Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  The other Alterrans were waiting for him in the library upstairs, or came in soon, gathering around the driftwood fire on the hearth: ten of them all together. Seiko and Alla Pasfal lighted the gas jets and turned them low. Though Agat had said nothing at all, his friend Huru Pilotson coming to stand beside him at the fire said, “Don’t let ’em get you down, Jakob. A herd of stupid stubborn nomads—they’ll never learn.”

  “Have I been sending?”

  “No, of course not.” Huru giggled. He was a quick, slight, shy fellow, devoted to Jakob Agat. That he was a homosexual and that Agat was not was a fact well-known to them both, to everybody around them, to everyone in Landin indeed. Everybody in Landin knew everything, and candor, though wearing and difficult, was the only possible solution to this problem of over-communication.

  “You expected too much when you left, that’s all. Your disappointment shows. But don’t let ’em get you, Jakob. They’re just hilfs.”

  Seeing the others were listening, Agat said aloud, “I told the old man what I’d planned to; he said he’d tell their Council. How much he understood and how much he believed, I don’t know.”

  “If he listened at all it’s better than I’d hoped,” said Alla Pasfal, sharp and frail, with blueblack skin, and white hair crowning her worn face. “Wold’s been around as long as I have—longer. Don’t expect him to welcome wars and changes.”

  “But he should be well disposed; he married a human,” Dermat said.

  “Yes, my cousin Arilia, Jakob’s aunt, the exotic one in Wold’s female zoo. I remember the courtship,” Alla Pasfal said with such bitter sarcasm that Dermat wilted.

  “He didn’t make any decision about helping us? Did you tell him your plan about going up to the border to meet the Gaal?” Jonkendy Li stammered, hasty and disappointed. He was very young, and had been hoping for a fine war with marchings-forth and trumpets. So had they all. It beat being starved to death or burned alive.

  “Give them time. They’ll decide,” Agat said gravely to the boy.

  “How did Wold receive you?” asked Seiko Esmit. She was the last of a great family. Only the sons of the first leader of the Colony had borne that name Esmit. With her it would die. She was Agat’s age, a beautiful and delicate woman, nervous, rancorous, repressed. When the Alterrans met, her eyes were always on Agat. No matter who spoke she watched Agat.

  “He received me as an equal.”

  Alla Pasfal nodded approvingly and said, “He always had more sense than the rest of their males.” But Seiko went on, “What about the others? Could you just walk through their camp?” Seiko could always dig up his humiliation no matter how well he had buried and forgotten it. His cousin ten times over, his sister-playmate-lover-companion, she possessed an immediate understanding of any weakness in him and any pain he felt, and her sympathy, her compassion closed in on him like a trap. They were too close. Too close, Huru, old Alla, Seiko, all of them. The isolation that had unnerved him today had also given him a glimpse of distance, of solitude, had waked a craving in him. Seiko gazed at him, watching him with clear, soft, dark eyes, sensitive to his every mood and word. The hilf girl, Rolery, had never yet looked at him, never met his gaze. Her look always was aside, away, glancing, golden, alien.

  “They didn’t stop me,” he answered Seiko briefly. “Well, tomorrow maybe they’ll decide on our suggestion. Or the next day. How’s the provisioning of the Stack been going this afternoon?” The talk became general, though it tended always to center around and be referred back to Jakob Agat. He was younger than several of them, and all ten Alterrans were elected equal in their ten-year terms on the council, but he was evidently and acknowledgedly their leader, their center. No especial reason for this was visible unless it was the vigor with which he moved and spoke; is authority noticeable in the man, or in the men about him? The effects of it, however, showed in him as a certain tension and somberness, the results of a heavy load of responsibility that he had borne for a long time, and that got daily heavier.

  “I made one slip,” he said to Pilotson, while Seiko and the other women of the council brewed and served the little, hot, ceremonial cupfuls of steeped basuk leaves called ti. “I was trying so hard to convince the old fellow that there really is danger from the Gaal, that I think I sent for a moment. Not verbally; but he looked like he’d seen a ghost.”

