“Go to the Sorruba coast with the girls, and live a very peaceful life as a fish-lab technician. Until you come back.”
“Come back? Who knows if I could come back?”
She met his gaze straight on. “What would prevent you?”
“Maybe the Urrastt They might keep me. No one there is free to come and go, you know. Maybe our own people. They might prevent me from landing. Some of them in PDC threatened that, today. Rulag was one of them.”
“She would. She only knows denial. How to deny the possibility of coming home.”
“That is quite true. That says it completely,’’ he said, settling back again and looking at Takver with contemplative admiration. “But Rulag isn’t the only one, unfortunately. To a great many people, anyone who went to Urras and tried to come back would simply be a traitor, a spy.”
“What would they actually do about it?”
“Well, if they persuaded Defense of the danger, they could shoot down the ship.”
“Would Defense be that stupid?”
“I don’t think so. But anybody outside Defense could make explosives with blasting powder and blow up the ship on the ground. Or, more likely, attack me once I was outside the ship. I think that’s a definite possibility. It should be included in a plan to make a round-trip tour of the scenic areas of Urras.”
“Would it be worthwhile to you — that risk?”
He looked forward at nothing for a time. “Yes,” he said, “in a way. If I could finish the theory there, and give it to them — to us and them and all the worlds, you know — I’d like that. Here I’m walled in. I’m cramped, it’s hard to work, to test the work, always without equipment, without colleagues and students. And then when I do the work, they don’t want it. Or, if they do, like Sabul, they want me to abandon initiative in return for receiving approval. They’ll use the work I do, after I’m dead, that always happens. But why must I give my lifework as a present to Sabul, all the Sabuls, the petty, scheming, greedy egos of one single planet? I’d like to share it. It’s a big subject I work on. It ought to be given out, handed around. It won’t run out!”
“All right, then,” Takver said, “it is worth it”
“Worth what?”
“The risk. Perhaps not being able to come back.”
“Not being able to come back,” he repeated. He looked at Takver with a strange, intense, yet abstracted gaze.
“I think there are more people on our side, on the Syndicate’s side, than we realize. It’s just that we haven’t actually done much — done anything to bring them together — taken any risk. If you took it, I think they’d come out in support of you. If you opened the door, they’d smell fresh air again, they’d smell freedom.”
“And they might all come rushing to slam the door shut”
“If they do, too bad for them. The Syndicate can protect you when you land. And then, if people are still so hostile and hateful, well say the hell with them. What’s the good of an anarchist society that’s afraid of anarchists? We’ll go live in Lonesome, in Upper Sedep, in Uttermost, well go live alone in the mountains if we have to. There’s room. There’d be people who’d come with us. We’ll make a new community. If our society is settling down into politics and power seeking, then we’ll get out, well go make an Anarres beyond Anarres, a new beginning. How’s that?”
“Beautiful,” he said, “it’s beautiful, dear heart. But I’m Dot going to go to Urras, you know.”
“Oh, yes. And you will come back,” Takver said. Her eyes were very dark, a soft darkness, like the darkness of a forest at night. “If you set out to. You always get to where you’re going. And you always come back.”
“Don’t be stupid, Takver. I’m not going to Urras!”
“I’m worn out,” Takver said, stretching, and leaning over to put her forehead against his arm, “Let’s go to bed.”
Chapter 13
Before they broke orbit, the view ports were filled with the cloudy turquoise of Urras, immense and beautiful. But the ship turned, and the stars came into sight, and Anarres among them like a round bright rock: moving yet not moving, thrown by what hand, timelessly circling, creating time.
They showed Shevek all over the ship, the interstellar Davenant. It was as different as it could be from the freighter Mindful From the outside it was as bizarre and fragile-looking as a sculpture in glass and wire; it did not have the look of a ship, a vehicle, about it at all, not even a front and back end, for it never traveled through any atmosphere thicker than that of interplanetary space. Inside, it was as spacious and solid as a house. The rooms were large and private, the walls wood-paneled or covered with textured weavings, the ceilings high. Only it was like a house with the blinds drawn, for few rooms had view ports, and it was very quiet. Even the bridge and the engine rooms had this quietness about them, and the machines and instruments had the simple definitiveness of design of the fittings of a sailing ship. For recreation, there was a garden, where the lighting had the quality of sunlight, and the air was sweet with the smell of earth and leaves; during ship night the garden was darkened, and its ports cleared to the stars.
Though its interstellar journeys lasted only a few hours or days shiptime, a near-lightspeed ship such as this might spend months exploring a solar system, or years in orbit around a planet where its crew was living or exploring. Therefore it was made spacious, humane, livable, for those who must live aboard it. Its style had neither the opulence of Urras nor the austerity of Anarres, but struck a balance, with the effortless grace of long practice. One could imagine leading that restricted life without fretting at its restrictions, contentedly, meditatively. They were a meditative people, the Hainish among the crew, civil, considerate, rather somber. There was little spontaneity in them. The youngest of them seemed older than any of the Terrans aboard.
But Shevek was seldom very observant of them, Terrans or Hainish, during the three days that the Davenant, moving by chemical propulsion at conventional speeds, took to go from Urras to Anarres. He replied when spoken to; he answered questions willingly, but he asked very few. When he spoke, it was out of an inward silence. The people of the Davenant, particularly the younger ones, were drawn to him, as if he had something they lacked or was something they wished to be. They discussed him a good deal among themselves, but they were shy with him. He did not notice this. He was scarcely aware of them. He was aware of Anarres, ahead of him. He was aware of hope deceived and of the promise kept; of failure; and of the sources within his spirit, unsealed at last, of joy. He was a ma” released from jail, going home to his family. Whatever such a man sees along his way he sees only as reflections of the light.
On the second day of the voyage he was in the communications room, talking with Anarres on the radio, first on the PDC wave length and now with the Syndicate of Initiative. He sat leaning forward, listening, or answering with a spate of the clear, expressive language that was his native tongue, sometimes gesturing with his free hand as if his interlocutor could see him, occasionally laughing. The first mate of the Davenant, a Hainishman named Ketho, controlling the radio contact, watched nun thoughtfully. Ketho had spent an hour after dinner the night before with Shevek, along with the commander and other crew members; he had asked — in a quiet, undemanding, Hainish way — a good many questions about Anarres.
Shevek turned to him at last. “All right, done. The rest can wait till I’m home. Tomorrow they will contact you to arrange the entry procedure.”
Ketho nodded. “You got some good news,” he said.
“Yes, I did. At least some, what do you call it, lively news.” They had to speak Iotic together; Shevek was more fluent in the language than Ketho, who spoke it very correctly and stiffly. “The landing is going to be exciting,” Shevek went on. “A tot of enemies and a lot of friends will be there. The good news is the friends… It seems there are more of them than when I left.”