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.
Shevek managed to recognize one of them as Fae, and the others as men who had been with him all last evening. He explained that he had not caught their names, and they reintroduced themselves, smiling: Dr. Chifoilisk, Dr. Oiie, and Dr. Atro.
“Oh, by damn!” Shevek said, “Atro! I am glad to meet you!” He put his hands on the old man’s shoulders and kissed his cheek, before thinking that this brotherly greeting, common enough on Anarres, might not be acceptable here.
Atro, however, embraced him heartily in return, and looked up into his face with filmy grey eyes. Shevek realized that he was nearly blind. “My dear Shevek,” he said, “welcome to A-Io — welcome to Urras — welcome home!”
“So many years we have written letters, destroyed each other’s theories!”
“You were always the better destroyer. Here, hold on, I’ve got something for you.” The old man felt about in his pockets. Under his velvet university gown he wore a jacket, under that a vest, under that a shirt, and probably another layer under that. All of these garments, and his trousers, contained pockets. Shevek watched quite fascinated as Atro went through six or seven pockets, all containing belongings, before he came up with a small cube of yellow metal mounted on a bit of polished wood. “There,” he said, peering at it. “Your award. The Seo Oen prize, you know. The cash is in your account. Here. Nine years late, but better late than never.” His hands trembled as he handed the thing to Shevek.
It was heavy; the yellow cube was solid gold. Shevek stood motionless, holding it.
“I don’t know about you young men,” said Atro, “but I’m going to sit down.” They all sat down in the deep, soft chairs, which Shevek had already examined, puzzled by the material with which they were covered, a nonwoven brown stuff that felt like skin. “How old were you nine years ago, Shevek?”
Atro was the foremost living physicist on Urras. There was about him not only the dignity of age but also the blunt self-assurance of one accustomed to respect. This was nothing new to Shevek. Atro had precisely the one kind of authority that Shevek recognized. Also, it gave him pleasure to be addressed at last simply by his name.
“I was twenty-nine when I finished the Principles, Atro.”
“Twenty-nine? Good God. That makes you the youngest recipient of the Seo Oen for a century or so. Didn’t get around to giving me mine till I was sixty or so… How old were you, then, when you first wrote me?”
“About twenty.”
Atro snorted. “Took you for a man of forty then!”
“What about Sabul?” Oiie inquired. Oiie was even shorter than most Urrasti, who all seemed short to Shevek; he had a flat, bland face and oval, jet-black eyes. “There was a period of six or eight years when you never wrote, and Sabul kept in touch with us; but he never has talked on your radio link-up with us. We’ve wondered what your relationship is.”
“Sabul is the senior member of the Abbenay Institute in physics,” said Shevek. “I used to work with him.”
“An older rival; jealous; meddled with your books; been clear enough. We hardly need an explanation, Oiie,” said the fourth man, Chifoilisk, in a harsh voice. He was middle-aged, a swarthy, stocky man with the fine hands of a desk worker. He was the only one of them whose face was not completely shaven: he had left the chin bristling to match his short, iron-grey head hair. “No need to pretend that all you Odonian brothers are full of brotherly love,” he said. “Human nature is human nature.”
Shevek’s lack of response was saved from seeming significant by a volley of sneezes. “I do not have a handkerchief,” he apologized, wiping his eyes.
“Take mine,” said Atro, and produced a snowy handkerchief from one of his many pockets. Shevek took it, and as he did so an importunate memory wrung his heart. He thought of his daughter Sadik, a little dark-eyed girl, saying, “You can share the handkerchief I use.” That memory, which was very dear to him, was unbearably painful now. Trying to escape it, he smiled at random and said, “I am allergic to your planet. The doctor says this.”
“Good God, you won’t be sneezing like that permanently?” old Atro asked, peering at him.
“Hasn’t your man been in yet?” said Pae.
“My man?”
“The servant. He was supposed to bring you some things. Handkerchiefs included. Just enough to tide you over till you can shop for yourself. Nothing choice — I’m afraid there’s very little choice in ready-made clothes for a man your height!”
When Shevek had sorted this out (Pae spoke in a rapid drawl, which matched with his soft, handsome features), he said, “That is kind of you. I feel—” He looked at Atro. “I am, you know the Beggarman,” he said to the old man, as he had said to Dr. Kimoe on the Mindful. “I could not bring money, we do not use it. I could not bring gifts, we use nothing that you lack. So I come, like a good Odonian, ‘with empty hands.’ ”
Atro and Pae assured him that he was a guest, there was no question of payment, it was their privilege. “Besides,” Chifoilisk said in his sour voice, “the Ioti Government foots the bill.”
Pae gave him a sharp glance, but Chifoilisk, instead of returning it, looked straight at Shevek. On his swarthy face was an expression that he made no effort to hide, but which Shevek could not interpret: warning, or complicity?
“There speaks the unregenerate Thuvian,” old Atro said with his snort. “But you mean to say, Shevek, that you brought nothing at all with you — no papers, no new work? I was looking forward to a book. Another revolution in physics. See these pushy young fellows stood on their heads, the way you stood me with the Principles. What have you been working on?”
“Well, I have been reading Pae — Dr. Pae’s paper on the block universe, on Paradox and Relativity.”
“All very well. Saio’s our current star, no doubt of that. Least of all in his own mind, eh, Saio? But what’s that to do with the price of cheese? Where’s your General Temporal Theory?”
“In my head,” said Shevek with a broad, genial smile.
There was a very little pause.