URSULA K. Le GUINSOLITUDE *An addition to "POVERTY: The Second Report on Eleven-Soro" by MobileEntselenne'temharyonoterregwis Leaf, by her daughter, Serenity.MY MOTHER, A FIELD ETHnologist, took the difficulty of learning anything aboutthe people of Eleven-Soro as a personal challenge. The fact that she used herchildren to meet that challenge might be seen as selfishness or as selflessness.Now that I have read her report I know that she finally thought she had donewrong. Knowing what it cost her, I wish she knew my gratitude to her forallowing me to grow up as a person.Shortly after a robot probe reported people of the Hainish Descent on theeleventh planet of the Soro system, she joined the orbital crew as back-up forthe three First Observers down on planet. She had spent four years in thetree-cities of nearby Huthu. My brother In Joy Born was eight years old and Iwas five; she wanted a year or two of ship duty so we could spend some time in aHainish-style school. My brother had enjoyed the rainforests of Huthu very much,but though he could brachiate he could barely read, and we were all bright bluewith skin-fungus. While Borny learned to read and I learned to wear clothes andwe all had antifungus treatments, my mother became as intrigued by Eleven-Sortas the Observers were frustrated by it.All this is in her report, but I will say it as I learned it from her, whichhelps me remember and understand. The language had been recorded by the probeand the Observers had spent a year learning it. The many dialectical ;.variations excused their accents and errors, and they reported that language wasnot a problem. Yet there was a communication problem. The two men foundthemselves isolated, faced with suspicion or hostility, unable to form anyconnection with the native men, all of whom lived in solitary houses as hermitsor in pairs. Finding communities of adolescent males, they tried to make contactwith them, but when they entered the territory of such a group the boys eitherfled or rushed desperately at them trying to kill them. The women, who lived inwhat they called "dispersed villages," drove them away with volleys of stones assoon as they came anywhere near the houses. "I believe," one of them reported,"that the only community activity of the Sorovians is throwing rocks at men."Neither of them succeeded in having a conversation of more than three exchangeswith a man. One of them mated with a woman who came by his camp; he reportedthat though she made unmistakable and insistent advances, she seemed disturbedby his attempts to converse, refused to answer his questions, and left him, hesaid, "as soon as she got what she came for."The woman Observer was allowed to settle in an unused house in a "village"(auntring) of seven houses. She made excellent observations of daily life,insofar as she could see any of it, and had several conversations with adultwomen and many with children; but she found that she was never asked intoanother woman's house, nor expected to help or ask for help in any work.Conversation concerning normal activities was unwelcome to the other women; thechildren, her only informants, called her Aunt Crazy-Jabber. Her aberrantbehavior caused increasing distrust and dislike among the women, and they beganto keep their children away from her. She left. "There's no way," she told mymother, "for an adult to learn anything. They don't ask questions, they don'tanswer questions. Whatever they learn, they learn when they're children."Aha! said my mother to herself, looking at Borny and me. And she requested afamily transfer to Eleven. Sort with Observer status. The Stabiles interviewedher extensively by ansible, and talked with Borny and even with me-- I don'tremember it, but she told me I told the Stabiles all about my new stockings--andagreed to her request. The ship was to stay in close orbit, with the previousObservers in the crew, and she was to keep radio contact with it, daily ifpossible.I have a dim memory of the tree-city, and of playing with what must have been akitten or a ghole-kit on the ship; but my first clear memories are of our housein the auntring. It is half underground, half aboveground, with wattle-and-daubwalls. Mother and I are standing outside it in the warm sunshine. Between us isa big mudpuddle, into which Borny pours water from a basket; then he runs off tothe creek to get more water. I muddle the mud with my hands, deliciously, tillit is thick and smooth. I pick up a big double handful and slap it onto thewalls where the sticks show through. Mother says, "That's good! That's right!"in our new language, and I realize that this is work, and I am doing it. I amrepairing the house. I am making it right, doing it right. I am a competentperson.I have never doubted that, so long as I lived there.We are inside the house at night, and Borny is talking to the ship on the radio,because he misses talking the old language, and anyway he is supposed to tellthem stuff. Mother is making a basket and sweating at the split reeds. I amsinging a song to drown out Borny so nobody in the auntring hears him talkingfunny, and anyway I like singing. I learned this song this afternoon in Hyuru'shouse. I play every day with Hyuru. "Be aware, listen, listen, be aware," Ising. When Mother stops swearing she listens, and then she turns on therecorder. There is a little fire still left from cooking dinner, which waslovely pigi root, I never get tired of pigi. It is dark and warm and smells ofpigi and of burning duhur, which is a strong, sacred smell to drive out magicand bad feelings, and as I sing "Listen, be aware," I get sleepier and sleepierand lean against Mother, who is dark and warm and smells like Mother, strong andsacred, full of good feelings.Our daily life in the auntring was repetitive. On the ship, later, I learnedthat people who live in artificially complicated situations call such a life"simple." I never knew anybody, anywhere I have been, who found life simple. Ithink a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details, the way aplanet looks smooth, from orbit.Certainly our life in the auntring was easy, in the sense that our needs cameeasily to hand. There was plenty of food to be gathered or grown and preparedand cooked, plenty of temas to pick and rett and spin and weave for clothes andbedding plenty of reeds to make baskets and thatch with; we children had otherchildren to play with, mothers to look after us, and a great deal to learn. Noneof this is simple, though it's all easy enough, when you know how to do it, whenyou are aware of the details.It was not easy for my mother. It was hard for her, and complicated. She had topretend she knew the details while she was learning them, and had to think howto report and explain this way of living to people in another place who didn'tunderstand it. For Borny it was easy until it got hard because he was a boy. Forme it was all easy. I learned the work and played with the children and listenedto the mothers sing.The First Observer had been quite right: there was no way for a grown woman tolearn how to make her soul. Mother couldn't go listen to another mother sing, itwould have been too strange. The aunts all knew she hadn't been brought up well,and some of them taught her a good deal without her realizing it. They haddecided her mother must have been irresponsible and had gone on scouting insteadof settling in an auntring so that her daughter didn't get educated properly.That's why even the most aloof of the aunts always let me listen with theirchildren, so that I could become an educated person. But of course they couldn'task another adult into their houses. Borny and I had to tell her all the songsand stories we learned, and then she would tell them to the radio, or we toldthem to the radio while she listened to us. But she never got it right, notreally. How could