He was Falk, and he was Ramarren. He was the fool and the wise man: one man twice born.
There was the book he had been looking at when the woman entered calling him by that name he would not remember. He would not remember it. The book: he had held it in his hands, it was real, it was there. He picked it up very carefully and stared at the page that it opened to. Columns of beautiful meaningless patterns, lines of half-comprehensible script, changed from the letters he had learned long ago in the First Analect, deviant, bewildering. He stared at them and could not read them, and a word of which he did not know the meaning rose up from them, the first word:
The way …
He looked from the book to his own hand that held it. Whose hand, darkened and scarred beneath an alien sun? Whose hand?
The way that can be gone
is not the eternal Way.
The name …
He could not remember the name; he would not read it. In a dream he had read these words, in a long sleep, a death, a dream.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
And with that the dream rose up overwhelming him like a wave rising, and broke.
He was Falk, and he was Ramarren. He was the fool and the wise man: one man twice born.
