THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K.Leguin

Our next efforts were no more successful. I tried sending to Estraven while he slept, recalling what my Educer had told me about the occurrence of “dream-messages” among pre-telepathic peoples, but it did not work.

“Perhaps my species lacks the capacity,” he said. “We have enough rumors and hints to have made up a word for the power, but I don’t know of any proven instances of telepathy among us.”

“So it was with my people for thousands of years. A few natural Sensitives, not comprehending their gift, and lacking anyone to receive from or send to. All the rest latent, if that. You know I told you that except in the case of the born Sensitive, the capacity, though it has a physiological basis, is a psychological one, a product of culture, a side-effect of the use of the mind. Young children, and defectives, and members of un-evolved or regressed societies, can’t mindspeak. The mind must exist on a certain plane of complexity first. You can’t build up amino acids out of hydrogen atoms; a good deal of complexifying has to take place first: the same situation. Abstract thought, varied social interaction, intricate cultural adjustments, esthetic and ethical perception, all of it has to reach a certain level before the connections can be made—before the potentiality can be touched at all.”

“Perhaps we Gethenians haven’t attained that level.”

“You’re far beyond it. But luck is involved. As in the creation of amino acids… Or to take analogies on the cultural plane—only analogies, but they illuminate—the scientific method, for instance, the use of concrete, experimental techniques in science. There are peoples of the Ekumen who possess a high culture, a complex society, philosophies, arts, ethics, a high style and a great achievement in all those fields; and yet they have never learned to weigh a stone accurately. They can learn how, of course. Only for half a million years they never did… There are peoples who have no higher mathematics at all, nothing beyond the simplest applied arithmetic. Every one of them is capable of understanding the calculus, but not one of them does or ever has. As a matter of fact, my own people, the Terrans, were ignorant until about three thousand years ago of the uses of zero.” That made Estraven blink. “As for Gethen, what I’m curious about is whether the rest of us may find ourselves to have the capacity for Foretelling—whether this too is a part of the evolution of the mind—if you’ll teach us the techniques.”

“You think it a useful accomplishment?”

“Accurate prophecy? Well, of course!—”

“You might have to come to believe that it’s a useless one, in order to practice it.”

“Your Handdara fascinates me, Harth, but now and then I wonder if it isn’t simply paradox developed into a way of life…”

We tried mindspeech again. I had never before sent repeatedly to a total non-receiver. The experience was disagreeable. I began to feel like an atheist praying. Presently Estraven yawned and said, “I am deaf, deaf as a rock. We’d better sleep.” I assented. He turned out the light, murmuring his brief praise of darkness; we burrowed down into our bags, and within a minute or two he was sliding into sleep as a swimmer slides into dark water. I felt his sleep as if it were my own: the empathic bond was there, and once more I bespoke him, sleepily, by his name—”Therem!”

He sat bolt upright, for his voice rang out above me in the blackness, loud. “Arek! is that you?”

“No: Genly Ai: I am bespeaking you.”

His breath caught. Silence. He fumbled with the Chabe stove, turned up the light, stared at me with his dark eyes full of fear. “I dreamed,” he said, “I thought I was at home—”

“You heard me mindspeak.”

“You called me— It was my brother. It was his voice I heard. He’s dead. You called me—you called me Therem? I… This is more terrible than I had thought.” He shook his head, as a man will do to shake off nightmare, and then put his face in his hands.

“Harth, I’m very sorry—”

“No, call me by my name. If you can speak inside my skull with a dead man’s voice then you can call me by my name! Would he have called me ‘Harth’? Oh, I see why there’s no lying in this mindspeech. It is a terrible thing… All right. All right, speak to me again.”

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