Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 101

"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
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