came; they brought us help. They built ships and gave them to us, so we could leave our ruined world. They treat us gently, charitably, as the strong man treats the
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sicfc one. They are a very strange people, the Hainish;
older than any of us; infinitely generous. They are altruists. They are moved by a guilt we don't even understand, despite an our crimes. They are moved in all they do, I think, by the past. their endleaa past Well, we had saved what could be saved, and made a kind of life in the ruins, on Terra, in the only way it could be done: by total centralization. Total control over the use of every acre of land, every scrap of metal, every ounce of fuel. Total rationing, birth control, euthanasia, universal conscription into the labor force. The absolute regimentation of each life toward the goal of racial survival. We had achieved that much, when the Hainish came. They brought us ... a little more hope. Not very much. We have outlived it. .*..
We can only look at this splendid world, this vital society, this Urras, this Paradise, from the outside. We are capable only of admiring it, and maybe envying it a little. Not very much."
"Then Anarres, as you heard me speak of it—what would Anarres mean to you, Keng?"
Nothing. Nothing, Shevek. We forfeited our chance
for Anarres centuries ago, before it ever came into being."
Shevek got up and went over to the window, one of the long horizontal window slits of the tower. There was a niche in the wall below it, into which an archer would step up to look down and aim at assailants at the gate; if one did not take that step up one could see nothing from it but the sunwashed, slightly misty sky. Shevek stood below the window gazing out, the light filling his eyes.
"You don't understand what time is," he said. 'Aou say the past is gone, the future is not real, there is no change, no hope. You think Anarres is a future that cannot be reached, as your past cannot be changed. So there is nothing but the present, this Urras, the rich, real, stable present, the moment now. And you think that ia something which can be possessed! You envy it a little. You think ifs something you would like to have. But it is not real, you know. It is not stable, not solid—nothing is.
Things change, change. You cannot have anything. . . .
And least of all can you have the present, unless you accept with it the past and the future. Not only the past but also the future, not only the future but also the pasti Because they are reaclass="underline" only their reality makes the present
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real. You wW not achieve or even understand Urras unless you accept the reality, the enduring reality, of Anarres.
You are right, we are the key. But when you said that, you did not really believe it. You don't believe in Anarres. You dont believe in me, though I stand with you, in this room, in this moment . . . My people were right, and I was wrong, in this: We cannot come to you. You will not
let us. You do not believe in change, in chance, in evolution. You would destroy us rather than admit our reality. rather than admit that there is hope! We cannot come to you. We can only wait for you to come to us."
Keng sat with a startled and thoughtful, and perhaps slightly dazed, expression.
**I don't understand—I don*t understand." she said at last "You are like somebody from our own past, the old idealists, the visionaries of freedom', and yet I don't understand you, as if you were trying to tell me of future things; and yet, as you say, you are here, nowl . . ." She had not lost her shrewdness. She said after a little while, 'Then why is it that you came to me, Shevek?"
"Oh, to give you the idea. My theory, you know. To save it from becoming a property of the loti, an investment or a weapon- If you are willing, the simplest thing to do would be to broadcast the equations, to give them to physicists all over this world, and to the Hainish and the other worlds, as soon as possible. Would you be willing to do that?"
"More than willing.'*
"It will come to only a few pages. The proofs and some of the implications would take longer, but that can come later, and other people can work on them if I cannot."
"But what will you do then? Do you mean to go back to Nio? The city is quiet now, apparently; the insurrection seems to be defeated, at least for the time being; but I'm afraid the loti government regards you as an insurrectionary. There is Thu, of course—"
"No. I don't want to stay here. I am no altruist! If you would help me in this too, I might go home. Perhaps the loti would be willing to send me home, even. It would be consistent, I think: to make me disappear, to deny my existence. Of course, they might find it easier to do by killing me or putting me in Jail for life. I don't want to die yet, and I don't want to die here in Hell at all. Where
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does your soul go, when you die in Hell?" He laughed; he had regained all his gentleness of manner. But if you could send me home, I think they would be relieved. Dead anarchists mate martyrs, you know, and keep living for centuries. But absent ones can be forgotten."
"I thought I knew what 'realism* was," Keng said. She smiled, but U was not an easy smile.
"How can you, if you don't know what hope is?"
^ont judge us too hardly, Shevek."
"I dont judge you at all. I only ask your help, for which I have nothing to give in return.'*
"Nothing? You call your theory nothing?"
"Weigh it in the balance with the freedom of one single human spirit," he said, turning to her, "and which will weigh heavier? Can you tell? I cannot.**
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Chapter 12
**! want to introduce a project," said Bedap, "from the Syndicate of Initiative. You know that we've been m radio contact with Unas for about twenty decads—"
"Against the recommendation of this council, and the Defense Federative, and a majority vote of the Usti"
"Yes," Bedap said, looking the speaker up and down, but not protesting the interruption. There were no rules of parliamentary procedure at meetings in PDC. Interruptions were sometimes more frequent than statements.
The process, compared to a well-managed executive con" ference, was a slab of raw beef compared to a wiring diagram. Raw beef, however, functions better than a wiring diagram would, in its place—inside a living animaL
Bedap knew all his old opponents on the Import-Export Council; he had been coming and fighting them for three years now. This speaker was a new one, a young man, probably a new lottery posting to the PDC List Bedap looked him over benevolently and went on, "Let's not refight old quarrels, shall we? I propose a new one. We've received an interesting message from a group on Urras. It came on the wave length our loti contacts use, but it didn't come at a scheduled time, and was a weak signal,
It seems to have been sent from a country called Benbili,
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not from A-Io. The group called themselves The Odonian Society.' It appears that they're post-Settlement Odonians, existing in some fashion in the loopholes of law and government on Urras. Their message was to *the brothers on Anarres.* You can read it in the Syndicate bulletin, it's interesting. They ask if they might be allowed to send people here."
"Send people here? Let Urrasti come here? Spies?"
"No, as settlers.'*
*They want the Settlement reopened, is that it, Bedap?"
They »ay they're being hounded by their government, and are hoping for—"
"Reopen the Settlement! To any profiteer who calk himself an Odonian?"
To report an Anarresti managerial debate in fim would be difficult; it went very fast, several people often speaking at once, nobody speaking at great length, a good deal of sarcasm, a great deal left unsaid; the tone emotional, often fiercely personal; an end was reached, yet there was no conclusion. It was like an argument among brothers, or
among thoughts m an undecided mind.