"Enemies?"
'The little men- Sabul's friends! The people in power."
"What are you talking about. Dap? We have no power structure."
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"No? What makes Sabul so strong?"
"Not a power structure, a government. This isn't Urras, after all!"
"No. We have no government, no laws, all right. But as far as I can see, ideas never were controlled by laws and governments, even on Urras. If they had been, how would Odo have worked out hers? How would Odonian-ism have become a world movement? The archists tried to stamp it out by force, and failed. You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change. And that's precisely what our society is doingi Sabul uses you where he can, and where he can't, he prevents you from publishing, from teaching, even from working. Right? In other words, he has power over you. Where does he get it from? Not from vested authority, there isn't any. Not from intellectual excellence, he hasn't any. He gets it from the innate cowardice of the average human mind. Public opinion! That's the power structure he's part of, and knows how to use. The unadmitted, inadmissible government that rules the Odonian society by stifling the individual mind."
Shevek leaned his hands on the window sill, looking through the dim reflections on the pane into the darkness outside. He said at last, "Crazy talk, Dap."
"No, brother, I'm sane. What drives people crazy is trying to live outside reality. Reality is terrible. It can kill you. Given time, it certainly will kill you. The reality is pain—you said that! But it's the lies, the evasions of reality, that drive you crazy. It's the lies that make you want to kill yourself."
Shevek turned around to face him. "But you can't seriously talk of a government, herel"
"Tomar's Definitions: 'Government: The legal use of power to maintain and extend power.' Replace 'legal' with 'customary,' and you've got Sabul, and the Syndicate of Instruction, and the PDC."
•The PDC!"
"The PDC is, by now, basically an archistic bureaucracy."
After a moment Shevek laughed, not quite naturally,
and said, "Well, come on, Dap, this is amusing, but it's a
bit diseased, isn't it?"
"Shev, did you ever think that what the analogic mode
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calls 'disease,' social disaffection, discontent, alienation, that this might analogically also be called pain—what you meant when you talked about pain, suffering? And that, like pain, it serves a function in the organism?"
"No!" Shevek said, violently. "I was talking in personal, in spiritual terms."
"But you spoke of physical suffering, of a man dying of bums. And I speak of spiritual suffering! Of people seeing their talent, their work, their lives wasted. Of good minds submitting to stupid ones. Of strength and courage strangled by envy, greed for power, fear of change. Change is freedom, change is life—is anything more basic to Odon-ian thought than that? But nothing changes any more! Our society is sick. You know it. You're suffering its sickness. Its suicidal sickness!"
"That's enough. Dap. Drop it."
Bedap said no more. He began to bite his thumbnail, methodically and thoughtfully.
Shevek sat down again on the bed platform and put his head in his hands. There was a long silence. The snow had ceased. A dry, dark wind pushed at the windowpane. The room was cold; neither of the young men had taken off his coat.
"Look, brother," Shevek said at last. "It's not our society that frustrates individual creativity. It's the poverty of Anarres- This planet wasn't meant to support civilization. If we let one another down, if we don't give up our personal desires to the common good, nothing, nothing on this barren world can save us. Human solidarity is our only resource."
"Solidarity, yes! Even on Urras, where food falls out of the trees, even there Odo said that human solidarity is our one hope. But we've betrayed that hope. We've let cooperation become obedience. On Urras they have government by the minority. Here we have government by the majority. But it is government! The social conscience isn't a living thing any more, but a machine, a power machine,
controlled by bureaucrats!"
"You or I could volunteer and be lottery-posted to PDC within a few decads. Would that turn us into bureaucrats, bosses?"
"It's not the individuals posted to PDC, Shev. Most of them are like us. All too much like us. Well-meaning,
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na!ve. And it's not just PDC. It's anywhere on Anarrea. Learning centers, institutes, mines, mills, fisheries, canneries, agricultural development and research stations, factories, one-product communities—anywhere that function demands expertise and a stable institution. But that stability gives scope to the authoritarian impulse. In the early years of the Settlement we were aware of that, on the lookout for it. People discriminated very carefully then between administering things and governing people.
They did it so well that we forgot that the will to dominance is as central in human beings as the impulse to mutual aid is, and has to be trained in each individual, in each new generation. Nobody's bom an Odonian any more than he's bom civilized! But we've forgotten that. We don't educate for freedom. Education, the most important activity of the social organism, has become rigid, moralistic, authoritarian. Kids leam to parrot Odo's words as if they were laws—the ultimate blasphemyi"
Shevek hesitated. He had experienced too much of the kind of teaching Bedap was talking about, as a child, and even here at the Institute, to be able to deny Bedap's accusation.
Bedap seized his advantage relentlessly. "It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don't make changes, don't risk disapproval, don't upset your syndics. It's always easiest to let yourself be governed."
"But it's not government. Dap! The experts and the old hands are going to manage any crew or syndicate;
they know the work best. The work has to get done, after alll As for PDC, yes, it might become a hierarchy, a power structure, if it weren't organized to prevent exactly that Look how it's set upl Volunteers, selected by lot; a year of training; then four years as a Listing; then out Nobody could gain power, in the archist sense, in a system like that, with only four years to do it in."
"Some stay on longer than four years."
"Advisers? They don't keep the vote."
"Votes aren't important There are people behind the scenes—"
"Come on! That's sheer paranoia! Behind the scenes— bow? What scenes? Anybody can attend any PDC meeting, and if he's an interested syndic, he can debate and
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votel Are you trying to pretend that we have politicians here?" Shevek was furious with Bedap; his prominent ears were scarlet, his voice had got loud. It was late, not a light showing across the quadrangle. Desar, in Room 45, knocked on the wall for quiet
"I'm saying what you know," Bedap replied in a much lowered voice. 'That it's people like Sabul who really run PDC, and run it year after year.**
"If you know that," Shevek accused in a harsh whisper,
*then why havent you made it public? Why haven't you called a criticism session in your syndicate, if you have facts? If your ideas won't stand public examination, I don't want them as midnight whispers."
Bedap's eyes had got very small, like steel beads.
"Brother," he said, **you are self-righteous. You always were. Look outside your own damned pure conscience for once! I come to you and whisper because I know I can trust you, damn youl Who else can I talk to? Do I want to end up like Tirin?"
"Like Turin?" Shevek was startled into raising his voice. Bedap hushed him with a gesture towards the walL "What's wrong with Tirin? Where is he?"