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[4 Nov 1999] When the Killing Stopped [5 Nov 1999] Worst Crimes of the Millennium [8 Nov 1999] Four Gates to the City [9 Nov 1999] Conviction of E. German Chief Upheld [10 Nov 1999] Prisoner's Dilemma [11 Nov 1999] The Mechanical Demon [12 Nov 1999] Psalm 23 [19 Nov 1999] Translator's Note [22 Nov 1999] Future Shocks |
[24 Nov 1999] Worlds Enough, and Time [26 Nov 1999] Everybody Knows [29 Nov 1999] The German Atomic Bomb [30 Nov 1999] The Endless Frontier [1 Dec 1999] The Scarlet Pimpernel [2 Dec 1999] Was the Great War Necessary? [3 Dec 1999] Bullet Proof Soul [6 Dec 1999] Rocannon's World I [7 Dec 1999] Rocannon's World II |
Rocannon's World IIIBy URSULA K. LEGUIN Now and then Rocannon looked back. Nothing was behind him but the peaceful land, mist lying in the riverbottom westward. He listened with the mind-sense, and felt the thoughts and motions and wakening dreams of his enemies, going on as usual. He had done what he could do. He had been a fool to think he could do anything. What was one man alone, against a people bent on war? Worn out, chewing wearily on his defeat, he rode on toward Breygna, the only place he had to go. He wondered no longer why the League delayed their attack so long. They were not coming. They had thought his message a trick, a trap. Or, for all he knew, he had misremembered the coordinates: one figure wrong had sent his message out into the void where there was neither time nor space. And for that, Raho had died, Iot had died, Mogien had died: for a message that got nowhere. And he was exiled here for the rest of his life, useless, a stranger on an alien world. It did not matter, after all. He was only one man. One man's fate is not important. "If it is not, what is?" |