The Left Hand Of Darkness (SF Masterworks)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  ‘Name?’

  I did not ask him his. I must learn to live without shadows as they do in Orgoreyn; not to take offence; not to offend uselessly. But I did not give him my landname, which is no business of any man in Orgoreyn.

  ‘Therem Harth? That is not an Orgota name. What Commensality?’

  ‘Karhide.’

  ‘That is not a Commensality of Orgoreyn. Where are your papers of entry and identification?’

  Where were my papers?

  I had been considerably rolled about in the streets of Shelt before someone had me carted off to the hospital, where I had arrived without papers, belongings, coat, shoes, or cash. When I heard this I let go of anger and laughed; at the pit’s bottom is no anger. The Inspector was offended by my laughter. ‘Do you not understand that you are an indigent and unregistered alien? How do you intend to return to Karhide?’

  ‘By coffin.’

  ‘You are not to give inappropriate answers to official questions. If you have no intention to return to your own country you will be sent to the Voluntary Farm, where there is a place for criminal riffraff, aliens, and unregistered persons. There is no other place for indigents and subversives in Orgoreyn. You had better declare your intention to return to Karhide within three days, or I shall be—’

  ‘I’m proscribed from Karhide.’

  The physician, who had turned around from the next bed at the sound of my name, drew the Inspector aside and muttered at him a while. The Inspector got to looking sour as bad beer, and when he came back to me he said, taking long to say it and grudging me each word, ‘Then I assume you will declare your intention to me to enter application for permission to obtain permanent residence in the Great Commensality of Orgoreyn pending your obtaining and retaining useful employment as a digit of a Commensality or Township?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ The joke was gone out of it with that word permanent, a skull-word if there ever was one.

  After five days I was granted permanent residence pending my registry as a digit in the Township of Mishnory (which I had requested), and was issued temporary papers of identification for the journey to that city. I would have been hungry for those five days, if the old physician had not kept me in the hospital. He liked having a Prime Minister of Karhide in his ward, and the Prime Minister was grateful.

  I worked my way to Mishnory as a landboat loader on a fresh-fish caravan from Shelt. A fast smelly trip, ending in the great Markets of South Mishnory, where I soon found work in the ice-houses. There is always work in such places in summer, with the loading and packing and storing and shipping of perishable stuff. I handled mostly fish, and lodged in an island by the Markets with my fellows from the ice-house; Fish Island they called it; it stank of us. But I liked the job for keeping me most of the day in the refrigerated warehouse. Mishnory in summer is a steam-bath. The doors of the hills are shut; the river boils; men sweat. In the month of Ockre there were ten days and nights when the temperature never went below sixty degrees, and one day the heat rose to 88°. Driven out into that smelting-furnace from my cold fishy refuge at day’s end, I would walk a couple of miles to the Kunderer Embankment where there are trees and one may see the great river, though not get down to it. There I would roam late and go back at last to Fish Island through the fierce, close night. In my part of Mishnory they broke the street lamps, to keep their doings in the dark. But the Inspectors’ cars were forever snooping and spotlighting those dark streets, taking from poor men their one privacy, the night.

  The new Alien Registry Law enacted in the month of Kus as a move in the shadow-fight with Karhide invalidated my registration and lost me my job, and I spent a halfmonth waiting in the anterooms of infinite Inspectors. My mates at work lent me money and stole fish for my dinner, so that I got reregistered before I starved; but I had heard the lesson. I liked those hard loyal men, but they lived in a trap there was no getting out of, and I had work to do among people I liked less. I made the calls I had put off for three months.

  Next day I was washing out my shirt in the wash-house in the courtyard of Fish Island along with several others, all of us naked or half naked, when through the steam and stink of grime and fish and the clatter of water I heard someone call me by my landname: and there was Commensal Yegey in the wash-house, looking just as he had looked at the Reception of the Archipelagan Ambassador in the Ceremonial Hall of the Palace in Erhenrang seven months before. ‘Come along out of this, Estraven,’ he said in the high, loud, nasal voice of the Mishnory rich. ‘Oh, leave the damned shirt.’

  ‘I haven’t got another.’

  ‘Fish it out of that soup then and come on. It’s hot in here.’

