The Found and the Lost

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  He was in the doorway when she said, “Luis.”

  He stopped, but didn’t turn.

  “I want to talk more about all this maybe with you later.”

  “Sure. Don’t let it worry you.”

  “I have to talk to Hiroshi about it.”

  “Sure,” he said again, and went out into the corridor.

  He wanted to go somewhere else, not corridor 4-4, not any corridor, not any room, not any place he knew. But there was no place he didn’t know. No place in the world.

  “I want to go out,” he said to himself. “Outside.”

  Silent, black, outside.

  On the Bridge

  “TELL YOUR FRIEND NOT TO panic,” Hiroshi said. “The angels aren’t in control. Not as long as we are.”

  He turned back to his work.

  “Hiroshi.”

  He did not answer.

  She stood a while near his seat at the navigators’ station. Her gaze was on Discovery’s one “window”: a meter-square screen on which data from the epidermal sensors was represented in visible light. Blackness. Bright dots, dim dots, haze: the local starfield and, in the left lower corner, a bit of the remote central galactic disk.

  Children in the third year of school are brought to see the “window.”

  Or they used to be.

  “Is that actually what’s ahead of us?” she had asked Teo not long ago, and he had said, smiling, “No. Some of it’s behind us. It’s a movie I made. It’s where we’d be if we were on schedule. In case somebody noticed.”

  She stared at it now and remembered Luis’s phrase, VU. Virtual Unreality.

  Without looking at Hiroshi she began to speak.

  “Luis thinks the angels are taking control. You think you’re in control. I think the angels are controlling you. You don’t dare tell people that we’re decades ahead of schedule, because you think that if the archangels knew, they’d take over and change course so as to miss the planet. But if you go on hiding the truth, you’re guaranteeing that they’ll take over when we reach the planet. What are you planning to say? Here we are! Surprise! All the angels will have to say is, These people are crazy, they made a navigation error and then tried to cover it up. We aren’t at Shindychew—it’s forty years too soon—this is some other solar system. So they take over the Bridge and we go on. And on. To nowhere.”

  A long time passed, so that she thought he had not listened, had not heard her at all.

  “Patel’s people are extremely numerous,” he said. His voice was low. “As your friend has been discovering. . . . It was not an easy decision, Hsing. We have no strength except in the accomplished fact. Actuality against wishful thinking. We arrive, we come into orbit, and we can say: There’s the planet. It’s real. Our job is to land people on it. But if we tell people now . . . four years or forty, it doesn’t matter. Patel’s people will discredit us, replace us, change course, and . . . as you say. . . go on to nowhere. To ‘bliss.’”

  “How can you expect anybody to believe you, to support you, if you’ve lied to them right up to the last moment? Ordinary people. Not angels. What justifies you in not telling them the truth?”

  He shook his head. “You underestimate Patel,” he said. “We cannot throw away our one advantage.”

  “I think you underestimate the people who would support you. Underestimate them to the point of contempt.”

  “We must keep personalities out of this matter,” he said with sudden harshness.

  She stared at him. “Personalities?”

  The Plenary Council

  “THANK YOU, CHAIRWOMAN. MY NAME is Nova Luis. I request the Council discuss formation of an ad hoc Committee on Religious Manipulation, to investigate the educational curriculum, the contents and availability of certain materials in the Records and Archives, and the composition of the fourteen committees and deliberative bodies listed on the screen.”

  4-Ferris Kim was on his feet at once: “A Committee on Religious Manipulation can be convened, according to the Constitution, only to investigate ‘an election or the deliberation of a legislative body.’ School curriculum, the materials kept in Records and Archives, and the committees and councils listed cannot be defined as legislative bodies and thus are exempt from examination.”

  “The Constitutional Committee will decide that point,” said Uma, chairing the meeting. Ferris sat down looking satisfied.

  Luis stood up again. “Since the religion in question is the creed of Bliss, may I suggest that the Chair consider the Constitutional Committee as possibly biased, since five of the six members profess the creed of Bliss.”

