Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 128

And far into the night, under the pressure of weariness and of hunger,
of the thoughts he would not allow himself to think and the terror of death
that he would not allow himself to feel, his mind entered at last the state he
had sought. The walls fell away; his self fell away from him, and he was
nothing. He was the words: he was the word, the word spoken in darkness
with none to hear at the beginning, the first page of time. His self had
fallen from him and he was utterly, everlastingly himself: nameless, single,
one.
Gradually the moment returned, and things had names, and the walls
arose. He read the first page of the book once again, and then lay down
and slept.
The east wall of his room was emerald-bright with early sunlight
when a couple of toolmen came for him and took him down through the
misty hall and levels of the building to the street, and by slider through the
shadowy streets and across the chasm to another tower. These two were
not the servants who had waited on him, but a pair of big, speechless
guards. Remembering the methodical brutality of the beating he had got
when he had first entered Es Toch, the first lesson in self-distrust the Shing
had given him, he guessed that they had been afraid he might try to escape
at this last minute, and had provided these guards to discourage any such
impulse.
He was taken into a maze of rooms that ended in brightly lit,
underground cubicles all walled in by and dominated by the screens and
banks of an immense computer complex. In one of these Ken Kenyek
came forward to meet him, alone. It was curious how he had seen the
Shing only one or two at a time, and very few of them in all. But there was
no time to puzzle over that now, though on the fringes of his mind a vague
memory, an explanation, danced for a moment, until Ken Kenyek spoke.
"You did not try to commit suicide last night," the Shing said in his
toneless whisper.
That was in fact the one way out that had. never occurred to Falk.
"I thought I would let you handle that," he said.
Ken Kenyek paid no heed to his words, though he had an air of
listening closely. "Everything is set up," he said. "These are the same
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