“No one ever defies it?”

“Perhaps not often enough,” Shevek said.

“Does everybody work so hard, then?” Oiie’s wife asked. “What happens to a man who just won’t cooperate?”

“Well, he moves on. The others get tired of him, you know. They make fun of him, or they get rough with him, beat him up; in a small community they might agree to take his name off the meals listing, so he has to cook and eat all by himself; that is humiliating. So he moves on, and stays in another place for a while, and then maybe moves on again. Some do it all their lives. Nuchnibi they’re called. I am a sort of nuchnib. I am here evading my own work posting. I moved farther than most.” Shevek spoke tranquilly; if there was bitterness in his voice it was not discernible to the children, nor explicable to the adults. But a little silence followed on his words.

“I don’t know who does the dirty work here,” he said. “I never see it being done. It’s strange. Who does it? Why do they do it? Are they paid more?”

“For dangerous work, sometimes. For merely menial tasks, no. Less.”

“Why do they do them, then?”

“Because low pay is better than no pay,” Oiie said, and the bitterness in his voice was quite clear. His wife began speaking nervously to change the subject, but he went on, “My grandfather was a janitor. Scrubbed floors and changed dirty sheets in a hotel for fifty years. Ten hours a day, six days a week. He did it so that he and his family could eat.” Oiie stopped abruptly, and glanced at Shevek with his old secretive, distrustful look, and then, almost with defiance, at his wife. She did not meet his eyes. She smiled and said in a nervous, childish voice, “Demaere’s father was a very successful man. He owned four companies when he died.” Her smile was that of a person in pain, and her dark, slender hands were pressed tightly one over the other.

“I don’t suppose you have successful men on Anarres,” Oiie said with heavy sarcasm. Then the cook entered to change the plates, and he stopped speaking at once. The child Ini, as if knowing that the serious talk would not resume while the servant was there, said, “Mother, may Mr. Shevek see my otter when dinner’s over?”

When they returned to the sitting room Ini was allowed to bring in his pet: a half-grown land otter, a common animal on Urras. They had been domesticated, Oiie explained, since prehistoric times, first for use as fish retrievers, then as pets. The creature had short legs, an arched and supple back, glossy dark-brown fur. It was the first uncaged animal Shevek had seen close up, and it was more fearless of him than he was of it. The white, sharp teeth were impressive. He put his hand out cautiously to stroke it, as Ini insisted he do. The otter sat up on its haunches and looked at him. Its eyes were dark, shot with gold, intelligent, curious, innocent. “Ammar,” Shevek whispered, caught by that gaze across the gulf of being—“brother.”