Planet Of Exile by Ursula Le Guin

Author:Ursula Le Guin [Guin, Ursula]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf

CHAPTER EIGHT: In The Alien City

THE STRANGEST thing in all the strangeness of this house was the painting on the wall of the big room downstairs. When Agat had gone and the rooms were deathly still she stood gazing at this picture till it became the world and she the wall. And the world was a network: a deep network, like interlacing branches in the woods, like inter-running currents in water, silver, gray, black, shot through with green and rose and a yellow like the sun. As one watched their deep network one saw in it, among it, woven into it and weaving it, little and great patterns and figures, beasts, trees, grasses, men and women and other creatures, some like farborns and some not; and strange shapes, boxes set on round legs, birds, axes, silver spears and feathers of fire, faces that were not faces, stones with wings and a tree whose leaves were stars.

"What is that?" she asked the farborn woman whom Agat had asked to look after her, his kinswoman; and she in her way that was an effort to be kind replied, "A painting, a picture—your people make pictures, don't they?"

"Yes, a little. What is it telling of?"

"Of the other worlds and our home. You see the people in it...It was painted long ago, in the first Year of our exile, by one of the sons of Esmit." , "What is that?" Rolery pointed, from a respectful distance.

"A building—the Great Hall of the League on the world called Davenant."

"And that?"

"An erkar."

"I listen again," Rolery said politely—she was on her best manners at every moment now—but when Seiko Esmit seemed not to understand the formality, she asked, "What is an erkar?"

The farborn woman pushed out her lips a little and said indifferently, "A ... thing to ride in, like a ... well, you don't even use wheels, how can I tell you? You've seen our wheeled carts?

Yes? Well, this was a cart to ride in, but it flew in the sky."

"Can your people make such cars now?" Rolery asked in pure wonderment, but Seiko took the question wrong. She replied with rancor, "No. How could we keep such skills here, when the Law commanded us not to rise above your level? For six hundred years your people have failed to learn the use of wheels!"

Desolate in this strange place, exiled from her people and now alone without Agat, Rolery was frightened of Seiko Esmit and of every person and every thing she met. But she would not be scorned by a jealous woman, an older woman. She said, "I ask to learn. But I think your people haven't been here for six hundred years."

"Six hundred home-years is ten Years here." After a moment Seiko Esmit went on, "You see, we don't know all about the erkars and many other things that used to belong to our people, because when our ancestors came here they were sworn to obey a law of the League, which forbade them to use many things different from the things the native people used.

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