Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 12

conquered and conquerors, millions of lives, all drawn together to a vague
point on the horizon of past time. The stars had been gained, and lost
again. Still the years went on, so many years that the Forest of archaic
times, destroyed utterly during the era when men had made and kept their
history, had grown up again. Even in the obscure vast history of a planet
the time it takes to make a forest counts. It takes a while. And not every
planet can do it; it is no common effect, that tangling of the sun's first cool
light in the shadow and complexity of innumerable wind-stirred
branches…
Falk stood rejoicing in it, perhaps the more intensely because for him
behind this morning there were so few other mornings, so short a stretch of
remembered days between him and the dark. He listened to the remarks
made by a chickadee in the oak, then stretched, scratched his head
vigorously, and went off to join the work and company of the house.
Zove's
House
was
a
rambling,
towering,
intermitted
chalet-castle-farmhouse of stone and timber; some parts of it had stood a
century or so, some longer. There was a primitiveness to its aspect: dark
staircases, stone hearths and cellars, bare floors of tile or wood. But
nothing in it was unfinished; it was perfectly fireproof and weatherproof;
and certain elements of its fabric and function were highly sophisticated
devices or machines—the pleasant, yellowish fusion-lights, the libraries of
music, words and images, various automatic tools or devices used in
house-cleaning, cooking, washing, and farmwork, and some subtler and
more specialized instruments kept in workrooms in the East Wing. All
these things were part of the House, built into it or along with it, made in it
or in another of the Forest Houses. The machinery was heavy and simple,
easy to repair; only the knowledge behind its power-source was delicate
and irreplaceable.
One type of technological device was notably lacking. The library
evinced a skill with electronics that had become practically instinctive; the
boys liked to build little tellies to signal one another with from room to
room. But there was no television, telephone, radio, telegraph transmitting
or receiving beyond the Clearing. There were no instruments of
communication over distance. There were a couple of homemade
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