Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

by The wind's twelve quarters - vol 2

  During the second of these long periods he asked to see Hughes. Shapir had already been instructed to let the two astronauts talk together if possible; there was a feeling that this might elicit more information, if they talked freely together. It was necessary for Hughes to write, since Temski was artificially deafened; as he knew touch typing he carried on his part of the dialogue on a portable typewriter. Not all the material found in the wastebasket, however, could be successfully collated in to the tape of Temski's spoken conversation. The two men mostly discussed the return journey and Commander Rogers's illness and death, which Temski could not recall; Hughes described all this as he had done before without new information. They did not talk about the 'room' (Site D) or their respective disabilities, except as follows:

  T. It's not inside, is it?

  H. If it was, earplugs wd improve yr reception.

  T. It's real, then.

  H. Hell yes.

  T. See, when they first stuck those plugs in my ears, when I woke up and there was this silence, I was really spooked. It took me a long time to come back from where I'd been. And I didn't much want to come back. But when Shapir began telling me how long it had been, and I realized this was Earth, you know, that's what spooked me — I thought, maybe all this has been some sort of, like, hallucination. You know. Jesus, have I been off my chump? That scared me. Like I was two different people. But I began to put it together, to see that it wasn't a split, but a...

  H. Change.

  T. Exactly, it changed me, it had changed me. It's real.

  Because when I can hear, that's what I hear. And when you can see, that's what you see. Right? In other words, it is real.

  We have to be artificially blinded and made deaf to not hear it and see it. That's it, isn't it? [Hughes's typed responses for the following section were not identifiable in the wastebasket material.]

  H. ...

  T. Oh, no. Beautiful. It took me a long time, at least I know now it was a long time, to begin to get it. At first it didn't make any sense, Jesus, it scared the balls off me at first. You or Dwight would say something, and there'd be this kind of chords all around your voice, like rainbows around a prism so you can't even see the prism — yeah, that's what it's like for you, isn't it? It's the same, only this is with hearing, it's like everything turns into this music, only it isn't music, it's... At first like I said I didn't know how to hear it. I thought it was something wrong with my suit radio! Jesus! [laughs] I couldn't follow the patterns, you know, the modulations, like, the transformations. It was all so different. But you learn. The more you listen the more you hear. I wish you could hear it. You know, you tell me it's two months since we left Mars, and so on, and shit, I believe you, but it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter — does it, Gerry?

  H....

  T. I wish I could see it, the way you do. It must be tremendous. But I'll tell you, I'm glad they pull me out of it like this, every day now. I think it's meant to be that way. I was kind of, I don't know, swamped, overwhelmed, it's too much. We're not built right, not quite strong enough, maybe. At least at first. Can't take it all at once. What I'd like to try to do while I'm out of touch is try to write some of it down.

  H....

  T. No, I don't. But it wouldn't have to be music. See, it isn't music, that's just like a way of describing it because it's beautiful. I think I could get it into words just as well.

  Maybe better. To say what it means.

  H. ...

  T. Afraid of what?

  Bernard Decelis and his wife called Hughes every couple of days on the telephone, though they were prevented by the quarantine from coming to see him. On the 27th of July Hughes and Decelis had a significant conversation concerning the so-called room, site D of the Psyche XIV survey. Decelis said, 'If I don't get on the Sixteen team and see that damned place, I'll flip.'

  'Seeing is believing,' Hughes remarked. He was not as excitable as he had been earlier, tending to be terse and rather bitter.

  'Listen, Terry. Was there ever machinery in those pigeonholes?'

  'No.'

  'Hah! There's a definite answer! I thought you wouldn't assert anything about Site D except its incomprehensibility to the human mind. You softening up?'

  'No. Learning.'

  'Learning what?'

  'How to see.'

  After a pause Decelis asked cautiously, 'See what?'

  'Site D. Since it's all I can see.'

  'You mean, that's what you - when your eyes are open—'

  'No.' Hughes spoke wearily and with reluctance. 'It's more complex than that. I don't see Site D. I see ... the world in the light cast by Site D ... A new light. The man you ought to ask is Joe Temski. Or, listen, did you ever run the pigeonholes through Algie, like you said?'

