hundred kilometers away in the Nation of A-Io (and here came the jeweled navels), women kept for the sexual use of male members of the propertied class (the Iotic words were used, as there was no equivalent for either word in Pravic) lie on the sand all day until dinner is served to them by people of the unpropertied class.” A close-up of dinnertime: soft mouths champing and smiling, smooth hands reaching out for delicacies wetly mounded in silver bowls. Then a switch back to the blind, blunt face of a dead child, mouth open, empty, black, dry. “Side by side,” the quiet voice had said.
But the image that had risen like an oily iridescent bubble in the boys’ minds was all the same.
“How old are those films?” said Tirin. “Are they from before the Settlement, or are they contemporary? They never say.”
“What does it matter?” Kvetur said. “They were living like that on Urras before the Odonian Revolution. The Odonians all got out and came here to Anarres. So probably nothing’s changed—they’re still at it, there.” He pointed to the great blue-green Moon.
“How do we know they are?”
“What do you mean, Tir?” asked Shevek.
“If those pictures are a hundred and fifty years old, things could be entirely different now on Urras. I don’t say they are, but if they were, how would we know it? We don’t go there, we don’t talk, there’s no communication. We really have no idea what life’s like on Urras now.”
“People in PDC do. They talk to the Urrasti that man the freighters that come in at Port of Anarres. They keep informed. They have to, so we can keep up trade with Urras, and know how much of a threat they pose to us, too.” Bedap spoke reasonably, but Tirin’s reply was sharp: “Then PDC may be informed, but we’re not.”
“Informed!” Kvetur said. “I’ve heard about Urras ever since nursery! I don’t care if I never see another picture of foul Urrasti cities and greasy Urrasti bodies!”
“That’s just it,” said Tirin with the glee of one following logic. “All the material on Urras available to students is the same. Disgusting, immoral, excremental. But look. If it was that bad when the Settlers left, how has it kept on going for a hundred and fifty years? If they were so sick, why aren’t they dead? Why haven’t their propertarian societies collapsed? What are we so afraid of?”
“Infection,” said Bedap.
“Are we so feeble we can’t withstand a little exposure? Anyhow, they can’t all be sick No matter what their society’s like, some of them must be decent. People vary here, don’t they? Are we all perfect Odonians? Look at that snotball Pesus!”
“But in a sick organism, even a healthy cell is doomed,” said Bedap.
“Oh, you can prove anything using the analogy, and you know it. Anyhow, how do we actually know their society is sick?”
Bednap gnawed on his thumbnail. “You’re saying that PDC and the educational supplies syndicate are lying to us about Urras.”
“No; I said we only know what we’re told. And do you know what we’re told?” Tirin’s dark, snub-nosed face, clear in the bright bluish moonlight, turned to them. “Kvet said it, a minute ago. He’s got the message. You heard it: detest Urras, hate Urras, fear Urras.”
“Why not?” Kvetur demanded. “Look how they treated us Odonians!”
“They gave us their Moon, didn’t they?”
“Yes, to keep us from wrecking their profiteering states and setting up the just society there. And as soon as they got rid of us, I’ll bet they started building up governments and armies faster than ever, because nobody was left to stop them. If we opened the Port to them, you think they’d come like friends and brothers? A thousand million of them, and twenty million of us? They’d wipe us out, or make us all what do you call it, what’s the word, slaves, to work the mine for them!”
“All right. I agree that it’s probably wise to fear Urras. But why hate? Hate’s not functional; why are we taught it? Could it be that if we knew what Urras was really like, we’d like it—some of it—some of us? That what PDC wants to prevent is not just some of them coming here, but some of us wanting to go there?”
“Go to Urras?” Shevek said, startled.
They argued because they liked argument, liked the swift run of the unfettered mind along the paths of possibility, liked to question what was not questioned. They were intelligent, their minds were