she, trying to learn it after she'd grown up, and after she'dalways lived with magicians?"Be aware!" she would imitate my solemn and probably irritating imitation of theaunts and the big gifts. "Be aware! How many times a day do they say that? Beaware of what? They aren't aware of what the ruins are, their own history, --they aren't aware of each other! They don't even talk to each other! Be aware,indeed!"When I told her the stories of the Before Time that Aunt Sadne and Aunt Noyittold their daughters and me, she often heard the wrong things in them. I toldher about the People, and she said, "Those are the ancestors of the people herenow." When I said, "There aren't any people here now," she didn't understand."There are persons here now," I said, but she still didn't understand.Borny liked the story about the Man Who Lived with Women, how he kept some womenin a pen, the way some persons keep rats in a pen for eating, and all of themgot pregnant, and they each had a hundred babies, and the babies grew up ashorrible monsters and ate the man and the mothers and each other. Motherexplained to us that that was a parable of the human overpopulation of thisplanet thousands of years ago. "No, it's not," I said, "it's a moral story." --"Well, yes," Mother said. "The moral is, don't have too many babies." -- "No,it's not," I said. "Who could have a hundred babies even if they wanted to? Theman was a sorceror. He did magic. The women did it with him. So of course theirchildren were monsters."The key, of course, is the word "tekell," which translates so nicely into theHainish word "magic," an art or power that violates natural law. It was hard forMother to understand that some persons truly consider most human relationshipsunnatural; that marriage, for instance, or government, can be seen as an evilspell woven by sorcerors. It is hard for her people to believe magic.The ship kept asking if we were all right, and every now and then a Stabilewould hook up the ansible to our radio and grill Mother and us. She alwaysconvinced them that she wanted to stay, for despite her frustrations, she wasdoing the work the First Observers had not been able to do, and Borny and I werehappy as mudfish, all those first years. I think Mother was happy too, once shegot used to the slow pace and the indirect way she had to learn things. She waslonely, missing other grown-ups to talk to, and told us that she would have gonecrazy without us. If she missed sex she never showed it. I think, though, thather Report is not very complete about sexual matters, perhaps because she wastroubled by them. I know that when we first lived in the auntring, two of theaunts, Hedimi and Behyu, used to meet to make love, and Behyu courted my mother;but Mother didn't understand, because Behyu wouldn't talk the way Mother wantedto talk. She couldn't understand having sex with a person whose house youwouldn't enter.Once when I was nine or so, and had been listening to some of the older girls, Iasked her why didn't she go out scouting. "Aunt Sadne would look after us," Isaid, hopefully. I was tired of being the uneducated woman's daughter. I wantedto live in Aunt Sadne's house and be just like the other children."Mothers don't scout," she said, scornfully, like an aunt."Yes, they do, sometimes," I insisted. "They have to, or how could they havemore than one baby?""They go to settled men near the auntring. Behyu went back to the Red Knob HillMan when she wanted a second child. Sadne goes and sees Downriver Lame Man whenshe wants to have sex. They know the men around here. None of the mothersscout."I realized that in this case she was right and I was wrong, but I stuck to mypoint. "Well, why don't you go see Downriver Lame Man? Don't you ever want sex?Migi says she wants it all the time.""Migi is seventeen," Mother said drily. "Mind your own nose." She soundedexactly like all the other mothers.Men, during my childhood, were a kind of uninteresting mystery to me. Theyturned up a lot in the Before Time stories, and the singing-circle girls talkedabout them; but I seldom saw any of them. Sometimes I'd glimpse one when I wasforaging, but they never came near the auntring. In summer the Downriver LameMan would get lonesome waiting for Aunt Sadne and would come lurking around, notvery far from the auntring --not in the bush or down by the river, of course,where he might be mistaken for a rogue and stoned-- but out in the open, on thehillsides, where we could all see who he was. Hyuru and Didsu, Aunt Sadne'sdaughters, said she had had sex with him when she went out scouting the firsttime, and always had sex with him and never tried any of the other men of thesettlement.She had told them, too, that the first child she bore was a boy, and she drownedit, because she didn't want to bring up a boy and send him away. They felt queerabout that and so did I, but it wasn't an uncommon thing. One of the stories welearned was about a drowned boy who grew up underwater, and seized his motherwhen she came to bathe, and tried to hold her under till she too & owned; butshe escaped.At any rate, after the Downriver Lame Man had sat around for several days on thehillsides, singing long songs and braiding and unbraiding his hair, which waslong too, and shone black in the sun, Aunt Sadne always went off for a night ortwo with him, and came back looking cross and self-conscious.Aunt Noyit explained to me that Downriver Lame Man's songs were magic; not theusual bad magic, but what she called the great good spells. Aunt Sadne nevercould resist his spells. "But he hasn't half the charm of some men I've known,"said Aunt Noyit, smiling reminiscently.Our diet, though excellent, was very low in fat, which Mother thought mightexplain the rather late onset of puberty; girls seldom menstreated before theywere fifteen, and boys often weren't mature till they were considerably olderthan that. But the women began looking askance at boys as soon as they showedany signs at all of adolescence. First Aunt Hedimi, who was always grim, thenAunt Noyit, then even Aunt Sadne began to turn away from Borny, to leave himout, not answering when he spoke. "What are you doing playing with thechildren?" old Aunt Dnemi asked him so fiercely that he came home in tears. Hewas not quite fourteen.Sadne's younger daughter Hyuru was my soulmate, my best friend, you would say.Her elder sister Didsu, who was in the singing circle now, came and talked to meone day, looking serious. "Borny is very handsome," she said. I agreed proudly."Very big, very strong" she said, "stronger than I am."I agreed proudly again, and then I began to back away from her."I'm not doing magic, Ren," she said."Yes you are," I said. "I'll tell your mother!"Didsu shook her head. "I'm trying to speak truly. If my fear causes your fear, Ican't help it. It has to be so. We talked about it in the singing circle. Idon't like it," she said, and I knew she meant it; she had a soft face, softeyes, she had always been the gentlest of us children. "I wish he could be achild," she said. "I wish I could. But we can't.""Go be a stupid old woman, then," I said, and ran away from her. I went to mysecret place down by the river and cried. I took the holies out of my soulbagand arranged them. One holy -- it doesn't matter if I tell you -- was a crystalthat Borny had given me, clear at the top, cloudy purple at the base. I held ita long time and then I gave it back. I dug a hole under a boulder, and wrappedthe holy in duhur leaves inside a square of cloth I tore out of my kilt,beautiful, fine cloth Hyuru had woven and sewn for me. I tore the square rightfrom the front, where it would show. I gave the crystal back, and then sat along time there near it. When I went home I said nothing of what Didsu had said.But Borny was very silent, and my mother had a worried look. "What have you doneto your kilt, Ren?" she