Rulag listened, her head erect, her face set, like that of a person repressing pain. Across the table from her Shevek sat with his head bowed. The words left a silence after them, and he looked up and spoke into it.

“You see,” he said, “what we’re after is to remind ourselves that we didn’t come to Anarres for safety, but for freedom. If we must all agree, all work together, we’re no better than a machine. If an individual can’t work in solidarity with his fellows, it’s his duty to work alone. His duty and his right. We have been denying people that right. We’ve been saying, more and more often, you must work with the others, you must accept the rule of the majority. But any rule is tyranny. The duty of the individual is to accept no rule, to be the initiator of his own acts, to be responsible. Only if he does so will the society live, and change, and adapt, and survive. We are not subjects of a State founded upon law, but members of a society founded upon revolution. Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution. ‘The Revolution is in the individual spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all, or it is nothing. If it is seen as having any end, it will never truly begin.’ We can’t stop here. We must go on. We must take the risks.”

Rulag replied, as quietly as he, but very coldly, “You have no right to involve us all in a risk that private motives compel you to take.”

“No one who will not go as far as I’m willing to go has any right to stop me from going,” Shevek answered. Their eyes met for a second; both looked down.

“The risk of a trip to Urras involves nobody but the person going,” Bedap said. “It changes nothing in the terms of the Settlement, and nothing in our relationship with Urras, except, perhaps, morally—to our advantage. But I don’t think we’re ready, any of us, to decide on it. I’ll withdraw the topic for the present, if it’s agreeable to the rest of you.”

They assented, and he and Shevek left the meeting.

“I’ve got to go over to the Institute,” Shevek said as they came out of the PDC building. “Sabul sent me one of his toenail clippings—first in years. What’s on his mind, I wonder?”

“What’s on that woman Rulag’s mind, I wonder! She’s got a personal grudge against you. Envy, I suppose. We won’t put you two across a table again, or we’ll get nowhere. Though that young fellow from Northrising was bad news, too. Majority rule and might makes right! Are we going to get our message across, Shev? Or are we only hardening the opposition to it?”

“We may really have to send somebody off to Urras—prove our right to by acts, if words won’t do it.”

“Maybe. So long as it isn’t me! I’ll talk myself purple about our right to leave Anarres, but if I had to do it, by damn, I’d slit my throat.”