His speech was often interrupted by members of the Domination faction demanding that the President stop this lunatic, turn him out, and get on with the order of business. Csl. Yemenbey was most obstreperous, and probably spontaneous. “You don’t swallow this gichy-michyp” he kept roaring across to Obsle. Planned interruptions which made part of the tape hard to follow were led, Obsle says, by Kaharosile.—From memory:
Alshel (presiding): Mr. Envoy, we find this information, and the proposals made by Mr. Obsle, Mr. Slose, Mr. Ithepen, Mr. Yegey and others, most interesting—most stimulating. We need, however, a little more to go on. (Laughter) Since the King of Karhide has your… the vehicle you arrived on, locked up where we can’t see it, would it be possible, as suggested, for you to bring down your… Star Ship? What do you call it?
Ai: Starship is a good name, sir.
Alshel: Oh? What do you call it?
Ai: Well, technically, it’s a manned interstellar Cetian Design NAFAL-20.
Voice: You’re sure it’s not St. Pethethe’s sledge? (Laughter)
Alshel: Please. Yes. Well, if you can get this ship down onto the ground here—solid ground you might say—so that we can, as it were, have some substantial—
Voice: Substantial fishguts!
Ai: I want very much to bring that ship down, Mr. Alshel, as proof and witness of our reciprocal good faith. I await only your preliminary public announcement of the event.
Kaharosile: Don’t you see, Commensals, what all this is? It’s not just a stupid joke. It is, in intention, a public mockery of our credulity, our gullibility, our stupidity—engineered, with incredible impudence, by this person who stands here before us today. You know he comes from Karhide. You know he is a Karhidish agent. You can see he is a sexual deviant of a type which in Karhide, due to the influence of the Dark Cult, is left uncured, and sometimes is even artificially created for the Foretellers’ orgies. And yet when he says “I am from outer space” some of you actually shut your eyes, abase your intellects, and believe! Never could I have thought it possible, etc., etc.
To judge by the tape, Ai withstood gibes and assaults with patience. Obsle says he handled himself well. I was hanging about outside the Hall to see them come out after the Session of the Thirty-Three. Ai had a grim pondering look. Well he might.
My helplessness is intolerable. I was one who set this machine running, and now cannot control its running. I slink in the streets with my hood pulled forward, to catch a glimpse of the Envoy. For this useless sneaking life I threw away my power, my money, and my friends. What a fool you are, Therem.
Why can I never set my heart on a possible thing?
Odeps Susmy. The transmitting device Genly Ai has now turned over to the Thirty-Three, in Obsle’s care, is not going to change any minds. No doubt it does what he says it does, but if Royal Mathematician Shorst would say of it only, “I don’t understand the principles,” then no Orgota mathematician or engineer will do much better, and nothing is proved or disproved. An admirable outcome, were this world one Fastness of the Handdara, but alas we must walk forward troubling the new snow, proving and disproving, asking and answering.
Once more I pressed on Obsle the feasibility of having Ai radio his Star Ship, waken the people aboard, and ask them to converse with the Commensals by radio hook-up to the Hall of the Thirty-Three. This time Obsle had a reason ready for not doing so. “Listen, Estraven my dear, the Sarf runs all our radio, you know that by now. I have no idea, even I, which of the men in Communications are the Sarf men; most of them, no doubt, for I know as a fact that they run the transmitters and receivers on every level right down to the technicians and repairmen. They could and would block—or falsify —any transmission we received, if we did receive one! Can you imagine that scene, in the Hall? We ‘Outer-spacers’ victims of our own hoax, listening with bated breath to a clutter of static-and nothing else—no answer, no Message?”