Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 54
"If we can get across into Samsit territory, just a few miles west of
here, we could hole up in an Old Place I know there and hide till they give
up looking. I thought of trying it before you came. But I had no compass
and was afraid of getting lost in the storm. With a compass, and a gun, we
might make it…We might not."
"If it's our best chance," Falk said, "we'll take it." He was not quite so
naive, so hopeful and easily swayed, as he had been before his capture. He
was a little more resistant and resolute. Though he had suffered at their
hands he had no special grudge against the Basnasska; they had branded
him once and for all down both his arms with the blue tattoo-slashes of
their kinship, branding him as a barbarian, but also as a man. That was all
right. But they had their business, and he had his. The hard individual will
developed in him by his training in the Forest House demanded that he get
free, that he get on with his journey, with what Zove had called mans
work. These people were not going anywhere, nor did they come from
anywhere, for they had cut their roots in the human past. It was not only
the extreme precariousness of his existence among the Basnasska that
made him impatient to get out; it was also a sense of suffocation, of being
cramped and immobilized, which was harder to endure than the bandage
that blanked his vision.
That evening Estrel stopped by his tent to tell him that it had begun to
snow, and they were settling their plan in whispers when a voice spoke at
the flap of the tent. Estrel translated quietly: "He says, 'Blind Hunter, do
you want the Red Woman tonight?'" She added no explanation. Falk knew
the rules and etiquette of sharing the women around; his mind was busy
with the matter of their talk, and he replied with the most useful of his
short list of Basnasska words—"Mieg!"—no.
The male voice said something more imperative. If it goes on
snowing, tomorrow night, maybe," Estrel murmured in Galaktika. Still
thinking, Falk did not answer. Then he realized she had risen and gone,
leaving him alone in the tent. And after that he realized that she was the
Red Woman, and that the other man had wanted her to copulate with.
He could simply have said Yes instead of No; and when he thought of
her cleverness and gentleness towards him, the softness of her touch and
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