The Dispossessed Read online

  The man went off into another unintelligible speech, sidling meantime towards the bedroom. Shevek caught several words of Iotic this time, but could make no sense of the rest. He let the fellow go, since he seemed to want to get to the bedroom. Perhaps he was a roommate? But there was only one bed. Shevek gave him up and went back to the window, and the man scuttled on into the bedroom and thumped around in it for a few minutes. Just as Shevek had decided that he was a night worker who used the bedroom days, an arrangement sometimes made in temporarily overcrowded domiciles, he came out again. He said something—“There you are, sir,” perhaps?—and ducked his head in a curious fashion, as if he thought that Shevek, five meters away, was about to hit him in the face. He left. Shevek stood by the windows, slowly realizing that he had for the first time in his life been bowed to.

  He went into the bedroom and discovered that the bed had been made.

  Slowly, thoughtfully, he got dressed. He was putting on his shoes when the next knock came.

  A group entered, in a different manner; in a normal manner, it seemed to Shevek, as if they had a right to be there, or anywhere they chose to be. The man with the packages had been hesitant, he had almost slunk in. And yet his face, and his hands, and his clothing, had come closer to Shevek’s notion of a normal human being’s appearance than did those of the new visitors. The slinking man had behaved strangely, but he had looked like an Anarresti. These four behaved like Anarresti, but looked, with their shaven faces and gorgeous clothes, like creatures of an alien species.

  Shevek managed to recognize one of them as Pae, and the others as men who had been with him all last evening. He explained that he had not caught their names, and they reintroduced themselves, smiling: Dr. Chifoilisk, Dr. Oiie, and Dr. Atro.

  “Oh, by damn!” Shevek said. “Atro! I am glad to meet you!” He put his hands on the old man’s shoulders and kissed his cheek, before thinking that this brotherly greeting, common enough on Anarres, might not be acceptable here.

  Atro, however, embraced him heartily in return, and looked up into his face with filmy grey eyes. Shevek realized that he was nearly blind. “My dear Shevek,” he said, “welcome to A-Io—welcome to Urras—welcome home!”

  “So many years we have written letters, destroyed each other’s theories!”

  “You were always the better destroyer. Here, hold on, I’ve got something for you.” The old man felt about in his pockets. Under his velvet university gown he wore a jacket, under that a vest, under that a shirt, and probably another layer under that. All of these garments, and his trousers, contained pockets. Shevek watched quite fascinated as Atro went through six or seven pockets, all containing belongings, before he came up with a small cube of yellow metal mounted on a bit of polished wood. “There,” he said, peering at it “Your award. The Seo Oen prize, you know. The cash is in your account. Here. Nine years late, but better late than never.” His hands trembled as he handed the thing to Shevek.

  It was heavy; the yellow cube was solid gold. Shevek stood motionless, holding it.

  “I don’t know about you young men,” said Atro, “but I’m going to sit down.” They all sat down in the deep, soft chairs, which Shevek had already examined, puzzled by the material with which they were covered, a nonwoven brown stuff that felt like skin. “How old were you nine years ago, Shevek?”

  Atro was the foremost living physicist on Urras. There was about him not only the dignity of age but also the blunt self-assurance of one accustomed to respect. This was nothing new to Shevek. Atro had precisely the one kind of authority that Shevek recognized. Also, it gave him pleasure to be addressed at last simply by his name.

  “I was twenty-nine when I finished the Principles, Atro.”

  “Twenty-nine? Good God. That makes you the youngest recipient of the Seo Oen for a century or so. Didn’t get around to giving me mine till I was sixty or so…How old were you, then, when you first wrote me?”

  “About twenty.”

  Atro snorted. “Took you for a man of forty then!”

  “What about Sabul?” Oiie inquired. Oiie was even shorter than most Urrasti, who all seemed short to Shevek; he had a flat, bland face and oval, jet-black eyes. “There was a period of six or eight years when you never wrote, and Sabul kept in touch with us; but he never has talked on your radio link-up with us. We’ve wondered what your relationship is.”

