King Dog

by Le Guin, Ursula K.

  Along the corridors are signs on doors such as: PLANET 3: BlO STUDIES. — PLANET 5: ECOSYSTEM — DIRECTOR OF MISSION: LIFE STUDIES, SYSTEM 11097B.

  Maps of a solar system with ten planets: complex charts of routes of vehicles among the orbits of the planets, electronic displays of these vehicle routes, all starting from and returning to “SHIP” which is stationary between the fourth and fifth planets’ orbits. Whether this is or is not our solar system remains totally ambiguous; it could be.

  A Lounge on the Ship.

  It is a big, low-ceilinged, well-lit room, like the ambulatory patients’ visiting room in a very fine modern hospital. Comfortable chairs, game tables, bookshelves, many screens and consoles set for viewing from the chairs. No one is in the room but a man whom we see from the back, a short, bulky figure in a full-length loose white dressing-gown of Ship style. He is watching a running view of wildly exotic otherworldly scenery on one of the screens, while a voice murmurs over background music:

  DISPLAY VOICE: The North Continent Range of Planet Four of this solar system is one of the most picturesque areas yet mapped by the Exploratory Mission. Though waterless…

  ASHTHERA’S VOICE: (closer and clearer than the Display Voice) Who is that man?

  ANDUSE DEJI’S VOICE: (clear and somewhat robotlike) He is from your world. Kammin is his name. King Kammin.

  We now see Ashthera and Anduse Deji standing in the doorway of the lounge. Ashthera wears a white or grey dressing-gown like Kammin’s; he looks thin, but very much recovered and not older than his age, forty-five. Anduse Deji is a strong-looking woman in her thirties, of the same physical type as Romond (as are all the people of the Ship.) Her clothing is of the same general style or cut as Romond’s silver suit. She carries or wears a hand-sized device which includes a small mouth-mike. Her lips move in a totally different set of words than what comes out of the device, the words that we and Ashthera hear.

  ASHTHERA: I’ve been ill, or asleep, or dead. I don’t know the dream from the not-dream.

  ANDUSE: You were given a great many drugs. Come and sit down here.

  ASHTHERA: That is truly Kammin?

  ANDUSE: Yes. He is from your world. You have not met him?

  ASHTHERA: Oh, yes. We fought a war…. I haven’t met him since we were children. At the signing of the treaty of peace between our fathers. We played flip-the-knife. He lost. How did he come here?

  ANDUSE: Romond. He has been collecting kings. We insisted that, if you are an experiment, he must have a control.

  She is aware that this makes no sense to Ashthera; so is her translating device, which goes tinny-voiced on the words ‘experiment’ and ‘control.’ She fiddles with it, but does not know how to explain. She says finally,

  ANDUSE: Would you like to speak to King Kammin?

  ASHTHERA: Speak to him? No. But if he’s here, where is my brother, Fezat? I’d like very much to speak to him.

  ANDUSE: I have not heard his name.

  ASHTHERA: He was a just man, a kind, brave man. How can you bring Kammin here and leave Fezat out?

  ANDUSE: Please do not distress yourself. Romond —

  Romond has looked into the lounge. Anduse now speaks away from the mike, and we hear her own voice, without the stilted and mechanical quality of the translating device/

  ANDUSE: Romond, explain to him, will you? You did a great job programming this translator, but I still don’t have enough context. He wants to know why somebody isn’t here.

  ASHTHERA: Is this a heaven only for kings, Romond?

  ROMOND: It isn’t heaven at all, Ashthera.

  Ashthera has risen, every inch a king.

  ASHTHERA: Send me to hell with my brother and wife. I will not share heaven with King Kammin!

  He stalks out of the lounge in regal wrath, leaving Romond and Anduse nonplussed. Kammin still stands across the lounge watching the scenery on the screen, his back to the others, motionless and withdrawn.

  Darkness and Stars.

  Ashthera stands alone at the huge window full of stars. A faint music on the sound system of the Ship.

