The door of the garden room opened, increasing the dim illumination. The commander of the Davenant looked in and spoke his name; he answered; the commander came in, with Ketho.

“We have the entry pattern for our landing craft from your ground control,” the commander said. He was a short, iron-colored Terran, cool and businesslike. “If you’re ready to go, we’ll start launch procedure.”

“Yes.”

The commander nodded and left. Ketho came forward to stand beside Shevek at the port.

“You’re sure you want to walk through this wall with me, Ketho? You know, for me, it’s easy. Whatever happens, I am coming home. But you are leaving home. “True journey is return…’ ”

“I hope to return,” Ketho said in his quiet voice. “In time.”

“When are we to enter the landing craft?”

“In about twenty minutes.”

“I’m ready. I have nothing to pack.” Shevek laughed, a laugh of clear, unmixed happiness. The other man looked at him gravely, as if he was not sure what happiness was, and yet recognized or perhaps remembered it from afar. He stood beside Shevek as if there was something he wanted to ask him. But he did not ask it.

“It will be early morning at Anarres Port,” he said at last, and took his leave, to get his things and meet Shevek at the launch port.

Alone, Shevek turned back to the observation port, and saw the blinding curve of sunrise over the Temae, just coming into sight.

“I will lie down to sleep on Anarres tonight,” he thought. “I will lie down beside Takver. I wish I’d brought the picture, the baby sheep, to give Pilun.”

But he had not brought anything. His hands were empty, as they had always been.

URSULA K. LE GUIN. She is the author of more a 100 short stories, 2 collections of essays, 4 volumes of poetry, and 18 novels. Her best known fantasy works, the Books of Earthsea, have sold millions of copies in America and England, and have been translated into sixteen languages. Her first major work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness, is considered epoch-making in the field of its radical investigation of gender roles and its moral and literary complexity.

Three of Le Guin’s books have been finalists for American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and among the many honors her writing has received are a National Book Award, five Hugo Awards, five Nebula Awards, the Kafka Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Howard Vursell Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Notes

^[†] Papa. A small child may call any adult mamme or tadde. Gimar’s tadde may have been her father, an uncle, or an unrelated adult who showed her parental or grandparental responsibility and affection. She may have called several people tadde or mamme, but the word has a more specific use than ammar (brother/sister), which may be used to anybody. <<