Falk was silent a minute. He was a short, spare, well-made man; his very lively and expressive face just now looked rather somber or apprehensive, reflecting his feelings as candidly as a child's face. At last, visibly summoning up his resolution, he said, "While I was studying with Ranya this past summer, she showed me how I differ from the human genetic norm. It's only a twist or two of a helix…a very small difference. Like the difference between wei and o." Zove looked up with a smile at the reference to the Canon which fascinated Falk, but the younger man was not smiling. "However, I am unmistakably not human. So I may be a freak; or a mutant, accidental or intentionally produced; or an alien. I suppose most likely I am an unsuccessful genetic experiment, discarded by the experimenters…There's no telling. I'd prefer to think I'm an alien, from some other world. It would mean that at least I'm not the only creature of my kind in the universe."
"What makes you sure there are other populated worlds?"
Falk looked up, startled, going at once with a child's credulity but a man's logic to the conclusion: "Is there reason to think the other Worlds of the League were destroyed?"
"Is there reason to think they ever existed?"
"So you taught me yourself, and the books, the histories—"
"You believe them? You believe all we tell you?"
"What else can I believe?" He flushed red. "Why would you lie to me?"
"We might lie to you day and night about everything, for either of two good reasons. Because we are Shing. Or because we think you serve them."
There was a pause. "And I might serve them and never know it," Falk said, looking down.
"Possibly," said the Master. "You must consider that possibility, Falk. Among us, Metock has always believed you to be a programmed mind, as they call it.—But all the same, he's never lied to you. None of us has, knowingly. The River Poet said a thousand years ago, 'In truth manhood lies…'" Zove rolled the words out oratorically, then laughed. "Double-tongued, like all poets. Well, we've told you what truths and facts we know, Falk. But perhaps not all the guesses and the legends, the stuff that comes before the facts…"
"How could you teach me those?"
"We could not. You learned to see the world somewhere else—some other world, maybe. We could help you become a man again, but we could not give you a true childhood. That one has only once…"
"I feel childish enough, among you," Falk said with a somber ruefulness.
"You're, not childish. You are an inexperienced man. You are a cripple, because there is no child in you, Falk; you are cut off from your roots, from your source. Can you say that this is your home?"
"No," Falk answered, wincing. Then he said, "I have been very happy here."
The Master paused a little, but returned to his questioning. "Do you think our life here is a good one, that we follow a good way for men to go?"
"Yes."
"Tell me another thing. Who is our enemy?"
"The Shing."
"Why?"
"They broke the League of All Worlds, took choice and freedom from men, wrecked all man's works and records, stopped the evolution of the race. They are tyrants, and liars."
"But they don't keep us from leading our good life here."
"We're in hiding—we live apart, so that they'll let us be. If we tried to build any of the great machines, if we gathered in groups or towns or nations to do any great work together, then the Shing would infiltrate and ruin the work and disperse us. I tell you only what you told me and I believed, Master!"
"I know. I wondered if behind the fact you had perhaps sensed the…legend, the guess, the hope…"
Falk did not answer.
"We hide from the Shing. Also we hide from what we were. Do you see that, Falk? We live well in the Houses—well enough. But we are ruled utterly by fear. There was a time we sailed in ships between the stars, and now we dare not go a hundred miles from home. We keep a little knowledge, and do nothing with it. But once we used that knowledge to weave the pattern of life like a tapestry across night and chaos. We enlarged the chances of life. We did man's work."
After another silence Zove went on, looking up into the bright November sky: "Consider the worlds, the various men and beasts on them, the constellations of their skies, the cities they built, their songs and ways. All that is lost, lost to us, as utterly as your childhood is lost to you. What do we really know of the time of our greatness? A few names of worlds and heroes, a ragtag of facts we've tried to patch into a history. The Shing law forbids killing, but they killed knowledge, they burned books, and what may be worse, they falsified what was left. They slipped in the Lie, as always. We aren't sure of anything concerning the Age of the League; how many of the documents are forged? You must remember, you see, wherein the Shing are our Enemy. It's easy enough to live one's whole life without ever seeing one of them—knowingly; at most one hears an aircar passing by far away. Here in the Forest they let us be, and it may be the same now all over the Earth, though we don't know. They let us be so long as we stay here, in the cage of our ignorance and the wilderness, bowing when they pass by above our heads. But they don't trust us. How could they, even after twelve hundred years? There is no trust in them, because there is no truth in them. They honor no compact, break any promise, perjure, betray and lie inexhaustibly; and certain records from the time of the Fall of the League hint that they could mindlie. It was the Lie that defeated all the races of the League and left us subject to the Shing. Remember that, Falk. Never believe the truth of anything the Enemy has said."
"I will remember, Master, if I ever meet the Enemy."
"You will not, unless you go to them."
The apprehensiveness in Falk's face gave way to a listening, still look. What he had been waiting for had arrived. "You mean leave the House," he said.
"You have thought of it yourself," Zove said as quietly.
"Yes, I have. But there is no way for me to go. I want to live here. Parth and I—"
He hesitated, and Zove struck in, incisive and gentle. "I honor the love grown between you and Parth, your joy and your fidelity. But you came here on the way to somewhere else, Falk. You are welcome here; you have always been welcome. Your partnership with my daughter must be childless; even so, I have rejoiced in it. But I do believe that the mystery of your being and your coming here is a great one, not lightly to be put aside; that you walk a way that leads on; that you have work to do…"
"What work? Who can tell me?"
"What was kept from us and stolen from you, the Shing will have. That you can be sure of."
There was an aching, scathing bitterness in Zove's voice that Falk had never heard.
"Will those who speak no truth tell me the truth for the asking? And how will I recognize what I seek when I find it?"
Zove was silent a little while, and then said with his usual ease and control, "I cling to the notion, my son, that in" you lies some hope for man. I do not like to give up that notion. But only you can seek your own truth; and if it seems to you that your way ends here, then that, perhaps, is the truth."
"If I go," Falk said abruptly, "will you let Parth go with me?"
"No, my son."
A child was singing down in the garden—Garra's four-year-old, turning inept somersaults on the path and singing shrill, sweet nonsense. High up, in the long wavering V of the great migrations, skein after skein of wild geese went over southward.
"I was to go with Metock and Thurro to fetch home Thurro's bride," Falk said. "We planned to go soon, before the weather changes. If I go, I'l1 go on from Ransifel House."
"In winter?"