“What’s up? You’re from Nio Esseia?”

“I want to see the Ambassador.”

“Are you one of the strikers?”

“Shevek. My name is Shevek. From Anarres.”

The alien eyes flashed, brilliant, intelligent, in the jet-black face. “Mai-god!” the Terran said under his breath, and then, in Iotic, “Are you asking asylum?”

“I don’t know. I—”

“Come with me, Dr. Shevek. I’ll get you somewhere you can sit down.”

There were halls, stairs, the black man’s hand on his arm.

People were trying to take his coat off. He struggled against them, afraid they were after the notebook in his shirt pocket. Somebody spoke authoritatively in a foreign language. Somebody else said to him, “It’s all right. He’s trying to find out if you’re hurt. Your coat’s bloody.”

“Another man,” Shevek said. “Another man’s blood.”

He managed to sit up, though his head swam. He was on a couch in a large, sunlit room; apparently he had fainted. A couple of men and a woman stood near him. He looked at them without understanding.

“You are in the Embassy of Terra, Dr. Shevek. You are on Terran soil here. You are perfectly safe. You can stay here as long as you want.”

The woman’s skin was yellow-brown, like ferrous earth, and hairless, except on the scalp; not shaven, but hairless. The features were strange and childlike, small mouth, low-bridged nose, eyes with long full lids, cheeks and chin rounded, fat-padded. The whole figure was rounded, supple, childlike.

“You are safe here,” she repeated.

He tried to speak, but could not. One of the men pushed him gently on the chest, saying, “Lie down, lie down.” He lay back, but he whispered, “I want to see the Ambassador.”

“I’m the Ambassador. Keng is my name. We are glad you came to us. You are safe here. Please rest now, Dr. Shevek, and we’ll talk later. There is no hurry.” Her voice had an odd, singsong quality, but it was husky, like Takver’s voice.

“Takver,” he said, in his own language, “I don’t know what to do.”

She said, “Sleep,” and he slept.

• • •

After two days’ sleep and two days’ meals, dressed again in his grey Ioti suit, which they had cleaned and pressed for him, he was shown into the Ambassador’s private salon on the third floor of the tower.

The Ambassador neither bowed to him nor shook his hand, but joined her hands palm to palm before her breast and smiled. “I’m glad you feel better, Dr. Shevek. No, I should say simply Shevek, should I? Please sit down. I’m sorry that I have to speak to you in Iotic, a foreign language to both of us. I don’t know your language. I am told that it’s a most interesting one, the only rationally invented language that has become the tongue of a great people.”

He felt big, heavy, hairy, beside this suave alien. He sat down in one of the deep, soft chairs. Keng also sat down, but grimaced as she did so. “I have a bad back,” she said, “from sitting in these comfortable chairs!” And Shevek realized then that she was not a woman of thirty or less, as he had thought, but was sixty or more; her smooth skin and childish physique had deceived him. “At home,” she went on, “we mostly sit on cushions on the floor. But if I did that here I would have to look up even more at everyone. You Cetians are all so tall!… We have a little problem. That is, we really do not, but the government of A-Io does. Your people on Anarres, the ones who maintain radio communication with Urras, you know, have been asking very urgently to speak with you. And the Ioti Government is embarrassed.” She smiled, a smile of pure amusement. “They don’t know what to say.”