The baby, rucked away next to the wall, snored slightly. People in the next room came back from commons, a door slammed, somebody down in the square called good night and was answered from an open window. The big domicile, two hundred rooms, was astir, alive quietly all round them; as their existence entered into its existence so did its existence enter into theirs, as part of a whole. Presently Sadik slipped ofi her father’s knees and sat on the plat form beside him, close to him. Her dark hair was rumpled and tangled, hanging around her face.
“I didn’t want to tell you, because…” Her voice sounded thin and small. “But it just keeps getting worse. They make each other meaner.”
•Then you wont go back there,” Shevek said. He put his arm around her, but she resisted, sitting straight.
“If I go and talk to them—” said Takver.
“It’s no use. They feel as they feel.”
“But what is this we’re up against?” Takver asked with bewilderment.
Shevek did not answer. He kept his arm around Sadik, and she yielded at last, leaning her head against his arm with a weary heaviness. “There are other learning centers,” he said at last, without much certainty.
Takver stood up. She clearly could not sit still and wanted to do something, to act. But there was not much to do. “Let me braid your hair, Sadik,” she said in a subdued voice.
She brushed and braided the child’s hair; they set the screen across the room, and tucked Sadik in beside the sleeping baby, Sadik was near tears again saying good night, but within half an hour they heard by her breathing that she was asleep.
Shevek had settled down at the head of their bed platform with a notebook and the slate he used for calculating.
“I paged that manuscript today,” Takver said.
“What did it come to?”
“Forty-one pages. With the supplement.”
He nodded. Takver got up, looked over the screen at the two sleeping children, returned, and sat down on the edge of the platform.
“I knew there was something wrong. But she didn’t say anything. She never has, she’s stoical. It didn’t occur to me it was this. I thought it was just our problem, it didnt occur to me they’d take it out on children.” She spoke softly and bitterly. “It grows, it keeps growing… Will another school be any different?’’
“I don’t know. If she spends much time with us, probably not”
“You certainly aren’t suggesting — •
“No, I’m not I’m stating a fact, only. If we choose to give the child the intensity of individual love, we can’t spare her what comes with that, the risk of pain. Pain from us, and through us.”
“It isn’t fair she should be tormented for what we do. She’s so good, and good-natured, she’s like clear water—” Takver stopped, strangled by a brief rush of tears, wiped her eyes, set her lips.
“It isn’t what we do. It’s what I do.” He put his notebook down. “You’ve been suffering for it too.”
“I don’t care what they think.”
“At work?”
“I can take another posting.”
“Not here, not in your own field.”
“Well, do you want me to go somewhere else? The Sor-ruba fishery labs at Peace-and-Plenty would take me on. But where does that leave you?” She looked at him angrily. “Here, I suppose?”
“I could come with you. Skovan and the others are coming along in Iotic, they’ll be able to handle the radio, and that’s my main practical function in the Syndicate now. I can do physics as well in Peace-and-Plenty as I can here. But unless I drop right out of the Syndicate of Initiative, that doesn’t solve the problem, does it? I’m the problem. I’m the one who makes trouble.”
“Would they care about that, in a little place like Peace-and-Plenty?”
“I’m afraid they might.”
“Shev, how much of his hatred have you run up against? Have you been keeping quiet, like Sadik?”
“And like you. Well, at times. When I went to Concord, last summer, it was a little worse than I told you. Rock-throwing, and a good-sized fight. The students who asked me to come had to fight for me. They did, too, but I got out quick; I was putting them in danger. Well, students want some danger. And after all we’ve asked for a fight, we’ve deliberately roused people. And there are plenty on our side. But now… but I’m beginning to wonder if I’m not imperiling you and the children, Tak. By staying with you.”
“Of course you’re not in danger yourself,” she said savagely.
“I’ve asked for it. But it didn’t occur to me they’d extend their tribal resentment to you. I don’t feel the same about your danger as I do about mine.”
“Altruist!”
“Maybe. I can’t help it. I do feel responsible, Tak. Without me, you could go anywhere, or stay here. You’ve worked for the Syndicate, but what they hold against you is your loyalty to me. I’m the symbol. So there doesn’t… there isn’t anywhere for me to go.”
“Go to Urras,” Takver said. Her voice was so harsh that Shevek sat back as if she had hit him in the face.
She did not meet his eyes, but she repeated, more softly, “Go to Urras… Why not? They want you there. They don’t here! Maybe they’ll begin to see what they’ve lost, when you’re gone. And you want to go. I saw that tonight. I never thought of it before, but when we talked about the prize, at dinner, I saw it, the way you laughed.”
“I don’t need prizes and rewards!”
“No, but you do need appreciation, and discussion, and students — with no Sabul-strings attached. And look. You and Dap keep talking about scaring PDC with the idea of somebody going to Urras, asserting his right to self-determination. But if you talk about it and nobody goes, you’ve only strengthened their side — you’ve only proved that custom is unbreakable. Now you’ve brought it up in a PDC meeting, somebody will have to go. It ought to be you. They’ve asked you; you have a reason to go. Go get your reward — the money they’re saving for you,” she ended with a sudden quite genuine laugh.
“Takver, I don’t want to go to Urras!”
“Yes you do; you know you do. Though I’m not sure I know why.”
“Well, of course I’d like to meet some of the physicists… And see the laboratories at Ieu Eun where they’ve been experimenting with light” He looked shamefaced as he said it.
“It’s your right to do so,” Takver said with fierce determination. “If it’s part of your work, you ought to do it.”
“It would help keep the Revolution alive — on both sides — wouldn’t it?” he said. “What a crazy ideal Like Tirin’s play, only backwards. I’m to go subvert the archists… Well, it would at least prove to them that Anarres exists.
They talk with us on the radio, but I don’t think they really believe in us. In what we are.”
“If they did, they might be scared. They might come and blow us right out of the sky, if you really convinced them.”
“I don’t think so. I might make a little revolution in their physics again, but not in their opinions. It’s here, here, that I can affect society, even though here they won’t pay attention to my physics. You’re quite right; now that we’ve talked about it, we must do it” There was a pause. He said, “I wonder what kind of physics the other races do.”
“What other races?”
“The aliens. People from Ham and other solar systems. There are two alien Embassies on Urras, Hain and Terra. The Hainish invented the interstellar drive Urras uses now. I suppose they’d give it to us, too, if we were willing to ask for it. It would be interesting to…” He did not finish.
After another long pause he turned to her and said in a changed, sarcastic tone, “And-what would you do while I went visiting the propertarians?”