“You’ll be in actual danger, you mean?”

He bent toward her to hear, for the train was pulling into the station with a clatter of wheels and carriages. “I don’t know,” he said, smiling. “You know, our trains look very much like these? A good design need not change.” He went with her to a first-class carriage. Since she did not open the door, he did. He put his head in after her, looking around the compartment. “Inside they are not alike, though! This is all private—for yourself?”

“Oh, yes. I detest second class. Men chewing maera gum and spitting. Do people chew maera on Anarres? No, surely not. Oh, there are so many things I’d love to know about you and your country!”

“I love to tell about it, but nobody asks.”

“Do let’s meet again and talk about it, then! When you’re next in Nio, will you call me? Promise.”

“I promise,” he said good-naturedly.

“Good! I know you don’t break promises. I don’t know anything about you yet, except that I can see that. Goodbye, Shevek.” She put her gloved hand on his for a moment as he held the door. The engine gave its two-note honk; he shut the door, and watched the train pull out, Vea’s face a flicker of white and scarlet at the window.

He walked back to the Oiies’ in a very cheerful frame of mind, and had a snowball battle with Ini until dark.

• • •

REVOLUTION IN BENBILI! DICTATOR FLEES!

REBEL LEADERS HOLD CAPITAL!

EMERGENCY SESSION IN CWG.

POSSIBILITY A-IO MAY INTERVENE.

The birdseed paper was excited into its hugest typeface. Spelling and grammar fell by the wayside; it read like Efor talking: “By last night rebels hold all west of Meskti and pushing army hard…” It was the verbal mode of the Nioti, past and future rammed into one highly charged, unstable present tense.

Shevek read the papers and looked up a description of Benbili in the CWG Encyclopedia. The nation was in form a parliamentary democracy, in fact a military dictatorship, run by generals. It was a large country in the western hemisphere, mountains and arid savannahs, underpopulated, poor. “I should have gone to Benbili,” Shevek thought, for the idea of it drew him; he imagined pale plains, the wind blowing. The news had stirred him strangely. He listened for bulletins on the radio, which he had seldom turned on after finding that its basic function was advertising things for sale. Its reports, and those of the official telefax in public rooms, were brief and dry: a queer contrast to the popular papers, which shouted Revolution! on every page.

General Havevert, the President, got away safe in his famous armored airplane, but some lesser generals were caught and emasculated, a punishment the Benbili traditionally preferred to execution. The retreating army burned the fields and towns of their people as they went. Guerrilla partisans harried the army. The revolutionaries in Meskti, the capital, opened the jails, giving amnesty to all prisoners. Reading that, Shevek’s heart leapt. There was hope, there was still hope… He followed the news of the distant revolution with increasing intensity. On the fourth day, watching a telefax broadcast of debate in the Council of World Governments, he saw the Ioti ambassador to the CWG announce that A-Io, rising to the support of the democratic government of Benbili, was sending armed reinforcements to President-General Havevert.