  Ferris was up again: “Creed? Religion? What kind of misunderstanding is this? There are no creeds or cults in our world. Such words merely echo ancient history, divisive errors which we have long since left behind on our way.” His deep voice grew mellow, gentle. “Do you call the air a ‘creed,’ Doctor, because you breathe it? Do you call life a ‘religion,’ because you live it? Bliss is the ground and goal of our existence. Some of us rejoice in that knowledge; for others that joy lies in the future. But there are no religions here, no warring creeds. We are all united in the fellowship of Discovery.”

  “And the goal appointed in our Constitution for Discovery and those who travel in it is to travel through a portion of space to a certain planet, to study that planet, to colonise it if possible, and to send or bring back information about it to our world of origin, Dichew, Earth. We are all united in the resolve to accomplish that goal. Do you agree, Councillor Ferris?”

  “Surely the Plenary Council is not the place to quibble over linguistic and intellectual theories?” Ferris said with mild deprecation, turning to the Chair.

  “An allegation of religious manipulation is more than a quibble, Councillor,” Uma said. “I will discuss this matter with my advisory council. It will be on the agenda of the next meeting.”

  The Soup Thickens

  “WELL,” BINGDI SAID, “WE HAVE certainly put the turd in the soup-bowl.”

  They were running the track. Bingdi had done twenty laps. Luis had done five. He was slowing down and breathing hard. “Soup of bliss,” he panted.

  Bingdi slowed down. Luis gasped and stopped. He stood awhile and wheezed. “Damn,” he said.

  They walked to the bench for their towels.

  “What did Hsing say when you talked to her?”

  “Nothing.”

  After a while Bingdi said, “You know, that bunch on the Bridge and Uma’s advisory council, they’re as tight as the archangels. They talk to each other and nobody else. They’re a faction, as much as the archangels.”

  Luis nodded. “Well, so, we’re the third faction,” he said. “The turd faction. The soup thickens. Ancient history repeats itself.”

  The Great Rejoicing of Year 161, Day 88

  TWO DAYS AFTER THE PLENARY Council announced the formation of a Committee on Religious Manipulation to investigate ideological bias in educational curricula and the suppression and destruction of information in the Records and Archives, Patel Inbliss called for a Great Rejoicing.

  The Temenos was packed. Everybody said, “It must have been like this when 0-Kim died.”

  The old man stood up at the lectern. His face, dark, unwrinkled, the bones showing through the fragile skin, loomed on every screen in every homespace. He raised his arms in blessing.

  The great crowd sighed, a sound like wind in a forest, but they did not know that; they had never heard the sound of wind in a forest; they had never heard any sigh, any voice but their own and the voices of machines.

  He talked for nearly an hour. At first he spoke of the importance of learning and following the laws of life laid down in the Constitution and taught in the schools. He asserted with passion that only scrupulous observance of these rules could assure justice, peace, and happiness to all. He talked about cleanliness, about recycling, about parenthood, about athletics, about teachers and teaching, about specialized studies, about the importance of unglamorous profes
sions such as labwork, soilwork, infant care. Speaking of the happiness to be found in what he called “the modest life,” he looked younger; his dark eyes shone. “Bliss is to be found everywhere,” he said.

  That became his theme: the ship called “discovery,” the ship of life, that travels across the void of death: the vehicle of bliss.

  Within the ship, rules and laws and ways are provided by which each mortal being may, by learning to live in mortal harmony and happiness, learn also the way to the True Destination.

  “There is no death,” the old man said, and again that sigh ran through the forest of lives crowded in the round hall. “Death is nothing. Death is null, death is void. Life is all. Mortal life voyages onward, ever onward, straight and true on its course to everlasting life, and light, and joy. Our origin was in darkness, in pain, in suffering. On that black ground of evil, in that terrible place, our ancestors in their wisdom saw where true life, true freedom was. And they sent us, their children, forth, free of darkness, earth, gravity, negativity, to travel forever into the light.”

