City of Illusions

He woke, feeling rested, vigorous, and confused, in a comfortable bed in a bright, windowless room. He sat up, and as if that had given a signal two men came hurrying from behind a partition, big men with a staring, bovine look to them. "Greetings Lord Agad! Greetings Lord Agad!" they said one after the other, and then, "Come with us, please, come with us, please." Falk stood up, stark naked, ready to fight—the only thing clear in his mind at the moment was his fight and defeat in the entrance hall of the palace—but they offered no violence. "Come on, please," they repeated antiphonally, until he came with them. They led him, still naked, out of the room, up a long blank corridor, through a mirror-walled hall, up a staircase that turned out to be a ramp painted to look like stairs, through another corridor and up more ramps, and finally into a spacious, furnished room with bluish-green walls, one of which was glowing with sunlight. One of the men stopped outside the room; the other entered with Falk. "There's clothes, there's food, there's drink. Now you—now you eat, drink. Now you—now you ask for need. All right?" He stared persistently but without any particular interest at Falk.

There was a pitcher of water on the table, and the first thing Falk did was drink his fill, for he was very thirsty. He looked around the strange, pleasant room with its furniture of heavy, glass-clear plastic and its windowless, translucent walls, and then studied his guard or attendant with curiosity. A big, blank-faced man, with a gun strapped to his belt. "What is the Law?" he asked on impulse.

Obediently and with no surprise the big, staring fellow answered, "Do not take life."

"But you carry a gun."

"Oh, this gun, it makes you all stiff, not dead," said the guard, and laughed. The modulations of his voice were arbitrary, not co

"Are you a Raze?"

"No. I am a Captain of the Bodyguard of the True Lords, and I key in to the Number Eight computer. Now you eat, drink, get clean."

"I will if you leave the room."

A slight pause. "Oh yes, very well, Lord Agad," said the big man, and again laughed as if he had been tickled. Perhaps it tickled when the computer spoke through his brain. He withdrew. Falk could see the vague hulking shapes of the two guards through the i

A girl, Falk thought at first, then saw it was a boy of sixteen or so, dressed in loose robes like those he wore himself. The boy did not come close to Falk, but stopped, holding out his hands palm upwards, and spouted a whole rush of gibberish.

"Who are you?"

"Orry," said the young man, "Orry!" and more gibberish. He looked frail and excited; his voice shook with emotion. He then dropped down on both knees and bowed his head low, a bodily gesture that Falk had never seen, though its meaning was unmistakable: it was the full and original gesture, of which, among the Bee-Keepers and the subjects of the Prince of Kansas, he had seen certain vestigial remnants.

"Speak in Galaktika," Falk said fiercely, shocked and uneasy. "Who are you?"

"I am Har-Orry-Prech-Ramarren," the boy whispered.

"Get up. Get off your knees. I don't—Do you know me?"

"Prech Ramarren, do you not remember me? I am Orry, Har Weden's son—"

"What is my name?"

The boy raised his head, and Falk stared at him—at his eyes, which looked straight into his own. They were of a gray-amber color, except for the large dark pupil: all iris, without visible white, like the eyes of a cat or a stag, like no eyes Falk had ever seen, except in the mirror last night.

"Your name is Agad Ramarren," the boy said, frightened and subdued.

"How do you know it?"

"I—I have always known it, prech Ramarren."

"Are you of my race? Are we of the same people?"

"I am Har Weden's son, prech Ramarren! I swear to you I am!"

There were tears in the gray-old eyes for a moment. Falk himself had always tended to react to stress with a brief blinding of tears; Buckeye had once reproved him for being embarrassed by this trait, saying it appeared to be a purely physiological reaction, probably racial.

The confusion, bewilderment, disorientation Falk had undergone" since he had entered Es Toch now left him unequipped to question and judge this latest apparition. Part of his mind said, That is exactly what they want: they want you confused to the point of total credulity. At this point he did not know whether Estrel—Estrel whom he knew so well and loved so loyally—was a friend or a Shing or a tool of the Shing, whether she had ever told him the truth or ever lied to him, whether she had been trapped here with him or had lured him here into a trap. He remembered a laugh; he also remembered a desperate embrace, a whisper…What then was he to make of this boy, this boy looking at him in awe and pain with unearthly eyes like his own: would he turn if touched to a blur of lights? Would he answer questions with lies, or truth?

Amidst all illusions, errors and deceptions there remained, it seemed to Falk, only one way to take: the way he had followed all along, from Zove's House on. He looked at the boy again and told him the truth.

"I do not know you. If I should remember you, I do not, because I remember nothing longer ago than four or five years." He cleared his throat, turned away again sat down on one of the tall spindly chairs, motioned for the boy to do the same.

"You …do not remember Werel?"

"Who is Werel?"

"Our home. Our world."

That hurt. Falk said nothing.

"Do you remember the—the journey here, prech Ramarren?" the boy asked, stammering. There was incredulity in his voice; he seemed not to have taken in what Falk had told him. There was also a shaken, yearning note, checked by respect or fear.

Falk shook his head.

Orry repeated his question with a slight change: "You do remember our journey to Earth, prech Ramarren?"

"No. When was the journey?"

"Six Terran years ago.—Forgive me, please, prech Ramarren. I did not know—I was over by the California Sea and they sent an aircar for me, an automatic; it did not say what I was wanted for. Then Lord Kradgy told me one of the Expedition had been found, and I thought—But he did not tell me this about your memory—You remember…only…only the Earth, then?"

He seemed to be pleading for a denial. "I remember only the Earth," Falk said, determined not to be swayed by the boy's emotion, or his naivete, or the childish candor of his face and voice. He must assume that this Orry was not what he seemed to be. But if he was?