City of Illusions

Yet was that not more plausible than his own vague dreams and notions of his origin?

"How do they do this to a man's mind?"

"I do not know."

"They might do it," he said harshly, "not only to criminals, but to—to rebels?"

"What are rebels?"

She spoke Galaktika much more fluently than he, but she had never heard that word.

She had finished dressing his hurt and was carefully tucking her few medicaments away in their pouch. He turned around to her so abruptly that she looked up startled, drawing back a little.

"Have you ever seen eyes like mine, Estrel?"

"No."

"You know—the City?"

"Es Toch? Yes, I have been there."

"Then you have seen the Shing?"

"You are no Shing."

"No. But I am going among them." He spoke fiercely. "But I dread—" He stopped.

Estrel closed the medicine-pouch and put it in her pack. "Es Toch is strange to men from the Lonely Houses and the far lands," she said at last in her soft, careful voice. "But I have walked its streets with no harm; many people live there, in no fear of the Lords. You need not go in dread. The Lords are very powerful, but much is told of Es Toch that is not true…"

Her eyes met his. With sudden decision, summoning what paraverbal skill he had, he bespoke her for the first time: "Then tell me what is true of Es Toch!"

She shook her head, answering aloud, "I have saved your life and you mine, and we are companions, and fellow-Wanderers perhaps for a while. But I will not bespeak you or any person met by chance; not now, nor ever."

"Do you think me a Shing after all?" he asked ironically, a little humiliated, knowing she was right.

"Who can be sure?" she said, and then added with her faint smile, "Though I would find it hard to believe of you…There, the snow in the kettle has melted down. I'll go up and get more. It takes so much to make a little water, and we are both thirsty. You…you are called Falk?"

He nodded, watching her.

"Don't mistrust me, Falk," she said. "Let me prove myself to you. Mindspeech proves nothing; and trust is a thing that must grow, from actions, across the days."

"Water it, then," said Falk, "and I hope it grows."

Later, in the long night and silence of the cavern, he roused from sleep to see her sitting hunched by the embers, her tawny head bowed on her knees. He spoke her name.

"I'm cold," she said. "There's no warmth left…"

"Come over to me." He spoke sleepily, smiling. She did not answer, but presently she came to him across the red-lit darkness, naked except for the pale jade stone between her breasts. She was slight, and shaking with the cold. In his mind which was in certain aspects that of a very young man he had resolved not to touch her, who had endured so much from the savages; but she murmured to him, "Make me warm, let me have solace." And he blazed up like fire in the wind, all resolution swept away by her presence and her utter compliance. She lay all night in his arms, by the ashes of the fire.

Three more days and nights in the cavern, while the blizzard renewed and spent itself overhead, Falk and Estrel passed in sleep and lovemaking. She was always the same, yielding, acquiescent. He, having only the memory of the pleasant and joyful love he had shared with Parth, was bewildered by the insatiability and violence of the desire Estrel roused in him. Often the thought of Parth came to him accompanied by a vivid image, the memory of a spring of clear, quick, water that rose among rocks in a shadowy place in the forest near the Clearing. But no memory quenched this thirst, and again he would seek satisfaction in Estrel's fathomless submissiveness and find, at least, exhaustion. Once it all turned to uncomprehended anger. He accused her; "You only take me because you think you have to, that I'd have raped you otherwise."

"And you would not?"

"No!" he said, believing it. "I don't want you to serve me, to obey me—Isn't it warmth, human warmth, we both want?"

"Yes," she whispered.

He would not come near her for a while; he resolved he would not touch her again. He went off by himself with his lightgun to explore the strange place they were in. After several hundred paces the cavern narrowed, becoming a high, wide, level tu

The storm was over. A night's rain had laid the black earth bare, and the last hollowed drifts of snow dripped and sparkled. Falk stood at the top of the stairway, sunlight on his hair, wind fresh on his face and in his lungs. He felt like a mole done hibernating, like a rat come out of a hole. "Let's go," he called to Estrel, and went back down to the cavern only to help her pack up quickly and clear out.

He had asked her if she knew where her people were, and she had answered, "Probably far ahead in the west, by now."

"Did they know you were crossing Basnasska territory alone?"

"Alone? It's only in fairytales from the Time of the Cities that women ever go anywhere alone. A man was with me. The Basnasska killed him." Her delicate face was set, unexpressive.

Falk began to explain to himself, then, her curious passivity, the want of response that had seemed almost a betrayal of his strong feeling. She had borne too much and could no longer respond. Who was the companion the Basnasska had killed? It was none of Falk's business to know, until she wanted to tell him. But his anger was gone and from that time on he treated Estrel with confidence and with tenderness.

"Can I help you look for your people?"

She said softly, "You are a kind man, Falk. But they will be far ahead, and I ca

The lost, patient note in her voice moved him. "Come west with me, then, till you get news of them. You know what way I take."

It was still hard for him to say the name "Es Toch," which in the tongue of the Forest was an obscenity, abominable. He was not yet used to the way Estrel spoke of the Shing city as a mere place among other places.

She hesitated, but when he pressed her she agreed to come with him. That pleased him, because of his desire for her and his pity for her, because of the loneliness he had known and did not wish to know again. They set off together through the cold sunshine and the wind. Falk's heart was light at being outside, at being free, at going on. Today the end of the journey did not matter. The day was bright, the broad bright clouds sailed overhead, the way itself was its end. He went on, the gentle, docile, unwearying woman walking by his side.