
when a ship and its crew went from one place in the universe to another without taking any time at all to do so. “You cannot
say ‘went,’ you cannot say
‘happened,’“ the Cetians chided. “It is here not there in one moment and in that same moment it is there not here. The non-interval
is called, in our language, churten.”

Interlocking with these circles of Cetian temporalists were circles of Hainish psychologists, investigating and arguing about
what, in fact, happened when intelligent life-forms experienced the churten. “You cannot say ‘in fact,’ you cannot say ‘experienced,’“
they chided. “The reality point of ‘arrival’ for a churten crew is obtained by mutual perception-comparison and adjustment,
so that for thinking beings construction of event is essential to effective transilience,” and so on, and on, for the Hainish
have been talking for a million years and have never got tired of it. But they are also fond of listening, and they listened
to what the crew of the
Shoby
had to tell them. And when Commander Dalzul arrived, they listened to him.

“You have to send one man alone,” he said. “The problem is interference. There were ten people on the
Shoby.
Send one man. Send me.”

“You ought to go with Shan,” Betton said.

His mother shook her head.

“It’s dumb not to go!”

“If they don’t want you, they don’t get me,” she said.

The boy knew better than to hug her, or say anything much. But he did something he seldom did: he made a joke. “You’d be back
in no time,” he said.

“Oh, get along,” Tai said.

Shan knew that the Hainish did not wear uniforms and did not use status indicators such as “Commander.” But he put on his
black-and-silver uniform of the Terran Ekumen to meet Commander Dalzul.

Born in the barracks of Alberta in the earliest years of Terra’s membership in the Ekumen, Dalzul took a
degree in temporal physics at the University of A-Io on Urras and trained with the Stabiles on Hain before returning to his
native planet as a Mobile of the Ekumen of the Worlds. During the sixty-seven years of his near-lightspeed journey, a troublesome
religious movement escalated into the horrors of the Unist Revolution. Dalzul got the situation under control within months,
by a combination of acumen and tactics that won him the respect of those he worked for, and the worship of those he had worked
against—for the Unist Fathers decided he was God. The worldwide slaughter of unbelievers devolved into a worldwide novena
of adoration of the New Manifestation, before devolving further into schisms and sects intent mainly on killing one another.
Dalzul had defused the worst resurgence of theocratic violence since the Time of Pollution. He had acted with grace, with
wit, with patience, reliability, resilience, trickiness, and good humor, with all the means the Ekumen most honored.

As he could not work on Terra, being prey to deification, he was given obscure but significant tasks on obscure but significant
planets; one of them was Orint, the only world from which the Ekumen had yet withdrawn. They did so on Dalzul’s advice, shortly
before the Orintians destroyed sentient life on their world by the use of pathogens in war. Dalzul had foretold the event
with terrible and compassionate accuracy. He had set up the secret, last-minute rescue of a few thousand children whose parents
were willing to let them go; Dalzul’s Children, these last of the Orintians were called.

Shan knew that heroes were phenomena of primitive cultures; but Terra’s culture was primitive, and Dalzul was his hero.

Tai read the message from Ve Port with disbelief. “What kind of crew is that?” she said. “Who asks parents to leave their
kid?”

Then she looked up at Shan, and saw his face.

“It’s Dalzul,” he said. “He wants us. In his crew.”

“Go,” Tai said.

He argued, of course, but Tai was on the hero’s side. He went. And for the reception at which he was to meet Dalzul, he wore
the black uniform with the silver thread down the sleeves and the one silver circle over the heart.

The commander wore the same uniform. When he saw him Shan’s heart leaped and thudded. Inevitably, Dalzul was shorter than
Shan had imagined him: he was not three meters tall. But otherwise he was as he should be, erect and lithe, the long, light
hair going grey pulled back from a magnificent, vivid face, the eyes as clear as water. Shan had not realized how white-skinned
Dalzul was, but the deformity or atavism was minor and could even be seen as having its own beauty. Dalzul’s voice was warm
and quiet; he laughed as he talked to a group of excited Anarresti. He saw Shan, turned, came straight to him. “At last! You’re
Shan, I’m Dalzul, we’re shipmates. I am truly sorry your partner couldn’t be one of us. But her replacements are old friends
of yours, I think—Forest and Riel.”

