Ursula K. Le Guin - Unlocking The Air

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2024-12-20 0 0 62.87KB 13 页 5.9玖币

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Unlocking The Air

fiction By URSULA K. LE GUIN

THIS IS A FAIRY TALE. People stand in the lightly falling snow.

Something

is shining, trembling, making a silvery sound. Eyes are shining. Voices

sing. People laugh and weep, clasp one another's hands, embrace.

Something shines and trembles. They live happily ever after. The snow

falls on

the roofs and blows across the parks, the squares, the river.

This is history. Once upon a time, a good king lived in his palace in a

kingdom far away. But an evil enchantment fell upon that land. The

wheat

withered in the ear, the leaves dropped from the trees of the forest

and

nothing thrived.

This is a stone. It's a paving stone of a square that slants downhill

front of an old, reddish, almost windowless fortress called the Roukh

Palace.

The square was paved nearly 300 years ago, so a lot of feet have walked

this stone, bare feet and shod, children's little pads, horses' iron

shoes,

soldiers' boots; and wheels have gone over and over it, cart wheels,

carriage

wheels, car tires, tank treads. Dogs' paws every now and then. There

has been

dogshit on it, there has been blood, both soon washed away by water

sloshed

from buckets or run from hoses or dropped from the clouds.

You can't get blood from a stone, they say, nor can you give it to a

stone; it takes no stain. Some of the pavement, down near that street

that

leads out of Roukh Square through the old Jewish quarter to the river,

got dug

up, once or twice, and piled into a barricade, and some of the stones

even

found themselves flying through the air, but not for long. They were

soon put

back in their place, or replaced by others. It made no difference to

them. The

man hit by the flying stone dropped down like a stone beside the stone

that

had killed him. The man shot through the brain fell down and his blood

ran out

on this stone, or another one maybe; it makes no difference to them.

The

soldiers washed his blood away with water sloshed from buckets, the

buckets

their horses drank from. The rain fell after a while. The snow fell.

Bells rang

the hours, the Christmases, the New Years. A tank stopped with its

treads on

this stone. You'd think that that would leave a mark, a huge heavy

thing like a

tank, but the stone shows nothing. Only all the feet bare and shod over

the

centuries have worn a quality into it, not a smoothness, exactly, but a

kind of

softness, like leather or like skin. Unstained, unmarked, indifferent,

it does

have that quality of having been worn for a long time by life. So it is

a stone of

power, and who sets foot on it may be transformed.

This is a story. She let herself in with her key and called, "Mama?

It's

me, Fana!"

And her mother, in the kitchen of the apartment, called, "I'm in here,"

and they met and hugged in the doorway of the kitchen.

"Come on, come on!"

"Come where?"

"It's Thursday, Mama!"

"Oh," said Bruna Fabbre, retreating toward the stove, making vague

protective gestures at the saucepans, the dishcloths, the spoons.

"You said."

"But it's nearly four already--"

"We can be back by six-thirty."

"I have all the papers to read for the advancement tests."

"You have to come, Mama. You do. You'll see!"

A heart of stone might resist the shining eyes, the coaxing, the

bossiness. "Come on' she said, and the mother came.

But grumbling. "This is for you," she said on the stairs.

On the bus, she said it again. "This is for you. Not me.

"What makes you think that?"

Bruna did not reply for a while, looking out the bus window at the gray

city lurching by, the dead November sky behind the roofs.

"Well, you see," she said, "before Kasi, my brother Kasimir, before he

was killed, that was the time that would have been for me. But I was

too

young. Too stupid. And then they killed Kasi."

"By mistake."

"It wasn't a mistake. They were hunting for a man who'd been getting

people out across the border, and they'd missed him. So it was to. . .

"To have something to report to the Central Office."

Bruna nodded. "He was about the age you are now," she said. The bus

stopped, people climbed on, crowding the aisle. "Since then, twenty-

seven

years, always since then, it's been too late. For me. First too stupid,

then too

late. This time is for you. I missed mine."

"You'll see," Stefana said. "There's enough time to go round."

This is history. Soldiers stand in a row before the reddish, almost

windowless palace; their muskets are at the ready. Young men walk

across the

stones toward them, singing, "Beyond this darkness is the light, 0

Liberty, of

thine eternal day!"

The soldiers fire their guns. The young men live happily ever after.

This is biology.

"Where the hell is everybody?"

"It's Thursday," Stefan Fabbre said, adding, "Damn!" as the figures on

the computer screen jumped and flickered. He was wearing his topcoat

over

sweater and scarf, since the biology laboratory was heated only by a

space

heater that shorted out the computer circuit if they were on at the

same time.

"There are programs that could do this in two seconds," he said,

jabbing

morosely at the keyboard.

Avelin came up and glanced at the screen. "What is it?"

"The RNA comparison count. I could do it faster on my fingers."

Avelin, a bald, spruce, pale, dark-eyed man of 40, roamed the

laboratory, looked restlessly through a folder of reports. "Can't run a

university with this going on," he said. "I'd have thought you'd be

down

there."

Fabbre entered a new set of figures and said, "Why?"

"You're an idealist."

"Am l?" Fabbre leaned back, rolled his head to get the cricks out. "I

try

hard not to be," he said.

"Realists are born, not made." The younger man sat down on a lab

stool and stared at the scarred, stained counter. "It's coming apart,"

he said.

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摘要：

UnlockingTheAirfictionByURSULAK.LEGUINTHISISAFAIRYTALE.Peoplestandinthelightlyfallingsnow.Somethingisshining,trembling,makingasilverysound.Eyesareshining.Voices\sing.Peoplelaughandweep,clasponeanother'shands,embrace.Somethingshinesandtrembles.Theylivehappilyeverafter.Thesnowfallsontheroofsandblowsac...

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