  'I had trouble setting up the program.'

  'I'll bet you did,' Hughes said with a short laugh. 'Send the stuff on up here. I'll set it up. Blindfolded.'

  Temski came into Hughes's room, radiant. 'Gerry,' he said, 'I've got it.'

  'Got what?'

  'I've got it together. I heard you. No, I wasn't lip-reading. Say something with your back turned. Go on!'

  'Ptomaine poisoning.'

  ' "Ptomaine poisoning." —OK? See, I'm hearing you. But I haven't lost the music. I've got it all together!'

  Blue-eyed and fair, Temski was ordinarily a handsome man; now he was magnificent. Hughes could not see him (though the spy camera in the ventilator grille could and did), but he heard the vibration of his voice, and was moved, and frightened.

  'Take off your blinkers, Gerry,' the gentle, vibrant voice said.

  Hughes shook his head.

  'You can't sit in the dark inside yourself forever. Come out: You can't choose blindness, Gerry.'

  'Why can't I?'

  'Not after you've seen the light.'

  'What light?'

  'The light, the word, the truth we have been taught to perceive and to know,' Temski said, with the gentleness of utter certainty, and a warmth in his voice, a warmth like sunlight.

  'Get out,' Hughes said. 'Get out, Temski!'

  Twelve weeks had passed since Psyche XIV splashdown. Nobody on the debriefing staff had come down with any symptoms more alarming than boredom. Hughes was no worse, and Temski was now completely recovered. It could be safely assumed that whatever had affected the crew of Psyche XIV, it had not been an infection vectored by a virus, spore, bacterium, or other physical agent. The hypothesis accepted tentatively and with various reservations by the majority, including Dr Shapir, was that something in the arrangement of the elements constituting the 'room', Site D, had, during their prolonged and intense study of the site, caused a degree of brain-wave disruption in all three men, analogous to the brain-function disturbance caused by strobe lights at certain frequencies, etc. Precisely what elements of the 'room' were involved was not yet known, though the holographs were being examined intensively by experts. Psyche XV was to make a still more thorough investigation of the site, taking due precautions to protect and monitor the astronauts.

  These suspect elements of Site D were so numerous and so intricately interrelated that it was very hard for a single mind to attempt to arrange or order them. Some Martianologists were sure the peculiar properties of the 'room' were only a geological accident, and that all the 'room' had to 'tell' us was the kind of information furnished so concisely and beautifully by the strata of rocks, the rings of a tree, the lines of a spectrum. Others were as convinced that intelligent beings had built the City, and that in studying it we might learn something of their nature and the way their minds worked - those unimaginable minds of six hundred million years ago (for the radioactive-decay dating of the site was absolutely definite now). The job of doing so, however, was daunting. T. A. Newman of the Smithsonian Institution put it well: 'Archaeologists are used to getting a lot of information out of very simple things - potsherds, bits of flint, a wall here, a grave there. But what if all we had of an ancient civilization was a very complica
ted thing, complicated in more than a technological sense - let's say, one copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Now let's assume that the archaeologists who find this copy of Hamlet are not humanoid, don't have books, don't have plays, don't speak, write, or think at all as we do. What are they going to make of that little physical artifact, the evident complexity and purposefulness of it, the repetition of certain elements and the non-repetition of others, the semi-regularity of line lengths, and so on? How are they going to read Hamlet?'

  To those who accepted the 'Hamlet theory', the obvious first step was to employ computers, and a number of them had been set to work analyzing the various elements of Site D: the spacing, size, depth, and configurations of the 'pigeonholes', the proportions of the first, middle, and third 'subchambers', the extraordinary acoustical properties of the 'room' as a whole, and so on. None of these programs had as yet produced any sure evidence of conscious planning or rational pattern; none, that is, except the program set up by Decelis and Hughes on NASA's new Algebraic V, which had certainly got results, though they could not be called rational. Indeed, that print-out had given a shudder to the NASA brass, and a good laugh to those few scientists to whom Decelis had shown it before it was suppressed as being probably a fraud and certainly an embarrassment. The entire print-out read as follows:

  RUN

  PIGEONHOLES SITE D MARS SECTOR NINE DECELIS HUGHES

  GOD

  GOOD GOD GOD GOOD YOU ARE GOD RESET

  RESET TOTALITY COMPREHENSION NONSENSE PERCEIVE NONSENSE NO SENSE REAL GOOD GOD

  PERCEIVE RECEIVE DIRECTIONS DIRECTION

  PROCEED INFORM UNINFORMED

  GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD

  END RUN

  Shapir came in to find Hughes lying on his bed, as he now did most of the time, wearing his black goggles. He looked white and ill.

