“Would it be worthwhile to you—that risk?”

He looked forward at nothing for a time. “Yes,” he said, “in a way. If I could finish the theory there, and give it to them—to us and them and all the worlds, you know—I’d like that. Here I’m walled in. I’m cramped, it’s hard to work, to test the work, always without equipment, without colleagues and students. And then when I do the work, they don’t want it. Or, if they do, like Sabul, they want me to abandon initiative in return for receiving approval. They’ll use the work I do, after I’m dead, that always happens. But why must I give my lifework as a present to Sabul, all the Sabuls, the petty, scheming, greedy egos of one single planet? I’d like to share it. It’s a big subject I work on. It ought to be given out, handed around. It won’t run out!”

“All right, then,” Takver said, “it is worth it.”

“Worth what?”

“The risk. Perhaps not being able to come back.”

“Not being able to come back,” he repeated. He looked at Takver with a strange, intense, yet abstracted gaze.

“I think there are more people on our side, on the Syndicate’s side, than we realize. It’s just that we haven’t actually done much—done anything to bring them together—taken any risk. If you took it, I think they’d come out in support of you. If you opened the door, they’d smell fresh air again, they’d smell freedom.”

“And they might all come rushing to slam the door shut.”

“If they do, too bad for them. The Syndicate can protect you when you land. And then, if people are still so hostile and hateful, we’ll say the hell with them. What’s the good of an anarchist society that’s afraid of anarchists? We’ll go live in Lonesome, in Upper Sedep, in Uttermost, we’ll go live alone in the mountains if we have to. There’s room. There’d be people who’d come with us. We’ll make a new community. If our society is settling down into politics and power seeking, then we’ll get out, we’ll go make an Anarres beyond Anarres, a new beginning. How’s that?”

“Beautiful,” he said, “it’s beautiful, dear heart. But I’m not going to go to Urras, you know.”

“Oh, yes. And you will come back,” Takver said. Her eyes were very dark, a soft darkness, like the darkness of a forest at night. “If you set out to. You always get to where you’re going. And you always come back.”

“Don’t be stupid, Takver. I’m not going to Urras!”

“I’m worn out,” Takver said, stretching, and leaning over to put her forehead against his arm. “Let’s go to bed.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Anarres • Urras

BEFORE they broke orbit, the view ports were filled with the cloudy turquoise of Urras, immense and beautiful. But the ship turned, and the stars came into sight, and Anarres among them like a round bright rock; moving yet not moving, thrown by what hand, timelessly circling, creating time.