Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 115

themselves apart—"
He was fluent, incoherent, childish. Did he know his own loneliness,
orphaned and alien, living out his childhood and entering adolescence
among these people who held themselves apart, who would not touch him,
who stuffed him with words but left him so empty of reality that, at fifteen,
he sought contentment from a drug? He certainly did not know his
isolation as such—he did not seem to have clear ideas on anything
much—but it looked from his eyes sometimes, yearning, at Falk. Yearning
and feebly hoping, the look of one perishing of thirst in a dry salt desert
who looks up at a mirage. There was much more Falk wanted to ask him,
but little use in asking. Pitying him, Falk put his hand on Orry's slender
shoulder. The boy started at the touch, smiled timidly and vaguely, and
sucked again at his tranquillant.
Back in his room, where everything was so luxuriously arranged for
his comfort—and to impress Orry?—Falk paced a while like a caged bear,
and finally lay down to sleep. In his dreams he was in a house, like the
Forest House, but the people in the dream house had eyes the color of
agate and amber. He tried to tell them he was one of them, their own
kinsman, but they did not understand his speech and watched him
strangely while he stammered and sought for the right words, the true
words, the true name.
Toolmen waited to serve him when he woke. He dismissed them, and
they left. He went out into the hall. No one barred his way; he met no one
as he went on. It all seemed deserted, no one stirring in the long misty
corridors or on the ramps or inside the half-seen, dim-walled rooms whose
doors he could not find. Yet all the time he felt he was being watched, that
every move he made was seen.
When he found his way back to his room Orry was waiting for him,
wanting to show him about the city. All afternoon they explored, on foot
and on a paristolis slider, the streets and terraced gardens, the bridges and
palaces and dwellings of Es Toch. Orry was liberally provided with the
slips of iridium that served as money, and when Falk remarked that he did
not like the fancy-dress his hosts had provided him, Orry insisted they go
to a clothier's shop and outfit him as he wished. He stood among racks and
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