  'I think you've been overdoing it.'

  Hughes did not answer.

  Shapir sat down. 'They're sending me back to New York,' he said presently.

  Hughes did not answer.

  'Temski's been released, you know. He's on his way to Florida now. With his wife. I can't find out what they plan for you. I asked...' After a long pause he completed the sentence. 'I asked for another two weeks here with you. No go.'

  'It's all right,' Hughes said.

  'I want to keep in touch with you, Geraint. Obviously we can't write letters. But there's the phone. And tapes; I'm leaving a cassette recorder here with you. When you want to talk, please call me. If you can't get me, talk to the recorder. It's not the same, but—'

  'You're a very good man, Sidney,' Hughes said gently. 'I wish...' After a minute he sat up. He reached up to his face and took off the black goggles. They fitted so closely around his eyes sockets that it took him a little while to get them off. When they were off he lowered his hands, and looked across the room, directly at Shapir. His eyes, the pupils enlarged by long privation of light, were almost as dark as the goggles.

  'I see you,' he said. 'Hide and seek. I spy. You're It. Do you want to know what I see?'

  'Yes,' Shapir said softly.

  'A blot. A shadow. An incompleteness, a rudiment, an obstruction. Something completely unimportant. You see, it doesn't do any good to be a good man, even...'

  'And when you look at yourself?'

  'The same. Just the same. A hindrance, a triviality. A blot on the field of vision.'

  'The field of vision. What is the field of vision?'

  'What do you think?' Hughes said, very quietly and wearily. 'What is true vision of? Reality, of course. I have been re-programmed to perceive reality, to see the truth. I see God.' He sank his face into his hands, covering his eyes. 'I was a thinking man,' he said. 'I tried to be a rational man. But what good's reason, when you can see the truth? Seeing is believing...' He looked up again at Shapir, his dark eyes both piercing and unseeing. 'If you want a real explanation, go ask Joe Temski. He's keeping quiet now; he's biding his time. But he's the one who can tell you. And he will, when his time comes. He can translate what he hears - translate it into words. It's harder to do with visual perceptions. Mystics have always had trouble putting their visions into words; except the ones that got the Word, that heard the Voice. They usually got right up and acted, didn't they? Temski will act. But I will not. I refuse. I will not preach. I will not be a missionary.'

  'A missionary?'

  'Don't you see? Don't you see that's what the "room" is? A training center, a briefing room, a—'

  'A religious center? A church?'

  'Well, in a way. A place where you are taught to see God, and hear God, and know God. And love God. A conversion center. A place where you're converted! And then you want to go out and preach the knowledge of God to the others - to the heathen. Because now you know how blind they are, and how easy it is to see. No, not just a church; a mission. The Mission. And you learn the Mission, and you come out of it with the Mission. They weren't explorers. They were missionaries, bearing the truth, bringing it to the other races and the future races, all the poor damned heathens living in the outer darkness. They knew the answer, and they wanted us all to know the answer. Nothing else matters, once you've learned the answer. It doesn't matter if you're a good man or a bad one, if I'm an intelligent man or a fool. Nothing about us matters except that we are trivial vehicles of the great truth. The earth doesn't matter, the stars don't matter, death doesn't matter, nothing is anything. Only God is.'

  'An alien god?'

  'Not a god. God - the one true God, immanent in all things. Everywhere, forever. I have learned to see God. All I have to do is open my eyes, and I see the Face of God. And I'd give all my life just to see one human face again, to see a tree, a chair -a plain wooden chair, ordinary— They can keep their God, they can keep their Light. I want the world back. I want questions, not the answer. I want my own life back, and my own death!'

