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reflection on invasion, exploitation and oppression, and on the necessity and cost of resistance.
Homo sapiens has a common ancestry with a forerunner species, the still extant and annoyingly wise Hainish, who in the distant past settled many worlds, including Earth.
And in implying that the now wise and compassionate Hainish were themselves invaders and colonisers in the distant past, this tale of damage and destruction carries a small, secret seed of hope for a better future than it depicts.
She remains subversive, and her work dangerous reading, because it changes the reader and makes them look at the real world in a different light.
The pursuit of art, then, by artist or audience, is the pursuit of liberty.
The desire for power, in the sense of power over others, is what pulls most people off the path of the pursuit of liberty.
The victory of the ethic of exploitation, in all societies, seemed as inevitable as it was disastrous.
For this world, New Tahiti, was literally made for men. Cleaned up and cleaned out, the dark forests cut down for open fields of grain, the primeval murk and savagery and ignorance wiped out, it would be a paradise, a real Eden. A better world than worn-out Earth. And it would be his world.
You want to make this world into Earth’s image, eh? A desert of cement?”
But when they came here there had been nothing. Trees. A dark huddle and jumble and tangle of trees, endless, meaningless.
Ocean: forest. That was your choice on New Tahiti. Water and sunlight, or darkness and leaves. But men were here now to end the darkness, and turn the tree-jumble into clean sawn planks, more prized on Earth than gold.
The humanoids on Hain-Davenant of course claimed they’d done it at the same time as they colonised Earth,
But the humans had died out. And the nearest thing that had developed from the monkey line to replace them was the creechie—a metre tall and covered with green fur.
Don’t look for good sense from women or creechies, Ok!
The forest stood there, green, next to the ruins.
“You can’t sing, Captain Davidson, is that right? Well, then, you may run to your hopper, and fly away, and tell the Colonel in Central that this place is burned and the humans are all killed.”
“I was Selver Thele, when I lived in Eshreth in Sornol. My city was destroyed by the yumens when they cut down the trees in that region. I was one of those made to serve them, with my wife Thele. She was raped by one of them and died.
There presently the yumens came and began to cut down the world.
But all the time I watched the trees fall and saw the world cut open and left to rot.
They will not follow me, but they may follow us all. Hunt us, as hunters drive coneys. That is the danger. They may try to kill us. To kill us all, all men.”
They have killed us by ones, now they will kill us as they kill the trees, by hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds.”
But I know they don’t spare one who asks life.
Selver: do they dream?” “As children do, in sleep.” “They have no training?”
he has left the dream time. In the forest, through the forest he comes, where leaves fall, where trees fall, a god that knows death, a god that kills and is not himself reborn.”
He saw what must be done; she saw that it was done.
They were not all one people on the Forty Lands of the world. There were more languages than lands, and each with a different dialect for every town that spoke
In all the Forty Lands, women ran the cities and towns, and almost every town had a Men’s Lodge. Within the Lodges the Dreamers spoke an old tongue, and this varied little from land to land.
They make the forest into a dry beach”—her language had no word for “desert”—”and call that making things ready for the women? They should have sent the women first.
Maybe when they kill a tree they think it will come alive again!”
“No, they understand death very well. . .
They have left their roots behind them, perhaps, in this other forest from which they came, this forest with no trees. So they take poison to let loose the dreams in them, but it only makes them drunk or sick.
If the yumens are men they are men unfit or untaught to dream and to act as men.
The fruit of fear is ripening. And I see you gather it.
I dreamed of you before we met here. You were walking on a path, and behind you the young trees grew up, oak and birch, willow and holly, fir and pine, alder, elm, white-flowering ash, all the roof and walls of the world, forever renewed.
Nearly five E-years here, and he had believed the Athsheans to be incapable of killing men, his kind or their kind.
“It was the native hilfs, the Athsheans employed in the camp, who joined with an attack by the forest people against the Terran humans.
These two N.-T.H.’s knew nothing about the exploitation of the Athsheans.
Accusations of rape and murder supported Davidson’s image of himself as the totally virile man, but now that image was endangered: Lyubov had called up a picture of him, the soldier, the fighter, the cool tough man, being knocked down by enemies the size of six-year-olds. . .
Rape, violent assault, and murder virtually don’t exist among them.
We have killed, raped, dispersed, and enslaved the native humans, destroyed their communities, and cut down their forests. It wouldn’t be surprising if they’d decided that we are not human.” “And therefore can be killed, like animals, yes yes,”
“do you consider the native hilfs human, or not?” “I don’t know.” “But you had sexual intercourse with one—this Selver’s wife. Would you have sexual intercourse with a female animal?
give the government there an ansible. That is, an ICD transmitter.”
It takes no time. There is no more time-gap between worlds.”
The time-gap for bodies remains, but the information lag does not.
The League of Worlds now exists.
Your reports are very incomplete; censorship or stupidity have been at work.
we’ve irrecoverably wrecked the native life-systems on one large island, have done great damage on this subcontinent Sornol, and if we go on logging at the present rate, may reduce the major habitable lands to desert within ten years.
The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest.
To hell with my self-respect so long as the forest people get a chance, Lyubov thought,
“You must tell the League to do something to save the forests, the forest people,”
