Ursula I(. Le Guin Hainish Novels & Stories
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URSULA I(. LE GUIN HAINISH NOVELS & STORIES VOLUME Two The Word for World Is Forest Stories Five Ways to Forgiveness The Telling Brian Attebery, editor .. THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA Contents Volume compilation, notes, and chronology copyright© 2017 by Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., New York, N.Y. Introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin . ..... Xl All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without THE WoRD FOR WORLD FOREST . .. l the permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief Is quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. STORIES Visit our website at www.loa.org. The Shobies' Story .......................... 107 Introduction copyright© 2017 by Ursula K. Le Guin. Dancing to Ganam . ........................ 134 The Word for World Is Forest copyright© 1972 by Ursula K. Le Guin. Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea ... 168 Published by arrangement with Tom Doherty Associates. Unchosen Love .................... 207 The Telli1tlf copyright© 2000 by Ursula K. Le Guin. Published by Mountain Ways .................... arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. 226 All other texts published by arrangement with the author. The Matter of Seggri . .......... .. 250 Solitude .. ............ ....... .... 290 Endpaper by Donna G. Brown for Library of America. This paper meets the requirements of STORY SUITE: FIVE WAYS TO FORGIVENESS ANSI/NIS0 z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). Betrayals ......... ... .............. 321 Distributed to the trade in the United States Forgiveness Day ....................... 353 by Penguin Random House lnc. A Man of the People ................... 408 and in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Ltd. A Woman's Liberation .................. 457 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958894 Old Music and the Slave Women ........ 518 ISBN 978-1-59853-539-6 Notes on Werel and Yeowe . ............ 570 first Printing THE TELLING The Library of America-297 APPENDIX Introduction to The Word for World Is Forest . 753 On Not Reading Science Fiction . 758 Chronology. 765 Note on the Texts . 780 Notes......... ... .............. 783 Manufactured in the United States of America OLD MUSIC AND THE SLAVE WOMEN 519 . till stood, most of its fifteen million people were still there, Old Music and the Slave Women ,csbut its deep c?mp Iex1ty · was gone. C ?nnecuons. were b roken. 1 ceractions did not take place. A bram after a stroke. nThe greatest break was a brutal one, an axe-blow right HE CHIEF intelligence officer of the Ekumenical ~ through the pons, a kilo-wide no-man's-land of blown-up Tto Werel, a man who on his home world had the narnS) buildings and bloc~e? streets, _wreckage and rubble. East of Sohikelwenyanmurkeres Esdan, and who in Voe Deo \Ve the Divide was Legitimate terntory: downtown, government known by a nickname, Esdardon Aya or Old Music, was bore: offices, embassies, banks, communications towers, the univer It had taken a civil war and three years to bore him, but he had icy the great parks and wealthy neighborhoods, the roads out got to the point where he referred to himself in ansible reports co tlle armory, barracks, airports, and spaceport. West of the to the Stabiles on Hain as the embassy's chief stupidity officer. Divide was Free City, Dustyville, Liberation territory: factories, He had been able, however, to retain a few clandestine links union compounds, the rentspeople's quarters, the old gareot with friends in the Free City even after the Legitimate Govern residential neighborhoods, endless miles of little streets peter ment sealed the embassy, allowing no one and no information ing out into the plains at last. Through both ran the great to enter or leave it. In the third summer of the war, he came to East-West highways, empty. the Ambassador with a request. Cut off from reliable commu The Liberation people successfully smuggled him out of the nication with the embassy, Liberation Command had asked embassy and almost across the Divide. He and they had had a him (how? asked the Ambassador; through one of the men lot of practice in the old days getting runaway assets out to :r. who delivered groceries, he explained) if the embassy would Yeowe and freedom. He found it interesting to be the one •!If' let one or two of its people slip across the lines and talk with smuggled instead of one of the smugglers, finding it far more them, be seen with them, offer proof that despite propaganda frightening yet less stressful, since he was not responsible, the ·' :.. ~ and disinformation, and though the embassy was stuck