  He blessed them again, and some thought his sermon was done, but as if given new energy by his words he was speaking on: “Do not mistake the goal of our discovery, the purpose of our lives! Do not mistake symbol and metaphor for reality! Our ancestors did not send us on this great voyage only to return to where it began. They did not free us from gravity only to sink again into gravity. They did not free us from Earth to doom us to another earth! That is literalism—scientific fundamentalism—a dreadful mental myopia. Our origin was on a planet, in darkness and misery, yes, but that is not our destination! How could it be?

  “Our ancestors spoke of the Destination as a world, because they knew nothing else. They had lived only in darkness, in filth, in fear, dragged down by gravity. When they tried to imagine bliss, they could only imagine a better, brighter world, and so they called it a ‘new earth.’ But we can see the meaning of that obscure symbol, and translate it into truth: not a planet, a world, a place of darkness, fear, pain, and death—but the bright journey of mortal life into endless life, the unceasing, everlasting pilgrimage into unceasing, everlasting bliss. O my fellow angels! our voyage is sacred, and it is eternal!”

  “Ahh,” sighed the forest leaves.

  “Ah!” said Luis, watching and listening in his homespace with Bingdi and several friends, known among themselves as the Turd Group.

  “Hah!” said Hiroshi, watching and listening in his homespace with Hsing.

  On the Bridge, Year 161, Day 101

  “DIAMANT ASKED ME YESTERDAY ABOUT an anomaly he noticed in the acceleration figures. He’s been following up on it for a couple of tendays.”

  “Lead him astray,” Hiroshi said, comparing two sets of figures.

  “I will not.”

  After some minutes he said, “What will you do?”

  “Nothing.”

  His hands were flickering over the workboard. “Leaving it to me.”

  “If you choose.”

  “I have no choice.”

  He worked on. Hsing worked on.

  She stopped working and said, “When I was about ten I had a terrible dream. I dreamed I was in one of the cargo bays, wandering around, and I realised that there was a little hole in the wall, in the skin of the ship. A hole in the world. It was very small. Nothing was happening, but I knew what had to happen was that all the air would rush out the hole, because outside was vacuum. The nothing outside the ship. So I put my hand over the hole. My hand covered it. But if I took my hand away, I knew the air would begin to rush out. I called and called, but nobody was near. Nobody heard. And finally I thought I had to go get help, and tried to take my hand off the hole, but I couldn’t. It was held there. By the nothing outside.”

  “A terrible dream,” Hiroshi said. As she spoke he had turned from the workboard and sat facing her with his hands on his knees, straight-backed, expressionless. “Do you recall it because you feel yourself in a similar position now?”

  “No. I see you in that position.”

  He considered this awhile. “And do you see a way out of that position?”

  “Shout for help.”

  He shook his head very slightly.

  “Hiroshi, one or another of the students or the engineers is going to find out what you’ve been doing and talk about it before you can mislead, or co-opt, or silence them. In fact, I think it’s already happening. Diamant’s been going after this as if he’s trying to prove something. He’s very bright and extremely anti-authoritarian—I was in classes with him. He will not be easy to mislead or co-opt.”

  He made no reply.

  “As I was,” she added, dryly but without rancor.

  “What do you mean by ‘shout for help’?”

  “Tell him the truth.”

  “Only him?”

  She shook her head. She said in a low voice, “Tell the truth.”

  “Hsing,” he said, “I know you think our tactics are mistaken. I’m grateful to you for bringing up your disagreement so seldom, and only with me. I wish we could agree on what is right. But I cannot put the power to change our course into the hands of the cultists until it is literally too late for them to do so.”

  “It’s not your decision to make.”

  “Will you take it out of my hands?”

  “Someone will. And when they do, it will appear that you’ve been lying for years, you and your friends, in order to have sole power. How else can they see it? You will be dishonored.” Her voice still sounded low and rough. After a moment, biting her lip, she added, “Your question to me just now was dishonorable.”