  The others stared at him with dour curiosity, knowing him a rich man, but they did not know him for a Commensal. I did not like his being there; he should have sent someone after me. Very few Orgota have any feeling for decency. I wanted to get him out of there. The shirt was no good to me wet, so I told a hearthless lad that hung about the courtyard to keep it on his back for me till I returned. My debts and rent were paid and my papers in my hieb-pocket; shirtless I left the island in the Markets, and went with Yegey back among the houses of the powerful.

  As his ‘Secretary’ I was again re-registered in the rolls of Orgoreyn, not as a digit but as a dependent. Names won’t do, they must have labels, and say the kind before they can see the thing. But this time their label fit, I was dependent, and soon was brought to curse the purpose that brought me here to eat another man’s bread. For they gave me no sign for a month yet that I was any nearer achieving that purpose than I had been at Fish Island.

  On the rainy evening of the last day of summer Yegey sent for me to his study, where I found him talking with the Commensal of the Sekeve District, Obsle, whom I had known when he headed the Orgota Naval Trade Commission in Erhenrang. Short and swaybacked, with little triangular eyes in a fat, flat face, he was an odd match with Yegey, all delicacy and bone. The frump and the fop, they looked, but they were something more than that. They were two of the Thirty-Three who rule Orgoreyn; yet again, they were something more than that.

  Politenesses exchanged and a dram of Sithish lifewater drunk, Obsle sighed and said to me, ‘Now tell me why you did what you did in Sassinoth, Estraven, for if there was ever a man I thought unable to err in the timing of an act or the weighing of shifgrethor, that man was you.’

  ‘Fear outweighed caution in me, Commensal.’

  ‘Fear of what the devil? What are you afraid of, Estraven?’

  ‘Of what’s happening now. The continuation of the prestige-struggle in the Sinoh Valley; the humiliation of Karhide, the anger that rises from humiliation; the use of that anger by the Karhidish Government.’

  ‘Use? To what end?’

  Obsle has no manners; Yegey, delicate and prickly, broke in, ‘Commensal, Lord Estraven is my guest and need not suffer questioning—’

  ‘Lord Estraven will answer questions when and as he sees fit, as he ever did,’ said Obsle grinning, a needle hidden in a heap of grease. ‘He knows himself between friends, here.’

  ‘I take my friends where I find them, Commensal, but I can no longer look to keep them long.’

  ‘I can see that. Yet we can pull a sledge together without being kemmerings, as we say in Eskeve – eh? What the devil, I know what you were exiled for, my dear: for liking Karhide better than its king.’

  ‘Rather for liking the king better than his cousin, perhaps.’

  ‘Or for liking Karhide better than Orgoreyn,’ said Yegey. ‘Am I wrong, Lord Estraven?’

  ‘No, Commensal.’

  ‘You think, then,’ said Obsle, ‘that Tibe wants to run Karhide as we run Orgoreyn – efficiently?’

  ‘I do. I think that Tibe, using the Sinoth Valley dispute as a goad, and sharpening it at need, may within a year work a greater change in Karhide than the last thousand years have seen. He has a model to work from, the Sarf. And he knows how to play on Argaven’s fears. That’s easier than trying to arouse Argaven’s courage, as I did
. If Tibe succeeds, you gentlemen will find you have an enemy worthy of you.’

  Obsle nodded. ‘I waive shifgrethor,’ said Yegey, ‘what are you getting at, Estraven?’

  ‘This: Will the Great Continent hold two Orgoreyns?’

  ‘Aye, aye, aye, the same thought,’ said Obsle, ‘the same thought; you planted it in my head a long time ago, Estraven, and I never can uproot it. Our shadow grows too long. It will cover Karhide too. A feud between two Clans, yes; a foray between two towns, yes; a border-dispute and a few barn-burnings and murders, yes; but a feud between two nations? a foray involving fifty million souls? O by Mesche’s sweet milk, that’s a picture that has set fire to my sleep, some nights, and made me get up sweating … We are not safe, we are not safe. You know it, Yegey; you’ve said it in your own way, many times.’

  ‘I’ve voted thirteen times now against pressing the Sinoth Valley dispute. But what good? The Domination faction holds twenty votes ready at command, and every move of Tibe’s strengthens the Sarf’s control over those twenty. He builds a fence across the valley, puts guards along the fence armed with foray guns – foray guns! I thought they kept them in museums. He feeds the Domination faction a challenge whenever they need one.’