asked. I raised my head a little and did not answer; shestarted to speak again, and then did not. She had finally learned not to talk toa person who chose to be silent.Borny didn't have a soulmate, but he had been playing more and more often withthe two boys nearest his age, Ednede who was a year or two older, a slight,quiet boy, and Bit who was only eleven, but boisterous and reckless.The three of them went off somewhere all the time. I hadn't paid much attention,partly because I was glad to be rid of Bit. Hyuru and I had been practicingbeing aware, and it was tiresome to always have to be aware of Bit yelling andjumping around. He never could leave anyone quiet, as if their quietness tooksomething from him. His mother, Hedimi, had educated him, but she wasn't a goodsinger or story-teller like Sadne and Noyit, and Bit was too restless to listeneven to them. Whenever he saw me and Hyuru trying to slow-walk or sitting beingaware, he hung around making noise till we got mad and told him to go, and thenhe jeered, "Dumb girls!"I asked Borny what he and Bit and Ednede did, and he said, "Boy stuff.""Like what ?""Practicing.""Being aware?"After a while he said, "No.""Practicing what, then?""Wrestling. Getting strong. For the boygroup." He looked gloomy, but after awhile he said, "Look," and showed me a knife he had hidden under his mattress."Ednede says you have to have a knife, then nobody will challenge you. Isn't ita beauty?" It was metal, old metal from the People, shaped like a reed, poundedout and sharpened down both edges, with a sharp point. A piece of polishedflintshrub wood had been bored and fitted on the handle to protect the hand. "Ifound it in an empty man's-house," he said. "I made the wooden part." He broodedover it lovingly. Yet he did not keep it in his soulbag."What do you do with it?" I asked, wondering why both edges were sharp, so you'dcut your hand if you used it."Keep off attackers," he said."Where was the empty man's-house?""Way over across Rocky Top.""Can I go with you if you go back?""No," he said, not unkindly, but absolutely."What happened to the man? Did he die?""There was a skull in the creek. We think he slipped and drowned."He didn't sound quite like Borny. There was something in his voice like agrown-up; melancholy; reserved. I had gone to him for reassurance, but came awaymore deeply anxious. I went to Mother and asked her, "what do they do in theboygroups?""Perform natural selection," she said, not in my language but in hers, in astrained tone. I didn't always understand Hainish any more and had no idea whatshe meant, but the tone of her voice upset me; and to my horror I saw she hadbegun to cry silently. "We have to move, Serenity," she said -- she was stilltalking Hainish without realizing it. "There isn't any reason why a family can'tmove, is there? Women just move in and move out as they please. Nobody careswhat anybody does. Nothing is anybody's business. Except hounding the boys outof town!"I understood most of what she said, but got her to say it in my language; andthen I said, "But anywhere we went, Borny would be the same age, and size, andeverything.""Then we'll leave," she said fiercely. "Go back to the ship."I drew away from her. I had never been afraid of her before: she had never usedmagic on me. A mother has great power, but there is nothing unnatural in it,unless it is used against the child's soul.Borny had no fear of her. He had his own magic. When she told him she intendedleaving, he persuaded her out of it. He wanted to go join the boygroup, he said;he'd been wanting to for a year now. He didn't belong in the auntring any more,all women and girls and little kids. He wanted to go live with other boys. Bit'solder brother Yit was a member of the boygroup in the Four Rivers Territory, andwould look after a boy from his auntring. And Ednede was getting ready to go.And Borny and Ednede and Bit had been talking to some men, recently. Men weren'tall ignorant and crazy, the way Mother thought. They didn't talk much, but theyknew a lot."What do they know?" Mother asked grimly"They know how to be men," Borny said. "It's what I'm going to be.""Not that kind of man -- not if I can help it! In Joy Born, you must rememberthe men on the ship, real men -- nothing like these poor, filthy hermits. Ican't let you grow up thinking that that's what you have to be!""They're not like that," Borny said. "You ought to go talk to some of them,Mother.""Don't be naive," she said with an edgy laugh. "You know perfectly well thatwomen don't go to men to talk."I knew she was wrong; all the women in the auntring knew all the settled men forthree days' walk around. They did talk with them, when they were out foraging.They only kept away from the ones they didn't trust; and usually those mendisappeared before long. Noyit had told me, "Their magic turns on them." Shemeant the other men drove them away or killed them. But I didn't say any ofthis, and Borny said only, "Well, Cave Cliff Man is really nice. And he took usto the place where I found those People things" -- some ancient artifacts thatMother had been excited about. "The men know things the women don't," Borny wenton. "At least I could go to the boygroup for a while, maybe. I ought to. I couldlearn a lot! We don't have any solid information on them at all. All we knowanything about is this auntring. I'll go and stay long enough to get materialfor our report. I can't ever come back to either the auntring or the boygrouponce I leave them. I'll have to go to the ship, or else try to be a man. So letme have a real go at it, please, Mother?""I don't know why you think you have to learn how to be a man," she said after awhile. "You know how already."He really smiled then, and she put her arm around him.What about me? I thought. I don't even know what the ship is. I want to be here,where my soul is. I want to go on learning to be in the world.But I was afraid of Mother and Borny, who were both working magic, and so I saidnothing and was still, as I had been taught.Ednede and Borny went off together. Noyit, Ednede's mother, was as glad asMother was about their keeping company, though she said nothing. The eveningbefore they left, the two boys went to every house in the auntring. It took along time. The houses were each just within sight or hearing of one or two ofthe others, with bush and gardens and irrigation ditches and paths in between.In each house the mother and the children were waiting to say goodbye, only theydidn't say it; my language has no word for hello or goodbye. They asked the boysin and gave them something to eat, something they could take with them on theway to the Territory. When the boys went to the door everybody in the householdcame and touched their hand or cheek. I remembered when Yit had gone around theauntring that way. I had cried then, because even though I didn't much like Yit,it seemed so strange for somebody to leave forever, like they were dying. Thistime I didn't cry; but I kept waking and waking again, until I heard Borny getup before the first light and pick up his things and leave quietly. I knowMother was awake too, but we did as we should do, and lay still while he left,and for a long time after.I have read her description of what she calls "An adolescent male leaves theAuntring: a vestigial survival of ceremony."She had wanted him to put a radio in his soulbag and get in touch with her atleast occasionally. He had been unwilling. "I want to do it fight, Mother.There's no use doing it if I don't do it right.""I simply can't handle not heating from you at all, Borny," she had said inHainish."But if the radio got broken or taken or something you'd worry a lot more, maybewith no reason at all."She finally agreed to wait half a year, till the first rains then she would goto a landmark, a huge rain near the fiver that marked the southern end of