Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 28

spoke to each other across him. Their voices sounded as if they came from
behind high walls a great way off, and he could not understand the words.
He shivered with cold. With the sensation of cold he came more
closely in touch with the world and began to regain control of his mind.
His hearing was clearer, his tongue was loosed. He said something which
was meant to be, "What did you do to me?"
There was no answer, but presently the man on his left stuck his face
quite close to Falk's and said loudly, "Why did you come here?"
Falk heard the words; after a moment he understood them; after
another moment he answered. "For refuge. The night."
"Refuge from what?"
"Forest. Alone."
He was more and more penetrated with cold. He managed to get his
heavy, clumsy hands up a little, trying to button his shirt. Below the straps
that bound him in the chair, just below his breastbone was a little painful
spot.
"Keep your hands down," the man on his right said out of the
shadows. "It's more than programming, Argerd, No hypnotic block could
stand up to penton that way."
The one on his left, slab-faced and quick-eyed, a big man, answered in
a weak sibilant voice: "You can't say that—what do we know about their
tricks? Anyhow, how can you estimate his resistance—what is he? You,
Falk, where is this place you came from, Zove's House?"
"East. I left…" The number would not come to mind. "Fourteen days
ago, I think."
How did they know the name of his House, his name?
He was getting his wits back now, and did not wonder very long. He
had hunted deer with Metock using hypodermic darts, which could make
even a scratch-wound a kill. The dart that had felled him, or a later
injection when he was helpless, had been some drug which must relax both
the learned control and the primitive unconscious block of the telepathic
centers of the brain, leaving him open to para-verbal questioning. They
had ransacked his mind. At the idea, his feeling of coldness and sickness
increased, complicated by helpless outrage. Why this violation? Why did
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