Free City of Illusions by Ursula K. LeGuin Page A

agriculture and no domestic animals; they were illiterate and did not know, except perhaps through certain myths and hero-legends, any of the history of humankind. They informed Falk that he had not come out of the Forest, because the Forest was inhabited only by giant white snakes. They practiced a monotheistic religion whose rituals involved mutilation, castration and human sacrifice.
    It was one of the outgrowth-superstitions of their complex creed that had induced them to take Falk alive and make him a member of the tribe. Normally, since he carried a laser and thus was above slave-status, they would have cut out his stomach and liver to examine for auguries, and then let the women hack him up as they pleased. However, a week or two before his capture an old man of the Mzurra Society had died. There being no as-yet-unnamed infant in the tribe to receive his name, it was given to the captive, who, blinded, disfigured, and only conscious at intervals, still was better than nobody; for so long as Old Horressins kept his name his ghost, evil like all ghosts, would return to trouble the ease of the living. So the name was taken from the ghost and given to Falk, along with the full initiations of a Hunter, a ceremony which included whippings, emetics, dances, the recital of dreams, tattooing, antiphonal free-association, feasting, sexual abuse of one woman by all the males in turn, and finally nightlong incantations to The God to preserve the new Horressins from harm. After this they left him on a horsehide rug in a cowhide tent, delirious and unattended, to die or recover, while the ghost of Old Horressins, nameless and powerless, went whining away on the wind across the plains.
    The woman, who, when he had first recovered consciousness, had been busy bandaging his eyes and looking after his wounds, also came whenever she could to care for him. He had only seen her when for brief moments in the semi-privacy of his tent he could lift the bandage which her quick wits had provided him when he was first brought in. Had the Basnasska seen those eyes of his open, they would have cut out his tongue so he could not name his own name, and then burned him alive. She had told him this, and other matters he needed to know about the Nation of the Basnasska; but not much about herself. Apparently she had not been with the tribe very much longer than himself; he gathered that she had been lost on the prairie, and had joined the tribe rather than starve to death. They were willing to accept another she-slave for the use of the men, and she had proved skillful at doctoring, so they let her live. She had reddish hair, her voice was very soft, her name was Estrel. Beyond this he knew nothing about her; and she had not asked him anything at all about himself, not even his name.
    He had escaped lightly, all things considered. Paris-tolis, the Noble Matter of ancient Cetian science, would not explode nor take fire, so the slider had not blown up under him, though its controls were wrecked. The bursting missile had chewed the left side of his head and upper body with fine shrapnel, but Estrel was there with the skill and a few of the materials of medicine. There was no infection; he recuperated fast, and within a few days of his blood-christening as Horressins he was planning escape with her.
    But the days went on and no chances came. A defensive society: a wary, jealous people, all their actions rigidly scheduled by rite, custom, and tabu. Though each Hunter had his tent, women were held in common and all a man's doings were done with other men; .they were less a community than a club or herd, interdependent members of one entity. In this effort to attain security, independence and privacy of course were suspect; Falk and Estrel had to snatch at any chance to talk for a moment. She did not know the Forest dialect, but they could use Galaktika, which the Basnasska spoke only in a pidgin form.
    "The time to try," she said once, "might be during a