theTerritory, and he would try and come to her there. "But only wait ten days," hesaid. "If I can't come, I can't." She agreed. She was like a mother with alittle baby, I thought, saying yes to everything. That seemed wrong to me; but Ithought Borny was fight. Nobody ever came back to their mother from boygroup.But Borny did.Summer was long, clear, beautiful. I was learning to starwatch; that is when youlie down outside on the open hills in the dry season at night, and find acertain star in the eastern sky, and watch it cross the sky till it sets. Youcan look away, of course, to rest your eyes, and doze, but you try to keeplooking back at the star and the stars around it, until you feel the earthturning, until you become aware of how the stars and the world and the soul movetogether. After the certain star sets you sleep until dawn wakes you. Then asalways you greet the sunrise with aware silence. I was very happy on the hillsthose warm great nights, those clear dawns. The first time or two Hyuru and Istarwatched together, but after that we went alone, and it was better alone.I was coming back from such a night, along the narrow valley between Rocky Topand Over Home Hill in the first sunlight, when a man came crashing through thebush down onto the path and stood in front of me. "Don't be afraid," he said,"Listen!" He was heavyset, half naked; he stank.I stood still as a stick. He had said "Listen!" just as the aunts did, and Ilistened. "Your brother and his friend are all right. Your mother shouldn't gothere. Some of the boys are in a gang. They'd rape her. I and some others arekilling the leaders. It takes a while. Your brother is with the other gang. He'sall right. Tell her. Tell me what I said."I repeated it word for word, as I had learned to do when I listened."Right. Good," he said, and took off up the steep slope on his short, powerfullegs, and was gone.Mother would have gone to the Territory right then, but I told the man's messageto Noyit, too, and she came to the porch of our house to speak to Mother. Ilistened to her, because she was telling things I didn't know well and Motherdidn't know at all. Noyit was a small, mild woman, very like her son Ednede; sheliked teaching and singing, so the children were always around her place. Shesaw Mother was getting ready for a journey. She said, "House on the Skyline Mansays the boys are all right." When she saw Mother wasn't listening, she went on,she pretended to be talking to me, because women don't teach women: "He sayssome of the men are breaking up the gang. They do that, when the boygroups getwicked. Sometimes there are magicians among them, leaders, older boys, even menwho want to make a gang. The settled men will kill the magicians and make surenone of the boys gets hurt. When gangs come out of the Territories, nobody issafe. The settled men don't like that. They see to it that the auntring is safe.So your brother will be all right."My mother went on packing pigi-roots into her net."A rape is a very, very bad thing for the settled men," said Noyit to me. "Itmeans the women won't come to them. If the boys raped some woman, probably themen would kill all the boys."My mother was finally listening.She did not go to the rendezvous with Borny, but all through the rainy seasonshe was utterly miserable. She got sick, and old Dnemi sent Didsu over to doseher with gagberry syrup. She made notes while she was sick, lying on hermattress, about illnesses and medicines and how the older gifts had to lookafter sick women, since grown women did not enter one another's houses. Shenever stopped working and never stopped worrying about Borny.Late in the rainy season, when the warm wind had come and the yellowhoney-flowers were in bloom on all the hills, the Golden World time, Noyit cameby while Mother was working in the garden. "House on the Skyline Man says thingsare all right in the boygroup," she said, and went on.Mother began to realize then that although no adult ever entered another'shouse, and adults seldom spoke to one another, and men and women had only brief,often casual relationships, and men lived all their lives in real solitude,still there was a kind of community, a wide, thin, fine network of delicate andcertain intention and restraint: a social order. Her reports to the ship werefilled with this new understanding. But she still found Sorovian lifeimpoverished, seeing these persons as mere survivors, poor fragments of thewreck of something great."My dear," she said -- in Hainish; there is no way to say "my dear" in mylanguage. She was speaking Hainish with me in the house so that I wouldn'tforget it entirely. -- "My dear, the explanation of an uncomprehended technologyas magic is primitivism. It's not a criticism, merely a description.""But technology isn't magic," I said."Yes, it is, in their minds; look at the story you just recorded. Before Timesorcerors who could fly in the air and undersea and underground in magic boxes!""In metal boxes," I corrected."In other words, airplanes, tunnels, submarines; a lost technology explained assupernatural.""The boxes weren't magic," I said. "The people were. They were sorcerors. Theyused their power to get power over other persons. To live rightly a person hasto keep away from magic.""That's a cultural imperative, because a few thousand years ago uncontrolledtechnological expansion led to disaster. Exactly. There's a perfectly rationalreason for the irrational taboo."I did not know what "rational" and "irrational" meant in my language; I couldnot find words for them. "Taboo" was the same as "poisonous." I listened to mymother because a daughter must learn from her mother, and my mother knew many,many things no other person knew; but my education was very difficult,sometimes. If only there were more stories and songs in her teaching, and not somany words, words that slipped away from me like water through a net!The Golden Time passed, and the beautiful summer; the Silver Time returned, whenthe mists lie in the valleys between the hills, before the rains begin; and therains began, and fell long and slow and warm, day after day after day. We hadheard nothing of Borny and Ednede for over a year. Then in the night the softthrum of rain on the reed roof turned into a scratching at the door and awhisper, "Shh -- it's all right -- it's all right."We wakened the fire and crouched at it in the dark to talk. Borny had got talland very thin, like a skeleton with the skin dried on it. A cut across his upperlip had drawn it up into a kind of snarl that bared his teeth, and he could notsay p, b, or m. His voice was a man's voice. He huddled at the fire trying toget warmth into his bones. His clothes were wet rags. The knife hung on a cordaround his neck. "It was all right," he kept saying. "I don't want to go onthere, though."He would not tell us much about the year and a half in the boygroup, insistingthat he would record a full description when he got to the ship. He did tell uswhat he would have to do if he stayed on Soro. He would have to go back to theTerritory and hold his own among the older boys, by fear and sorcery, alwaysproving his strength, until he was old enough to walk away -- that is, to leavethe Territory and wander alone till he found a place where the men would let himsettle. Ednede and another boy had paired, and were going to walk away togetherwhen the rains stopped. It was easier for a pair, he said, if their bond wassexual; so long as they offered no competition for women, settled men wouldn'tchallenge them. But a new man in the region anywhere within three days' walk ofan auntring had to prove himself against the settled men there. "It would 'ethree or four years of the same thing," he said, "challenging, fighting, alwayswatching the others, on guard, showing how strong you are, staying alert allnight, all day. To end up living alone your