City of Illusions (18 page)

"Wait for me in the hall, Orry," Falk said; docile, the boy went out. When the vertical lips of the door had closed behind him, Falk said—whispered, rather, because everyone whispered here—I wished to repeat what I asked you before. I am not sure I understood. You can restore my earlier memory only at the cost of my present memory—is that true?"

"Why do you ask me what is true? Will you believe it?"

"Why—why should I not believe it?" Falk replied, but his heart sank, for he felt the Shing was playing with him, as with a creature totally incompetent and powerless.

"Are we not the Liars? You must not believe anything we say. That is what you were taught in Zove's House, that is what you think. We know what you think."

"Tell me what I ask," Falk said, knowing the futility of his stubbornness.

"I will tell you what I told you before, and as best I can, though it is Ken Kenyek who knows these matters best. He is our most skilled mindhandler. Do you wish me to call him?—no doubt he will be willing to project to us here. No? It does not matter, of course. Crudely expressed, the answer to your question is this: Your mind was, as we say, razed. Mindrazing is an operation, not a surgical one of course, but a paramental one involving psychoelectric equipment, the effects of which are much more absolute than those of any mere hypnotic block. The restoration of a razed mind is possible, but is a much more drastic matter, accordingly, than the removal of a hypnotic block. What is in question, to you, at this moment, is a secondary, super-added, partial memory and personality-structure, which you now call your 'self.' This is, of course, not the case. Looked at impartially, this second-growth self of yours is a mere rudiment, emotionally stunted and intellectually incompetent, compared to the true self which lies so deeply hidden. As we cannot and do not expect you to be able to look at it impartially, however, we wish we could assure you that the restoration of Ramarren will include the continuity of Falk. And we have been tempted to lie to you about this, to spare you fear and doubt and make your decision easy. But it is best that you know the truth; we would not have it otherwise, nor, I think, would you. The truth is this: when we restore to its normal condition and function the synaptic totality of your original mind, if I may so simplify the incredibly complex operation which Ken Kenyek and his psychocomputers are ready to perform, this restoration will entail the total blocking of the secondary synaptic totality which you now consider to be your mind and self. This secondary totality will be irrecoverably suppressed: razed in its turn."

"To revive Ramarren you must kill Falk, then."

"We do not kill," the Shing said in his harsh whisper, then repeated it with blazing intensity in mindspeech—
"We do not kill!"

There was a pause.

"To gain the great you must give up the less. It is always the rule," the Shing whispered.

"To live one must agree to die," Falk said, and saw the mask-face wince. "Very well. I agree. I consent to let you kill me. My consent does not really matter, does it?—yet you want it."

"We will not kill you." The whisper was louder. "We do not kill. We do not take life. We are restoring you to your true life and being. Only you must forget. That is the price; there is not any choice or doubt: to be Ramarren you must forget Falk. To this you must consent, indeed, but it is all we ask."

"Give me one day more," Falk said, and then rose, ending the conversation. He had lost; he was powerless. And yet he had made the mask wince, he had touched, for a moment, the very quick of the lie; and in that moment he had sensed that, had he the wits or strength to reach it, the truth lay very close at hand.

Falk left the building with Orry, and when they were in the street he said, "Come with me a minute. I want to speak with you outside those walls." They crossed the bright street to the edge of the cliff and stood side by side there in the cold night-wind of spring, the lights of the bridge shooting on out past them, over the black chasm that dropped sheer away from the street's edge.

"When I was Ramarren," Falk said slowly, "had I the right to ask a service of you?"

"Any service," the boy answered with the sober promptness that seemed to hark back to his early training on Werel.

Falk looked straight at him, holding his gaze a moment. He pointed to the bracelet of gold links on Orry's wrist, and with a gesture indicated that he should slip it off and toss it into the gorge.

Orry began to speak: Falk put his finger to his lips.

The boy's gaze flickered; he hesitated, then slipped the chain off and cast it down into the dark. Then he turned again to Falk his face in which fear, confusion, and the longing for approval were clear to see.

