Nobody else said anything. The silence and the loud thin music went on while the boy handed back the slate and made his way out of the circle. He went off into the corridor and stood there. The group he had left began, under the director’s guidance, a group story, taking turns. Shevek listened to their subdued voices and to his heart still beating fast There was a surging in his ears which was not the orchestra but the noise that came when you kept yourself from crying; he had observed this singing noise several times before. He did not like listening to it, and he did not want to think about the rock and the tree, so he turned his mind to the Square. It was made of numbers, and numbers were always cool and solid; when he was at fault he could turn to them, for they had no fault. He had seen the Square in his mind a while ago, a design in space like the designs music made in time: a square of the first nine integers with 5 in the center. However you added up the rows they came out the same, all inequality balanced out; it was pleasant to look at. If only he could make a group that liked to talk about things like that; but there were only a couple of the older boys and girls who did, and they were busy. What about the book the director had spoken of? Would it be a book of numbers? Would it show how the rock got to the tree? He had been stupid to tell the joke about the rock and the tree, nobody else even saw it was a joke, the director was right. His head ached. He looked inward, inward to the calm patterns.
If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, Instead of staying straight and fitting together. But underneath the words, at the center, like the center of the Square, it all came out even. Everything could change, yet nothing would be lost. If you saw the numbers you could see that, the balance, the pattern. You saw the foundations of the world. And they were solid.
Shevek had learned how to wait. He was good at it, an expert. He had first learned the skill waiting for his mother Rulag to come back, though that was so long ago he didn’t remember it; and he had perfected it waiting for his turn, waiting to share, waiting for a share. At the age of eight he asked why and how and what if, but he seldom asked when.
He waited till his father came to take him for a dom visit. It was a long wait: six decads. Palat had taken a short posting in maintenance in the Water Reclamation Plant in Drum Mountain, and after that he was going to take a decad at the beach in Malennin, where he would swim, and rest, and copulate with a woman named Pipar. He had explained all this to his son. Shevek trusted him, and he deserved trust. At the end of sixty days he came by the children’s dormitories in Wide Plains, a long, thin man with a sadder look than ever. Copulating was not really what he wanted. Rulag was. When he saw the boy, he smiled and his forehead wrinkled in pain.
They took pleasure in each other’s company.
“Palat, did you ever see any books with all numbers in them?”
“What do you mean, mathematics?”
“I guess so.”
“Like this?”
Palat took from his overtunic pocket a book. It was small, meant to be carried in a pocket, and like most books was bound in green with the Circle of Life stamped on the cover. It was printed very full, with small characters and narrow margins, because paper is a substance that takes a lot of holum trees and a lot of human labor to make, as the supplies dispenser at the learning center always remarked when you botched a page and went to get a new one. Palat held the book out open to Shevek. The double page was a series of columns of numbers. There they were, as he had imagined them. Into his hands he received the covenant of eternal justice. Logarithmic Tables, Bases 10 and 12, said the title on the cover above the Circle of Life.
The little boy studied the first page for some while. “What are they for?” he asked, for evidently these patterns were presented not only for their beauty. The engineer, sitting on a hard couch beside him in the cold, poorly lit common room of the domicile, undertook to explain logarithms to him. Two old men at the other end of the room cackled over their game of “Top ’Em.” An adolescent couple came in and asked if the single room was free tonight and went off to it. Rain hit hard on the metal roofing of the one-storey domicile, and ceased. It never rained for long. Palat got out his slide rule and showed Shevek its operation; in return Shevek showed him the Square and the principle of its arrangement. It was very late when they realized it was late. They ran through the marvelously rain-scented, muddy dark to the children’s dormitory, and got a perfunctory scolding from the vigil-keeper. They kissed quickly, both shaking with laughter, and Shevek ran to the big sleeping room, to the window, from which he could see his father going back down the single street of Wide Plains in the wet, electric dark.
The boy went to bed muddy-legged, and dreamed. He dreamed he was on a road through a bare land. Far ahead across the road he saw a line. As he approached it across the plain he saw that it was a wall. It went from horizon, to horizon across the barren land. It was dense, dark, and very high. The road ran up to it and was stopped.
He must go on, and he could not go on. The wall stopped him. A painful, angry fear rose up in him. He had to go on or he could never come home again. But the wall stood there. There was no way.
He beat at the smooth surface with his hands and yelled at it. His voice came out wordless and cawing. Frightened by the sound of it he cowered down, and then he heard another voice saying, “Look.” It was his father’s voice. He had an idea his mother Rulag was there too, though he did not see her (he had no memory of her face). It seemed to him that she and Palat were both on all fours in the darkness under the wall, and that they were bulkier than human beings and shaped differently. They were pointing, showing him something there on the ground, the sour dirt where nothing grew. A stone lay there. It was dark like the wall, but on it, or inside it, there was a number; a 5 he thought at first, then took it for 1, then understood what it was — the primal number, that was both unity and plurality. “That is the cornerstone,” said a voice of dear familiarity, and Shevek was pierced through with joy. There was no wall in the shadows, and he knew that he had come back, that he was home.
Later he could not recall the details of this dream, but that rush of piercing joy he did not forget. He had never known anything like it; so certain was its assurance of permanence, like one glimpse of a light that shines steadily, that he never thought of it as unreal though it had been experienced in dream. Only, however reliably there, he could not reattain it either by longing for it or by the act of will. He could only remember it, waking. When he dreamed of the wall again, as he sometimes did, the dreams were sullen and without resolution.
They had picked up the idea of “prisons” from episodes in the Life of Odo, which all of them who had elected to work on History were reading. There were many obscurities in the book, and Wide Plains had nobody who knew enough history to explain them; but by the time they got to Odo’s years in the Fort in Drio, the concept “prison” had become self-explanatory. And when a circuit history teacher came through the town he expounded the subject, with the reluctance of a decent adult forced to explain an obscenity to children. Yes, he said, a prison was a place where a State put people who disobeyed its Laws.
But why didn’t they just leave the place? They couldn’t leave, the doors were locked. Locked? Like the doors on a moving truck, so you don’t fall out, stupid! But what did they do inside one room all the time? Nothing. There was nothing to do. You’ve seen pictures of Odo in the prison cell in Drio, haven’t you? Image of defiant patience, bowed grey head, clenched hands, motionless in encroaching shadows. Sometimes prisoners were sentenced to work. Sentenced? Well, that means a judge, a person given power by the Law, ordered them to do some kind of physical labor. Ordered them? What if they didn’t want to do it? Well, they were forced to do it; if they didn’t work, they were beaten. A thrill of tension went through the children listening, eleven- and twelve-year-olds, none of whom had ever been struck, or seen any person struck, except in immediate personal anger.