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papers, and filled the room with radiance. And he worked.
The false starts and futilities of the past years proved themselves to be groundwork, foundations, laid in the dark but well laid. On these, methodically and carefully but with a deftness and certainty that seemed nJ^iing of his own but a knowledge working through him, using aim as its vehicle, he built up the beautiful steadfast structure of the Principles of Simultaneity.
Tafcver, like any man or woman who undertakes companionship of the creator spirit, did not always have an easy time of it Although her existence was necessary to
Shevek her actual presence could be a distraction. She didnt like to get home too early, because he often quit working when she got home, and she felt this to be wrong. Later on, when they were middle-aged and stodgy, he could ignore her, but at twenty-four he couldnt. Therefore she arranged her tasks in the laboratory so that she did not get home till midaftemoon. This was not a perfect arrangement either, for he needed looking after. On days when he had no classes, when she came in he might have been sitting at the table for six or eight hours straight. When he got up he would lurch with fatigue, his hands would shake, and he was scarcely coherent The usage the creator spirit gives its vessels is rough, it wears them out, discards them, gets a new model For Takver there were no replacements, and when she saw how hard Shevek was used she protested. She would have cried out as Odo*s husband, Asieo, did once, "For God's sake, girl. can't you serve Truth a Uttte at a time?"—except that she was the girl, and was unacquainted with God.
They would talk, go out for a walk or to the baths, then to dinner at the Institute commons. After dinner there were meetings, or a concert, or they saw their friends,
Bedap and Salas and their circle, Desar and others from the Institute, Takver's colleagues and friends. But the meetings and the friends were peripheral to them. Neither social nor sociable participation was necessary to them;
their partnership was enough, and they could not hide the fact It did not seem to offend the others. Rather the reverse. Bedap, Salas, Desar, and the rest came to them as thirsty people come to a fountain. The others were peripheral to them: but they were central to the others.
They did nothing much; they were not more benevolent
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than other people or more brilliant talkers; and yet their friends loved them, depended on them, and kept bringing them presents—the small offerings that circulated among these people who possessed nothing and everything: a handknit scarf, a bit of granite studded with crimson garnets, a vase hand-thrown at the Potters* Federation workshop, a poem about love, a set of carved wooden buttons, a spiral shell from the Sorruba Sea. They gave the present to Takver, saying, **Here, Shev might like this for a paperweight," or to Shevek, saying, "Here, Tak might like this color." In giving they sought to share in what Shevek and Takver shared, and to celebrate, and to praise.
It was a long summer, warm and bright, the summer of the 160th year of the Settlement of Anarres. Plentiful rains in the spring bad greened the Plains of Abbenay and laid the dust so that the air was unusually clear; the sun was warm by day and at night the stars shone thick.
When the Moon was in the sky one could make out the coastlines of its continents dearly, under the dazzling white whorls of its clouds.
"Why does it look so beautiful?" Takver said, lying beside Shevek under the orange blanket, the light out. Over them the Occupations of Uninhabited Space hung, dim;
out the window the full Moon hung, brilliant "When we know that it's a planet just like this one, only with a better dimate and worse people—when we know they're all propertarians, and fight wars, and make laws, and eat while others starve, and anyhow are all getting older and having bad luck and getting rheumatic knees and corns on their toes Just like people here .. . when we know all that, why does it still look so happy—as if life there must be so happy? I can't look at that radiance and imagine a horrid little man with greasy sleeves and an atrophied mind like Sabul living on it; I Just can't."
Their naked arms and breasts were moonlit The fine, faint down on Takver's face made a blurring aureole over her features; her hair and the shadows were black. Shevek touched her silver arm with his silver hand, marveling at the warmth of the touch in that cool light.
"H you can see a thing whole," he said, "it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives. . . . But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need dis-
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tance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death."
"That's all right for Urras. Let it stay off there and be the moon—I don't want ill But I'm not goingTo stand up on a gravestone and look down on life and say, '0 lovelyl' I want to see it whole right in the middle of it, here, now. I don't give a hoot for eternity."
"It's nothing to do with eternity." said Shevek, grinning, a thin shaggy man of silver and shadow. "All you have to do to see life whole is to see it as mortal. I'll die, youll die; how could we love each other otherwise? The sun's going to burn out, what else keeps it shining?"
"Ahl your talk, your damned philosophy!"
"Talk? It's not talk. It's not reason. It's hand's touch. I touch the wholeness, I hold it. Which is moonlight, which is Takver? How shall I fear death? When I hold it, when I hold in my hands the light—"
"Don't be propertarian," Takver muttered.
"Dear heart, don't cry."
"I'm not crying. You are. Those are your tears."
•Tea cold. The moonlight's cold."
"Lie down."
A great shiver went through his body as she took him in her arms.
"I am afraid, Takver," he whispered.
file:///F|/rah/Ursula%20LeGuin/LeGuin,%20Ursula%20K%20-%20The%20Dispossessed.txt "Brother, dear soul, hush."
They slept in each other's amis that night, many nights.
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Shevek found a letter in a pocket of the new, fleece-lined coat he had ordered for winter from the shop in the nightmare street. He had no idea how the letter had got there. It certainly had not been in the mail delivered to him thrice daily, which consisted entirely of manuscripts and reprints from physicists all over Urras, invitations to receptions, and artless messages from schoolcaildren. This was a flimsy piece of paper stuck down to itself without envelope; it bore no stamp or frank from any of the three competing mail companies.
He opened it, vaguely apprehensive, and read: "V you are an Anarchist why do you work with the power system betraying your World and the Odonian Hope or are you here to bring us that Hope- Suffering from injustice and repression we look to the Sister World the light of freedom in the dark night. Join with us your brothers!" There was no signature, no address.
It shook Shevek both morally and intellectually, jolted him, not with surprise but with a kind of panic. He knew they were here: but where? He had not met one, not seen one, he had not met a poor man yet. He had let a wall be built around him and had never noticed. He had accepted
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shelter, like a propertarian. He had been co-opted—just as Chifoilisk had said.
But he did not know how to break down the wall- And if he did, where could he go? The panic closed in OR him tighter. To whom could he turn? He was surrounded on all sides by the smiles of the rich.
"I'd like to talk with you, Efor."