More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
There was only one place to which he could truly go home, to the welcome of those who had loved him: Zove’s House. And he would never see it again. If his way led anywhere, it was out, away from Earth. He was on his own, and had only one job to do: to try to follow that way through to the end.
He stopped, caught by sudden joy. For it was something, no matter what had gone before and what might follow after—it was something to have seen the light, in one lifetime, of two suns. The orange gold of Werel’s sun, the white gold of Earth’s: he could hold them now side by side as a man might hold two jewels, comparing their beauty for the sake of heightening their praise.
Abundibot evidently told lies for the mere pleasure of it. Perhaps it was the only pleasure he knew.
Falk had not lived on Earth among children, but among men, brutalized, suffering, and impassioned.
Seen rightly, any situation, even a chaos or a trap, would come clear and lead of itself to its one proper outcome; for there is in the long run no disharmony, only misunderstanding, no chance or mischance but only the ignorant eye.
So Ramarren thought, and the second soul within him, Falk, took no issue with this view, but spent no time trying to think it all out, either. For Falk had seen the dull and bright stones slip across the wires of the patterning frame, and had lived with men in their fallen estate, kings in exile on their own domain the Earth, and to him it seemed that no man could make his fate or control the game, but only wait for the bright jewel luck to slip by on the wire of time. Harmony exists, but there is no understanding it; the Way cannot be gone.
They were afraid to kill and afraid to die, and called their fear Reverence for Life. The Shing, the Enemy, the Liars.… Did they in truth lie? Perhaps that was not quite the way of it; perhaps the essence of their lying was a profound, irremediable lack of understanding. They could not get into touch with men. They had used that and profited by it, making it into a great weapon, the mind-lie; but had it been worth their while, after all? Twelve centuries of lying, ever since they had first come here, exiles or pirates or empire-builders from some distant star, determined to rule over these
...more
Was he leaving home, or going home? On the screen dawn coming over the Eastern Ocean shone in a golden crescent for a moment against the dust of stars, like a jewel on a great patterning frame. Then frame and pattern shattered, the Barrier was passed, and the little ship broke free of time and took them out across the darkness.
