City of Illusions hc-3

by Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

  The new mixed stock and mixed culture of the Tevar-Alterran nation flourished in the years after that perilous Tenth Winter. The little cities grew; a mercantile culture was established on the single north-hemisphere continent. Within a few generations it was spreading to the primitive peoples of the southern continents, where the problem of keeping alive through the winter was more easily solved. Population went up; science and technology began their exponential climb, guided and aided always by the Books of Alterra, the ship's library, the mysteries of which grew explicable as the colonists' remote descendants relearned lost knowledge. They had kept and copied those books, generation after generation, and learned the tongue they were written in—Galaktika, of course. Finally, the moon and sister-planets all explored, the sprawl of cities and the rivalries of nations controlled and balanced by the powerful Kelshak Empire in the old Northland, at the height of an age of peace and vigor the Empire had built and sent forth a lightspeed ship.

  That ship, the Alterra, left Werel eighteen and a half years after the ship of the Colony from Earth landed: twelve hundred years, Earth style. Its crew had no idea what they would find on Earth. Werel had not yet been able to reconstruct the principles of the ansible transmitter, and had hesitated to broadcast radio-signals that would betray their location to a possible hostile world ruled by the Enemy the League had feared. To get information living men must go, and return, crossing the long night to the ancient home of the Alterrans.

  "How long was that voyage?"

  "Over two Werelian years—maybe a hundred and thirty or forty light-years—I was only a boy, a child, prech Ramarren, and some things I didn't understand, and much wasn't told me—"

  Falk did not see why this ignorance should embarrass the lad; he was much more struck by the fact that Orry, who looked fifteen or sixteen, had been alive for perhaps a hundred and fifty years. And himself?

  The Alterra, Orry went on, had left from a base near the old coast-town Tevar, her coordinates set for Terra. She had carried nineteen people, men, women and children, Kelshak for the most part and claiming Colonist descent: the adults selected by the Harmonious Council of the Empire for training, intelligence, courage, generosity, and arlesh.

  "I don't know a word for it in Galaktika. It's just arlesh." Orry smiled his ingenuous smile. "Rale is…the right thing to do, like learning things at school, or like a river following its course, and arlesh derives from rale, I guess."

  "Tao?" asked Falk; but Orry had never heard of the Old Canon of Man.

  "What happened to the ship? What happened to the other seventeen people?"

  "We were attacked at the Barrier. The Shing got there only after the Alterra was destroyed and the attackers were dispersing. They were rebels, in planetary cars. The Shing rescued me off one. They didn't know whether the rest of us had been killed or carried off by the rebels. They kept searching, over the whole planet, and about a year ago they heard a rumor about a man living in the Eastern Forest—that sounded like it might be one of us…"

  "What do you remember of all this—the attack and so on?"

  "Nothing. You know how lightspeed flight affects you—"

  "I know that for those in the ship, no time passes. But I have no idea how that feels."

  "Well, I don't really remember it very clearly. I was just a boy—nine years old, Earth style. And I'm not sure anybody could remember it clearly. You can't tell how—how things relate. You see and hear, but it doesn't hang together—nothing means anything—I can't explain it. It's horrible, but only like a dream. But then coming down into planetary space again, you go through what the Lords call the Barrier, and that blacks out the passengers, unless they're prepared for it. Our ship wasn't. None of us had come to when we were attacked, and so I don't remember it, any—any more than you, prech Ramarren. When I came to I was aboard a Shing vessel."

  "Why were you brought along as a boy?"

  "My father was the captain of the expedition. My mother was on the ship too. You know, otherwise, prech Ramarren—well, if one came back one's people would all have been dead, long long ago. Not that it mattered—my parents are dead, now, anyhow. Or maybe they were treated like you, and…and wouldn't recognize me if we met…"

  "What was my part in the expedition?"

  "You were our navigator."

