Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 112

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 cannot
be very many stars at just that distance.
"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
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