City of Illusions

"If I go," Falk said abruptly, "will you let Parth go with me?"

"No, my son."

A child was singing down in the garden—Garra's four-year-old, turning inept somersaults on the path and singing shrill, sweet nonsense. High up, in the long wavering V of the great migrations, skein after skein of wild geese went over southward.

"I was to go with Metock and Thurro to fetch home Thurro's bride," Falk said. "We pla

"In winter?"

"There are Houses west of Ransifel, no doubt, where I can ask shelter if I need it."

He did not say and Zove did not ask why west was the direction he would go.

"There may be; I don't know. I don't know if they would give shelter to strangers as we do. If you go you will be alone, and must be alone. Outside this House there is no safe place for you on Earth."

He spoke, as always, absolutely truthfully…and paid the cost of truth in self-control and pain. Falk said with quick reassurance, "I know that, Master. It's not safety I'd regret—"

"I will tell you what I believe about you. I think you came from a lost world; I think you were not born on Earth. I think you came here, the first Alien to return in a thousand years or more, bringing us a message or a sign. The Shing stopped your mouth, and turned you loose in the forests so that none might say they had killed you. You came to us. If you go I will grieve and fear for you, knowing how alone you go. But I will hope for you, and for ourselves! If you had words to speak to men, you'll remember them, in the end. There must be a hope, a sign: we ca

"Perhaps my race was never a friend of mankind," Falk said, looking at Zove with his yellow eyes. "Who knows what I came here to do?"

"You'll find those who know. And then you'll do it. I don't fear it. If you serve the Enemy, so do we all: all's lost and nothing's to lose. If not, then you have what we men have lost: a destiny; and in following it you may bring hope to us all…"

II

ZOVE HAD LIVED sixty years, Parth twenty; but she seemed, that cold afternoon in the Long Fields, old in a way no man could be old, ageless. She had no comfort from ideas of ultimate star-spa

"I will come back, Parth."

She held him in her arms but she did not listen to his promise.

He tried to bespeak her, though he had little skill in telepathic communication. The only Listener in the house was blind Kretyan; none of them was adept at the nonverbal communication, mindspeech. The techniques of learning mindspeech had not been lost, but they were little practiced. The great virtue of that most intense and perfect form of communication had become its peril for men.

Mindspeech between two intelligences could be incoherent or insane, and could of course involve error, misbelief; but it could not be misused. Between thought and spoken word is a gap where intention can enter, the symbol be twisted aside, and the lie come to be. Between thought and sent-thought is no gap; they are one act. There is no room for the lie.

In the late years of the League, the tales and fragmentary records Falk had studied seemed to show, the use of mind-speech had been widespread and the telepathic skills very highly developed. It was a skill Earth had come to late, learning its techniques from some other race; the Last Art, one book called it. There were hints of troubles and upheavals in the government of the League of All Worlds, rising perhaps from that prevalence of a form of communication that precluded lying. But all that was vague and half-legendary, like all man's history. Certainly since the coming of the Shing and the downfall of the League, the scattered community of man had mistrusted trust and used the spoken word. A free man can speak freely, but a slave or fugitive must be able to hide truth and lie. So Falk had learned in Zove's House, and soВ it was that he had had little practice in the attunement of minds. But he tried now to bespeak Parth so she would know he was not lying: "Believe me, Parth, I will come back to you!"

But she wouldn't hear. "No, I won't mindspeak," she said aloud.

"Then you're keeping your thoughts from me."

"Yes, I am. Why should I give you my grief? What's the good of truth? If you had lied to me yesterday, I'd still believe that you were only going to Ransifel and would be back home in a te

"Faith, will you wait for me one year?"

"No."

"Only a year—"

"A year and a day, and you'll return riding a silver steed to carry me to your kingdom and make me its queen. No, I won't wait for you, Falk. Why must I wait for a man who will be lying dead in the forest, or shot by Wanderers out on the prairie, or brainless in the City of the Shing, or gone off a hundred years to another star? What should I wait for? You needn't think I'll take another man. I won't. I'll stay here in my father's house. I'll dye black thread and weave black cloth to wear, black to wear and black to die in. But I won't wait for anyone, or anything. Never."

"I had no right to ask you," he said with the humility of pain—and she cried, "O Falk, I don't reproach you!"

They were sitting together on the slight slope above the Long Field. Goats and sheep grazed over the mile of fenced pasture between them and the forest. Yearling colts pranced and tagged around the shaggy mares. A gray November wind blew.

Their hands lay together. Parth touched the gold ring on his left hand. "A ring is a thing given," she said. "Sometimes I've thought, have you? that you may have had a wife. Think, if she was waiting for you…" She shivered.

"What of it?" he said. "What do I care about what may have been, what I was? Why should I go from here? All that I am now is yours, Parth, came from you, your gift—"

"It was freely given," the girl said in tears. "Take it and go. Go on…" They held each other, and neither would break free.

The House lay far behind hoar black trunks and inter-tangling leafless branches. The trees closed in behind the trail.

The day was gray and cool, silent except for the drone of wind through branches, a meaningless whisper without locality that never ceased. Metock led the way, setting a long easy pace. Falk followed and young Thurro came last. They were all three dressed light and warm in hooded shirt and breeches of an unwoven stuff called wintercloth, over which no coat was needed even in snow. Each carried a light backpack of gifts and trade-goods, sleeping-bag, enough dried concentrated food to see him through a month's blizzard. Buckeye, who had never left the House of her birth, had a great fear of perils and delays in the Forest and had supplied their packs accordingly. Each wore a laser-beam gun; and Falk carried some extras—another pound or two of food; medicines, compass, a second gun, a change of clothing, a coil of rope; a little book given him two years ago by Zove—amounting in all to about fifteen pounds of stuff, his earthly possessions. Easy and tireless Metock loped on ahead, and ten yards or so behind he followed, and after him came Thurro. They went lightly, with little sound, and behind them the trees gathered motionless over the faint, leaf-strewn trail.

They would come to Ransifel on the third day. At evening of the second day they were in country different from that around Zove's House. The forest was more open, the ground broken. Gray glades lay along hillsides above brush-choked streams. They made camp in one of these open places, on a south-facing slope, for the north wind was blowing stronger with a hint of winter in it. Thurro brought armloads of dry wood while the other two cleared away the gray grass and piled up a rough hearth of stones. As they worked Metock said, "We crossed a divide this afternoon. The stream down there runs west. To the Inland River, finally."