"LeGuin, Ursula K. - Ekumen 04 - The Left Hand of Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

"They'll have an aide standing readyЧI alerted them Чwho can handle Karhidish."
"What d'you mean? How?"
"Well, as you know, sir, I'm not the first alien to come to Gethen. I was preceded by a team of Investigators, who didn't announce their presence, but passed as well as they could for Gethenians, and traveled about in Karhide and Orgoreyn and the Archipelago for a year. They left, and reported to the Councils of the Ekumen, over forty years ago, during your grandfather's reign. Their report was extremely favorable. And so I studied the information they'd gathered, and the languages they'd recorded, and came. Would you like to see the device working, sir?"
"I don't like tricks, Mr. Ai."
"It's not a trick, sir. Some of your own scientists have examinedЧ"
"I'm not a scientist."
"You're a sovereign, my lord. Your peers on the Prime World of the Ekumen wait for a word from you."
He looked at me savagely. In trying to flatter and interest him I had cornered him in a prestige-trap. It was all going wrong.
"Very well. Ask your machine there what makes a man a traitor."
I typed out slowly on the keys, which were set to Karhidish characters, "King Argaven of Karhide asks the Stabiles on Hain what makes a man a traitor." The letters burned across the small screen and faded. Argaven watched, his restless shifting stilled for a minute.
There was a pause, a long pause. Somebody seventy-two light-years away was no doubt feverishly punching demands on the language computer for Karhidish, if not on a philosophy-storage computer. At last the bright letters burned up out of the screen, hung a while, and faded slowly away: "To King Argaven of Karhide on Gethen, greetings. I do not know what makes a man a traitor. No man considers himself a traitor: this makes it hard to find out. Respectfully, Spimolle G. F., for the Stabiles, in Saire on Hain, 93/1491/45."
When the tape was recorded I pulled it out and gave it to Argaven. He dropped it on the table, walked again to the central fireplace, almost into it, and kicked the flaming logs and beat down the sparks with his hands. "As useful an answer as I might get from any Foreteller. Answers aren't enough, Mr. Ai. Nor is your box, your machine there. Nor your vehicle, your ship. A bag of tricks and a trickster. You want me to believe you, your tales and messages. But why need I believe, or listen? If there are eighty thousand worlds full of monsters out there among the stars, what of it? We want nothing from them. We've chosen our way of life and have followed it for a long time. Karhide's on the brink of a new epoch, a great new age. We'll go our own way." He hesitated as if he had lost the thread of his argumentЧnot his own argument, perhaps, in the first place.
If Estraven was no longer the King's Ear, somebody else was. "And if there were anything these Ekumens wanted from us, they wouldn't have sent you alone. It's a joke, a hoax. Aliens would be here by the thousand."
"But it doesn't take a thousand men to open a door, my lord."
"It might to keep it open."
"The Ekumen will wait till you open it, sir. It will force nothing on you. I was sent alone, and remain here alone, in order to make it impossible for you to fear me."
"Fear you?" said the king, turning his shadow-scarred face, grinning, speaking loud and high. "But I do fear you, Envoy. I fear those who sent you. I fear liars, and I fear tricksters, and worst I fear the bitter truth. And so I rule my country well. Because only fear rules men. Nothing else works. Nothing else lasts long enough. You are what you say you are, yet you're a joke, a hoax. There's nothing in between the stars but void and terror and darkness, and you come out of that all alone trying to frighten me. But I am already afraid, and I am the king. Fear is king! Now take your traps and tricks and go, there's no more needs saying. I have ordered that you be given the freedom of Karhide."
So I departed from the royal presence-eck, eck, eck all down the long red floor in the red gloom of the hall, until at last the double doors shut me off from him.
I had failed. Failed all around. What worried me as I left the King's House and walked through the Palace grounds, however, was not my failure, but Estraven's part in it. Why had the king exiled him for advocating the Ekumen's cause (which seemed to be the meaning of the proclamation) if (according to the king himself) he had been doing the opposite? When had he started advising the king to steer clear of me, and why? Why was he exiled, and I let go free? Which of them had lied more, and what the devil were they lying for?
Estraven to save his skin, I decided, and the king to save his face. The explanation was neat. But had Estraven, in fact, ever lied to me? I discovered that I did not know.
I was passing the Corner Red Dwelling. The gates of the garden stood open. I glanced in at the serem trees leaning white above the dark pool, the paths of pink brick lying deserted in the serene gray light of afternoon. A little snow still lay in the shadow of the rocks by the pool. I thought of Estraven waiting for me there as the snow fell last night, and felt a pang of pure pity for the man whom I had seen in yesterday's parade sweating and superb under the weight of his panoply and power, a man at the prime of his career, potent and magnificentЧgone now, down, done. Running for the border with his death three days behind him, and no man speaking to him. The death-sentence is rare in Karhide. Life on Winter is hard to live, and people there generally leave death to nature or to anger, not to law. I wondered how Estraven, with that sentence driving him, would go. Not in a car, for they were all Palace property here; would a ship or landboat give him passage? Or was he afoot on the road, carrying what he could carry with him? Karhiders go afoot, mostly; they have no beasts of burden, no flying vehicles, the weather makes slow going for powered traffic most of the year, and they are not a people who hurry. I imagined the proud man going into exile step by step, a small trudging figure on the long road west to the Gulf. All this went through my mind and out of it as I passed the gate of the Corner Red Dwelling, and with it went my confused speculations concerning the acts and motives of Estraven and the king. I was done with them. I had failed. What next?
I should go to Orgoreyn, Karhide's neighbor and rival. But once I went there I might find it hard to return to Karhide, and I had unfinished business here. I had to keep in mind that my entire life could be, and might well be, used in achieving my mission for the Ekumen. No hurry. No need to rush off to Orgoreyn before I had learned more about Karhide, particularly about the Fastnesses. For two years I had been answering questions, now I would ask some. But not in Erhenrang. I had finally understood that Estraven had been warning me, and though I might distrust his warning I could not disregard it. He had been saying, however indirectly, that I should get away from the city and the court. For some reason I thought of Lord Tibe's teethЕ The king had given me the freedom of the country; I would avail myself of it. As they say in Ekumenical School, when action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep. I was not sleepy, yet. I would go east to the Fastnesses, and gather information from the Foretellers, perhaps.