  The irony of that made Falk wince, but Orry went on in his respectful, naive fashion, "Of course, that means you set the ship's course, the coordinates—you were the greatest prosteny, a mathematician-astronomer, in all Kelshy. You were prechnowa to all of us aboard except my father, Har Weden. You are of the Eighth Order, prech Ramarren! You—you remember something of that—?"

  Falk shook his head.

  The boy subsided, saying at last, sadly, "I can't really believe that you don't remember, except when you do that."

  "Shake my head?"

  "On Werel we shrug for no. This way."

  Orry's simplicity was irresistible. Falk tried the shrug; and it seemed to him that he found a certain Rightness in it, a propriety, that could persuade him that it was indeed an old habit. He smiled, and Orry at once cheered up. "You are so like yourself, prech Ramarren, and so different! Forgive me. But what did they do, what did they do to make you forget so much?"

  "They destroyed me. Surely I'm like myself. I am myself. I'm Falk…" He put his head in his hands. Orry, abashed, was silent. The quiet, cool air of the room glowed like a blue-green jewel around them; the western wall was lambent with late sunlight.

  "How closely do they watch you here?"

  "The Lords like me to carry a communicator if I go off by aircar." Orry touched the bracelet on his left wrist, which appeared to be simple gold links. "It can be dangerous, after all, among the natives."

  "But you're free to go where you like?"

  "Yes, of course. This room of yours is just like mine, across the canyon." Orry looked puzzled again. "We have no enemies here, you know, prech Ramarren," he ventured.

  "No? Where are our enemies, then?"

  "Well—outside—where you came from—"

  They stared at each other in mutual miscomprehension.

  "You think men are our enemies—Terrans, human beings? You think it was they that destroyed my mind?"

  "Who else?" Orry said, frightened, gaping.

  "The aliens—the Enemy—the Shing!"

  "But," the boy said with timid gentleness, as if realizing at last how utterly his former lord and teacher was ignorant and astray, "there never was an Enemy. There never was a War."

  The room trembled softly like a tapped gong to an almost sub-aural vibration, and a moment afterward a voice, disembodied, spoke: The Council meets. The slit-door parted and a tall figure entered, stately in white robes and an ornate black wig. The eyebrows, were shaven and repainted high; the face, masked by makeup to a matte smoothness, was that of a husky man of middle age. Orry rose quickly from the table and bowed, whispering, "Lord Abundibot."

  "Har Orry," the man acknowledged, his voice also damped to a creaking whisper, then turned to Falk. "Agad Ramarren. Be welcome. The Council of Earth meets, to answer your questions and consider your requests. Behold now . . ." He had glanced at Falk only for a second, and did not approach either Werelian closely. There was a queer air about him of power and also of utter self-containment, self-absorption. He was apart, unapproachable. All three of them stood motionless a moment; and Falk, following the others' gaze, saw that the inner wall of the room had blurred and changed, seeming to be now a depth of clear grayish jelly in which lines and forms twitched and flickered. Then the image came clear, and Falk caught his breath. It was Estrel's face, ten times lifesize. The eyes gazed at him with the remote composure of a painting.

  "I am Strella Siobelbel." The lips of the image moved, but the voice had no locality, a cold, abstract whisper trembling in the air of the room. "I was sent to bring to the City in safety the member of the Werel Expedition said to be living in the East of Continent One. I believe this to be the man."

&nb
sp; And her face, fading, was replaced by Falk's own.

  A disembodied voice, sibilant, inquired, "Does Har Orry recognize this person?"

  As Orry answered, his face appeared on the screen.

  "This is Agad Ramarren, Lords, the Navigator of the Alterra."

  The boy's face faded and the screen remained blank, quivering, while many voices whispered and rustled in the air, like a brief multitudinous discussion among spirits, speaking an unknown tongue. This was how the Shing held their Council: each in his own room, apart, with only the presence of whispering voices. As the incomprehensible questioning and replying went on, Falk murmured to Orry, "Do you know this tongue?"

  "No, prech Ramarren. They always speak Galaktika to me."

