Do you think they're the same thing?"
"He means violence," Rulag said. "And if there is violence, you will have caused it. You and your Syndicate. And you will have deserved it."
A thin, small, middle-aged man beside Trepu began speaking, at first so softly, in a voice hoarsened by the dust cough, that few of them heard him. He was a visiting delegate from a Southwest miners1 syndicate, not expected to speak on this matter. 2. . . what men deserve," he was Saying. "For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings,
•and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved?
Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think." They were, of course, Odo's words from the Prison Letters, but spoken in the weak, hoarse voice they made a strange effect, as if the man were working them out word by word himself, as if they came from his own heart, slowly, with difficulty, as the water wells up slowly, slowly, from the desert sand.
Rulag listened, her head erect, her face set, like that of a person repressing pain. Across the table from her Shevek sat with his head bowed. The words left a silence after them, and he looked up and spoke into it.
**You see," he said, *'what we're after is to remind ourselves that we didn't come to Anarres for safety, but for freedom. If we must all agree, all work together, we're no better than a machine. If an individual can't work in solidarity with his fellows, it's his duty to work alone.
His duty and his right. We have been denying people that right. We've been saying, more and more often, you must work with the others, you must accept the rule of the majority. But any rule is tyranny. The duty of the individual is to accept no rule, to be the initiator of his own acts, to be responsible. Only if he does so will the society live, and change, and adapt, and survive. We are not subjects of (a State founded upon law, but members of a society
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founded upon revolution. Revolution is our obligation: our
hope of evolution. The Revolution is in the individual
spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all, or it is nothing. If it is
seen as having any end, it will never truly begin.' We cant
stop here. We must go on. We must take the risks.'*
Rulag replied, as quietly as he, but very coldly, "you have no right to involve us all in a risk that private motives compel you to take.**
"No one who will not go as far as I'm willing to go has any right to stop me from going," Shevek answered. Their eyes met for a second; both looked down.
They assented, and he and Shevek left the meeting.
"I've got to go over to the Institute," Saevek said as they came out of the PDC building. "Sabul sent me one of his toenail dippings—first in years. What's on his mind, I wonder?"
"What's on that woman Rulag's mind, I wonderi She's got a personal grudge against you. Envy, I suppose. We won't put you two across a table again, or well get nowhere. Though that young fellow from Northrising was bad news, too. Majority rule and might makes right! Are we going to get our message across, Shev? Or are we only hardening the opposition to it?"
"We may really have to send somebody off to Urras— prove our right to by acts, if words won't do it."
"Maybe. So long as it isn't mel I'll talk myself purple about our right to leave Anarres, but if I had to do it, by damn, I'd slit my throat"
Shevek laughed. "I've got to go. TO. be home in an hour or so. Come eat with us tonight"
"ITI meet you at the room.**
Shevek set off down the street with his long stride;
Bedap stood hesitating in front of the PDC building. It was midaftemoon, a windy, sunny, cold spring day. The streets of Abbenay were bright, scoured-looking, alive with light and people. Bedap felt both excited and let
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down. Everything, including Ms emotions, was promising yet unsatisfactory. He went off to the domicile in the Pekesh Block where Shevek and Takver now lived, and found, as he had hoped, Takver at home with the baby.
Takver had miscarried twice and then Pilua bad come along, late and a little unexpected, but very welcome. She had been small at birth and now, getting on to two, was still small, with thin arms and legs. When Bedap held her he was always vaguely frightened of or repelled by the feeling of those arms, so fragile that he could have broken them simply with a twist of his hand. He was very fond of Pilun, fascinated by her cloudy grey eyes and won by her utter trustfulness, but whenever he touched her he knew consciously, as he had not done before, what the attraction of cruelty is. why the strong torment the weak. Aod therefore—though he could not have said why "therefore"
—he also understood something that had never made muck sense to him, or interested him at alclass="underline" parental feeling. It gave him a most extraordinary pleasure when Pflun called him •tadde."
He sat down on the bed platform under the window. It was a good-sized room with two platforms. The floor was matted; there was no other furniture, no chairs or tables, only a little movable fence that marked off a play space or screened Pilun's bed. Takver had the long, wide drawer of the other platform open. sorting piles of papers kept in ft. *T)o hold Pilun, dear Dapl" she said with her large Bmfle, when the baby began working towards him. **She'8 been into these papers at least ten times, every time I get them sorted. Ill be done in just a minute here—ten minutes."
•'Don't hurry. I dont want to talk. I just want to sit here. Come on, Pilun. Walk—there's a girl! Walk to Tadde Dap. Now I've got youl"
Puun sat contentedly on his knees and studied his hand,
Bedap was ashamed of his nails, which he no longer bit but which remained deformed from biting, and at first h& closed his hand to hide them; then he was ashamed of shame, and opened up his hand. Pilun patted it
*Thu is a nice room." he said. "With the north light.
11*8 always calm in here."
"Yes. Shh, I'm counting these."
After a while she put the piles of paper away and shut
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the drawer. "Therel Sorry. I told Shev I'd page that article for him. How about a drink?"
Rationing was still in force on many staple foods, though much less strict than it had been five years before. The fruit orchards of Northrising bad suffered less and recovered quicker from the drought than the grain-growing regions, and last year dried fruits and fruit juices had gone off the restricted list Takver had a bottle standing in the shaded window. She poured them each a cupful, in rather lumpy earthenware cups which Sadik had made at school. She sat down opposite Bedap and looked at him, smiling. "Well. how's it going at PDC?"
"Same as ever. How's the fish lab?"
Takver looked down into her cup, moving it to catch
the light on the surface of the liquid. **I don't know. I'm
thinking of quitting."
"Why, Takver?"
"Rather quit than be told to. The trouble is, I like that? Job, and I'm good at it. And it's the only one like it in Abbenay. But you can't be a member of a research team that's decided you're not a member of it."
"They're coming down harder on you, are they?"
"All the time," she said, and looked rapidly and unconsciously at the door, as if to be sure that Shevek waA not there, hearing. "Some of them are unbelievable. Well, you know. There's no use going on about it."
"No, that's why I'm glad to catch you alone. I dont really know. I, and Shev, and Skovan, and Gezach, and the rest of us who spend most of the time at the printing;
1
The risk of a trip to Urras involves nobody but the person going," Bedap said. "It changes nothing in the Terms of the Settlement, and nothing in our relationship with Urras, except, perhaps, morally—to our advantage.
2
But I dont think we're ready, any of us, to decide on it. m withdraw the topic for the present, if it's agreeable to the rest of you."*