City of Illusions

On the path among the shadowy flowers Orry paused to take a small white tube from a case and insert it endwise between his lips, sucking on it eagerly. Falk was too absorbed in other impressions to pay much heed, but as if slightly embarrassed the boy explained, "It's parьtha, a tranquillant—the Lords all use it; it has a very stimulating effect on the mind. If you'd care to—"

"No, thanks. There are some more things I want to ask you." He hesitated, however. His new questions could not be entirely direct. Throughout the "Council" and Abundibot's explanations he had felt, recurrently and uncomfortably, that the whole thing was a performance—a play, such as he had seen on ancient telescrolls in the library of the Prince of Kansas, the Dreamplay of Hain, the mad old king Lir raving on a stormswept heath. But the curious thing was his distinct impression that the play was not being acted for his benefit, but for Orry's. He did not understand why, but again and again he had felt that all Abundibot said to him was said to prove something to the boy.

And the boy believed it. It was no play to him; or else he was an actor in it.

"One thing puzzles me," Falk said, cautiously. "You told me that Werel is a hundred and thirty or forty light-years from Earth. There ca

"The Lords say there are four stars with planets that might be our system, between a hundred and fifteen and a hundred and fifty light-years away. But they are in four different directions, and if the Shing sent out a ship to search it could spend up to thirteen hundred years realtime going to and among those four to find the right one."

"Though you were a child, it seems a little strange that you didn't know how long the voyage was to take—how old you would be when you got home, as it were."

"It was spoken of as'two years', prech Ramarren—that is, roughly a hundred and twenty Earth years—but it was clear to me that that was not the exact figure, and that I was not to ask the exact figure." For a moment, harking back thus to Werel, the boy spoke with a touch of sober resoluteness that he did not show at other times. "I think that perhaps, not knowing who or what they were going to find on Earth, the adults of the Expedition wanted to be sure that we children, with no mindguard technique, could not give away Werel's location to an enemy. It was safest for us to be ignorant, perhaps."

"Do you remember how the stars looked from Werel—the constellations?"

Orry shrugged for no, and smiled. "The Lords asked that too. I was Winter-born, prech Ramarren. Spring was just begi

If all this was true, then it would seem that in fact only he—his suppressed self, Ramarren—could say where he and Orry came from. Would that then explain what seemed almost the central puzzle, the interest the Shing took in him, their bringing him here under Estrel's tutelage, their offer to restore his memory? There was a world not under their control; it had re-invented light-speed flight; they would want to know where it was. And if they restored his memory, he could tell them. If they could restore his memory. If anything at all of what they had told him was true.

He sighed. He was weary of this turmoil of suspicions, this plethora of unsubstantiated marvels. At moments he wondered if he was still under the influence of some drug. He felt wholly inadequate to judge what he should do. He, and probably this boy, were like toys in the hands of strange faithless players.

"Was he—the one called Abundibot—was he in the room just now, or was it a projection, an illusion?"

"I don't know, prech Ramarren," Orry replied. The stuff he was breathing in from the tube seemed to cheer and soothe him; always rather childlike, he spoke now with blithe ease. "I expect he was there. But they never come close. I tell you—this is strange—in this long time I've been here, six years, I have never touched one of them. They keep very much apart, each one alone. I don't mean that they are unkind," he added hastily, looking with his clear eyes at Falk to make sure he had not given the wrong impression. "They are very kind. I am very fond of Lord Abundibot, and Ken Kenyek, and Parla. But they are so far—beyond me—They know so much. They bear so much. They keep knowledge alive, and keep the peace, and bear the burdens, and so they have done for a thousand years, while the rest of the people of Earth take no responsibility and live in brutish freedom. Their fellow men hate them and will not learn the truth they offer. And so they must always hold themselves apart, stay alone, in order to preserve the peace and the skills and knowledge that would be lost, without them, in a few years, among these warrior tribes and Houses and Wanderers and roving ca

"They are not all ca

Orry's well-learnt lesson seemed to have run out. "No," he agreed, "I suppose not."

"Some of them say that they have sunk so low because the Shing keep them low; that if they seek knowledge the Shing prevent them, if they seek to form a City of their own the Shing destroy it, and them."

There was a pause. Orry finished sucking on his tube of parьtha and carefully buried it around the roots of a shrub with long, hanging, flesh-red flowers. Falk waited for his answer and only gradually realized that there was not going to be one. What he had said simply had not penetrated, had not made sense to the boy.

They walked on a little among the shifting lights and damp fragrances of the garden, the moon blurred above them.

"The one whose image appeared first, just now…do you know her?"

"Strella Siobelbel," the boy answered readily. "Yes, I have seen her at Council Meetings before."

"Is she a Shing?"

"No, she's not one of the Lords; I think her people are mountain natives, but she was brought up in Es Toch. Many people bring or send their children here to be brought up in the service of the Lords. And children with subnormal minds are brought here and keyed into the psychocomputers, so that even they can share in the great work. Those are the ones the ignorant call toolmen. You came here with Strella Siobelbel, prech Ramarren?"

"Came with her; walked with her, ate with her, slept with her. She called herself Estrel, a Wanderer."

"You could have known she was not a Shing—" the boy said, then went red, and got out another of his tranquillant-tubes and began sucking on it.

"A Shing would not have slept with me?" Falk inquired. The boy shrugged his Werelian "No," still blushing; the drug finally encouraged him to speak and he said, "They do not touch common men, prech Ramarren—they are like gods, cold and kind and wise—they hold themselves apart—"

He was fluent, incoherent, childish. Did he know his own loneliness, orphaned and alien, living out his childhood and entering adolescence among these people who held themselves apart, who would not touch him, who stuffed him with words but left him so empty of reality that, at fifteen, he sought contentment from a drug? He certainly did not know his isolation as such—he did not seem to have clear ideas on anything much—but it looked from his eyes sometimes, yearning, at Falk. Yearning and feebly hoping, the look of one perishing of thirst in a dry salt desert who looks up at a mirage. There was much more Falk wanted to ask him, but little use in asking. Pitying him, Falk put his hand on Orry's slender shoulder. The boy started at the touch, smiled timidly and vaguely, and sucked again at his tranquillant.

Back in his room, where everything was so luxuriously arranged for his comfort—and to impress Orry?—Falk paced a while like a caged bear, and finally lay down to sleep. In his dreams he was in a house, like the Forest House, but the people in the dream house had eyes the color of agate and amber. He tried to tell them he was one of them, their own kinsman, but they did not understand his speech and watched him strangely while he stammered and sought for the right words, the true words, the true name.