City Of Illusions

It seemed, at least, that they had not taught the boy to lie. But they had not taught him to know truth from lies.

The more defensive a society, the more conformist.

He liked the vast openness of sky and prairie, and found loneliness a pleasure with so immense a domain to be alone in.

Planets were very large places, on any scale but that of the spaces in between them.

The game must be played, and played their way, though they made all the rules and had all the skill. His ineptitude did not matter. His honesty did. He was staked now totally on one belief: that an honest man cannot be cheated, that truth, if the game be played through right to the end, will lead to truth.

The juniper-scented liquor had volatilized his thoughts; he should be thinking that madness caused this man to call himself a king, but was thinking rather that kingship had driven this man mad.

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.

We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God’s truth, the universe at once began to exist.

Between thought and spoken word is a gap where intention can enter, the symbol twisted aside, and the lie come to be.

Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.

They prevented men from doing anything. But they did nothing themselves. They did not rule, they only blighted.