whole life. I can't do it." Helooked at me. "I'ne not a 'erson," he said. "I want to go ho'e.""I'll radio the ship now," Mother said quietly, with infinite relief."No," I said.Borny was watching Mother, and raised his hand when she turned to speak to me."I'll go," he said. "She doesn't have to. Why should she?" Like me, he hadlearned not to use names without some reason to.Mother looked from him to me and finally gave a kind of laugh. "I can't leaveher here, Borny!""Why should you go?""Because I want to," she said. "I've had enough. More than enough. We've got atremendous amount of material on the women, over seven years of it, and now youcan fill the information gaps on the men's side. That's enough. It's time, pasttime, that we all got back to our own people. All of us.""I have no people," I said. "I don't belong to people. I am trying to be aperson. Why do you want to take me away from my soul? You want me to do magic! Iwon't. I won't do magic. I won't speak your language. I won't go with you!"My mother was still not listening; she started to answer angrily. Borny put uphis hand again, the way a woman does when she is going to sing, and she lookedat him."We can talk later," he said. "We can decide. I need to sleep."He hid in our house for two days while we decided what to do and how to do it.That was a miserable time. I stayed home as if I were sick so that I would notlie to the other persons, and Borny and Mother and I talked and talked. Bornyasked Mother to stay with me; I asked her to leave me with Sadne or Noyit,either of whom would certainly take me into their household. She refused. Shewas the mother and I the child and her power was sacred. She radioed the shipand arranged for a lander to pick us up in a barren area two days' walk from theauntring. We left at night, sneaking away. I carried nothing but my soulbag. Wewalked all next day, slept a little when it stopped raining, walked on and cameto the desert. The ground was all lumps and hollows and caves, Before-Timeruins; the soil was tiny bits of glass and hard grains and fragments, the way itis in the deserts. Nothing grew there. We waited there.The sky broke open and a shining thing fell down and stood before us on therocks, bigger than any house, though not as big as the ruins of the Before Time.My mother looked at me with a queer, vengeful smile. "Is it magic?" she said.And it was very hard for me not to think that it was. Yet I knew it was only athing, and there is no magic in things, only in minds. I said nothing. I had notspoken since we left my home.I had resolved never to speak to anybody until I got home again; but I was stilla child, used to listen and obey. In the ship, that utterly strange new world, Iheld out only for a few hours, and then began to cry and ask to go home. Please,please, can I go home now.Everyone on the ship was very kind to me.Even then I thought about what Borny had been through and what I was goingthrough, comparing our ordeals. The difference seemed total. He had been alone,without food, without shelter, a frightened boy trying to survive among equallyfrightened rivals against the brutality of older youths intent on having andkeeping power, which they saw as manhood. I was cared for, clothed, fed sorichly I got sick, kept so warm I felt feverish, guided, reasoned with, praised,befriended by citizens of a very great city, offered a share in their power,which they saw as humanity. He and I had both fallen among sorcerors. Both heand I could see the good in the people we were among, but neither he nor I couldlive with them.Borny told me he had spent many desolate nights in the Territory crouched in afireless shelter, telling over the stories he had learned from the aunts,singing the songs in his head. I did the same thing every night on the ship. ButI refused to tell the stories or sing to the people there. I would not speak mylanguage, there. It was the only way I had to be silent.My mother was enraged, and for a long time unforgiving. "You owe your knowledgeto our people," she said. I did not answer, because all I had to say was thatthey were not my people, that I had no people. I was a person. I had a languagethat I did not speak. I had my silence. I had nothing else.I went to school; there were children of different ages on the ship, like anauntring, and many of the adults taught us. I learned Ekumenical history andgeography, mostly, and Mother gave me a report to learn about the history ofEleven-Soro, what my language calls the Before Time. I read that the cities ofmy world had been the greatest cities ever built on any world, covering two ofthe continents entirely, with small areas set aside for farming, there had been120 billion people living in the cities, while the animals and the sea and theair and the dirt died, until the people began dying too. It was a hideous story.I was ashamed of it and wished nobody else on the ship or in the Ekumen knewabout it. And yet, I thought, if they knew the stories I knew about the BeforeTime, they would understand how magic turns on itself, and that it must be so.After less than a year, Mother told us we were going to Hain. The ship's doctorand his clever machines had repaired Borny's lip; he and Mother had put all theinformation they had into the records; he was old enough to begin training forthe Ekumenical Schools, as he wanted to do. I was not flourishing, and thedoctor's machines were not able to repair me. I kept losing weight, I sleptbadly, I had terrible headaches. Almost as soon as we came aboard the ship, Ihad begun to menstruate; each time the cramps were agonizing. "This is no good,this ship life," she said. "You need to be outdoors. On a planet. On a civilizedplanet.""If I went to Hain," I said, "when I came back, the persons I know would all bedead hundreds of years ago.""Serenity," she said, "you must stop thinking in terms of Soro. We have leftSore. You must stop deluding and tormenting yourself, and look forward, notback. Your whole life is ahead of you. Hain is where you will learn to live it."I summoned up my courage and spoke in my own language: "I am not a child now.You have no power over me. I will not go. Go without me. You have no power overme!"Those are the words I had been taught to say to a magician, a sorceror. I don'tknow if my mother fully understood them, but she did understand that I wasdeathly afraid of her, and it struck her into silence.After a long time she said in Hainish, "I agree. I have no power over you. But Ihave certain rights; the right of loyalty; of love.""Nothing is right that puts me in your power," I said, still in my language.She stared at me. "You are like one of them," she said. "You are one of them.You don't know what love is. You're closed into yourself like a rock. I shouldnever have taken you there. People crouching in the ruins of a society --brutal, rigid, ignorant, superstitious -- Each one in a terrible solitude -And Ilet them make you into one of them!""You educated me," I said, and my voice began to tremble and my mouth to shakearound the words, "and so does the school here, but my aunts educated me, and Iwant to finish my education." I was weeping, but I kept standing with my handsclenched. "I'm not a woman yet. I want to be a woman.""But Ren, you will be! -- ten times the woman you could ever be on Soro -- youmust try to understand, to believe me --""You have no power over me," I said, shutting my eyes and putting my hands overmy ears. She came to me then and held me, but I stood stiff, enduring her touch,until she let me go.The ship's crew had changed entirely while we were onplanet. The First Observershad gone on to other worlds; our backup was now a Gethenian archeologist namedArrem, a mild, watchful person, not young. Arrem had gone down onplanet only onthe two desert continents, and welcomed the chance to talk with us, who had"lived