“About you.” He leaned on the grassy bank, near enough to Vea that he was surrounded by the natural and artificial perfumes of her body. “I want to know, is an Urrasti woman content to be always inferior?”

“Inferior to whom?”

“To men.”

“Oh—that! What makes you think I am?”

“It seems that everything your society does is done by men. The industry, arts, management, government, decisions. And all your life you bear your father’s name and the husband’s name. The men go to school and you don’t go to school; they are all the teachers, and judges, and police, and government, aren’t they? Why do you let them control everything? Why don’t you do what you like?”

“But we do. Women do exactly as they like. And they don’t have to get their hands dirty, or wear brass helmets, or stand about shouting in the Directorate, to do it.”

“But what is it that you do?”

“Why, run the men, of course! And you know, it’s perfectly safe to tell them that, because they never believe it. They say, ‘Haw haw, funny little woman!’ and pat your head and stalk off with their medals jangling, perfectly self-content.”

“And you too are self-content?”

“Indeed I am.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Because it doesn’t fit your principles. Men always have theories, and things always have to fit them.”

“No, not because of theories, because I can see that you are not content. That you are restless, unsatisfied, dangerous.”

“Dangerous!” Vea laughed radiantly. “What an utterly marvelous compliment! Why am I dangerous, Shevek?”

“Why, because you know that in the eyes of men you are a thing, a thing owned, bought, sold. And so you think only of tricking the owners, of getting revenge—”

She put her small hand deliberately on his mouth. “Hush,” she said. “I know you don’t intend to be vulgar. I forgive you. But that’s quite enough.”

He scowled savagely at the hypocrisy, and at the realization that he might really have hurt her. He could still feel the brief touch of her hands on his lips. “I am sorry!” he said.

“No, no. How can you understand, coming from the Moon? And you’re only a man, anyway… I’ll tell you something, though. If you took one of your ‘sisters’ up there on the Moon, and gave her a chance to take off her boots, and have an oil bath and a depilation, and put on a pair of pretty sandals, and a belly jewel, and perfume, she’d love it. And you’d love it too! Oh, you would! But you won’t, you poor things with your theories. All brothers and sisters and no fun!”

“You are right,” Shevek said. “No fun. Never. All day long on Anarres we dig lead in the bowels of the mines, and when night comes, after our meal of the three holum grains cooked in one spoonful of brackish water, we antiphonally recite the Sayings of Odo, until it is time to go to bed. Which we all do separately, and wearing boots.”