Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 134

familiar to his ear, and though he did not know the tongue she spoke he
understood a word of it, then another. For a second this frightened him by
its uncanniness and made him fear she was using some form of
mindspeech that could penetrate even his outphase barrier; in the next
second, he realized that he understood her because she was speaking the
Tongue of the Books, Galaktika. Only her accent and her fluency in
speaking it had kept him from recognizing it at once.
She had already said several sentences to him, speaking in a curiously
cold, quick, lifeless way; "…not know I am here," she was saying. "Now
tell me which of us is the liar, the faithless one. I walked with you all that
endless way, I lay with you a hundred nights, and now you don't even
know my name. Do you, Falk? Do you know my name? Do you know
your own?"
"I am Agad Ramarren," he said, and his own name in his own voice
sounded strange to him.
"Who told you so? You're Falk. Don't you know a man named
Falk?—he used to wear your flesh. Ken Kenyek and Rradgy forbade me to
say his name to you, but I'm sick of playing their games and never my
own. I like to play my own games. Don't you remember your name,
Falk?—Falk—Falk—don't you remember your name? Ah, you're still as
stupid as you ever were, staring like a stranded fish!"
At once he dropped his gaze. The matter of looking directly into
another person's eyes was a sensitive one among Werelians, and was
strictly controlled by tabu and manners. That was his only response at first
to her words, though his inward reactions were immediate and various. For
one thin g, she was lightly drugged, with something on the
stimulant-hallucinogenic order: his trained perceptions reported this to him
as a certainty, whether he liked its implications concerning the Race of
Man or not. For another thing, he was not sure he had understood all she'd
said and certainly had no idea what she was talking about, but her intent
was aggressive, destructive. And the aggression was effective. For all his
lack of comprehension, her weird jeers and the name she kept repeating
moved and distressed him, shook him, shocked him.
He turned away a little to signify he would not cross her gaze again
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