Planète d'exil

1) "Agat took the last cup from her tray, and drained it. There was a slight sense-stimulant in freshly brewed ti, so that he was vividly aware of its astringent, clean heat in his throat, of Seiko's intense gaze, of the bare, large, firelit room, of the twilight outside the windows. The cup in his hand, blue porcelain, was very old, a work of the Fifth Year. The handpress books in cases under the windows were old. Even the glass in the windowframes was old. All their luxuries, all that made them civilized, all that kept them Alterran, was old. In Agat's lifetime and for long before there had been no energy or leisure for subtle and complex affirmations of man's skill and spirit. They did well by now merely to preserve, to endure. Gradually, Year by Year for at least ten generations, their numbers had been dwindling; very gradually, but always there were fewer children born. They retrenched, they drew together. Old dreams of dominion were forgotten utterly. They came back—if the Winters and hostile hilf tribes did not take advantage of their weakness first—to the old center, the first colony, Landin. They taught their children the old knowledge and the old ways, but nothing new. They lived always a little more humbly, coming to value the simple over the elaborate, calm over strife, courage over success. They withdrew."

2) "Wold was sitting in his tent with men of his Kin over a good hot pot of bhan, when there was a commotion outside. Umaksuman went out, shouted at everybody to clear out, and reentered the great tent behind the farborn Agat. 'Welcome, Alterra,' said the old man, and with a sly glance at his two grandsons, 'will you sit with us and eat?' He liked to shock people; he always had. That was why he had always been running off to the farborns in the old days. And this gesture freed him, in his mind, from the vague shame he suffered since speaking before the other men of the farborn girl who had so long ago been his wife. Agat, calm and grave as before, accepted and ate enough to show he took the hospitality seriously; he waited till they were all done eating, and Ukwet's wife had scuttled out with the leavings, then he said, 'Eldest, I listen.' 'There's not much to hear,' Wold replied."

3) "'Let me go,' she said at last in her normal voice. He released her at once. She drew a long breath. 'You spoke—I heard you speak inside me. Down there on the sands. Can you do that again?' He was watching her, alert and quiet. He nodded. 'Yes. But I told you then that I never would.' 'I still hear it. I feel your voice.' She put her hands over her ears. 'I know... I'm sorry. I didn't know you were a hilf—a Tevaran, when I called you. It's against the law. And anyhow it shouldn't have worked...? 'What's a hilf?' 'What we call you.' 'What do you call yourselves?' 'Men.'"

4) "Again there was silence between them for a time. 'What was the other world like—your home?' 'There are songs that tell what it was like,' he said, but when she asked timidly what a song was, he did not reply. After a while he said, 'At home, the world was closer to its sun, and the whole year there wasn't even one moonphase long. So the books say. Think of it, the whole Winter would only last ninety days...' This made them both laugh. 'You wouldn't have time to light a fire,' Rolery said. Real darkness was soaking into the dimness of the woods. The path in front of them ran indistinct, a faint gap among the trees leading left to her city, right to his. Here, between, was only wind, dusk, solitude. Night was coming quickly. Night and Winter and war, a time of dying. 'I'm afraid of the Winter,' she said, very low. 'We all are,' he said. 'What will it be like?... We've only known the sunlight.'"