Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 131

as if it were one night, one long night, last night…But it aged you from a
child almost to a man. We were wrong about that, then."
"No—the Voyage did not age me—" Orry stopped.
"Where are the others?"
"Lost."
"Dead? Speak entirely, vesprech Orry."
"Probably dead, prech Ramarren."
"What is this place?"
"Please, rest now—"
"Answer."
"This is a room in a city called Es Toch on the planet Earth," the boy
answered with due entirety, and then broke out in a kind of wail, "You
don't know it?—you don't remember it, any of it? This is worse than
before—"
"How should I remember Earth?" Ramarren whispered.
"I—I was to say to you, Read the first page of the book."
Ramarren paid no need to the boy's stammering. He knew now that all
had gone amiss, and that a time had passed that he knew nothing of. But
until he could master this strange weakness of his body he could do
nothing, and so he was quiet until all dizziness had passed. Then with
closed mind he told over certain of the Fifth Level Soliloquies; and when
they had quieted his mind as well, he summoned sleep.
The dreams rose up about him once more, complex and frightening
yet shot through with sweetness like the sunlight breaking through the dark
of an old forest. With deeper sleep these fantasies dispersed, and his dream
became a simple, vivid memory: He was waiting beside the airfoil to
accompany his father to the city. Up on the foothills of Charn the forests
were half leafless in their long dying, but the air was warm and clear and
still. His father Agad Karsen, a lithe spare old man in his ceremonial garb
and helmet, holding his office-stone, came leisurely across the lawn with
his daughter, and both were laughing as he teased her about her first suitor,
"Look out for that lad, Parth, he'll woo without mercy if you let him."
Words lightly spoken long ago, in the sunlight of the long, golden autumn
of his youth, he heard them again now, and the girl's laugh in response.
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