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

perfect “quarter-half” oval, and so fit exactly; but while the other rocks were mostly a dark, smooth-grained
     bluish grey, the new one was a vivid blue-green, with flecks of paler jade green.
    Bu knew, of course, that the color of a rock is a matter of absolute indifference, an accidental and trivial quality that
     does not affect the true pattern in any way. All the same, she found herself gazing with peculiar satisfaction at this blue-green
     stone. Presently she thought, “This stone is beautiful.” She was not looking, as she should have been, at the whole design,
     but at the one stone, whose color was set off by the duller hue of the others. She was strangely moved; strange thoughts arose
     in her mind. She thought, “This stone is significant. It means. It is a word.” She picked it up and held it while studying
     the test pattern.
    The original design, up on the terrace, was called the Dean’s Design, for the Dean of the College, Festl, who had planned
     this section of the terraces. When Bu replaced the blue-green stone in the pattern, it still caught her eye by its color,
     distracting her mind from the pattern, but she could not see any meaning in it.
    She took the blue-green stone to the rockpile fore-nur and asked him if he saw anything wrong, or odd, or particular about
     the stone. The fore-nur gazed thoughtfully at the stone, but at last opened his eyes wide, meaning no.
    Bu took the stone up to the inner terraces and set it into the true pattern. It fitted the Dean’s Design exactly; its shape
     and size were perfect. But, standing back to study the pattern, Bu thought it scarcely seemed to be the Dean’s Design at all.
     It was not that the new stone changed the design; it simply completed a pattern that Bu had never realized was there: a pattern
     of color, that had little or no relation to the shape-and-size arrangement of the Dean’s Design. The new stone completed a
     spiral of blue-green stones within the field of interlocked rhomboids of “quarter-half” ovals that formedthe center of Festl’s design. Most of the blue-green stones were ones that Bu had laid over the past several years; but the
     spiral had been begun by some other nur, before Bu was promoted to the Dean’s Design.
    Just then Dean Festl came strolling out in the spring sunshine, his rusty gun on his shoulder, his pipe in his mouth, happy
     to see the disorder of the floods being repaired. The Dean was a kind old obl who had never raped Bu, though he often patted
     her. Bu summoned up her courage, hid her eyes, and said, “Lord Dean, sir! Would the Lord Dean in his knowledge be so good
     as to tell me the verbal significance of this section of the true pattern which I have just repaired?”
    Dean Festl paused, perhaps a touch displeased to be interrupted in his meditations; but seeing the young nur so modestly crouching
     and hiding all her eyes, he patted her in a forebearing way and said, “Certainly. This subsection of my design may be read,
     on the simplest level, as: ‘I place stones beautifully,’ or ‘I place stones in excellent order.’ There is an immanent higher-plane
     postverbal significance, of course, as well as the Ineffable Arcana. But you needn’t bother your little head with that!”
    “Is it possible,” the nur asked in a submissive voice, “to find a meaning in the
colors
of the stones?”
    The Dean smiled again and patted her in several places. “Who knows what goes on in the heads of nurs! Color! Meaning in color!
     Now run along, little nurblit. You’ve done very pretty repair work here. Very neat, very nice.” And he strolled on, puffing
     on his pipe and enjoying the spring sunshine.
    Bu returned to the rockpile to sort stones, but her mind was disturbed. All night she dreamed of the blue-green rock. In the
     dream the rock spoke, and the rocks about it in the pattern began speaking too. Waking, Bu could not remember the words the
     stones had said.
    The sun was not up yet, but the