  ASHTHERA: I walk among the stars, but I am not in heaven. This isn’t heaven. Or hell. They are not the gods. I’m alive, I’m awake. I understand that. Then why is there the music? Why am I crying like a child?

  The music begins to sound like the Temple music in Aremgar.

  THE VOICE OF THE PRIESTESS: (soft, amused, emotionless) There’s no freedom for you on this side of the river.

  A Laboratory-Library on the Ship.

  This room has shining black walls muralled with cloud-chamber (accelerator) patterns, several pulpit-like stands containing non-self-explanatory machines or consoles, and eight or ten individual worktables fitted out with various devices and display apparatus. No music.

  Davdre, a tall woman of Ship physique and dress, takes down from a storage slot in a whole wall of such slots a neat little device or cassette marked PLANET 3: ECOSYSTEM STUDY: YEARS 1-8. She returns with it to a worktable, where she drops it into a read-out device and starts scanning, scrolling it past very quickly. At the next such device at the next table, Anduse Deji is scanning, and writing in notes or additions by moving her fingers in fascinating rapid patterns over an unmarked plane, a keyless keyboard.

  DAVDRE: You left Romond down on-planet too long, Anduse.

  ANDUSE: You may be right.

  DAVDRE: Bringing a Class Eleven native on board! — And then a second one!

  ANDUSE: Well, the second one’s my fault. I insisted he have a control. It was probably a mistake.

  DAVDRE: A control? But what’s the field of the experiment?

  ANDUSE: (stoically) Ethics.

  DAVDRE: Ethics?! Oh, really. You anthropologists — I keep trying to believe that you aren’t softbrained —

  ANDUSE: Romond’s as much a psychologist as an anthropologist, and I really don’t think he’s softbrained. But he may be a bit bent. After ten years among primitives. It’s an occupational hazard.

  DAVDRE: We should keep clear out of these primitive societies. They’re nothing but hazard. ‘Ethics!’ Wait, you’ll see!

  ANDUSE: I know.

  On the screen of her device now a poor-quality film in black and white is running. As the camera moves in on it slowly we can recognize the hall and the great fireplace of Jogen. Tassalil and Shiros — a child of eleven — are playing with the latest litter of kittens, and Tassalil laughs aloud, which we have never seen her do, and hugs her daughter. There is no soundtrack. The people on film are clearly unaware they are being filmed. Anduse watches, and speaks very softly:

  ANDUSE: But I can see how one might become... attached.

  The Ship’s Garden.

  The garden is at an end or angle of the ship, and one is aware of the walls curving in behind the ferntrees and exotic flowering shrubs and vines. It is a beautiful hot-house, softly lit, without dirt or disorder. Ashthera is wandering down an aisle between the plants. The yellow dog — no longer lame, lively now and alert, though still an ugly yaller dawg — tears up to him in an ecstasy of greeting, bouncing all over him.

  ASHTHERA: Hello, dog! There’s a good dog! You’re healed too, are you? Not lame, look at that. And fattened out. You’re healed, so am I. Yes! there’s a good dog! so am I.

  Romond comes down the aisle among the ferns.

  ROMOND: How are you feeling, my friend?

  ASHTHERA: Very well.

  ROMOND: Good! You look yourself again. Have you spoken with Kammin yet?

  ASHTHERA: (speaks gently to the dog) Down, down now. — We don’t speak each other’s language.

  ROMOND: But I showed you how to use the translator, you only have to turn it on and speak into —

  ASHTHERA: I don’t speak his language in any language. Romond, you juggle us like dice.

  ROMOND: It isn’t a game, Ashthera.

  ASHTHRA: Oh, yes, it is; but you’re not the player. You only roll the dice. How does God play, Romond? Does God play fair, or cheat?

&n
bsp; ROMOND: These questions are meaningless, in my language.

  ASHTHERA: So you learned mine, in order to ask them. And you think I have an answer for you. You think I’ll tell you that God plays fair. And you think perhaps Kammin will tell you, in his language, that God cheats at dice. And thus you’re spared decision. You needn’t even bet. No stakes, no losses. Safe.

