“A person from Cime, a female.” I had to use the word that Gethenians would apply only to a person in the culminant phase of kemmer, the alternative being their word for a female animal.
“Permanently?”
“Yes.”
He dropped the cube and stood swinging from foot to foot, staring at me or a little past me, the firelight shifting on his face. “They’re all like that—like you?”
This was the hurdle I could not lower for them. They must, in the end, learn to take it in their stride.
“Yes. Gethenian sexual physiology, so far as we yet know, is unique among human beings.”
“So all of them, out on these other planets, are in permanent kemmer? A society of perverts? So Lord Tibe put it; I thought he was joking. Well, it may be the fact, but it’s a disgusting idea, Mr. Ai, and I don’t see why human beings here on earth should want or tolerate any dealings with creatures so monstrously different. But then, perhaps you’re here to tell me I have no choice in the matter.”
“The choice, for Karhide, is yours, sir.”
“And if I send you packing, too?”
“Why, I’ll go. I might try again, with another generation…”
That hit him. He snapped, “Are you immortal?”
“No, not at all, sir. But the time-jumps have their uses. If I left Gethen now for the nearest world, Ollul, I’d spend seventeen years of planetary time getting there. Timejumping is a function of traveling nearly as fast as light. If I simply turned around and came back, my few hours spent on the ship would, here, amount to thirty-four years; and I could start all over.” But the idea of timejumping, which with its false hint of immortality had fascinated everyone who listened to me, from the Horden Island fisherman on up to the Prime Minister, left him cold. He said in his shrill harsh voice, “What’s that?”—pointing to the ansible.
“The ansible communicator, sir.”
“A radio?”
“It doesn’t involve radio waves, or any form of energy. The principle it works on, the constant of simultaneity, is analogous in some ways to gravity—” I had forgotten again that I wasn’t talking to Estraven, who had read every report on me and who listened intently and intelligently to all my explanations, but instead to a bored king. “What it does, sir, is produce a message at any two points simultaneously. Anywhere. One point has to be fixed, on a planet of a certain mass, but the other end is portable. That’s this end. I’ve set the coordinates for the Prime World, Hain. A NAFAL ship takes 67 years to go between Gethen and Hain, but if I write a message on that keyboard it will be received on Hain at the same moment as I write it. Is there any communication you’d care to make with the Stabiles on Hain, sir?”
“I don’t speak Voidish,” said the king with his dull, malign grin.
“They’ll have an aide standing ready—I alerted them —who can handle Karhidish.”
“What d’you mean? How?”
“Well, as you know, sir, I’m not the first alien to come to Gethen. I was preceded by a team of Investigators, who didn’t announce their presence, but passed as well as they could for Gethenians, and traveled about in Karhide and Orgoreyn and the Archipelago for a year. They left, and reported to the Councils of the Ekumen, over forty years ago, during your grandfather’s reign. Their report was extremely favorable. And so I studied the information they’d gathered, and the languages they’d recorded, and came. Would you like to see the device working, sir?”
“I don’t like tricks, Mr. Ai.”
“It’s not a trick, sir. Some of your own scientists have examined—”
“I’m not a scientist.”
“You’re a sovereign, my lord. Your peers on the Prime World of the Ekumen wait for a word from you.”
He looked at me savagely. In trying to flatter and interest him I had cornered him in a prestige-trap. It was all going wrong.
“Very well. Ask your machine there what makes a man a traitor.”
I typed out slowly on the keys, which were set to Karhidish characters, “King Argaven of Karhide asks the Stabiles on Hain what makes a man a traitor.” The letters burned across the small screen and faded. Argaven watched, his restless shifting stilled for a minute.