their legends, only heroes.
Through their distant racket a near voice broke in, startling Rocannon so his hand jumped on the radio tuner. He had at last found the enemy's communication band. A voice rattled on, speaking a language Rocannon did not know. Luck would have been too good if the enemy had spoken Galactic; there were hundreds of thousands of languages among the Worlds of the League, let alone the recognized planets such as this one and the planets still unknown. The voice began reading a list of numbers, which Rocannon understood, for they were in Cetian, the language of a race whose mathematical
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
attainments had led to the general use throughout the League of Cetian mathematics and therefore Cetian numerals. He listened with strained attention, but it was no good, a mere string
of numbers.
The voice stopped suddenly, leaving only
the hiss of static.
Rocannon looked across the room to the little Fian, who had asked to stay with him, and now sat cross-legged and silent on the floor near the casement window.
"That was the enemy, Kyo."
The Fian's face was very still.
"Kyo," said Rocannon—it was the custom to address a Fian by the Angyar name of his village, since individuals of the species
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
perhaps did and perhaps did not have individual names—"Kyo, if you tried, could you mindhear the enemies?"
In the brief notes from his one visit to a Fian village Rocannon had commented that Species 1-B seldom answered direct questions directly; and he well remembered their smiling elusiveness. But Kyo, left desolate in the alien country of speech, answered what Rocannon asked him. "No, Lord," he said submissively.
"Can you mindhear others of your own kind, in other villages?"
"A little. If I lived among them, perhaps. Fua go sometimes to live in other villages than their own. It is said even that once the Fua and the Gdemiar mindspoke together as one people, but that was very long ago.
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
It is said . . ." He stopped.
"Your people and the Clayfolk are indeed one race, though you follow very different ways now. What more, Kyo?"
"It is said that very long ago, hi the south, hi the high places, the gray places, lived those who mindspoke with all creatures.
All thoughts they could hear, the Old Ones, the Most Ancient. But we came down from the mountains, and lived in the valleys and the caves, and have forgotten
the harder way."
Rocannon pondered a moment. There were no mountains on the continent south of Hallan. He rose to get his Handbook for Galactic Area Eight, with its maps, when the radio, still hissing on the same band, stopped him short. A voice was coming
through, much fainter, remote, rising and falling on billows of static, but speaking in Galactic. "Number Six, come in. Number Six, come in. This is Foyer. Come in, Number Six." After endless repetitions and pauses it continued: "This is Friday. No, this is Friday. This is Foyer; are you there, Number Six? The FTLs are due tomorrow and I want a full report on the Seven Six sidings and the nets. Leave the staggering plan to the Eastern Detachment. Are you getting me, Number Six? We are going to be in ansible communication with Base tomorrow. Will you get me that information on the sidings at once. Seven Six sidings. Unnecessary—" A surge of starnoise swallowed the voice, and when it reemerged it was audible only in snatches.
Ten long minutes went by in static, silence, and snatches of speech, then a nearer voice cut in, speaking quickly in the unknown language used before. It went on and on; moveless, minute after minute, his hand still on the cover of his Handbook, Rocannon listened. As moveless, the Fian sat in the shadows across the room. A double pair of numbers was spoken, then repeated; the second time Rocannon caught the Cetian word for "degrees." He flipped his notebook open and scribbled the numbers down; then at last, though he still listened, he opened the Handbook to the maps of Fomalhaut II.
The numbers he had noted were 28°
28—121° 40. If they were coordinates of latitude and longitude. He brooded over the maps a while, setting the point of his
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
pencil down a couple of times on blank open sea. Then, trying 121 West with 28 North, he came down just south of a range of mountains, halfway down the Southwest Continent. He sat gazing at the map. The radio voice had fallen silent.
"Starlord?"
"I think they told me where they are. Maybe. And they've got an ansible there."
He looked up at Kyo unsee-ingly, then back at the map. "If they're down there—if I could get there and wreck their game, if I could get just one message out on their ansible to the League, if I could."
Southwest Continent had been mapped only from the air, and nothing but the mountains and major rivers were sketched inside the coastlines: hundreds of
kilometers of blank, of unknown. And a goal merely guessed at.
"But I can't just sit here," Rocannon said. He looked up again, and met the little man's clear, uncomprehending gaze.
He paced down the stone-floored room and back. The radio hissed and
whispered.
There was one thing in his favor: the fact that the enemy would not be expecting him. They thought they had the planet all to themselves. But it was the only thing hi
his favor.
"I'd like to use their weapons against them," he said. "I think I'll try to find them. In the land to the south. My people were killed by these strangers, like yours, Kyo.
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
You and I are both alone, speaking a language not our own. I would rejoice in
your companionship."
He hardly knew what moved him to the
suggestion.
The shadow of a smile went across the Fian's face..He raised his hands, parallel and apart. Rushlight in sconces on the walls bowed and flickered and changed. "It was foretold that the Wanderer would choose companions," he said. "For a
while."
"The Wanderer?" Rocannon asked, but this time the Fian did not answer.
III
Contents - Prev/Next
THE LADY OF THE CASTLE crossed the high hall slowly, skirts rustling over stone. Her dark skin was deepened with age to the black of an ikon; her fair hair was white. Still she kept the beauty of her lineage. Rocannon bowed and spoke a greeting in the fashion of her people: "Hail Hal-lanlady, Durhal's daughter, Haldre the
Fair!"
"Hail Rokanan, my guest," she said, looking calmly down at him. Like most Angyar women and all Angyar men she was considerably taller than he. "Tell me why you go south." She continued to pace slowly across the hall, and Rocannon
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
walked beside her. Around them was dark air and stone, dark tapestry hung on high walls, the cool light of morning from clerestory windows slanting across the black of rafters overhead.
"I go to find my enemy, Lady."
"And when you have found them?"
"I hope to enter their. their castle, and make use of their. message-sender, to tell the League they are here, on this world. They are hiding here, and there is very little chance of their being found: the worlds are thick as sand on the sea-beach. But they must be found. They have done harm here, and they would do much worse