  ROMOND: Ashthera —

  ASHTHERA: I asked for all sorts of impossible things, justice, peace — even freedom — But I never asked for safety!

  His scorn, though impersonal and without malice, is hard for Romond to endure. As he moves away through the flowery aisles of the garden, Romond follows him. Across the corridor, they come into the viewport room, with the great window that shows darkness and stars; but the shutters are closed, except for one narrow strip, so that they stand talking in an almost featureless, curving space, with one streak of stars across it vertically.

  ROMOND: Ashthera, believe this: I didn’t bring you here to play with you, or control you — I wanted to free you. To heal your body, to free your mind — to show you what life can be —

  ASHTHERA: You did, my kind Lord Death.

  ROMOND: I am not —

  ASHTHERA: I know. I know now that you’re not Death. Or that you don’t know it. If you did, your kingdom would be a great deal larger. As it is, it’s very small. Two ex-kings and a dog…. Why do I miss Fezat so much, here? And Tassalil. I keep thinking I’m about to see her, around that corner. I suppose it’s because I was dying when I came here. I keep thinking of them all, the dead. Even old Batash.

  ROMOND: Batash isn’t dead. He’s in jail in Aremgar.

  ASHTHERA: In jail? Batash?

  ROMOND: (answers dispiritedly, not really interested) Your… (he gropes for the word) son-in-law, Shiros’s husband, Zeham, took a dislike to him. And the old man wouldn’t keep his mouth shut. Kept scolding the queen.

  ASHTHERA: Shiros had him put in prison?

  ROMOND: Well, she let it be done —

  ASHTHERA: Harish Ashed did nothing?

  ROMOND: He was back in the north with your son. Ashthera, this is gossip from a little world nine million miles away — a dustmote. Quarrels no longer yours. Duties you’ve outgrown. You must turn your back on all that. You’re not a king now. You’re a free man.

  ASHTHERA: O my friend Batash! I brought the dog and never thought of you! An old man — a foolish old man locked in the dark by children —

  ROMOND: Ashthera —

  ASHTHERA: (with absolute authority) I will go home now. (He looks at Romond, and says more gently,) You can keep your other king.

  The Lounge of the Ship.

  Again King Kammin is alone in the lounge, sitting down this time, watching one of the screens; we see a glimpse of a drama from the home world of the Ship, an incomprehensible moment of dramatic action, words in an unknown tongue. Kammin, heavy and bowed, watches with dull submission.

  Ashthera, wearing a dark tunic and breeches pretty much like those of his own people, enters and comes directly across the room to Kammin. Kammin gets up hurriedly. He is afraid of Ashthera, and takes a posture of defense, which relaxes somewhat as he listens, though it is not clear whether he understands anything Ashthera says. He watches Ashthera with hopeless, resentful submission and passivity, like a cowed, caged animal.

  ASHTHERA: Kammin, I come to say farewell. Take my hand, across the deaths of all the women and men we killed. They’re dust now. Everything’s dust, the stars and all. Stay here and be free, among these gods who do without the gods. They don’t get angry, they don’t judge. They live in peace, and truth, and justice. They don’t keep dogs, or cats, or even lice. They’re free. Enjoy your freedom, brother enemy! I’m going back to my kennel.

  Impassive, uncomprehending, not without dignity, Kammin shakes hands with Ashthera.

  Now the camera begins to pull back and back, and this scene turns out to have been on a closed-circuit monitor screen, with Anduse Deji, Davdre, and a man of the Ship watching it. They are in the black-walled Laboratory-Library. As Ashthera leaves the lounge, Davdre turns off the picture, blanking the screen, and speaks with mild sarcasm.

  DAVDRE: The experiment in Ethics grows complex.

  ANDUSE: To put it mildly. Have we the right to keep him here against his will? Romond says he doesn’t know his will — is incompetent to make an informed choice. But the question of competence gets very sticky.

  DAVDRE: Solution’s clear. It was a mistake. It should be rectified. At once.

