Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 143
He could assume that Ken Kenyek, while manipulating his mind
through the psychocomputer yesterday, had tried to get him to divulge the
Galaktika name of Werel's sun. And he could assume that if he had
divulged it, he would be dead or mindless now. They did not want him,
Ramarren; they wanted only his knowledge. And they had not got it.
That in itself must have them worried, and well it might. The Kelshak
code of secrecy concerning the Books of the Lost Colony had evolved
along with a whole technique of mindguarding. That mystique of
secrecy—or more precisely of restraint—had grown over the long years
from the rigorous control of scientific-technical knowledge exercised by
the original Colonists, itself an outgrowth from the League's Law of
Cultural Embargo, which forbade cultural importation to colonial planets.
The whole concept of restraint was fundamental in Werelian culture by
now, and the stratification of Werlian society was directed by the
conviction that knowledge and technique must remain under intelligent
control. Such details as the True Name of the Sun were formal and
symbolical, but the formalism was taken seriously—with ultimate
seriousness, for in Kelshy knowledge was religion, religion knowledge. To
guard the intangible holy places in the minds of men, intangible and
invulnerable defenses had been devised. Unless he was in one of the
Places of Silence, and addressed in a certain form by an associate of his
own Level, Ramarren was absolutely unable to communicate, in words or
writing or mindspeech, the True Name of his world's sun.
He possessed, of course, equivalent knowledge: the complex of
astronomical facts that had enabled him to plot the Alterra's coordinates
from Werel to Earth; his knowledge of the exact distance between the two
planets' suns; his clear, astronomer's memory of the stars as seen from
Werel. They had not got this information from him yet, probably because
his mind had been in too chaotic a state when first restored by Ken
Kenyek's manipulations, or because even then his parahypnotically
strengthened mindguards and specific barriers had been functioning.
Knowing there might still be an Enemy on Earth, the crewmen of the
Alterra had not set off unprepared. Unless Shing mindscience was much
stronger than Werelian, they would not now be able to force him to tell
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