For the first time, Falk bespoke him in mindspeech: "Do you wear any other device or ornament, Orry?"

At first the boy did not understand. Falk's sending was inept and weak compared to that of the Shing. When he did at last understand, he replied paraverbally, with great clarity, "No, only the communicator. Why did you bid me throw it away?"

"I wish to speak with no listener but you, Orry."

The boy looked awed and scared. "The Lords can hear," he whispered aloud. "They can hear mindspeech anywhere, prech Ramarren—and I had only begun my training in mindguarding—"

"Then we'll speak aloud," Falk said, though he doubted that the Shing could overhear mindspeech "anywhere," without mechanical aid of some land. "This is what I wish to ask you. These Lords of Es Toch brought me here, it seems, to restore my memory as Ramarren. But they can do it, or will do it, only at the cost of my memory of myself as I am now, and all I have learned on Earth. This they insist upon. I do not wish it to be so. I do not wish to forget what I know and guess, and be an ignorant tool in their hands. I do not wish to die again before my death! I don't think I can withstand them, but I will try, and the service I ask of you is this—" He stopped, hesitant among choices, for he had not worked out his plan at all.

Orry's face, which had been excited, now dulled with confusion again, and finally he said, "But why…"

"Well?" Falk said, seeing the authority he had briefly exerted over the boy evaporate. Still, he had shocked Orry into asking "Why?" and if he was ever to get through to the boy, it would be right now.

"Why do you mistrust the Lords? Why should they want to suppress your memory of Earth?"

"Because Ramarren does not know what I know. Nor do you. And our ignorance may betray the world that sent us here."

"But you…you don't even remember our world…"

"No. But I will not serve the Liars who rule this one. Listen to me. This is all I can guess of what they want. They will restore my former mind in order to learn the true name, the location of our home world. If they learn it while they are working on my mind, then I think they'll kill me then and there, and tell you that the operation was fatal; or raze my mind once more and tell you that the operation was a failure. If not, they'll let me live, at least until I tell them what they want to know. And I won't know enough, as Ramarren, not to tell them. Then they'll send us back to Werel—sole survivors of the great journey, returning after centuries to tell Werel how, on dark barbaric Earth, the Shing bravely hold the torch of civilization alight. The Shing who are no man's Enemy, the self-sacrificing Lords, the wise Lords who are really men of Earth, not aliens or conquerors. We will tell Werel all about the friendly Shing. And they'll believe us. They will believe the lies we believe. And so they will fear no attack from the Shing; and they will not send help to the men of Earth, the true men who await deliverance from the lie."

"But prech Ramarren, those are not lies," Orry said.

Falk looked at him a minute in the diffuse, bright, shifting light. His heart sank, but he said finally, "Will you do the service I asked of you?"

"Yes," the boy whispered.

"Without telling any other living being what it is?"

"Yes."

"It is simply this. When you first see me as Ramarren—if you ever do—then say to me these words: Read the first page of the book."

"'Read the first page of the book,'" Orry repeated, docile.

There was a pause. Falk stood feeling himself encompassed by futility, like a fly bundled in spider-silk.

"Is that all the service, prech Ramarren?"

"That's all."

The boy bowed his head and muttered a sentence in his native tongue, evidently some formula of promising. Then he asked, "What should I tell them about the bracelet communicator, prech Ramarren?"

"The truth—it doesn't matter, if you keep the other secret," Falk said. It seemed, at least, that they had not taught the boy to lie. But they had not taught him to know truth from lies.

Orry took him back across the bridge on his slider, and he re-entered the shining, mist-walled palace where Estrel had first brought him. Once alone in his room he gave way to fear and rage, knowing how he was utterly fooled and made helpless; and when he had controlled his anger still he walked the room like a bear in a cage, contending with the fear of death.

If he besought them, might they not let him live on as Falk, who was useless to them, but harmless?

No. They would not. That was clear, and only cowardice made him turn to the notion. There was no hope there.

Could he escape?