  ANDUSE: He couldn’t learn very much in five or ten years, anyway, and that’s all he’s got to live.

  DAVDRE: Send him back to his world.

  THE MAN: I agree.

  Anduse flips the monitor back on for a moment: Kammin is still watching the screen in the lounge.

  ANDUSE: What about that one?

  DAVDRE: If he wants to stay I suppose he has to stay. The whole trouble is, Romond has been playing God. He made the choices. He pulled the strings.

  ANDUSE: He threw the dice.

  DAVDRE: The what?

  ANDUSE: A native game of probabilities.

  Images of the Crossing.

  The images flow swiftly and lightly one into the next — the sun of this solar system and its planets, the Ship against the stars, a small planet-hopper coming out of the bay of the Ship and moving past the stars, approaching Ashthera’s world: a beautiful blue-green cloudy opal which is neither identifiable as the planet Earth, nor identifiably not the planet Earth, with a moon which seems perhaps marked differently from Earth’s moon perhaps not. And now the atmosphere rushes past in fire — but before the landing at the island in TollinBay, while the imagery builds up to that beautiful climax, we hear first Romond’s voice and then Ashthera’s.

  ROMOND’S VOICE: Ashthera, I’ll take you back. But listen to me first. Stay — stay with us. You’re throwing away your life, your mind, your hope, for what? Batash may be dead by now. Most likely he’s been set free. Nobody took the old man seriously. He’s probably been free for months, telling everybody where they’re going wrong. You must not waste yourself for him! Conscience must be intelligent. The guide of right action is just proportion. You know that. Measure the difference between what you have to lose and what you can win. It is an abyss!

  ASHTHERA’S VOICE: In that difference is God, in that abyss is joy. My dear friend Romond, you’ve sailed across the ocean of the stars and never got out of sight of land. You never will, till you learn not to hedge your bets. But anyway, there’s no use my staying here. There’s no freedom for people like me. I’m no good for anything but life. By nothing that I do can I attain a goal beyond my reach. That knowledge I owe to you. Goodbye, dear friend, Traveller.

  Before the Gates of the Palace in Aremgar.

  Summer sunlight pours down on the wide, dusty street and the walls; there is an echo of music from the GreatTemple, up the street.

  With the yellow dog trotting importantly beside him, Ashthera comes down the street from the west, dressed like a commoner, and dusty with travel on foot. A considerable crowd, mostly of adults, is following him, not boisterous, not cheering, but silent, awed, not approaching him closely. This is a miracle, welcome but uncanny, the return of the well-loved king from the dead.

  News has gone ahead, and there is coming and going and nervous consultation among the officers of the palace guard at the gates. The gates are left wide open, and they make way for Ashthera; but he does not enter the gates. He stops and waits in front of them. The dog wags its tail and sits down panting. Shiros, attended by several courtiers but in advance of them, comes hurrying down the walk from the palace doors. She looks terrified, angry, incredulous. She stares hard, but only for a moment, at Ashthera. She recognizes him, and stands stock still, and then, as if forced down, bows very deeply.

  SHIROS: Father —

  She is about to prostrate herself to him as he did to the Priestess. He goes to her, takes her hands, raises her. He says to her, speaking low so no
body else will hear, almost as to a child forgetful of manners:

  ASHTHERA: You’re the queen, my dear, you’re the queen. Have to wear your best dress all the time. (louder) Set Batash free, my lady. That’s all I came for. Let him go with me. Jail’s no place for old men.

  SHIROS: I will. Father —

  He shakes his head, smiling. Releasing her hands, he steps back and bows deeply to her. She stands erect and accepts his duty.

  In front of the Palace gates, a few minutes later, Batash, very much aged, a bit shuffly, blinking, bewildered, has just been brought out of the compound into the Street by guards. Ashthera embraces him and takes his arm. Batash, Ashthera, and the dog intent set off westward down the street. People watch, not speaking, , unjudging.

  A large landscape, fields, forests, mountains. The three, Batash, Ashthera, and the dog, are going away from us, small figures on a long dusty road.

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