4. The Nineteenth Day
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An East Karhidish story, as told in Gorinhering Hearth by Tobord Chorhawa, and recorded by G. A., 93/1492.
LORD BEROSTY REM IR IPE came to Thangering Fastness and offered forty beryls and half the year's yield from his orchards as the price of a Foretelling, and the price was acceptable. He set his question to the Weaver Odren, and the question was, On what day shall I die?
The Foretellers gathered and went together into the darkness. At the end of darkness Odren spoke the answer: You will die on Odstreth (the 19th day of any month).
"In what month? in how many years?" cried Berosty, but the bond was broken, and there was no answer. He ran into the circle and took the Weaver Odren by the throat choking him and shouted that if he got no further answer he would break the Weaver's neck. Others pulled him off and held him, though he was a strong man. He strained against their hands and cried out, "Give me the answer!"
Odren said, "It is given, and the price paid. Go."
Raging then Berosty rem ir Ipe returned to Charuthe, the third Domain of his family, a poor place in northern Osnoriner, which he had made poorer in getting together the price of a Foretelling. He shut himself up in the strong-place, in the highest rooms of the Hearth-Tower, and would not come out for friend or foe, for seedtime or harvest, for kerrimer or foray, all that month and the next and the next, and six months went by and ten months went by, and he still kept like a prisoner to his room, waiting. On Onnetherhad and Odstreth (the 18th and 19th days of the month) he would not eat any food, nor would he drink, nor would he sleep.
His kemmering by love and vow was Herbor of the Geganner clan. This Herbor came in the month of Grende to Thangering Fastness and said to the Weaver, "I seek a Foretelling."
"What have you to pay?" Odren asked, for he saw that the man was poorly dressed and badly shod, and his sledge was old, and everything about him wanted mending.
"I will give my life," said Herbor.
"Have you nothing else, my lord?" Odren asked him, speaking now as to a great nobleman, "nothing else to give?"
"I have nothing else," said Herbor. "But I do not know if my life is of any value to you here."
"No," said Odren, "it is of no value to us."
Then Herbor fell on his knees, struck down by shame and love, and cried to Odren, "I beg you to answer my question. It is not for myself!"
"For whom, then?"" asked the Weaver.
"For my lord and kemmering Ashe Berosty," said the man, and he wept. "He has no love nor joy nor lordship since he came here and got that answer which was no answer. He will die of it."
"That he will: what does a man die of but his death?" said the Weaver Odren. But Berber's passion moved him, and at length he said, "I will seek the answer of the question you ask, Herbor, and I will ask no price. But bethink you, there is always a price. The asker pays what he has to pay." ,
Then Herbor set Odren's hands against his own eyes in sign of gratitude, and so the Foretelling went forward. The Foretellers gathered and went into the darkness. Herbor went among them and asked his question, and the question was, How long will Ashe Berosty rem ir Ipe live? For Herbor thought thus to get the count of days or years, and so set his love's heart at rest with certain knowledge. Then the Foretellers moved in the darkness and at last Odren cried in great pain, as if he burned in a fire, Longer than Herbor of Geganner!
It was not the answer Herbor had hoped, but it was the answer he got, and having a patient heart he went home to Charuthe with it, through the snows of Grende. He came into the Domain and into the strong-place and climbed the tower, and there found his kemmering Berosty sitting as ever blank and bleak by an ash-smothered fire, his arms lying on a table of red stone, his head sunk between his shoulders.
"Ashe," said Herbor, "I have been to Thangering Fastness, and have been answered by the Foretellers. I asked them how long you would live and their answer was, Berosty will live longer than Herbor."
Berosty looked up at him as slow as if the hinge in his neck had rusted, and said, "Did you ask them when I would die, then?"
"I asked how long you would live."
"How long? You fool! You had a question of the Foretellers, and did not ask them when I am to die, what day, month, year, how many days are left to meЧyou asked how long? O you fool, you staring fool, longer than you, yes, longer than you!" Berosty took up the great table of red stone as if it had been a sheet of tin and brought it down on Herbor's head. Herbor fell, and the stone lay on him. Berosty stood a while demented. Then he raised up the stone, and saw that it had crushed Herbor's skull. He set the stone back on its pedestal. He lay down beside the dead man and put his arms about him, as if they were in kemmer and all was well. So the people of Charuthe found them when they broke into the tower-room at last. Berosty was mad thereafter and had to be kept under lock, for he would always go looking for Herbor, who he thought was somewhere" about the Domain. He lived a month thus, and then hanged himself, on Odstreth, the nineteenth day of the month of Thern.

5. The Domestication of Hunch
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