Shan was delighted to see the two familiar faces, Forest’s an obsidian knife with watchful eyes, Riel’s round and shining
as a copper sun. He had been in training on Ollul with them. They greeted him with equal pleasure. “This is wonderful,” he
said, and then, “So we’re all Terrans?”—a stupid question, since the fact was obvious; but the Ekumen generally favored mixing
cultures in a crew.

“Come on out of this,” Dalzul said, “and I’ll explain.” He signaled a mezklete, which trotted over, proudly pushing a little
cart laden with drinks and food. They filled trays, thanked the mezklete, and found themselves a deep windowseat well away
from the noisy throng. There they sat and ate and drank and talked and listened. Dalzul did not try to hide his passionate
conviction that he was on the right track to solve the “churten problem.”

“I’ve gone out twice alone,” he said. He lowered his
voice slightly as he spoke, and Shan began naively, “Without—?” and stopped.

Dalzul grinned. “No, no. With the permission of the Churten Research Group. But not really with their blessing. That’s why
I tend to whisper and look over my shoulder. There are still some CRG people here who make me feel as if I’d stolen their
ship—scoffed at their theories—violated their shifgrethor—peed on their shoes—even after the ship and I round-tripped with
no churten problems, no perceptual dissonances at all.”

“Where?” Forest asked, blade-sharp face intent.

“First trip, inside this system, from Ve to Hain and back. A bus trip. Everything known, expectable. It was absolutely without
incident—as expected. I’m here: I’m there. I leave the ship to check in with the Stabiles, get back in the ship, and I’m here.
Hey presto! It is magic, you know. And yet it seems so natural. Where one is, one is. Did you feel that, Shan?”

The clear eyes were amazing in their intensity. It was like being looked at by lightning. Shan wanted to be able to agree,
but had to stammer, “I—we, you know, we had some trouble deciding where we were.”

“I think that that’s unnecessary, that confusion. Transilience is a non-experience. I think that normally,
nothing happens.
Literally nothing. Extraneous events got mixed into it in the
Shoby
experiment—your interval was queered. This time, I think we can have a non-experience.” He looked at Forest and Riel and
laughed. “You’ll not-see what I don’t mean,” he said. “Anyhow, after the bus trip, I hung about annoying them persistently
until Gvonesh agreed to let me do a solo exploratory.”

The mezklete bustled up to them, pushing its little cart with its furry paws. Mezkletes love parties, love to give food, love
to serve drinks and watch their humans get weird. It stayed about hopefully for a while to see if they would get weird, then
bustled back to the Anarresti theorists, who were always weird.

“An exploratory—a first contact?”

Dalzul nodded. His strength and unconscious dignity were daunting, and yet his delight, his simple glee, in what he had done
was irresistible. Shan had met brilliant people and wise people, but never one whose energy shone so bright, so clear, so
vulnerable.

“We chose a distant one. G-14-214-yomo; it was Tadkla on the maps of the Expansion; the people I met there call it Ganam.
A preliminary Ekumen mission is actually on its way there at NAFAL speed. Left Ollul eight years ago, and will get there thirteen
years from herenow. Of course there was no way to communicate with them while they’re in transit, to tell them I was going
to be there ahead of them. The CRG thought it a good idea that somebody would be dropping in after thirteen years. In case
I didn’t report back, maybe they could find out what happened. But it looks now as if the mission will arrive to find Ganam
already a member of the Ekumen!” He looked at them all, alight with passion and intention. “You know, churten is going to
change everything. When transilience replaces space travel—all travel—when there is no distance between worlds—when we control
interval—I keep trying to imagine, to understand what it will mean, to the Ekumen, to us. We’ll be able to make the household
of humankind truly one house, one place. But then it goes still deeper! In transilience what we do is to rejoin, restore the
primal moment, the beat that is the rhythm…. To rejoin unity. To escape time. To use eternity! You’ve been there, Shan—you
felt what I’m trying to say?”