  On the recommendation of the Army psychiatrist who took over the case of Geraint Hughes after Shapir was dismissed, Hughes was moved to a military hospital for the insane. As he was generally a quiet and cooperative patient he was not kept under strict supervision, and after eleven months of confinement he unfortunately carried out a successful suicide attempt, slashing his wrists with a spoon-handle which he had stolen from the mess hall and sharpened by rubbing against the bed frame. It is an interesting fact that he killed himself on the day the Psyche XV Mission started back to Earth from Mars, bringing the documents and records which, as interpreted by the First Apostle, now form the first chapters of the Revelation of the Ancients, the sacred texts of the holy and universal Church of God, bringer of light to the heathen, sole vehicle of the One Eternal Truth.

  O fools (said I) thus to prefer dark night

  Before true light... But as I did their madness so discuss

  One whisper'd thus, This Ring the Bride-groome did for none provide

  But for his bride.

  DIRECTION OF THE ROAD

  The tree stands just south of the McMinnville bypass on Oregon State Highway 18. It lost a major limb last year, but still looks grand. We drive past it several times a year, and it has never failed to uphold Relativity with dignity and the skill of long practice.

  They did not use to be so demanding. They never hurried us into anything more than a gallop, and that was rare; most of the time it was just a jigjog foot-pace. And when one of them was on his own feet, it was a real pleasure to approach him. There was time to accomplish the entire act with style. There he'd be, working his legs and arms the way they do, usually looking at the road, but often aside at the fields, or straight at me: and I'd approach him steadily but quite slowly, growing larger all the time, synchronizing the rate of approach and the rate of growth perfectly, so that at the very moment that I'd finished enlarging from a tiny speck to my full size - sixty feet in those days - I was abreast of him and hung above him, loomed, towered, overshadowed him. Yet he would show no fear. Not even the children were afraid of me, though often they kept their eyes on me as I pas
sed by and started to diminish.

  Sometimes on a hot afternoon one of the adults would stop me right there at our meeting-place, and lie down with his back against mine for an hour or more. I didn't mind in the least. I have an excellent hill, good sun, good wind, good view; why should I mind standing still for an hour or an afternoon? It's only a relative stillness, after all. One need only look at the sun to realize how fast one is going; and then, one grows continually - especially in summer. In any case I was touched by the way they would entrust themselves to me, letting me lean against their little warm backs and falling sound asleep there between my feet. I liked them. They have seldom lent us Grace as do the birds; but I really preferred them to squirrels.

  In those days the horses used to work for them, and that too was enjoyable from my point of view. I particularly liked the canter, and got quite proficient at it. The surging and rhythmical motion accompanied shrinking and growing with a swaying and swooping, almost an illusion of flight. The gallop was less pleasant. It was jerky, pounding: one felt tossed about like a sapling in a gale. And then, the slow approach and growth, the moment of looming-over, and the slow retreat and diminishing, all that was lost during the gallop. One had to hurl oneself into it, cloppety-cloppety-cloppety! and the man usually too busy riding, and the horse too busy running, even to look up. But then, it didn't happen often. A horse is mortal, after all, and like all the loose creatures grows tired easily; so they didn't tire their horses unless there was urgent need. And they seemed not to have so many urgent needs, in those days.

  It's been a long time since I had a gallop and to tell the truth I shouldn't mind having one. There was something invigorating about it, after all.

  I remember the first motorcar I saw. Like most of us, I took it for a mortal, some kind of loose creature new to me. I was a bit startled, for after a hundred and thirty-two years I thought I knew all the local fauna. But a new thing is always interesting, in its trivial fashion, so I observed this one with attention. I approached it at a fair speed, about the rate of a canter, but in a new gait, suitable to the ungainly looks of the thing: an uncomfortable, bouncing, rolling, choking, jerking gait. Within two minutes, before I'd grown a foot tall, I knew it was no mortal creature, bound or loose or free. It was a making, like the carts the horses got hitched to. I thought it so very ill-made that I didn't expect it to return, once it gasped over the West