to look us over and see how we can be divided up as a property among the nations of Urras. And the next trip will be six or eight hundred armed ships of war: guns, soldiers, an occupying force. The end of Anarres, the end of the Promise. Our hope lies, it has lain for a hundred and seventy years, in the Terms of the Settlement: No Urrasti off the ships, except the Settlers, then, or ever. No mixing. No contact. To abandon that principle now is to say to the tyrants whom we defeated once, The experiment has failed, come re-enslave us!”
“Not at all,” Bedap said promptly. “The message is clear: The experiment has succeeded, we’re strong enough now to face you as equals.”
The argument proceeded as before, a rapid hammering of issues. It did not last long. No vote was taken, as usual. Almost everyone present was strongly for sticking to the Terms of the Settlement, and as soon as this became clear Bedap said, “All right, I’ll take that as settled. Nobody comes in on the Kuieo Fort or the Mindful. In the matter of bringing Urrasti to Anarres, the Syndicate’s aims clearly must yield to the opinion of the society as a whole; we asked your advice, and we’ll follow it. But there’s another aspect of the same question. Shevek?”
“Well, there’s the question,” Shevek said, “of sending an Anarresti to Urras.”
“There were exclamations and queries. Shevek did not raise his voice, which was not far above a mumble, but persisted. “It wouldn’t harm or threaten anyone living on Anarres. And it appears that it’s a matter of the individual’s right; a kind of test of it, in fact. The Terms of the Settlement don’t forbid it. To forbid it now would be an assumption of authority by the PDC, an abridgment of the right of the Odonian individual to initiate action harmless to others.”
Rulag sat forward. She was smiling a little. “Anyone can leave Anarres,” she said. Her light eyes glanced from Shevek to Bedap and back. “He can go whenever he likes, if the propertarians’ freighters will take him. He can’t come back.”
“Who says he can’t?” Bedap demanded.
“The Terms of the Closure of the Settlement. Nobody will be allowed off the freight ships farther than the boundary of the Port of Anarres.”
“Well, now, that was surely meant to apply to Urrasti, not Anarresti,” said an old adviser, Ferdaz, who liked to stick his oar in even when it steered the boat off the course he wanted.
“A person coming from Urras is an Urrasti,” said Rulag.
“Legalisms, legalisms! What’s all this quibbling?” said a calm, heavy woman named Trepil.
“Quibbling!” cried the new member, the young man. He had a Northrising accent and a deep, strong voice. “If you don’t like quibbling, try this. If there are people here that don’t like Anarres, let ’em go. I’ll help. I’ll carry ’em to the Port, I’ll even kick ’em there! But if they try to come sneaking back, there’s going to be some of us there to meet them. Some real Odonians. And they won’t find us smiling and saying, ‘Welcome home, brothers.’ They’ll find their teeth knocked down their throats and their balls kicked up into their bellies. Do you understand that? Is it clear enough for you?”
“Clear, no; plain, yes. Plain as a fart,” said Bedap. “Clarity is a function of thought. You should learn some Odonianism before you speak here.”
“You’re not worthy to say the name of Odo!” the young man shouted. “You’re traitors, you and the whole Syndicate! There are people all over Anarres watching you. You think we don’t know that Shevek’s been asked to go to Urras, to go sell Anarresti science to the profiteers? You think we don’t know that all you snivelers would love to go there and live rich and let the propertarians pat you on the back? You can go! Good riddance! But if you try coming back here, you’ll meet with justice!”
He was on his feet and leaning across the table, shouting straight into Bedap’s face. Bedap looked up at him and said, “You don’t mean justice, you mean punishment. Do you think they’re the same thing?”
“He means violence,” Rulag said. “And if there is violence, you will have caused it. You and your Syndicate. And you will have deserved it.”
A thin, small, middle-aged man beside Trepil began speaking, at first so softly, in a voice hoarsened by the dust cough, that few of them heard him. He