  "Why do they talk this way, instead of face to face?"

  "There are so many of them—thousands and thousands meet in the Council of Earth, Lord Abundibot told me. And they are scattered over the planet in many places, though Es Toch is the only city. That is Ken Kenyek, now."

  The buzz of disembodied voices had died away and a new face had appeared on the screen, a man's face, with dead white skin, black hair, pale eyes. "Agad Ramarren, we are met in Council, and you have been brought into our Council, that you may complete your mission to Earth and, if you desire, return to your home. The Lord Pelleu Abundibot will bespeak you."

  The wall abruptly blanked, returned to its normal translucent green. The tall man across the room was gazing steadily at Falk. His lips did not move, but Falk heard him speak, not in a whisper now but clearly—singularly clearly. He could not believe it was mind-speech, yet it could be nothing else. Stripped of the character and timbre, the incarnateness of voice, this was comprehensibility pure and simple, reason addressing reason.

  "We mindspeak so that you may hear only truth. For it is not true that we who call ourselves Shing, or any other man, can pervert or conceal truth in paraverbal speech. The Lie that men ascribe to us is itself a lie. But if you choose to use voicespeech do so, and we will do likewise."

  "I have no skill at bespeaking," Falk said aloud after a pause. His living voice sounded loud and coarse after the brilliant, silent mind-contact. "But I hear you well enough. I do not ask for the truth. Who am I to demand the truth? But I should like to hear what you choose to tell me."

  Young Orry looked shocked. Abundibot's face registered nothing at all. Evidently he was attuned to both Falk and Orry—a rare feat in itself, in Falk's experience—for Orry was quite plainly listening as the telepathic speech began again.

  "Men razed your mind and then taught you what they wished you to know—what they wish to believe. So taught, you distrust us. We feared it would be so. But ask what you will, Agad Ramarren of Werel; we will answer with the truth."

  "How long have I been here?"

  "Six days."

  "Why was I drugged and befooled at first?"

  "We were attempting to restore your memory. We failed."

  Do not believe him, do not believe him, Falk told himself so urgently that no doubt the Shing, if he had any empathic skill at all, received the message clearly. That did not matter. The game must be played, and played their way, though they made all the rules and had all the skill. His ineptitude did not matter. His honesty did. He was staked now totally on one belief: that an honest man cannot be cheated, that truth, if the game be played through right to the end, will lead to truth.

  "Tell me why I should trust you," he said.

  The mindspeech, pure and clear as an electronically produced musical. note, began again, while the sender Abundibot, and he and Orry, stood motionless as pieces on a chessboard.

  "We whom you know as Shing are men. We are Terrans, born on Earth of human stock, as was your ancestor Jacob Agat of the First Colony on Werel. Men have taught you what they believe about the history of Earth in the twelve centuries since the Colony on Werel was founded. Now we—men also—will teach you what we know.

  "No Enemy ever came from distant stars to attack the League of All Worlds. The League was destroyed by revolution, civil war, by its own corruption, militarism, despotism. On all the worlds there were revolts, rebellions, usurpations; from the Prime World came reprisals that scorched planets to black sand. No more lightspeed ships went out into so risky a future: only the FTLs, the missile-ships, the world-busters. Earth was not destroyed, but half its people were, its cities, its ships and ansibles, its records, its culture—all in two terrible years of civil war between the Loyalists and the Rebels, both armed with the unspeakable weapons developed by the League to fight an alien enemy.

  "Some desperate men on Earth, dominating the struggle for a moment but knowing further counter-revolt and wreckage and ruin was inevitable, employed a new weapon. They lied. They invented a name for themselves, and a language, and some vague tales of the remote home-world they came from, and then they went spreading the rumor over Earth, in their own ranks and the Loyalist camps as well, that the Enemy had come. The civil war was all due to the Enemy. The Enemy had infiltrated everywhere, had wrecked the League and was running Earth, was in power now and was going to stop the war. And they had achieved all this by their one unexpectable, sinister, alien power: the power to mindlie.