  “It was rhetorical,” he said.

  There was another long silence.

  He said, “It was dishonorable. I beg your pardon, Hsing.”

  She nodded. She sat looking down at her hands.

  “What action do you recommend?” he asked.

  “Talk to Tan Bingdi, Nova Luis, Gupta Lena—the group that’s behind the ad hoc committee. They’re working to expose Patel’s power-tactics. Tell them whatever you like about how it happened, but tell them that we’re going to be at the Destination in three years—unless Patel prevents it.”

  “Or Diamant,” he said.

  She winced. She spoke more cautiously, more patiently: “The danger isn’t people like Diamant, Hiroshi. It’s a fanatic gaining access to the Bridge for two minutes to damage, disable the course-computers—that’s always been a possibility, but now there’s a reason for somebody to do it. Now they want us never to arrive. At least that’s out in the open, since Patel’s speech. So now the fact that we are arriving has to come out in the open, because we need all the support we can get to make it happen. We must have support. You can’t go on alone with your hand over the hole in the world!”

  She had felt him withdraw when she said the name Nova Luis. She grew more urgent and eloquent as she spoke, losing ground; she ended up pleading. She waited and he made no response. Her arguments and urgency ebbed away slowly into a dry flatness of nonfeeling.

  At last she said, drily and flatly, “Or perhaps you can. But I can’t go on lying to colleagues and friends. I won’t give you away, but I won’t collude any more. I will say nothing at all to anyone.”

  “Not a very practical plan,” he said, looking up at her with a stiff smile. “Be patient, Hsing. That’s all I ask.”

  She stood up. “The evil of this is that we don’t trust each other.”

  “I trust you.”

  “You don’t. Me, or my silence, or my friends. The lie sucks trust out. Into nothing.”

  Again he did not speak; and presently she turned and left the Bridge. After she had walked a while she realised that she was at Quad Two, at Turning 2-3, heading for her old homespace, where her father lived alone. She wanted to see Yao, but felt it would be somehow disloyal to Hiroshi to go see him now. She turned around and started back to the Canaval-Liu homespace in Quad Four. The corridors seemed tight and narrow, crowded. She spoke to people who spo
ke to her. She remembered a part of her old nightmare dream that she had not thought to tell Hiroshi. The hole in the wall of the world had not been made by something from outside, a bit of dust or rock; when she saw it she knew, as one knows in a dream, that it had been there ever since the ship was made.

  An Announcement of Extraordinary Importance, Year 161, Day 202

  THE CHAIR OF THE PLENARY Council put a notice on the innet of an “announcement of extraordinary importance” to be made at twenty hours. The last such announcement had been made over fifteen years ago to explain the necessity of an alteration in profession quotas.

  People gathered in the homespace or compound or meetingspace or workplace to hear. The Plenary Council held session.

  Chatterji Uma came on the screen precisely at twenty and said, “Dear fellow passengers of the ship Discovery, we must prepare ourselves for a great change. From this night forward, our lives will be different—will be transformed.” She smiled; her smile was charming. “Do not be apprehensive. This is a matter for rejoicing. The great goal of our voyage, the destination for which this ship and its crew were intended from the very beginning of our voyage, is closer than we dreamed. Not our children, but we ourselves, may be the ones to set foot upon a new world. Now Canaval Hiroshi, our Chief Navigator, will tell you the great discovery he and others on the Bridge have made, and what it means, and what we may expect.”

  Hiroshi replaced Uma on the screens. The thickness and blackness of his eyebrows gave him a sometimes threatening, sometimes questioning look. His voice however was reassuring, quiet, positive, and rather pedantic. He began by telling them what had happened five years ago as the ship passed through a gravity sink near a very large area of cosmic dust.

  Hsing, watching him alone in their livingspace, could tell when he began to lie, not only because she knew the actual figures and dates but because when he began lying he became both more authoritative and more persuasive. The lies concerned the rates of acceleration and deceleration, the time of the discovery of the computer error, and the navigators’ response.