  “You’ve got very powerful sense-projection, and lousy control when you’re under strain. He probably did see a ghost.”

  “We’ve been out of touch with the hilfs so long—and we’re so ingrown here, so damned isolated, I can’t trust my control. First I bespeak that girl down on the beach, then I project to Wold—they’ll be turning on us as witches if this goes on, the way they did in the first Years. . . . And we’ve got to get them to trust us. In so short a time. If only we’d known about the Gaal earlier!”

  “Well,” Pilotson said in his careful way, “since there are no more human settlements up the coast, it’s purely due to your foresight in sending scouts up north that we have any warning at all. Your health, Seiko,” he added, accepting the tiny, steaming cup she presented.

  Agat took the last cup from her tray, and drained it. There was a slight sense-stimulant in freshly brewed ti, so that he was vividly aware of its astringent, clean heat in his throat, of Seiko’s intense gaze, of the bare, large, firelit room, of the twilight outside the windows. The cup in his hand, blue porcelain, was very old, a work of the Fifth Year. The handpress books in cases under the windows were old. Even the glass in the windowframes was old. All their luxuries, all that made them civilized, all that kept them Alterran, was old. In Agat’s lifetime and for long before there had been no energy or leisure for subtle and complex affirmations of man’s skill and spirit. They did well by now merely to preserve, to endure.

  Gradually, Year by Year for at least ten generations, their numbers had been dwindling; very gradually, but always there were fewer children born. They retrenched, they drew together. Old dreams of dominion were forgotten utterly. They came back—if the Winters and hostile hilf tribes did not take advantage of their weakness first—to the old center, the first colony, Landin. They taught their children the old knowledge and the old ways, but nothing new. They lived always a little more humbly, coming to value the simple over the elaborate, calm over strife, courage over success. They withdrew.

  Agat, gazing into the tiny cup in his hand, saw in its clear, pure translucency, the perfect skill of its making and the fragility of its substance, a kind of epitome of the spirit of his people. Outside the high windows the air was the same translucent blue. But cold: a blue twilight, immense and cold. The old terror of his childhood came over Agat, the terror which, as he became adult, he had reasoned thus: this world on which he had been born, on which his father and forefathers for twenty-three generations had been born, was not his home. His kind was alien. Profoundly, they were always aware of it. They were the farborn. And little by little, with the majestic slowness, the vegetable obstinacy of the process of evolution, this world was killing them—rejecting the graft.

  They were perhaps too submissive to this process, too willing to die out. But a kind of submission—their iron adherence to the League Laws—had been their strength from the very beginning; and they were still strong, each one of them. But they had not the knowledge or the skill to combat the sterility and early abortion that reduced their generations. For not all wisdom was written in the League Books, and from day to day and Year to Year a little knowledge would always be lost, supplanted by some more immediately useful bit of information concerning daily existence here and now. And in the end, they could not even understand much of what the books told them. What truly remained of their Heritage, by now? If ever the ship, as in the old hopes and tales, soared down in fire from the stars, would the men who stepped from it know them to be men?

  But no ship had come, or would come. They would die; their presence here, their long exile and struggle on this world, would be done with, broken like
a bit of clay.

  He put the cup very carefully down on the tray, and wiped the sweat off his forehead. Seiko was watching him. He turned from her abruptly and began to listen to Jonkendy, Dermat and Pilotson. Across his bleak rush of foreboding he had recalled briefly, irrelevant and yet seeming both an explanation and a sign, the light, lithe, frightened figure of the girl Rolery, reaching up her hand to him from the dark, sea-besieged stones.

  4

  The Tall Young Men

  THE SOUND OF ROCK pounded on rock, hard and unreverberant, rang out among the roofs and unfinished walls of the Winter City to the high red tents pitched all around it. Ak ak ak ak, the sound went on for a long time, until suddenly a second pounding joined it in counterpoint, kadak ak ak kadak. Another came in on a higher note, giving a tripping rhythm, then another, another, more, until any measure was lost in the clatter of constant sound, an avalanche of the high dry whack of rock hitting rock in which each individual pounding rhythm was submerged, indistinguishable.

