“What kind of help are you looking for?”

Shevek made an effort to pull himself together. He looked around the little, littered office, and at Maedda. “I have something they want,” he said. “An idea. A scientific theory. I came here from Anarres because I thought that here I could do the work and publish it. I didn’t understand that here an idea is a property of the State. I don’t work for a State. I can’t take the money and the things they give me. I want to get out. But I can’t go home. So I came here. You don’t want my science, and maybe you don’t like your government either.”

Maedda smiled. “No. I don’t. But our government don’t like me any better. You didn’t pick the safest place to come, either for you or for us… Don’t worry. Tonight’s tonight; we’ll decide what to do.”

Shevek took out the note he had found in his coat pocket and handed it to Maedda. “This is what brought me. Is it from people you know?”

“ ‘Join with us your brothers…’ I don’t know. Could be.”

“Are you Odonians?”

“Partly. Syndicalists, libertarians. We work with the Thuvianists, the Socialist Workers Union, but we’re anti-centralist. You arrived at a pretty hot moment, you know.”

“The war?”

Maedda nodded. “A demonstration’s been announced for three days from now. Against the draft, war taxes, the rise in food prices. There’s four hundred thousand unemployed in Nio Esseia, and they jack up taxes and prices.” He had been watching Shevek steadily all the time they talked; now, as if the examination was done, he looked away, leaning back in his chair. “This city’s about ready for anything. A strike is what we need, a general strike, and massive demonstrations. Like the Ninth Month Strike that Odo led,” he added with a dry, strained smile. “We could use an Odo now. But they’ve got no Moon to buy us off with this time. We make justice here, or nowhere.” He looked back at Shevek, and presently said in a softer voice, “Do you know what your society has meant, here, to us, these last hundred and fifty years? Do you know that when people here want to wish each other luck they say, ‘May you get reborn on Anarres!’ To know that it exists, to know that there is a society without government, without police, without economic exploitation, that they can never say again that it’s just a mirage, an idealist’s dream! I wonder if you fully understand why they’ve kept you so well hidden out there at Ieu Eun, Dr. Shevek. Why you never were allowed to appear at any meeting open to the public. Why they’ll be after you like dogs after a rabbit the moment they find you’re gone. It’s not just because they want this idea of yours. But because you are an idea. A dangerous one. The idea of anarchism, made flesh. Walking amongst us.”

“Then you’ve got your Odo,” the girl said in her quiet, urgent voice. She had re-entered as Maedda was speaking. “After all, Odo was only an idea. Dr. Shevek is the proof.”