may, with luck and courage, construct the fragile, makeshift, improbable roads and cities of fidelity: a landscape inhabitable by human beings.
It is not until an act occurs within the landscape of the past and the future that it is a human act. Loyalty, which asserts the continuity of past and future, binding time into a whole, is the root of human strength; there is no good to be done without it.
So, looking back on the last four years, Shevek saw them not as wasted, but as part of the edifice that he and Takver were building with their lives. The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.
RODARRED, the old capital of Avan Province, was a pointed city: a forest of pines, and above the spires of the pines, an airier forest of towers. The streets were dark and narrow, mossy, often misty, under the trees. Only from the seven bridges across the river could one look up and see the tops of the towers. Some of them were hundreds of feet tall, others were mere shoots, like ordinary houses gone to seed. Some were of stone, others of porcelain, mosaic, sheets of colored glass, sheathings of copper, tin, or gold, ornate beyond belief, delicate, glittering. In these hallucinatory and charming streets the Urrasti Council of World Governments had had its seat for the three hundred years of its existence. Many embassies and consulates to the CWG and to A-Io also clustered in Rodarred, only an hour’s ride from Nio Esseia and the National seat of government.
The Terran Embassy to the CWG was housed in the River Castle, which crouched between the Nio highway and the river, sending up only one squat, grudging tower with a square roof and lateral window slits like narrowed eyes. Its walls had withstood weapons and weathers for fourteen hundred years. Dark trees dustered near its landward side, and between them a drawbridge lay across a moat. The drawbridge was down, and its gates stood open. The moat, the river, the green grass, the black walls, the flag on top of the tower, all glimmered mistily as the sun broke through a river fog, and the bells in all the towers of Rodarred began their prolonged and insanely harmonious task of ringing seven o’clock
A clerk at the very modern reception desk inside the castle was occupied with a tremendous yawn. “We aren’t really open till eight o’clock,” he said hollowly.
“I want to see the Ambassador.”
“The Ambassador is at breakfast. You’ll have to make an appointment.” In saying this the clerk wiped his watery eyes and was able to see the visitor clearly for the first time. He stared, moved his jaw several times, and said, “Who are you? Where— What do you want?”
“I want to see the Ambassador.”
“You just hold on,” the clerk said in the purest Nioti accent, still staring, and put out his hand to a telephone.
A car had just drawn up between the drawbridge gate and the entrance of the Embassy, and several men were getting out of it, the metal fittings of their black coats glittering in the sunlight. Two other men had just entered the lobby from the main part of the building, talking together, strange-looking people, strangely clothed. Shevek hurried around the reception desk towards them, trying to run. “Help me!” he said.
They looked up startled. One drew back, frowning. The other one looked past Shevek at the uniformed group who were just entering the Embassy. “Right in here,” he said with coolness, took Shevek’s arm, and shut himself and Shevek into a little side office, with two steps and a gesture, as neat as a ballet dancer.
“What’s up? You’re from Nio Esseia?”
“I want to see the Ambassador.”
“Are you one of the strikers?”
“Shevek. My name is Shevek. From Anarres.”
The alien eyes flashed, brilliant, intelligent, in the jet-black face. “Mai-god!” the Terran said under his breath, and then, in Iotic, “Are you asking asylum?”
“I don’t know. I—”
“Come with me, Dr. Shevek. I’ll get you somewhere you can sit down.”
There were halls, stairs, the black man’s hand on his arm.
People were trying to take his coat off. He struggled against them, afraid they were after the notebook in his shirt pocket. Somebody spoke authoritatively in a foreign language. Somebody else said to him, “It’s all right. He’s trying to find out if you’re hurt. Your coat’s bloody.”
“Another man,” Shevek said. “Another man’s blood.”
He managed to sit up, though his