  As the sound-avalanche went ceaselessly and stupefyingly on, the Eldest Man of the Men of Askatevar walked slowly from his tent and between the aisles of tents and cookfires from which smoke rose through slanting late-afternoon, late-Autumn light. Stiff and ponderous the old man went alone through the camp of his people and entered the gate of the Winter City, followed a twisting path or street among the tent-like wooden roofs of the houses, which had no sidewalls aboveground, and came to an open place in the middle of the roofpeaks. There a hundred or so men sat, knees to chin, pounding rock on rock, pounding, in a hypnotic toneless trance of percussion. Wold sat down, completing the circle. He picked up the smaller of two heavy waterworn rocks in front of him and with satisfying heaviness whacked it down on the bigger one: Klak! klak! klak! To right and left of him the clatter went on and on, a rattling roar of random noise, through which every now and then a snatch of a certain rhythm could be discerned. The rhythm vanished, recurred, a chance concatenation of noise. On its return Wold caught it, fell in with it and held it. Now to him it dominated the clatter. Now his neighbor to the left was beating it, their two stones rising and falling together; now his neighbor to the right. Now others across the circle were beating it, pounding together. It came clear of the noise, conquered it, forced each conflicting voice into its own single ceaseless rhythm, the concord, the hard heartbeat of the Men of Askatevar, pounding on, and on, and on.

  This was all their music, all their dance.

  A man leaped up at last and walked into the center of the ring. He was bare-chested, black stripes painted up his arms and legs, his hair a black cloud around his face. The rhythm lightened, lessened, died away. Silence.

  “The runner from the north brought news that the Gaal follow the Coast Trail and come in great force. They have come to Tlokna. Have you all heard this?”

  A rumble of assent.

  “Now listen to the man who called this Stone-Pounding,” the shaman-herald called out; and Wold got up with difficulty. He stood in his place, gazing straight ahead, massive, scarred, immobile, an old boulder of a man.

  “A farborn came to my tent,” he said at last in his age-weakened, deep voice. “He is chief of them in Landin. He said the farborns have grown few and ask the help of men.”

  A rumble from all the heads of clans and families that sat moveless, knees to chin, in the circle. Over the circle, over the wooden roofpeaks about them, very high up in the cold, golden light, a white bird wheeled, harbinger of winter.

  “This farborn said the Southing comes not by clans and tribes but all in one horde, many thousands led by a great chief.”

  “How does he know?” somebody roared. Protocol was not strict in the Stone-Poundings of Tevar; Tevar had never been ruled by its shamans as some tribes were. “He had scouts up north!” Wold roared back. “He said the Gaal besiege Winter Cities and capture them. That is what the runner said of Tlokna. The farborn says that the warriors of Tevar should join with the farborns and with the men of Pernmek and Alakskat, go up in the north of our range, and turn the Southing aside to the Mountain Trail. These things he said and I heard them. Have you all heard?”

  The assent was uneven and turbulent, and a clan chief was on his feet at once. “Eldest! from your mouth we hear the truth always. But when did a farborn speak truth? When did men listen to farborns? I hear nothing this farborn said. What if his City perishes in the Southing? No men live in it! Let them perish and then we men can take their Range.”

  The speaker, Walmek, was a big dark man full of words; Wold had never liked him, and dislike influenced his reply. “I have heard Walmek. Not for the first time. Are the farborns men or not—who knows? Maybe they fell out of the sky as in the tale. Maybe not. No one ever fell out of the sky this Year. . . . They look like men; they fight like men. Their women are like women, I can tell you that! They have some wisdom. It’s better to listen to them. . . .” His references to farborn women had them all grinning as they sat in their solemn circle, but he wished he had not said it. It was stupid to remind them of his old ties with the aliens. And it was wrong . . . she had been his wife, after all. . . .