  ‘And so strengthens Orgoreyn. But also Karhide. Every response you make to his provocations, every humiliation you inflict upon Karhide, every gain in your prestige, will serve to make Karhide stronger, until it is your equal – controlled all from one centre as Orgoreyn is. And in Karhide they don’t keep foray guns in museums. The King’s Guard carry them.’

  Yegey poured out another dram around of lifewater. Orgota noblemen drink that precious fire, brought five thousand miles over the foggy seas from Sith, as if it were beer. Obsle wiped his mouth and blinked his eyes.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘all that is much as I thought, and much as I think. And I think we have a sledge to pull together. But I have a question before we get in harness, Estraven. You have my hood down over my eyes entirely. Now tell me: what was all this obscuration, obfuscation and fiddlefaddle concerning an Envoy from the far side of the moon?’

  Genly Ai, then, had requested permission to enter Orgoreyn.

  ‘The Envoy? He is what he says he is.’

  ‘And that is—’

  ‘An envoy from another world.’

  ‘None of your damned shadowy Karhidish metaphors, now, Estraven. I waive shifgrethor, I discard it. Will you answer me?’

  ‘I have done so.’

  ‘He is an alien being?’ Obsle said, and Yegey, ‘And he has had audience with King Argaven?’

  I answered yes to both. They were silent a minute and then both started to speak at once, neither trying to mask his interest. Yegey was for circumnambulating, but Obsle went to the point. ‘What was he in your plans, then? You staked yourself on him, it seems, and fell. Why?’

  ‘Because Tibe tripped me. I had my eyes on the stars, and didn’t watch the mud I walked in.’

  ‘You’ve taken up astronomy, my dear?’

  ‘We’d better all take up astronomy, Obsle.’

  ‘Is he a threat to us, this Envoy?’

  ‘I think not. He brings from his people offers of communication, trade, treaty, and alliance, nothing else. He came alone, without arms or defence, with nothing but a communicating device, and his ship, which he allowed us to examine completely. He is not to be feared, I think. Yet he brings the end of Kingdom and commensalities with him in his empty hands.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘How shall we deal with strangers except as brothers? How shall Gethen treat with a union of eighty worlds, except as a world?’

  ‘Eighty worlds?’ said Yegey, and laughed uneasily. Obsle stared at me athwart and said, ‘I’d like to think that you’ve been too long with the madman in his palace and had gone mad yourself … Name of Meshe! What’s this babble of alliances with the suns and treaties with the moon? How did the fellow come here, riding on a comet? astride a meteor? A ship, what sort of ship floats on air? On void space? Yet you’re no madder than you ever were, Estraven, which is to say shrewdly mad, wisely mad. All Karhiders are insane. Lead on, my lord, I follow. Go on!’

  ‘I go nowhere, Obsle. Where have I to go? You, however, may get somewhere. If you should follow the Envoy a little way, he might show you a way out of the Sinoth Valley, out of the evil course we’re caught in.’

  ‘Very good. I’ll take up astronomy in my old age. Where will it lead me?’

  ‘Toward greatness, if you go more wisely than I went. Gentlemen, I’ve been with the Envoy, I’ve seen his ship that crossed the void, and I know that he is truly and exactly a messenger from elsewhere than this earth. As to the honesty of his message and the truth of his descriptions of that elsewhere, there is no knowing; one can only judge as one would judge any man; if he were one of us I should call him an honest man. That you’ll judge for yourselves, perhaps. But this is certain: in his presence, lines drawn on the earth make no boundaries, and no defence. There is a greater challenger than Karhide at the doors of Orgoreyn. The men who meet that challenge, who first open the doors of earth, will be the leaders of us all. All: the Three Continents: all the earth. Our border now is no line between two hills, but the line our planet makes in circling the Sun. To stake shifgrethor on any lesser chance is a fool’s doing, now.’

  I had Yegey, but Obsle sat sunk in his fat, watching me from his small eyes. ‘This will take a month’s believing,’ he said. ‘And if it came from anyone’s mouth but yours, Estraven, I’d believe it to be pure hoax, a net for our pride woven out of starshine. But I know your stiff neck. Too stiff to stoop to an assumed disgrace in order to fool us. I can’t believe you’re speaking truth and yet I know a lie would choke you … Well, well. Will he speak to us, as it seems he spoke to you?’

