proportion never failed to satisfy him. He was used to that grace and comfort now, it had become familiar to him. So had the food, in all its variety and quantity, which at first had staggered him. The men who waited table knew his wants and served him as he would have served himself. He still did not eat meat; he had tried it, out of politeness and to prove to himself that he had no irrational prejudices, but his stomach had its reasons which reason does not know, and rebelled. After a couple of near disasters he had given up the attempt and remained a vegetarian, though a hearty one. He enjoyed dinner very much. He had gained three or four kilos since coming to Urras; he looked very well now, sunburnt from his mountain expedition, rested by the holiday. He was a striking figure as he got up from table in the great dining hall, with its beamed ceiling far overhead in shadow, and its paneled, portrait-hung walls, and its tables bright with candle flames and porcelain and silver. He greeted someone at another table and moved on, with an expression of peaceable detachment. From across the room Chifoilisk saw him, and followed him, catching up at the door.
“Have you got a few minutes to spare, Shevek?”
“Yes. My rooms?” He was accustomed to the constant use of the possessive pronoun by now, and spoke it without self-consciousness.
Chifoilisk seemed to hesitate. “What about the library? It’s on your way, and I want to pick up a book there.”
They set off across the quadrangle to the Library of the Noble Science—the old term for physics, which even on Anarres was preserved in certain usages—walking side by side in the pattering dark. Chifoilisk put up an umbrella, but Shevek walked in rain as the Ioti walked in sunshine, with enjoyment.
“You’re getting soaked,” Chifoilisk grumbled. “Got a bad chest, haven’t you? Ought to take care.”
“I’m very well,” Shevek said, and smiled as he strode through the fresh, fine rain. “That doctor from the Government, you know, he gave me some treatments, inhalations. It works; I don’t cough. I asked the doctor to describe the process and the drugs, on the radio to the Syndicate of Initiative in Abbenay. He did so. He was glad to do so. It is simple enough; it may relieve much suffering from the dust cough. Why, why not earlier? Why do we not work together, Chifoilisk?”
The Thuvian gave a little sardonic grunt. They came into the reading room of the library. Aisles of old books, under delicate double arches of marble, stood in dim serenity; the lamps on the long reading tables were plain spheres of alabaster. No one else was there, but an attendant hastened in behind them to light the fire laid on the marble hearth and to make sure they wanted nothing before he withdrew again. Chifoilisk stood before the hearth, watching the kindling catch. His brows bristled over his small eyes; his coarse, swarthy, intellectual face looked older than usual.
“I want to be disagreeable, Shevek,” he said in his hoarse voice. He added, “Nothing unusual in that, I suppose”—a humility Shevek had not looked for in him.
“What’s the matter?”
“I want to know whether you know what you’re doing here.”
After a pause Shevek said, “I think I do.”
“You are aware, then, that you’ve been bought?”
“Bought?”
“Call it co-opted, if you like. Listen. No matter how intelligent a man is, he can’t see what he doesn’t know how to see. How can you understand your situation, here, in a capitalist economy, a plutocratic-oligarchic State? How can you see it, coming from your little commune of starving idealists up there in the sky?”
“Chifoilisk, there aren’t many idealists left on Anarres, I assure you. The Settlers were idealists, yes, to leave this world for our deserts. But that was seven generations ago! Our society is practical. Maybe too practical, too much concerned with survival only. What is idealistic about social cooperation, mutual aid, when it is the only means of staying alive?”
“I can’t argue the values of Odonianism with you. Not that I haven’t wanted to! I do know something about it, you know. We’re a lot closer to it, in my country, than these people are. We’re products of the same great revolutionary movement of the eighth century—we’re socialists, like you.”
“But you are archists. The State of Thu is even more centralized than the State of A-Io. One power structure controls all, the government, administration, police, army,