Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 62

they cannot kill him to stop him, so they make him into a Raze. It is
something they do to the mind. They can turn him loose and he starts to
live anew, innocent. This man I spoke of was older than you, but had a
mind like a little child. But he got a gun in his hands, and his hands knew
how to use it, and he—shot a man very close up, like you did—"
Falk was silent. He glanced across the fire at his handgun, lying atop
his pack, the marvelous little tool that had started his fires, provided his
meat, and lighted his darkness all his long way. There had been no
knowledge in his hands of how to use the thing—had there? Metock had
taught him how to shoot. He had learned from Metock, and grown skillful
by hunting. He was sure of it. He could not be a mere freak and criminal
given a second chance by the arrogant charity of the Lords of Es Toch…
Yet was that not more plausible than his own vague dreams and
notions of his origin?
"How do they do this to a man's mind?"
"I do not know."
"They might do it," he said harshly, "not only to criminals, but to—to
rebels?"
"What are rebels?"
She spoke Galaktika much more fluently than he, but she had never
heard that word.
She had finished dressing his hurt and was carefully tucking her few
medicaments away in their pouch. He turned around to her so abruptly that
she looked up startled, drawing back a little.
"Have you ever seen eyes like mine, Estrel?"
"No."
"You know—the City?"
"Es Toch? Yes, I have been there."
"Then you have seen the Shing?"
"You are no Shing."
"No. But I am going among them." He spoke fiercely. "But I dread—"
He stopped.
Estrel closed the medicine-pouch and put it in her pack. "Es Toch is
strange to men from the Lonely Houses and the far lands," she said at last
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