  “Sabul is the senior member of the Abbenay Institute in physics,” said Shevek. “I used to work with him.”

  “An older rival; jealous; meddled with your books; been clear enough. We hardly need an explanation, Oiie,” said the fourth man, Chifoilisk, in a harsh voice. He was middle-aged, a swarthy, stocky man with the fine hands of a desk worker. He was the only one of them whose face was not completely shaven: he had left the chin bristling to match his short, iron-grey head hair. “No need to pretend that all you Odonian brothers are full of brotherly love,” he said. “Human nature is human nature.”

  Shevek’s lack of response was saved from seeming significant by a volley of sneezes. “I do not have a handkerchief,” he apologized, wiping his eyes.

  “Take mine,” said Atro, and produced a snowy handkerchief from one of his many pockets. Shevek took it, and as he did so an importunate memory wrung his heart. He thought of his daughter Sadik, a little dark-eyed girl, saying, “You can share the handkerchief I use.” That memory, which was very dear to him, was unbearably painful now. Trying to escape it, he smiled at random and said, “I am allergic to your planet. The doctor says this.”

  “Good God, you won’t be sneezing like that permanently?” old Atro asked, peering at him.

  “Hasn’t your man been in yet?” said Pae.

  “My man?”

  “The servant. He was supposed to bring you some things. Handkerchiefs included. Just enough to tide you over till you can shop for yourself. Nothing choice—I’m afraid there’s very little choice in ready-made clothes for a man your height!”

  When Shevek had sorted this out (Pae spoke in a rapid drawl, which matched with his soft, handsome features), he said, “That is kind of you. I feel—” He looked at Atro. “I am, you know, the Beggarman,” he said to the old man, as he had said to Dr. Kimoe on the Mindful “I could not bring money, we do not use it. I could not bring gifts, we use nothing that you lack. So I come, like a good Odonian, ‘with empty hands.’”

  Atro and Pae assured him that he was a guest, there was no question of payment, it was their privilege. “Besides,” Chifoilisk said in his sour voice, “the Ioti Government foots the bill.”

  Pae gave him a sharp glance, but Chifoilisk, instead of returning it, looked straight at Shevek. On his swarthy face was an expression that he made no effort to hide, but which Shevek could not interpret: warning, or complicity?

  “There speaks the unregenerate Thuvian,” old Atro said with his snort. “But you mean to say, Shevek, that you brought nothing at all with you—no papers, no new work? I was looking forward to a book. Another revolution in physics. See these pushy young fellows stood on their heads, the way you stood me with the Principles. What have you been working on?”

  “Well, I have been reading Pae—Dr. Pae’s paper on the block universe, on Paradox and Relativity.”

  “All very well. Saio’s our current star, no doubt of that. Least of all in his own mind, eh, Saio? But what’s that to do with the price of cheese? Where’s your General Temporal Theory?”

  “In my head,” said Shevek with a broad, genial smile.

  There was a very little pause.

  Oiie asked him if he had seen the work on relativity theory by an alien physicist, Ainsetain of Terra. Shevek had not. They were intensely interested in it, except for Atro, who had outlived intensity. Pae ran off to his room to get Shevek a copy of the translation. “It’s several hundred years old, but there’s fresh ideas in it for us,” he said.

  “Maybe,” said Atro, “but none of these offworlders can follow our physics. The Hainish call it materialism, and the Terra
ns call it mysticism, and then they both give up. Don’t let this fad for everything alien sidetrack you, Shevek. They’ve got nothing for us. Dig your own pigweed, as my father used to say.” He gave his senile snort and levered himself up out of the chair. “Come on out for a turn in the Grove with me. No wonder you’re stuffy, cooped up in here.”

  “The doctor says I am to stay in this room three days. I might be—infected? Infectious?”

  “Never pay any attention to doctors, my dear fellow.”

  “Perhaps in this case, though, Dr. Atro,” Pae suggested in his easy, conciliating voice.

  “After all, the doctor’s from the Government, isn’t he?” said Chifoilisk, with evident malice.