  He sat down, confused, signifying he would speak no more.

  Some of the other men, however, were impressed enough by the runner’s tale and Agat’s warning to argue with those who discounted or distrusted the news. One of Wold’s Spring-born sons, Umaksuman, who loved raids and forays, spoke right out in favor of Agat’s plan of marching up to the border.

  “It’s a trick to get our men away up north on the Range, caught in the first snow, while the farborns steal our flocks and wives and rob the granaries here. They’re not men, there’s no good in them!” Walmek ranted. Rarely had he found so good a subject to rant on.

  “That’s all they’ve ever wanted, our women. No wonder they’re growing few and dying out, all they bear is monsters. They want our women so they can bring up human children as theirs!” This was a youngish family-head, very excited. “Aagh!” Wold growled, disgusted at this mishmash of misinformation, but he kept sitting and let Umaksuman set the fellow straight.

  “And what if the farborn spoke truth?” Umaksuman went on. “What if the Gaal come through our Range all together, thousands of them? Are we ready to fight them?”

  “But the walls aren’t finished, the gates aren’t up, the last harvest isn’t stored,” an older man said. This, more than distrust of the aliens, was the core of the question. If the able men marched off to the north, could the women and children and old men finish all the work of readying the Winter City before winter was upon them? Maybe, maybe not. It was a heavy chance to take on the word of a farborn.

  Wold himself had made no decision, and looked to abide by that of the Elders. He liked the farborn Agat, and would guess him neither deluded nor a liar; but there was no telling. All men were alien one to another, at times, not only aliens. You could not tell. Perhaps the Gaal were coming as an army. Certainly the Winter was coming. Which enemy first?

  The Elders swayed toward doing nothing, but Umaksuman’s faction prevailed to the extent of having runners sent to the two neighboring Ranges, Allakskat and Pernmek, to sound them out on the project of a joint defense. That was all the decision made; the shaman released the scrawny hann he had caught in case a decision for war was reached and must be sealed by lapidation, and the Elders dispersed.

  Wold was sitting in his tent with men of his Kin over a good hot pot of bhan, when there was a commotion outside. Umaksuman went out, shouted at everybody to clear out, and reentered the great tent behind the farborn Agat.

  “Welcome, Alterra,” said the old man, and with a sly glance at his two grandsons, “will you sit with us and eat?”

  He liked to shock people; he always had. That was why he had always been running off to the farborns in the old days. And this gesture freed him, in his mind, from the vague shame he suffered since speaking before the other men of the farborn girl who had so long ago been his wife.

  Agat, calm and grave as befo
re, accepted and ate enough to show he took the hospitality seriously; he waited till they were all done eating, and Ukwet’s wife had scuttled out with the leavings, then he said, “Eldest, I listen.”

  “There’s not much to hear,” Wold replied. He belched. “Runners go to Pernmek and Allakskat. But few spoke for war. The cold grows each day now: safety lies inside walls, under roofs. We don’t walk about in timepast as your people do, but we know what the Way of Men has always been and is, and hold to it.”

  “Your way is good,” the farborn said, “good enough, maybe, that the Gaal have learned it from you. In past Winters you were stronger than the Gaal because your clans were gathered together against them. Now the Gaal too have learned that strength lies in numbers.”

  “If that news is true,” said Ukwet, who was one of Wold’s grandsons, though older than Wold’s son Umaksuman.

  Agat looked at him in silence. Ukwet turned aside at once from that straight, dark gaze.

  “If it’s not true, then why are the Gaal so late coming south?” said Umaksuman. “What’s keeping them? Have they ever waited till the harvests were in before?”

  “Who knows?” said Wold. “Last Year they came long before the Snowstar rose, I remember that. But who remembers the Year before last?”

  “Maybe they’re following the Mountain Trail,” said the other grandson, “and won’t come through Askatevar at all.”

  “The runner said they had taken Tlokna,” Umaksuman said sharply, “and Tlokna is north of Tevar on the Coast Trail. Why do we disbelieve this news, why do we wait to act?”