“How can I learn Iotic?”

“Grammar and a dictionary!”

Shevek stood his ground. “Where do I find them?”

“Here,” Sabul growled. He rummaged among the untidy shelves of small green-bound books. His movements were brusque and irritable. He located two thick, unbound volumes on a bottom shelf and slapped them down on the desk. “Tell me when you’re competent to read Atro in Iotic. Nothing I can do with you till then.”

“What kind of mathematics do these Urrasti use?”

“Nothing you can’t handle.”

“Is anybody working here in chronotopology?”

“Yes, Turet. You can consult him. You don’t need his lecture course.”

“I planned to attend Gvarab’s lectures.”

“What for?”

“Her work in frequency and cycle—”

Sabul sat down and got up again. He was unbearably restless, restless yet rigid, a woodrasp of a man. “Don’t waste time. You’re far beyond the old woman in Sequency theory, and the other ideas she spouts are trash.”

“I’m interested in Simultaneity principles.”

“Simultaneity! What kind of profiteering crap is Mitis feeding you up there?” The physicist glared, the veins on his temples bulging under the coarse, short hair.

“I organized a joint-work course in it myself.”

“Grow up. Grow up. Time to grow up. You’re here now. We’re working on physics here, not religion. Drop the mysticism and grow up. How soon can you learn Iotic?”

“It took me several years to learn Pravic,” Shevek said. His mild irony passed Sabul by completely.

“I did it in ten decads. Well enough to read To’s Introduction. Oh, hell, you need a text to work on. Might as well be that. Here. Wait.” He hunted through an overflowing drawer and finally achieved a book, a queer-looking book, bound in blue, without the Circle of Life on the cover. The title was stamped in gold letters and seemed to say Poilea Afio-ite, which didn’t make any sense, and the shapes of some of the letters were unfamiliar. Shevek stared at it, took it from Sabul, but did not open it. He was holding it, the thing he had wanted to see, the alien artifact, the message from another world.

He remembered the book Palat had shown him, the book of numbers.

“Come back when you can read that,” Sabul growled.

Shevek turned to go. Sabul raised his growl: “Keep those books with you! They’re not for general consumption.”

The young man paused, turned back, and said after a moment in his calm, rather diffident voice, “I don’t understand.”

“Don’t let anybody else read them!”

Shevek made no response.

Sabul got up again and came close to him. “Listen. You’re now a member of the Central Institute of Sciences, a Physics syndic, working with me, Sabul. You follow that? Privilege is responsibility. Correct?”

“I’m to acquire knowledge which I’m not to share,” Shevek said after a brief pause, stating the sentence as if it were a proposition in logic.

“If you found a pack of explosive caps in the street would you ‘share’ them with every kid that went by? Those books are explosives. Now do you follow me?”