  “Best man they could find, I’m sure,” Atro said unsmiling, and took his leave without urging Shevek further. Chifoilisk went with him. The two younger men stayed with Shevek, talking physics, for a long time.

  With immense pleasure, and with that same sense of profound recognition, of finding something the way it was meant to be, Shevek discovered for the first time in his life the conversation of his equals.

  Mitis, though a splendid teacher, had never been able to follow him into the new areas of theory that he had, with her encouragement, begun to explore. Gvarab was the only person he had met whose training and ability were comparable to his own, and he and Gvarab had met too late, at the very end of her life. Since those days Shevek had worked with many people of talent, but because he had never been a full-time member of the Abbenay Institute, he had never been able to take them far enough; they remained bogged down in the old problems, the classical Sequency physics. He had had no equals. Here, in the realm of inequity, he met them at last.

  It was a revelation, a liberation. Physicists, mathematicians, astronomers, logicians, biologists, all were here at the University, and they came to him or he went to them, and they talked, and new worlds were born of their talking. It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.

  Even on that first afternoon at the University, with Oiie and Pae, he knew he had found something he had longed for ever since, as boys and on a boyish level, he and Tirin and Bedap had used to talk half the night, teasing and daring each other into always bolder flights of mind. He vividly remembered some of those nights. He saw Thin, Tirin saying, “If we knew what Urras was really like, maybe some of us would want to go there.” And he had been so shocked by the idea that he had jumped all over Tirin, and Tir had backed down at once; he had always backed down, poor damned soul, and he had always been right.

  Conversation had stopped. Pae and Oiie were silent.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “The head is heavy.”

  “How’s the gravity?” Pae asked, with the charming smile of a man who, like a bright child, counts on his charm.

  “I don’t notice,” Shevek said. “Only in the, what is this?”

  “Knees—knee joints.”

  “Yes, knees. Function is impaired. But I will get accustomed.” He looked at Pae, then at Oiie. “There is a question. But I don’t wish to give offense.”

  “Never fear, sir!” Pae said.

  Oiie said, “I’m not sure you know how.” Oiie was not a likable fellow, like Pae. Even talking physics he had an evasive, secretive style. And yet beneath the style, there was something, Shevek felt, to trust; whereas beneath Pae’s charm, what was there? Well, no matter. He had to trust them all, and would.

  “Where are women?”

  Pae laughed. Oiie smiled and asked, “In what sense?”

  “All senses. I met women at the party last night—five, ten—hundreds of men. None were scientists, I think. Who were they?”

  “Wives. One of them was my wife, in fact,” Oiie said with his secretive smile.

  “Where are other women?”

  “Oh, no difficulty at all there, sir,” Pae said promptly. “Just tell us your preferences, and nothing could be simpler to provide.”

  “One does hear some picturesque speculations about Anarresti customs, but I rather think we can come up with almost anything you had in mind,” said Oiie.

  Shevek had no idea what they were talking about. He scratched his head. “Are all the scientists here men, then?”

  “Scientists?” Oiie asked, incredulous.

  Pae coughed. “Scientists. Oh, yes, certainly, they’re all men. There are some female teachers in the girls’ schools, of course. But they never get past Certificate level.”

  “Why not?”

  “Can’t do the math; no head for abstract thought; don’t belong. You know how it is, what women call thinking is done with the uterus! Of course, there’s always a few exceptions, God-awful brainy women with vaginal atrophy.”

  “You Odonians let women study science?” Oiie inquired.

  “Well, they are in the sciences, yes.”

  “Not many, I hope.”

  “Well, about half.”

  “I’ve always said,” said Pae, “that girl technicians properly handled could take a good deal of the load off the men in any laboratory situation. They’re actually defter and quicker than men at repetitive tasks, and more docile—less easily bored. We could free men for original work much sooner, if we used women.”

  “Not in my lab, you won’t,” said Oiie. “Keep ’em in their place.”

  “Do you find any women capable of original intellectual work, Dr. Shevek?”

