Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 141

allow for the gap of time during which he had not consciously existed. Ten
days ago where had he been? He had been on muleback among the snowy
mountains of Earth; Falk knew that; but Ramarren knew that he had been
taking leave of his wife in a house on the high green plains of
Werel…Also, what Ramarren guessed about Terra was often contradicted
by what Falk knew, while Falk's ignorance of Werel cast a strange glamor
of legend over Ramarren's own past. Yet even in this bewilderment there
was the germ of interaction, of the coherence toward which he strove. For
the fact remained, he was, bodily and chronologically, one man: his
problem was not really that of creating a unity, only of comprehending it.
Coherence was far from being gained. One or the other of the two
memory-structures still had to dominate, if he was to think and act with
any competence. Most often, now, it was Ramarren who took over, for the
Navigator of the Alterra was a decisive and potent person. Falk, in
comparison, felt himself childish, tentative; he could offer what knowledge
he had, but relied upon Ramarren's strength and experience. Both were
needed, for the two-minded man was in a very obscure and hazardous
situation.
One question was basic to all the others. It was simply put: whether or
not the Shing could be trusted. For if Falk had merely been inculcated with
a groundless fear of the Lords of Earth, then the hazards and obscurities
would themselves prove groundless. At first Ramarren thought this might
well be the case; but he did not think it for long.
There were open lies and discrepancies which already his double
memory had caught. Abundibot had refused to mindspeak to Ramarren,
saying the Shing avoided paraverbal communication: that Falk knew to be
a lie. Why had Abundibot told it? Evidently because he wanted to tell a
lie—the Shing story of what had happened to the Alterra and its
crew—and could not or dared not tell it to Ramarren in mindspeech.
But he had told Falk very much the same story, in mindspeech.
If it was a false story, then, the Shing could and did mindlie. Was it
false?
Ramarren called upon Falk's memory. At first that effort of
combination was beyond him, but it became easier as he struggled, pacing
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