with the living," as heshe said. I felt easy when I was with Artera, whowas so unlike anybody else. Arrem was not a man -- I could not get used tohaving men around all the time-- yet not a woman; and so not exactly an adult,yet not a child: a person, alone, like me. Heshe did not know my language well,but always tried to talk it with me. When this crisis came, Arrem came to mymother and took counsel with her, suggesting that she let me go back downonplanet. Borny was in on some of these talks, and told me about them."Arrem says if you go to Hain you'll probably die," he said. "Your soul will.Heshe says some of what we learned is like what they learn on Gethen, in theirreligion. That kind of stopped Mother from ranting about primitive superstition.... And Arrem says you could be useful to the Ekumen, if you stay and finishyour education on Soro. You'll be an invaluable resource." Borny sniggered, andafter a minute I did too. "They'll mine you like an asteroid," he said. Then hesaid, "You know, if you stay and I go, we'll be dead."That was how the young people of the ships said it, when one was going to crossthe lightyears and the other was going to stay. Goodbye, we're dead. It was thetruth."I know," I said. I felt my throat get tight, and was afraid. I had never seenan adult at home cry, except when Sut's baby died. Sut howled all night. Howledlike a dog, Mother said, but I had never seen or heard a dog, I heard a womanterribly crying. I was afraid of sounding like that. "If I can go home, when Ifinish making my soul, who knows, I might come to Hain for a while," I said, inHainish."Scouting?" Borny said in my language, and laughed, and made me laugh again.Nobody gets to keep a brother. I knew that. But Borny had come back from beingdead to me, so I might come back from being dead to him; at least I couldpretend I might.My mother came to a decision. She and I would stay on the ship for another yearwhile Borny went to Hain. I would keep going to school; if at the end of theyear I was still determined to go back onplanet, I could do so. With me orwithout me, she would go on to Hain then and join Borny. If I ever wanted to seethem again, I could follow them. It was a compromise that satisfied no one, butit was the best we could do, and we all consented.When he left, Borny gave me his knife.After he left, I tried not to be sick. I worked hard at learning everything theytaught me in the ship school, and I tried to teach Arrem how to be aware and howto avoid witchcraft. We did slow walking together in the ship's garden, and thefirst hour of the untrance movements from the Handdata of Karhide on Gethen. Weagreed that they were alike.The ship was staying in the Soro system not only because of my family, butbecause the crew was now mostly zoologists who had come to study a sea animal onEleven-Soro, a kind of cephalopod that had mutated toward high intelligence, ormaybe it already was highly intelligent; but there was a communication problem."Almost as bad as with the local humans," said Steadiness, the zoologist whotaught and teased us mercilessly. She took us down twice by lander to theuninhabited islands in the Northern Hemisphere where her station was. It wasvery strange to go down to my world and yet be a world away from my aunts andsisters and my soulmate; but I said nothing.I saw the great, pale, shy creature come slowly up out of the deep waters with arunning ripple of colors along its long coiling tentacles and a ringing shimmerof sound, all so quick it was over before you could follow the colors or hearthe tune. The zoologist's machine produced a pink glow and a mechanicallyspeeded-up twitter, tinny and feeble in the immensity of the sea. The cephalopodpatiently responded in its beautiful silvery shadowy language. "CP," Steadinesssaid to us, ironic -- Communication Problem. "We don't know what we're talkingabout."I said, "I learned something in my education here. In one of the songs, itsays," and I hesitated, trying to translate it into Hainish, "it says, thinkingis one way of doing and words are one way of thinking."Steadiness stared at me, in disapproval I thought, but probably only because Ihad never said anything to her before except "Yes." Finally she said, "Are yousuggesting that it doesn't speak in words?""Maybe it's not speaking at all. Maybe it's thinking."Steadiness stared at me some more and then said, "Thank you." She looked as ifshe too might be thinking. I wished I could sink into the water, the way thecephalopod was doing.The other young people on the ship were friendly and mannerly. Those are wordsthat have no translation in my language. I was unfriendly and unmannerly, andthey let me be. I was grateful. But there was no place to be alone on the ship.Of course we each had a room; though small, the Heyho was a Hainish-builtexplorer, designed to give its people room and privacy and comfort and varietyand beauty while they hung around in a solar system for years on end. But it wasdesigned. It was all human-made -- everything was human. I had much more privacythan I had ever had at home in our one-room house; yet there I had been free andhere I was in a trap. I felt the pressure of people all around me, all the time.People around me, people with me, people pressing on me, pressing me to be oneof them, to be one of them, one of the people. How could I make my soul? I couldbarely cling to it. I was in terror that I would lose it altogether.One of the rocks in my soulbag, a little ugly gray rock that I had picked up ona certain day in a certain place in the hills above the river in the SilverTime, a little piece of my world, that became my world. Every night I took itout and held it in my hand while I lay in bed waiting to sleep, thinking of thesunlight on the hills above the river, listening to the soft hushing of theship's systems, like a mechanical sea.The doctor hopefully fed me various tonics. Mother and I ate breakfast togetherevery morning. She kept at work, making our notes from all the years onEleven-Soro into her report to the Ekumen, but I knew the work did not go well.Her soul was in as much danger as mine was."You will never give in, will you, Ren?" she said to me one morning out of thesilence of our breakfast. I had not intended the silence as a message. I hadonly rested in it."Mother, I want to go home and you want to go home," I said. "Can't we?"Her expression was strange for a moment, while she misunderstood me; then itcleared to grief, defeat, relief."Will we be dead?" she asked me, her mouth twisting."I don't know. I have to make my soul. Then I can know if I can come.""You know I can't come back. It's up to you.""I know. Go see Borny," I said. "Go home. Here we're both dying." Then noisesbegan to come out of me, sobbing, howling. Mother was crying. She came to me andheld me, and I could hold my mother, cling to her and cry with her, because herspell was broken.From the lander approaching I saw the oceans of Eleven-Soro, and in thegreatness of my joy I thought that when I was grown and went out alone I wouldgo to the sea shore and watch the sea-beasts shimmering their colors and tunestill I knew what they were thinking. I would listen, I would learn, till my soulwas as large as the shining world. The scarred barrens whirled beneath us, rainsas wide as the continent, endless desolations. We touched down. I had mysoulbag, and Borny's knife around my neck on its string a communicator implantbehind my right earlobe, and a medicine kit Mother had made for me. "No usedying of an infected finger, after all," she had said. The people on the landersaid good-bye, but I forgot to. I set off out of the desert, home.It was summer; the night was short and warm; I walked most of it. I got to theauntring about the middle of the second day. I went to my house cautiously, incase somebody had moved in while I was gone; but it was