Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 78

quality.
This curious reality, this singular validity of the Prince's domain, so
fascinated and absorbed him that for days he scarcely thought of the world
outside, that scattered, violent, incoherent world he had been traveling
through so long. But talking on the thirteenth day with Estrel and having
spoken of going, he began to wonder at the relation of the Enclave with all
the rest, and said, "I thought the Shing suffered no lordship among men.
Why should they let him guard his boundaries here, calling himself Prince
and King?"
"Why should they not let him rave? This Enclave of Kansas is a great
territory, but barren and without people. Why should the Lords of Es Toch
interfere with him? I suppose to them he is like a silly child, boasting and
babbling.
"Is he that to you?"
"Well—did you see when the ship came over, yesterday?"
"Yes, I saw."
An aircar—the first Falk had ever seen, though he had recognized its
throbbing drone—had crossed directly over the house, up very high so that
it was in sight for some minutes. The people of the Prince's household had
run out into the gardens beating pans and clappers, the dogs and children
had howled, the Prince on an upper balcony had solemnly fired off a series
of deafening firecrackers, until the ship had vanished in the murky west.
"They are as foolish as the Basnasska, and the old man is mad."
Though the Prince would not see her, his people had been very kind to
her; the undertone of bitterness in her soft voice surprised Falk. "The
Basnasska have forgotten the old way of man," he said; "these people
maybe remember it too well." He laughed. "Anyway, the ship did go on
over."
"Not because they scared it away with firecrackers, Falk," she said
seriously, as if trying to warn him of something.
He looked at her a moment. She evidently saw nothing of the lunatic,
poetic dignity of those firecrackers, which ennobled even a Shing aircar
with the quality of a solar eclipse. In the shadow of total calamity why not
set off a firecracker? But since her illness and the loss of her jade talisman
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