Shevek turned to him at last. “All right, done. The rest can wait till I’m home. Tomorrow they will contact you to arrange the entry procedure.”

Ketho nodded. “You got some good news,” he said.

“Yes, I did. At least some, what do you call it, lively news.” They had to speak Iotic together; Shevek was more fluent in the language than Ketho, who spoke it very correctly and stiffly. “The landing is going to be exciting,” Shevek went on. “A lot of enemies and a lot of friends will be there. The good news is the friends… It seems there are more of them than when I left.”

“This danger of attack, when you land,” Ketho said. “Surely the officers of the Port of Anarres feel that they can control the dissidents? They would not deliberately tell you to come down and be murdered?”

“Well, they are going to protect me. But I am also a dissident, after all. I asked to take the risk. That’s my privilege, you see, as an Odonian.” He smiled at Ketho. The Hainishman did not smile back; his face was serious. He was a handsome man of about thirty, tall and light-skinned like a Cetian, but nearly hairless like a Terran, with very strong, fine features.

“I am glad to be able to share it with you,” he said. “I will be taking you down in the landing craft.”

“Good,” Shevek said. “It isn’t everyone who would care to accept our privileges!”

“More than you think, perhaps,” Ketho said. “If you would allow them to.”

Shevek, whose mind had not been fully on the conversation, had been about to leave; this stopped him. He looked at Ketho, and after a moment said, “Do you mean that you would like to land with me?”

The Hainishman answered with equal directness, “Yes, I would.”

“Would the commander permit it?”

“Yes. As an officer of a mission ship, in fact, it is part of my duty to explore and investigate a new world when possible. The commander and I have spoken of the possibility. We discussed it with our ambassadors before we left. Their feeling was that no formal request should be made, since your people’s policy is to forbid foreigners to land.”

“Hm,” Shevek said, noncommittal. He went over to the far wall and stood for a while in front of a picture, a Hainish landscape, very simple and subtle, a dark river flowing among reeds under a heavy sky. “The Terms of the Closure of the Settlement of Anarres,” he said, “do not permit Urrasti to land, except inside the boundary of the Port. Those terms still are accepted. But you’re not an Urrasti.”

“When Anarres was settled, there were no other races known. By implication, those terms include all foreigners.”

“So our managers decided, sixty years ago, when your people first came into this solar system and tried to talk with us. But I think they were wrong. They were just building more walls.” He turned around and stood, his hands behind his back, looking at the other man. “Why do you want to land, Ketho?”