just as we had left it.The mattresses were moldy, and I put them and the bedding out in the sun, andstarted going over the garden to see what had kept growing by itself. The pigihad got small and seedy, but there were some good roots. A little boy came byand stared; he had to be Migi's baby. After a while Hyuru came by. She squatteddown near me in the garden in the sunshine. I smiled when I saw her, and shesmiled, but it took us a while to find something to say."Your mother didn't come back," she said."She's dead," I said."I'm sorry," Hyuru said.She watched me dig up another root."Will you come to the singing circle?" she asked.I nodded.She smiled again. With her rosebrown skin and wide-set eyes, Hyuru had becomevery beautiful, but her smile was exactly the same as when we were little girls."Hi, ya!" she sighed in deep contentment, lying down on the dirt with her chinon her arms. "This is good!"I went on blissfully digging.That year and the next two, I was in the singing circle with Hyuru and two othergifts. Didsu still came to it often, and Han, a woman who settled in ourauntring to have her first baby, joined it too. In the singing circle the oldergifts pass around the stories, songs, knowledge they learned from their ownmother, and young women who have lived in other auntrings teach what theylearned there; so women make each other's souls, learning how to make theirchildren's souls.Han lived in the house where old Dnemi had died. Nobody in the auntring exceptSut's baby had died while my family lived there. My mother had complained thatshe didn't have any data on death and burial. Sut had gone away with her deadbaby and never came back, and nobody talked about it. I think that turned mymother against the others more than anything else. She was angry and ashamedthat she could not go and try to comfort Sut and that nobody else did. "It isnot human," she said. "It is pure animal behavior. Nothing could be clearerevidence that this is a broken culture -- not a society, but the remains of one.A terrible, an appalling poverty."I don't know if Dnemi's death would have changed her mind. Dnemi was dying for along time, of kidney failure I think; she turned a kind of dark orange color,jaundice. While she could get around, nobody helped her. When she didn't comeout of her house for a day or two, the women would send the children in withwater and a little food and firewood. It went on so through the winter; then onemorning little Rashi told his mother Aunt Dnemi was "staring." Several of thewomen went to Dnemi's house, and entered it for the first and last time. Theysent for all the girls in the singing circle, so that we could learn what to do.We took turns sitting by the body or in the porch of the house, singing softsongs, child-songs, giving the soul a day and a night to leave the body and thehouse; then the older women wrapped the body in the bedding, strapped it on akind of litter, and set off with it toward the barren lands. There it would begiven back, under a rock cairn or inside one of the ruins of the ancient city."Those are the lands of the dead," Sadne said. "What dies stays there."Hah settled down in that house a year later. When her baby began to be born sheasked Didsu to help her, and Hyuru and I stayed in the porch and watched, sothat we could learn. It was a wonderful thing to see, and quite altered thecourse of my thinking, and Hyuru's too. Hyuru said, "I'd like to do that!" Isaid nothing, but thought, So do I, but not for a long time, because once youhave a child you're never alone.And though it is of the others, of relationships, that I write, the heart of mylife has been my being alone.I think there is no way to write about being alone. To write is to tellsomething to somebody, to communicate to others. CP, as Steadiness would say.Solitude is non-communication, the absence of others, the presence of a selfsufficient to itself.A woman's solitude in the auntring is, of course, based firmly on the presenceof others at a little distance. It is a contingent, and therefore human,solitude. The settled men are connected as stringently to the women, though notto one another; the settlement is an integral though distant element of theauntring. Even a scouting woman is part of the society -- a moving part,connecting the settled parts. Only the isolation of a woman or man who choosesto live outside the settlements is absolute. They are outside the networkaltogether. There are worlds where such persons are called saints, holy people.Since isolation is a sure way to prevent magic, on my world the assumption isthat they are sorcerors, outcast by others or by their own will, theirconscience.I knew I was strong with magic, how could I help it? and I began to long to getaway. It would be so much easier and safer to be alone. But at the same time,and increasingly, I wanted to know something about the great harmless magic, thespells cast between men and women.I preferred foraging to gardening, and was out on the hills a good deal; andthese days, instead of keeping away from the man's-houses, I wandered by them,and looked at them, and looked at the men if they were outside. The men lookedback. Downriver Lame Man's long, shining hair was getting a little white in itnow, but when he sat singing his long, long songs I found myself sitting downand listening, as if my legs had lost their bones. He was very handsome. So wasthe man I remembered as a boy named Tret in the auntring, when I was little,Behyu's son. He had come back from the boygroup and from wandering, and hadbuilt a house and made a fine garden in the valley of Red Stone Creek. He had abig nose and big eyes, long arms and legs, long hands; he moved very quietly,almost like Arrem doing the untrance. I went often to pick lowberries in RedStone Creek valley.He came along the path and spoke. "You were Borny's sister," he said. He had alow voice, quiet."He's dead," I said.Red Stone Man nodded. "That's his knife."In my world, I had never talked with a man. I felt extremely strange. I keptpicking berries."You're picking green ones," Red Stone Man said.His soft, smiling voice made my legs lose their bones again."I think nobody's touched you," he said. "I'd touch you gently. I think aboutit, about you, ever since you came by here early in the summer. Look, here's abush full of ripe ones. Those are green. Come over here."I came closer to him, to the bush of ripe berries.When I was on the ship, Arrem told me that many languages have a single word forsexual desire and the bond between mother and child and the bond betweensoulmates and the feeling for one's home and worship of the sacred; they are allcalled love. There is no word that great in my language. Maybe my mother isright, and human greatness perished in my world with the people of the BeforeTime, leaving only small, poor, broken things and thoughts. In my language, loveis many different words. I learned one of them with Red Stone Man. We sang ittogether to each other.We made a brush house on a little cove of the creek, and neglected our gardens,but gathered many, many sweet berries.Mother had put a lifetime's worth of nonconceptives in the little medicine kit.She had no faith in Sorovian herbals. I did, and they worked.But when a year or so later, in the Golden Time, I decided to go out scouting, Ithought I might go places where the right herbs were scarce; and so I stuck thelittle noncon jewel on the back of my left earlobe. Then I wished I hadn't,because it seemed like witchcraft. Then I told myself I was being superstitious;the noncon wasn't any more witchcraft than the herbs were, it just workedlonger. I had promised my mother in my soul that I would never be superstitious.The skin grew over the noncon, and I took my soulbag and Borny's knife and themedicine kit, and set off across the world.I had told Hyuru and Red Stone Man I would be