in Jit package not the postman. But somewhere in the connection City, its staff had not been co-opted into supporting the Legit there had been a bad link. 2 imates, but remained neutral and ready to deal with rightful They made it on foot into the Divide and partway through J authority on either side. it and stopped at a little derelict truck sitting on its wheel rims - "Jit City?" said the Ambassador. "Never mind. But how do under a gutted apartment house. A driver sat at the wheel be you get there?" hind the cracked, crazed windshield, and grinned at him. His "Always the problem with Utopia," Esdan said. "Well, I can guide gestured him into the back. The truck took off like a pass with contact lenses, if nobody's looking closely. Crossing hunting cat, following a crazy route, zigzagging through the the Divide is the tricky bit." ruins. They were nearly across the Divide, jolting across a rub Most of the great city was still physically there, the govern bled stretch which might have been a street or a marketplace, ment buildings, factories and warehouses, the university, the when the truck veered, stopped, there were shouts, shots, the tourist attractions: the Great Shrine of Tuai, Theater Street, vanback was flung open and men plunged in at him. "Easy," he the Old Market with its interesting display rooms and lofty said, "go easy," for they were manhandling him, hauling him, Hall of Auction, disused since the sale and rental of assets had twisting his arm behind his back. They yanked him out of the been shifted to the electronic marketplace; the numberless truck, pulled off his coat and slapped him down searching for streets, avenues, and boulevards, the dusty parks shaded by weapons, frogmarched him to a car waiting beside the truck. purple-flowered beya trees, the miles and miles of shops, sheds, He tried to see if his driver was dead but could not look around mills, tracks, stations, apartment buildings, houses, com before they shoved him into the car. pounds, the neighborhoods, the suburbs, the exurbs. Most of It was an old government state-coach, dark red, wide and 518 520 FIVE WAYS TO FORGIVENESS OLD MUSIC AND THE SLAVE WOMEN 521 long, made for parades, for carrying great estate owners to th £sdan had particularly liked. He had left Werel long before the Council and ambassadors from the spaceport. Its main sectio e w..,,~• off to Terra and Hain with his wife, who would be a Mo- could be curtained to separate men from women passenger n bile of the Ekumen one of these days. In a few centuries. Long and the driver's compartment was sealed off so the passenge:, after the war was over, long after Esdan was dead. Unless he wouldn't be breathing in what a slave breathed out. s ,hose to follow them, went back, went home. One of the men had kept his arm twisted up his back llntil Idle thoughts. During a revolution you don't choose. You're he shoved him headfirst into the car, and all he thought as he carried, a bubble in a cataract, a spark in a bonfire, an unarmed found himself sitting between two men and facing three others rnan in a car with seven armed men driving very fast down the and the car starting up was, "I'm getting too old for this." broad, blank East Arterial Highway. They were leaving He held still, letting his fear and pain subside, not ready yet the city. Heading for the East Provinces. The Legitimate Gov to move even to rub his sharply hurting shoulder, not looking ernment of Voe Deo was now reduced to half the capital city into faces nor too obviously at the streets. Two glances told and two provinces, in which seven out of eight people were him they were passing Rei Street, going east, out of the city. what the eighth person, their owner, called assets. He realised then he had been hoping they were taking him The two men up in the front compartment were talking, back to the embassy. What a fool. though they couldn't be heard in the owner compartment. They had the streets to themselves, except for the startled 1 ow the bullet-headed man to Esdan's right asked a muttered gaze of people on foot as they flashed by. Now they were on a question to the oga facing him, who nodded. wide boulevard, going very fast, still going east. Although he "Oga," Esdan said. r: was in a very bad situation, he still found it absolutely exhila The veot's expressionless eyes met his. :ir rating just to be out of the embassy, out in the air, in the world "I need to piss." and moving, going fast. ' The man said nothing and looked away. None of them said Cautiously he raised his hand and massaged his shoulder. As anything for a while. They were on a bad stretch of the high cautiously, he glanced at the men beside him and facing him. way, torn up by fighting during the first summer of the Upris All were dark-skinned, two blue-black.