Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 45

risen about two feet, and then with the right arc sent the little craft slipping
over the yard and the river-bank till it hovered above the scummy ice of
the backwater below the cabin. He looked back then to call goodbye, but
the old man had already gone into the cabin and shut the door. And as Falk
steered his noiseless craft down the broad dark avenue of the river, the
enormous silence closed in around him again.
Icy mist gathered on the wide curves of water ahead of him and
behind him, and hung among the gray trees on either bank. Ground and
trees and sky were all gray with ice and fog. Only the water sliding along a
little slower than he slid airborne above it was dark. When on the
following day snow began to fall the flakes were dark against tie sky,
white against the water before they vanished, endlessly falling and
vanishing in the endless current.
This mode of travel was twice the speed of walking, and safer and
easier—too easy indeed, monotonous, hypnotic. Falk was glad to come
ashore when he had to hunt or to make camp. Waterbirds all but flew into
his hands, and animals coming down to the shore to drink glanced at him
as if he on the slider were a crane or heron skimming past, and offered
their defenseless flanks and ches ts to his hunting gun. Then all he could do
was skin, hack up, cook, eat, and build himself a little shelter for the night
against snow or rain with boughs or bark and the up-ended slider as a roof;
he slept, at dawn ate cold meat left from last night, drank from the river,
and went on. And on.
He played games with the slider to beguile the eventless hours: taking
her up above fifteen feet where wind and air-layers made the aircushion
unreliable and might tilt the slider right over unless he compensated
instantly with the controls and his own weight; or forcing her down into
the water in a wild commotion of foam and spray so she slapped and
skipped and skittered all over the river, bucking like a colt. A couple of
falls did not deter Falk from his amusements. The slider was set to hover at
one foot if uncontrolled, and all he had to do was clamber back on, get to
shore and make a fire if he had got chilled, or if not, simply go on. His
clothes were weatherproof, and in any case the river could get him little
wetter than the rain. The wintercloth kept him fairly warm; he was never
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