A Fisherman of the Inland Sea: Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin Page A

he said, and ran off towards the dark, vast waters
     that moved softly beyond the ruddy haze of their fire. The boy hesitated, then shed his shirt and sandals and followed. Shan
     pulled up Tai, and they followed; and finally the two old women went off into the night and the breakers, rolling up their
     pants legs, laughing at themselves.
    To Gethenians, even on a warm summer night on a warm summer world, the sea is no friend. The fire is where you stay. Oreth
     and Asten moved closer to Karthand watched the flames, listening to the faint voices out in the glimmering surf, now and then talking quietly in their own
     tongue, while the little sisterbrother slept on.
    After thirty lazy days at Liden the Shobies caught the fish train inland to the city, where a Fleet lander picked them up
     at the train station and took them to the spaceport on Ve, the next planet out from Hain. They were rested, tanned, bonded,
     and ready to go.
    One of Sweet Today’s hemi-affiliate cousins once removed was on ansible duty in Ve Port. She urged the Shobies to ask the
     inventors of the churten on Urras and Anarres any questions they had about churten operation. “The purpose of the experimental
     flight is understanding,” she insisted, “and your full intellectual participation is essential. They’ve been very anxious
     about that.”
    Lidi snorted.
    “Now for the ritual,” said Shan, as they went to the ansible room in the sunward bubble. “They’ll explain to the animals what
     they’re going to do and why, and ask them to help.”
    “The animals don’t understand that,” Betton said in his cold, angelic treble. “It’s just to make the humans feel better.”
    “The humans understand?” Sweet Today asked.
    “We all use each other,” Oreth said. “The ritual says: we have no right to do so; therefore, we accept the responsibility
     for the suffering we cause.”
    Betton listened and brooded.
    Gveter addressed the ansible first and talked to it for half an hour, mostly in Pravic and mathematics. Finally, apologizing,
     and looking a little unnerved, he invited the others to use the instrument. There was a pause. Lidi activated it, introduced
     herself, and said, “We have agreed that none of us, except Gveter, has the theoretical background to grasp the principles
     of the churten.”
    A scientist twenty-two light-years away responded in Hainish via the rather flat auto-translator voice, but with unmistakable
     hopefulness, “The churten, in lay terms, may be seen as displacing the virtual field in order to realize relational coherence
     in terms of the transiliential experientiality.”
    “Quite,” said Lidi.
    “As you know, the material effects have been nil, and negative effect on low-intelligence sentients also nil; but there is
     considered to be a possibility that the participation of high intelligence in the process might affect the displacement in
     one way or another. And that such displacement would reciprocally affect the participant.”
    “What has the level of our intelligence got to do with how the churten functions?” Tai asked.
    A pause. Their interlocutor was trying to find the words, to accept the responsibility.
    “We have been using ‘intelligence’ as shorthand for the psychic complexity and cultural dependence of our species,” said the
     translator voice at last. “The presence of the transilient as conscious mind nonduring transilience is the untested factor.”
    “But if the process is instantaneous, how can we be conscious of it?” Oreth asked.
    “Precisely,” said the ansible, and after another pause continued: “As the experimenter is an element of the experiment, so
     we assume that the transilient may be an element or agent of transilience. This is why we asked for a crew to test the process,
     rather than one or two volunteers. The psychic interbalance of a bonded social group is a margin of strength against disintegrative
     or incomprehensible experience, if any such occurs.