  “Well, it was more that they found me. Mitis, in Northsetting, was my teacher. Also Gvarab; you know of her, I think.”

  “Gvarab was a woman?” Pae said in genuine surprise, and laughed.

  Oiie looked unconvinced and offended. “Can’t tell from your names, of course,” he said coldly. “You make a point, I suppose, of drawing no distinction between the sexes.”

  Shevek said mildly, “Odo was a woman.”

  “There you have it,” Oiie said. He did not shrug, but he very nearly shrugged. Pae looked respectful, and nodded, just as he did when old Atro maundered.

  Shevek saw that he had touched in these men an impersonal animosity that went very deep. Apparently they, like the tables on the ship, contained a woman, a suppressed, silenced, bestialized woman, a fury in a cage. He had no right to tease them. They knew no relation but possession. They were possessed.

  “A beautiful, virtuous woman,” Pae said, “is an inspiration to us—the most precious thing on earth.”

  Shevek felt extremely uncomfortable. He got up and went over to the windows. “Your world is very beautiful,” he said. “I wish I could see more. While I must stay inside, will you give me books?”

  “Of course, sir! What sort?”

  “History, pictures, stories, anything. Maybe they should be books for children. You see, I know very little. We learn about Urras, but mostly about Odo’s times. Before that was eight and one half thousand years! And then since the Settlement of Anarres is a century and a half; since the last ship brought the last Settlers—ignorance. We ignore you; you ignore us. You are our history. We are perhaps your future. I want to learn, not to ignore. It is the reason I came. We must know each other. We are not primitive men. Our morality is no longer tribal, it cannot be. Such ignorance is a wrong, from which wrong will arise. So I come to learn.”

  He spoke very earnestly. Pae assented with enthusiasm. “Exactly, sir! We are all in complete agreement with your aims!”

  Oiie looked at him from those black, opaque, oval eyes, and said, “Then you come, essentially, as an emissary of your society?”

  Shevek returned to sit on the marble seat by the hearth, which he already felt as his seat, his territory. He wanted a territory. He felt the need for caution. But he felt more strongly the need that had brought him across the dry abyss from the other world, the need for communication, the wish to unbuild walls.

  “I come,” he said carefully, “as a syndic of the Syndicate of Initiative, the group that talks with
Urras on the radio these last two years. But I am not, you know, an ambassador from any authority, any institution. I hope you did not ask me as that.”

  “No,” Oiie said. “We asked you—Shevek the physicist. With the approval of our government and the Council of World Governments, of course. But you are here as the private guest of Ieu Eun University.”

  “Good.”

  “But we haven’t been sure whether or not you came with the approval of—” He hesitated.

  Shevek grinned. “Of my government?”

  “We know that nominally there’s no government on Anarres. However, obviously there’s administration. And we gather that the group that sent you, your Syndicate, is a kind of faction; perhaps a revolutionary faction.”

  “Everybody on Anarres is a revolutionary, Oiie…The network of administration and management is called PDC, Production and Distribution Coordination. They are a coordinating system for all syndicates, federatives, and individuals who do productive work. They do not govern persons; they administer production. They have no authority either to support me or to prevent me. They can only tell us the public opinion of us—where we stand in the social conscience. That’s what you want to know? Well, my friends and I are mostly disapproved of. Most people on Anarres don’t want to learn about Urras. They fear it and want nothing to do with the propertarians. I am sorry if I am rude! It is the same here, with some people, is it not? The contempt, the fear, the tribalism. Well, so I came to begin to change that.”

  “Entirely on your own initiative,” said Oiie.

  “It is the only initiative I acknowledge,” Shevek said, smiling, in dead earnest.

  • • •

  He spent the next couple of days talking with the scientists who came to see him, reading the books Pae brought him, and sometimes simply standing at the double-arched widows to gaze at the coming of summer to the great valley, and to listen for the brief, sweet conversations out there in the open air. Birds: he knew the singers’ name now, and what they looked like from pictures in the books, but still when he heard the song or caught the flash of wings from tree to tree, he stood in wonder like a child.