“Some people distill alcohol from fermented holum root, for drinking. They say it gives the unconscious free play, like brainwave training. Most people prefer that, it’s very easy and doesn’t cause a disease. Is that common here?”

“Drinking is. I don’t know about this disease. What’s it called?”

“Alcoholism, I think.”

“Oh, I see… But what do working people do on Anarres for a bit of jollity, to escape the woes of the world together for a night?”

Shevek looked blank. “Well, we… I don’t know. Perhaps our woes are inescapable?”

“Quaint,” Pae said, and smiled disarmingly.

Shevek pursued his reading. One of the journals was in a language he did not know, and one in a different alphabet altogether. The one was from Thu, Pae explained, and the other from Benbili, a nation in the western hemisphere. The paper from Thu was well printed and sober in format; Pae explained that it was a government publication. “Here in A-Io, you see, educated people get their news from the telefax, and radio and television, and the weekly reviews. These papers are read by the lower classes almost exclusively—written by semiliterates for semiliterates, as you can see. We have complete freedom of the press in A-Io, which inevitably means we get a lot of trash. The Thuvian paper is much better written, but it reports only those facts which the Thuvian Central Presidium wants reported. Censorship is absolute, in Thu. The state is all, and all for the state. Hardly the place for an Odonian, eh, sir?”

“And this paper?”

“I really have no idea. Benbili’s a backward sort of country. Always having revolutions.”

“A group of people in Benbili sent us a message on the Syndicate wave length, not long before I left Abbenay. They called themselves Odonians. Are there any such groups here, in A-Io?”

“Not that I ever heard of, Dr. Shevek.”

The wall. Shevek knew the wall, by now, when he came up against it. The wall was this young man’s charm, courtesy, indifference.

“I think you are afraid of me, Pae,” he said, abruptly and genially.

“Afraid of you, sir?”

“Because I am, by my existence, disproof of the necessity of the state. But what is to fear? I will not hurt you, Saio Pae, you know. I am personally quite harmless… Listen, I am not a doctor. We do not use titles. I am called Shevek.”

“I know, I’m sorry, sir. In our terms, you see, it seems disrespectful. It just doesn’t seem right.” He apologized winningly, expecting forgiveness.

“Can you not recognize me as an equal?” Shevek asked, watching him without either forgiveness or anger.

Pae was for once nonplused. “But really, sir, you are, you know, a very important man—”

“There is no reason why you should change your habits for me,” Shevek said. “It does not matter. I thought you might be glad to be free of the unnecessary, that’s all.”

• • •

Three days of confinement indoors left Shevek charged with surplus energy, and when he was released he wore out his escorts in his first eagerness to see everything at once. They took him over the University, which was a city in itself, sixteen thousand students and faculty. With its dormitories, refectories, theaters, meeting rooms, and so on, it was not very different from an Odonian community, except that it was very old, was exclusively male, was incredibly luxurious, and was not organized federatively but hierarchically, from the top down. All the same, Shevek thought, it felt like a community. He had to remind himself of the differences.