leaving. Hyuru and I sang andtalked together all one night down by the fiver. Red Stone Man said in his softvoice, "Why do you want to go?" and I said, "To get away from your magic,sorcerer," which was true in part. If I kept going to him I might always go tohim. I wanted to give my soul and body a larger world to be in.Now to tell of my scouting years is more difficult than ever. CP! A womanscouting is entirely alone, unless she chooses to ask a settled man for sex, orcamps in an auntring for a while to sing and listen with the singing circle. Ifshe goes anywhere near the territory of a boygroup, she is in danger; and if shecomes on a rogue she is in danger; and if she hurts herself or gets intopolluted country, she is in danger. She has no responsibility except to herself,and so much freedom is very dangerous.In my fight earlobe was the tiny communicator; every forty days, as I hadpromised, I sent a signal to the ship that meant "all well." If I wanted toleave, I would send another signal. I could have called for the lander to rescueme from a bad situation, but though I was in bad situations a couple of times Inever thought of using it. My signal was the mere fulfillment of a promise to mymother and her people, the network I was no longer part of, a meaninglesscommunication.Life in the auntring, or for a settled man, is repetitive, as I said; and so itcan be dull. Nothing new happens. The mind always wants new happenings. So forthe young soul there is wandering and scouting, travel, danger, change. But ofcourse travel and danger and change have their own dullness. It is finallyalways the same otherness over again; another hill, another fiver, another man,another day. The feet begin to turn in a long, long circle. The body begins tothink of what it learned back home, when it learned to be still. To be aware. Tobe aware of the grain of dust beneath the sole of the foot, and the skin of thesole of the foot, and the touch and scent of the air on the cheek, and the falland motion of the light across the air, and the color of the grass on the highhill across the fiver, and the thoughts of the body, of the soul, the shimmerand ripple of colors and sounds in the clear darkness of the depths, endlesslymoving, endlessly changing, endlessly new.So at last I came back home. I had been gone about four years.Hyuru had moved into my old house when she left her mother's house. She had notgone scouting, but had taken to going to Red Stone Creek Valley; and she waspregnant. I was glad to see her living there. The only house empty was an oldhalf-ruined one too close to Hedimi's. I decided to make a new house. I dug outthe circle as deep as my chest; the digging took most of the summer. I cut thesticks, braced and wove them, and then daubed the framework solidly with mudinside and out. I remembered when I had done that with my mother long long ago,and how she had said, "That's right. That's good." I left the roof open, and thehot sun of late summer baked the mud into clay. Before the rains came, Ithatched the house with reeds, a triple thatching, for I'd had enough of beingwet all winter.My auntring was more a string than a ring stretching along the north bank of theriver for about three kilos; my house lengthened the string a good bit, upstreamfrom all the others. I could just see the smoke from Hyuru's fireplace. I dug itinto a sunny slope with good drainage. It is still a good house.I settled down. Some of my time went to gathering and gardening and mending andall the dull, repetitive actions of primitive life, and some went to singing andthinking the songs and stories I had learned here at home and while scouting andthe things I had learned on the ship, also. Soon enough I found why women areglad to have children come to listen to them, for songs and stories are meant tobe heard, listened to. "Listen!" I would say to the children. The children ofthe auntring came and went, like the little fish in the river, one or two orfive of them, little ones, big ones. When they came, I sang or told stories tothem. When they left, I went on in silence. Sometimes I joined the singingcircle to give what I had learned traveling to the older girls. And that was allI did; except that I worked, always, to be aware of all I did.By solitude the soul escapes from doing or suffering magic; it escapes fromdullness, from boredom, by being aware. Nothing is boring if you are aware ofit. It may be irritating but it is not boring. If it is pleasant the pleasurewill not fail so long as you are aware of it. Being aware is the hardest workthe soul can do, I think.I helped Hyuru have her baby, a girl, and played with the baby. Then after acouple of years I took the noncon out of my left earlobe. Since it left a littlehole, I made the hole go all the way through with a burnt needle, and when ithealed I hung in it a tiny jewel I had found in a rain when I was scouting. Ihad seen a man on the ship with a jewel hung in his ear that way. I wore it whenI went out foraging. I kept clear of Red Stone Valley. The man there behaved asif he had a claim on me, a right to me. I liked him still, but I did not likethat smell of magic about him, his imagination of power over me. I went up intothe hills, northward.Apair of young men had settled in old North House about the time I came home.Often boys got through boygroup by pairing, and often they stayed paired whenthey left the Territory. It helped their chances of survival. Some of them weresexually paired, others weren't; some stayed paired, others didn't. One of thispair had gone off with another man last summer. The one that stayed wasn't ahandsome man, but I had noticed him. He had a kind of solidness I liked. Hisbody and hands were short and strong. I had courted him a little, but he wasvery shy. This day, a day in the Silver Time when the mist lay on the river, hesaw the jewel swinging in my ear, and his eyes widened."It's pretty, isn't it?" I said.He nodded."I wore it to make you look at me," I said.He was so shy that I finally said, "If you only like sex with men, you know,just tell me." I really was not sure."Oh, no," he said, "no. No." He stammered and then bolted back down the path.But he looked back; and I followed him slowly, still not certain whether hewanted me or wanted to be rid of me.He waited for me in front of a little house in a grove of redroot, a lovelylittle bower, all leaves outside, so that you would walk within arm's length ofit and not see it. Inside he had laid sweet grass, deep and dry and soft,smelling of summer. I went in, crawling because the door was very low, and satin the summer-smelling grass. He stood outside. "Come in," I said, and he camein very slowly."I made it for you," he said."Now make a child for me," I said.And we did that; maybe that day, maybe another.Now I will tell you why after all these years I called the ship, not knowingeven if it was still there in the space between the planets, asking for thelander to meet me in the barren land.When my daughter was born, that was my heart's desire and the fulfillment of mysoul. When my son was born, last year, I knew there is no fulfillment. He willgrow toward manhood, and go, and fight and endure, and live or die as a manmust. My daughter, whose name is Yedneke, Leaf, like my mother, will grow towomanhood and go or stay as she chooses. I will live alone. This is as it shouldbe, and my desire. But I am of two worlds; I am a person of this world, and awoman of my mother's people. I owe my knowledge to the children of her people.So I asked the lander to come, and spoke to the people on it. They gave me mymother's report to read, and I have written my story in their machine, making arecord for those who want to learn one of the ways to make a soul. To them, tothe children I say: Listen! Avoid magic! Be aware!

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