Maybe. The seeming emptiness of this great building might be a sham, or a trap, or like so much else here, an illusion. He felt and guessed that he was constantly spied upon, aurally or visually, by hidden presences or devices. All doors were guarded by toolmen or electronic monitors. But if he did escape from Es Toch, what then?

Could he make his way back across the mountains, across the plains, through the forest, and come at last to the Clearing, where Parth…No! He stopped himself in anger. He could not go back. This far he had come following his way, and he must follow on to the end: through death if it must be, to rebirth—the rebirth of a stranger, of an alien soul.

But there was no one here to tell that stranger and alien the truth. There was no one here that Falk could trust, except himself, and therefore not only must Falk die, but his dying must serve the will of the Enemy. That was what he could not bear; that was unendurable. He paced up and down the still, greenish dusk of his room. Blurred inaudible lightning flashed across the ceiling. He would not serve the Liars; he would not tell them what they wanted to know. It was not Werel he cared for—for all he knew, his guesses were all astray and Werel itself was a lie, Orry a more elaborate Estrel; there was no telling. But he loved Earth, though he was alien upon it. And Earth to him meant the house in the Forest, the sunlight on the Clearing, Parth. These he would not betray. He must believe that there was a way to keep himself, against all force and trickery, from betraying them.

Again and again he tried to imagine some way in which he as Falk could leave a message for himself as Ramarren: a problem in itself so grotesque it beggared his imagination, and beyond that, insoluble. If the Shing did not watch him write such a message, certainly they would find it when it was written. He had thought at first to use Orry as the go-between, ordering him to tell Ramarren, "Do not answer the Shing's questions," but he had not been able to trust Orry to obey, or to keep the order secret. The Shing had so mindhandled the boy that he was by now, essentially, their instrument; and even the meaningless message that Folk had given him might already be known to his Lords.

There was no device or trick, no means or way to get around or get out. There was only one hope, and that very small: that he could hold on; that through whatever they did to him he could keep hold of himself and refuse to forget, refuse to die. The only thing that gave him grounds for hoping that this might be possible was that the Shing had said it was impossible.

They wanted him to believe that it was impossible.

The delusions and apparitions and hallucinations of his first hours or days in Es Toch had been worked on him, then, only to confuse him and weaken his self-trust: for that was what they were after. They wanted him to distrust himself, his beliefs, his knowledge, his strength. All the explanations about mind-razing were then equally a scare, a bogey, to convince him that he could not possibly withstand their parahypnotic operations.

Ramarren had not withstood them…

But Ramarren had had no suspicion or warning of their powers or what they would try to do to him, whereas Falk did. That might make a difference. Even so, Ramarren's memory had not been destroyed beyond recall, as they insisted Falk's would be: the proof of that was that they intended to recall it.

A hope; a very small hope. All he could do was say I
will survive
in the hope it might be true; and with luck, it would be. And without luck…?

Hope is a slighter, tougher thing even than trust,
he thought, pacing his room as the soundless, vague lightning flashed overhead. In a good season one trusts life; in a bad season one only hopes, But they are of the same essence: they are the mind's indispensable relationship with other minds, with the world, and with time. Without trust, a man lives, but not a human life; without hope, he dies. When there is no relationship, where hands do not touch, emotion atrophies in void and intelligence goes sterile and obsessed. Between men the only link left is that of owner to slave, or murderer to victim.

Laws are made against the impulse a people most fears in itself.
Do not kill
was the Shing's vaunted single Law. All else was permitted: which meant, perhaps, there was little else they really wanted to do…Fearing their own profound attraction towards death, they preached Reverence for Life, fooling themselves at last with their own lie.

Against them he could never prevail except, perhaps, through the one quality no liar can cope with, integrity. Perhaps it would not occur to them that a man could so will to be himself, to live his life, that he might resist them even when helpless in their hands.

Perhaps, perhaps.

Deliberately stilling his thoughts at last, he took up the book that the Prince of Kansas had given him and which, belying the Prince's prediction, he had not yet lost again, and read in it for a while, very intently, before he slept.