LeGuin, Ursula K The Lathe of Heaven

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.He occupied himself with the controls of the Augmentor."O.K.," he said at last."This once, experimentally, let's let you compare the suggestion with the dream.Perhaps we'll find out why it came out negative.I said no, let's run the tape." He went over to a panel inthe wall."You tape the whole session?""Sure.Standard psychiatric practice.Didn't you know?"How could I know if it's hidden, makes no noise signal, and you didn't tell me, Orr thought; but he saidnothing.Maybe it was standard practice, maybe it was Haber's personal arrogance; but in either case hecouldn't do much about it."Here we are, it ought to be about here.The hypnotic state now, George.You are Here! Don't gounder, George!" The tape hissed.Orr shook his head and blinked.The last fragments of sentences hadbeen Haber's voice on the tape, of course; and he was still full of the hypnosis-inducing drug."I'll have to skip a bit.All right." Now it was his voice on the tape again, saying, " peace.No moremass killing of humans by other humans.No fighting in Iran and Arabia and Israel.No more genocides inAfrica.No stockpiles of nuclear and biological weapons, ready to use against other nations.No moreresearch on ways and means of killing people.A world at peace with itself.Peace as a universal life-styleon Earth.You will dream of that world at peace with itself.Now you're going to sleep.When I say "He stopped the tape abruptly, lest he put Orr to sleep with the key word.Orr rubbed his forehead."Well," he said, "I followed instructions.""Hardly.To dream of a battle in cislunar space " Haber stopped as abruptly as the tape."Cislunar," Orr said, feeling a little sorry for Haber."We weren't using that word, when I went to sleep.How are things in Isragypt?"The made-up word from the old reality had a curiously shocking effect, spoken in this reality: likesurrealism, it seemed to make sense and didn't, or seemed not to make sense and did.Haber walked up and down the long, handsome room.Once he passed his hand over his red-brown,curly beard.The gesture was a calculated one and familiar to Orr, but when he spoke Orr felt that hewas seeking and choosing his words carefully, not trusting, for once, to his inexhaustible fund ofimprovisation."It's curious that you used the Defense of Earth as a symbol or metaphor of peace, of theend of warfare.Yet it's not unfitting.Only very subtle.Dreams are endlessly subtle.Endlessly.For in factitwas that threat, that immediate peril of invasion by noncommunicating, reasonlessly hostile aliens, whichforced us to stop fighting among ourselves, to turn our aggressive-defensive energies outward, to extendthe territorial drive to include all humanity, to combine our weapons against a common foe.If the AliensGenerated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlhadn't struck, who knows? We might, actually, still be fighting in the Near East.""Out of the frying pan into the fire," Orr said."Don't you see, Dr.Haber, that that's all you'll ever getfrom me? Look, it's not that I want to block you, to frustrate your plans.Ending the war was a goodidea, I agree with it totally.I even voted Isolationist last election because Harris promised to pull us out ofthe Near East.But I guess I can't, or my subconscious can't, even imagine a warless world.The best itcan do is substitute one kind of war for another.You said, no killing of humans by other humans.So Idreamed up the Aliens.Your own ideas are sane and rational, but this is my unconscious you're trying touse, not my rational mind.Maybe rationally I could conceive of the human species not trying to kill eachother off by nations, in fact rationally it's easier to conceive of than the motives of war.But you'rehandling something outside reason.You're trying to reach progressive, humanitarian goals with a tool thatisn't suited to the job.Who has humanitarian dreams?"Haber said nothing, and showed no reaction, so Orr went on."Or maybe it's not just my unconscious, irrational mind, maybe it's my total self, my whole being, that justisn't right for the job.I'm too defeatist, or passive, as you said, maybe.I don't have enough desires.Maybe that has something to do with my having this this capacity to dream effectively; but if it doesn't,there might be others who can do it, people with minds more like your own, that you could work withbetter.You could test for it; I can't be the only one; maybe I just happened to become aware of it.But Idon'twant to do it.I want to get off the hook.I can't take it.I mean, look: all right, the war's been over inthe Near East for six years, fine, but now there are the Aliens, up on the Moon.What if they land? Whatkind of monsters have you dredged up out of my unconscious mind, in the name of peace? I don't evenknow!""Nobody knows what the Aliens look like, George," Haber said, in a reasonable, reassuring tone."Weall have our bad dreams about 'em, God knows! But as you said, it's been over six years now since theirfirst landing on the Moon, and they still haven't made it to Earth.By now, our missile defense systems arecompletely efficient.There's no reason to think they'll break through now, if they haven't yet.The dangerperiod was during those first few months, before the Defense was mobilized on an internationalcooperative basis."Orr sat a while, shoulders slumped [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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