  ‘That’s what he seeks: to speak, to be heard. There or here. Tibe will silence him if he tries to be heard again in Karhide. I am afraid for him, he seems not to understand his danger.’

  ‘Will you tell us what you know?’

  ‘I will; but is there a reason why he can’t come here and tell you himself?’

  Yegey said, biting his fingernail delicately, ‘I think not. He has requested permission to enter the Commensality. Karhide makes no objection. His request is under consideration …’

  7: THE QUESTION OF SEX

  From field notes of Ong Tot Oppong, Investigator, of the first Ekumenical landing party on Gethen/Winter, Cycle 93 E.Y. 1448

  1448 day 81. It seems likely that they were an experiment. The thought is unpleasant. But now that there is evidence to indicate that the Terran Colony was an experiment, the planting of one Hainish Normal group on a world with its own protohominid autochthones, the possibility cannot be ignored. Human genetic manipulation was certainly practised by the Colonizers; nothing else explains the hilfs of S or the degenerate winged hominids of Rokanan; will anything else explain Gethenian sexual physiology? Accident, possibly; natural selection, hardly. Their ambisexuality has little or no adaptive value.

  Why pick so harsh a world for an experiment? No answer. Tinibossol thinks the Colony was introduced during a major Interglacial. Conditions may have been fairly mild for their first 40 or 50,000 years here. By the time the ice was advancing again, the Hainish Withdrawal was complete and the Colonists were on their own, an experiment abandoned.

  I theorize about the origins of Gethenian sexual physiology. What do I actually know about it? Otie Nim’s communication from the Orgoreyn region has cleared up some of my earlier misconceptions. Let me set down all I know, and after that my theories; first things first.

  The sexual cycle averages 26 to 28 days (they tend to speak of it as 26 days, approximating it to the lunar cycle). For 21 or 22 days the individual is somer, sexually inactive, latent. On about the 18th day hormonal changes are initiated by the pituitary control and on the 22nd or 23rd day the individual enters kemmer, œstrus. In this first phase of kemmer (Karh. secher) he remains completely androgynous. Gender, and p
otency, are not attained in isolation. A Gethenian in first-phase kemmer, if kept alone or with others not in kemmer, remains incapable of coitus. Yet the sexual impulse is tremendously strong in this phase, controlling the entire personality, subjecting all other drives to its imperative. When the individual finds a partner in kemmer, hormonal secretion is further stimulated (most importantly by touch – secretion? scent?) until in one partner either a male or female hormonal dominance is established. The genitals engorge or shrink accordingly, foreplay intensifies, and the partner, triggered by the change, takes on the other sexual role (? without exception? If there are exceptions, resulting in kemmer-partners of the same sex, they are so rare as to be ignored). This second phase of kemmer (Karh. thorharmen), the mutual process of establishing sexuality and potency, apparently occurs within a time-span of two to twenty hours. If one of the partners is already in full kemmer, the phase for the newer partner is liable to be quite short; if the two are entering kemmer together, it is likely to take longer. Normal individuals have no predisposition to either sexual role in kemmer; they do not know whether they will be the male or the female, and have no choice in the matter. (Otie Nim wrote that in the Orgoreyn region the use of hormone derivatives to establish a preferred sexuality is quite common; I haven’t seen this done in rural Karhide.) Once the sex is determined it cannot change during the kemmer-period. The culminant phase of kemmer (Karh. thokemmer) lasts from two to five days, during which sexual drive and capacity are at maximum. It ends fairly abruptly, and if conception has not taken place, the individual returns to the somer phase within a few hours (note: Otie Nim thinks this ‘fourth phase’ is the equivalent of the menstrual cycle) and the cycle begins anew. If the individual was in the female role and was impregnated, hormonal activity of course continues, and for the 8.4-month gestation period and the 6- to 8-month lactation period this individual remains female. The male sexual organs remain retracted (as they are in somer), the breasts enlarge somewhat, and the pelvic girdle widens. With the cessation of lactation the female re-enters somer and becomes once more a perfect androgyne. No physiological habit is established, and the mother of several children may be the father of several more.