Compared to this, every scene Anarres could offer, even the Plain of Abbenay and the gorges of the Ne Theras, was meager: barren, arid, and inchoate. The deserts of Southwest had a vast beauty, but it was hostile, and timeless. Even where men farmed Anarres most closely, their landscape was like a crude sketch in yellow chalk compared with this fulfilled magnificence of life, rich in the sense of history and of seasons to come, inexhaustible.

This is what a world is supposed to look like, Shevek thought.

And somewhere, out in that blue and green splendor, something was singing: a small voice, high up, starting and ceasing, incredibly sweet. What was it? A little, sweet, wild voice, a music in midair.

He listened, and his breath caught in his throat.

There was a knock at the door. Turning naked and wondering from the window, Shevek said, “Come in!”

A man entered, carrying packages. He stopped just inside the door. Shevek crossed the room, saying his own name, Anarresti-style, and, Urrasti-style, holding out his hand.

The man, who was fifty or so, with a lined, worn face, said something Shevek did not understand a word of, and did not shake hands. Perhaps he was prevented by the packages, but he made no effort to shift them and free his hands. His face was extremely grave. It was possible that he was embarrassed.

Shevek, who thought he had at least mastered Urrasti customs of greeting, was nonplused. “Come on in,” he repeated, and then added, since the Urrasti were forever using titles and honorifics, “sir!”

The man went off into another unintelligible speech, sidling meantime towards the bedroom. Shevek caught several words of Iotic this time, but could make no sense of the rest. He let the fellow go, since he seemed to want to get to the bedroom. Perhaps he was a roommate? But there was only one bed. Shevek gave him up and went back to the window, and the man scuttled on into the bedroom and thumped around in it for a few minutes. Just as Shevek had decided that he was a night worker who used the bedroom days, an arrangement sometimes made in temporarily overcrowded domiciles, he came out again. He said something—“There you are, sir,” perhaps?—and ducked his head in a curious fashion, as if he thought that Shevek, five meters away, was about to hit him in the face. He left. Shevek stood by the windows, slowly realizing that he had for the first time in his life been bowed to.

He went into the bedroom and discovered that the bed had been made.

Slowly, thoughtfully, he got dressed. He was putting on his shoes when the next knock came.

A group entered, in a different manner; in a normal manner, it seemed to Shevek, as if they had a right to be there, or anywhere they chose to be. The man with the packages had been hesitant, he had almost slunk in. And yet his face, and his hands, and his clothing, had come closer to Shevek’s notion of a normal human being’s appearance than did those of the new visitors. The slinking man had behaved strangely, but he had looked like an Anarresti. These four behaved like Anarresti, but looked, with their shaven faces and gorgeous clothes, like creatures of an alien species.