Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Rocannon's World / Planet of Exile / City of Illusions (Hainish Cycle, #1-3)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

What if the weapons of the Enemy were things of the mind? Would it not be well to learn a little of the different shapes minds come in, and their powers?

When they spoke, they were uncanny; for there was no telling which one spoke; it seemed they all did, but with one harsh voice. Partial colonial telepathy,

“All my village,” the little man said. “I was with the flocks out on the hills. I mindheard my people call, and I came, and they were in the flames burning and crying out.

It was a strange gift he had got from the dweller in the cave, the guardian of the warm well in the unnamed mountains; a gift that went all against his grain to ask. There in the dark by the deep warm spring he had been taught a skill of the senses that his race and the men of Earth had witnessed and studied in other races, but to which they were deaf and blind, save for brief glimpses and rare exceptions.

He had learned to listen to the minds of one race, one kind of creature, among all the voices of all the worlds one voice: that of his enemy. With Kyo he had had some beginnings of mindspeech; but he did not want to know his companions’ minds when they were ignorant of his. Understanding must be mutual, when loyalty was, and love.

Understanding must be mutual, when loyalty was, and love.

He did not know how to select voice from voice, and was dizzy among a hundred different places and positions; he listened as a young infant listens, undiscriminating.

The guardian of the well had the gift, which Rocannon had only heard rumor of on one other planet, of unsealing the telepathic sense; and he had taught Rocannon how to limit and direct it, but there had been no time to learn its use, its practice.