"If we let these so-called Odonians come, how do they propose to get here?"
There spoke the opponent Bedap dreaded, the cool, intelligent woman named Rulag. She had been his cleverest enemy all year in the council- He glanced at Shevek, who was attending this council for the first time, to draw his attention to her. Somebody had told Bedap that Rmag was an engineer, and he had found in her the engineer's clarity and pragmatism of mind, plus the mechanist's hatred of complexity and irregularity. She opposed we Syndicate of Initiative on every issue, including that of its right to exist Her agnunents were good, and Bedap respected her.
Sometimes when she spoke of the strength of Urras, and the danger of bargaining with the strong from a position of weakness, he believed her.
For there were times when Bedap wondered, privately, whether he sad Shevek, when they got together in the winter of '68 and discussed the means by which a frustrated physicist might print bis work and communicate it to physicists on Unas, had not set off an uncontrollable chain of events. When they had finally set up radio contact, the Urrasti had been more eager to talk, to exchange
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information, than they had expected; and when they had printed reports of those exchanges, the opposition on Anarres had been more virulent than they had expected.
People on both worlds were paying more attention to them than was really comfortable. When the enemy enthusiastically embraces you. and the fellow countrymen bitterly reject you, it is hard not to wonder if you are, in fact, a traitor.
"I suppose they'd come on one of the freighters," he replied. "Like good Odonians, they'd hitchhike. If their government, or the Council of World Governments, let them. Would they let them? Would the archists do the anarchists a favor? That's what I'd like to find out. If we invited a small group, six or eight, of these people, what would happen at that end?"
"Laudable curiosity," Rulag said. "We'd know the danger better, all right, if we knew better how things really work on Unas. But the danger lies m the act of finding out." She stood up, signifying that she wanted to hold the floor for more than a sentence or two. Bedap winced, and glanced again at Shevek, who sat beside him. "Look out for this one," he muttered. Shevek made no response, but he was usually reserved and shy at meetings, no good at all unless he got moved deeply by something, in which case he was a surprisingly good speaker. He sat looking down at his hands. But as Rulag spoke, Bedap noticed that though she was addressing him* she kept glancing at Shevek.
"Your Syndicate of Initiative," she said, emphasizing the pronoun, "has proceeded with building a transmitter. with broadcasting to Urras and receiving from them, and with publishing the communications. You've done all this against the advice of the majority of the PDC, and increasing protests from the entire Brotherhood. There have been no reprisals against your equipment or yourselves yet, largely, I believe, because we Odonians have become unused to the very idea of anyone's adopting a course harmful to others and persisting in it against advice and protest. It's a rare event In fact, you are the first of us who have behaved in the way that archist critics always predicted people would behave in a society without laws: with total irresponsibility towards the society's welfare. I don't propose to go again into the harm you've al-
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ready done, and handing out of scientific information to a powerful enemy, the confession of our weakness that each of your broadcasts to Urraa represents. But now, thinking that we've got used to all that, you're proposing something very much worse. What's the difference, youTI say, between talking to a few Urrasti on the shortwave and talking to a few of them here in Abbenay? What's the difference? What's the difference between a shut door and an open one? Let's open the door—that's what he's saying, you know, ammari. Let's open the door, let the Urrasti cornel Six or eight pseudo-Odonians on the next freighter. Sixty or eighty loti profiteers on the one after, to look us over and see how we can be divided up as a property among the nations of Unas. And the next trip will be six or eight hundred armed ships of war: guns, soldiers, Aan occupying force. The end of Anarres, the end of the Promise. Our hope lies, it has lain for a hundred and seventy years, in the Terms of the Settlement: No Urrasti off the ships, except the Settlers, then, or ever. No mixing. No contact To abandon that principle now is to say to the tyrants whom we defeated once. The experiment has failed, come re-enslave usi"
"Not at an,'* Bedap said promptly. "The message is dear: The experiment has succeeded, we're strong enough now to face you as equals."
The argument proceeded as before, a rapid hammering of issues. It did not last long. No vote was taken, as usual. Almost everyone present was strongly for sticking to the Terms of the Settlement, and as soon as this became clear Bedap said, "All right. 111 take that as settled. Nobody comes in on the Kuieo Fart or the Mindful. In the matter of bringing Urrasti to Anarres, the Syndicate's aims clearly must yield to the opinion of the society as a whole; we asked your advice, and well follow it. But there's another aspect of the same question. Shevek?"
"Weu, there's the question," Shevek said, "Of sending an Anarresti to Unas."
There were exclamations and queries. Shevek did not raise his voice, which was not far above a mumble, but persisted, "It wouldn't harm or threaten anyone living on Anarres. And it appears that it's a matter of the individual's right; a kind of test of it, in fact. The Terms of the Settlement don't forbid ft. To forbid it now would be an
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assumption of authority by the PDC, an abridgment of the right of the Odonian individual to initiate action harmless to others."
Rulag sat forward. She was smiling a little. "Anyone can leave Anarres,'* she said. Her light eyes glanced from Shevek to Bedap and back. "He can go whenever he likes. if the propertarians' freighters win take him. He cast come back."
"Who says he cant?" Bedap demanded.
"The Terms of the Closure of the Settlement. Nobody will be allowed off the freight ships farther than the boundary of the Port of Anarres.**
"Well, now. that was surely meant to apply to Urrastf. not Anarresti," said an old adviser, Ferdaz, who liked to stick his oar in even when it steered the boat off the course he wanted.
"A person coming from Urras is an Urrasti," said Rulag.
"Legalisms, legalismsl What's all this quibbling?" said a calm, heavy woman named TrepiL
"Quibbling! ** cried the new member, the young man.
He had a Northrising accent and a deep, strong voice. "If you don't like quibbling, try this. If there are people here that dont like Anarres, let *em go. 1*11 help. m carry *em to the Port, I'll even kick *em there! But if they try to come sneaking back, there's going to be some of us there to meet them. Some real Odoniana. And they wont find us smiling and saying, "Welcome home, brothers.'
They'll find their teeth knocked down their throats and their balls kicked up into their bellies. Do you understand that? Is it clear enough for you?"
"Clear, no; plain, yes. Plain ax a fart." said Bedap. '"Clarity is a function of thought. You should leam some Odoniamsm before you speak here."
"You're not worthy to say the name of Odo!" the
young man shouted. 'Tfou're traitors, you and the whole
Syndicate! There are people all over Anarres watching
you. You think we dont know that Shevek*s been asked to
go to Urras, to go seU Anarresti science to the profiteers?
You think we don't know that all you snivelers would
love to go there and live rich and let the propertarians pat
you on the back? You can got Good riddance! But if you
try coming back here, you'U meet with Justicel"
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He was on his feet and leaning across the table, shouting straight into Bedap's face. Bedap looked up at him 'and said, ''You dont mean justice, you mean punishment.