  "Men believed the tale. It suited their panic, their dismay, their weariness. Their world in ruins around them, they submitted to an Enemy whom they were glad to believe supernatural, invincible. They swallowed the bait of peace.

  "And they have lived since then in peace.

  "We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God's truth, the universe at once began to exist…

  "If human peace depended on a lie, there were those willing to maintain the lie. Since men insisted that the Enemy had come and ruled the Earth, we called ourselves the Enemy, and ruled. None came to dispute our lie or wreck our peace; the worlds of the League are all sundered, the age of interstellar flight is past; once in a century, perhaps, some ship from a far world blunders here, like yours. There are rebels against our rule, such as those who attacked your ship at the Barrier. We try to control such rebels, for, rightly or wrongly, we bear and have borne for a millennium the burden of human peace. For having told a great lie, we must now uphold a great law. You know the law that we—men among men—enforce: the one Law, learned in humanity's most terrible hour."

  The brilliant toneless mindspeech ceased; it was like the switching off of a light. In the silence like darkness which followed, young Orry whispered aloud, "Reverence for Life."

  Silence again. Falk stood motionless, trying not to betray in his face or in his perhaps overheard thoughts the confusion and irresolution he felt. Was all he had learned false? Had mankind indeed no Enemy?

  "If this history is the true one," he said at last, "why do you not tell it and prove it to men?"

  "We are men," came the telepathic answer. "There are thousands upon thousands of us who know the truth. We are those who have power and knowledge, and use them for peace. There come dark ages, and this is one of them, all through man's history, when people will have it that the world is ruled by demons. We play the part of demons in their mythologies. When they begin to replace mythology with reason, we help them; and they learn the truth."

  "Why do you tell me these things?"

  "For truth's sake, and for your own."

  "Who am I to deserve the truth?" Falk repeated coldly, looking across the room into Abundibot's masklike face.

  "You were a messenger from a lost world, a colony of which all record was lost in the Years of Trouble. You came to Earth, and we, the Lords of Earth, failed to protect you. This is a shame and a grief to us. It was men of Earth who attacked you, killed or mindrazed all your company—men of Earth, of the planet to which, after so many centuries, you were returning. They were rebels from Continent Three, which is neither so primitive nor so sparsely inhabited as this Continent One;
they were using stolen interplanetary cars; they assumed that any lightspeed ship must belong to the 'Shing,' and so attacked it without warning. This we could have prevented, had we been more alert. We owe to you any reparation we can make."

  "They have sought for you and the others all these years," Orry put in, earnest and a little pleading; obviously he very much wanted Falk to believe it all, to accept it, and to—to do what?

  "You tried to restore my memory," Falk said. "Why?"

  "Is that not what you came seeking here: your lost self?"

  "Yes. It is. But I…" He did not even know what questions to ask; he could neither believe nor disbelieve all he had been told. There seemed to be no standard to judge it all by. That Zove and the others had lied to him was inconceivable, but that they themselves were deceived and ignorant was certainly possible. He was incredulous of everything Abundibot affirmed, and yet it had been mindsent, in clear immediate mindspeech where lying was impossible—or was it possible? If a liar says he is not lying—Falk gave it all up again. Looking once more at Abundibot he said, "Please do not bespeak me. I—I would rather hear your voice. You found, I think you said, that you could not restore my memory?"

  Abundibot's muted, creaking whisper in Galaktika came strangely after the fluency of his sending. "Not by the means we used."

  "By other means?"

  "Possibly. We thought you had been given a para-hypnotic block. Instead, you were mindrazed. We do not know where the rebels learned that technique, which we keep a close secret. An even closer secret is the fact that a razed mind can be restored." A smile appeared for a moment on the heavy, mask-like face, then disappeared completely. "With our psycho-computer techniques, we think we can effect the restoration in your case.В However, this incurs the permanent total blocking of the replacement-personality; and this being so we did not wish to proceed without your consent."