Oiie asked him if he had seen the work on relativity theory by an alien physicist, Ainsetain of Terra. Shevek had not. They were intensely interested in it, except for Atro, who had outlived intensity. Pae ran off to his room to get Shevek a copy of the translation. “It’s several hundred years old, but there’s fresh ideas in it for us,” he said.
“Maybe,” said Atro, “but none of these offworlders can follow our physics. The Hainish call it materialism, and the Terrans call it mysticism, and then they both give up. Don’t let this fad for everything alien sidetrack you, Shevek. They’ve got nothing for us. Dig your own pigweed, as my father used to say.” He gave his senile snort and levered himself up out of the chair. “Come on out for a turn in the Grove with me. No wonder you’re stuffy, cooped up in here.”
“The doctor says I’m to stay in this room three days. I might be — infected? Infectious?”
“Never pay any attention to doctors, my dear fellow.”
“Perhaps in this case, though, Dr. Atro,” Pae suggested in his easy, conciliating voice.
“After all, the doctor’s from the Government, isn’t he?” said Chifoilisk, with evident malice.
“Best man they could find, I’m sure,” Atro said unsmiling, and took his leave without urging Shevek further. Chifoilisk went with him. The two younger men stayed with Shevek, talking physics, for a long time.
With immense pleasure, and with that same sense of profound recognition, of finding something the way it was meant to be, Shevek discovered for the first time in his life the conversation of his equals.
Mitis, though a splendid teacher, had never been able to follow him into the new areas of theory that he had, with her encouragement, begun to explore. Gvarab was the only person he had met whose training and ability were comparable to his own, and he and Gvarab had met too late, at the very end of her life. Since those days Shevek had worked with many people of talent, but because he had never been a full-time member of the Abbenay Institute, he had never been able to take them far enough; they remained bogged down in the old problems, the classical Sequency physics. He had had no equals. Here, in the realm of inequity, he met them at last.
It was a revelation, a liberation. Physicists, mathematicians, astronomers, logicians, biologists, all were here at the University, and they came to him or he went to them, and they talked, and new worlds were born of their talking. It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass, It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.
Even on that first afternoon at the University, with Oiie and Pae, he knew he had found something he had longed for ever since, as boys and on a boyish level, he and Tirin and Bedap had used to talk half the night, teasing and daring each other into always bolder flights of mind. He vividly remembered some of those nights. He saw Tirin, Tirin saying, “If we knew what Urras was really like, maybe some of us would want to go there.” And he had been so shocked by the idea that he had jumped all over Tirin, and Tir had backed down at once; he had always backed down, poor damned soul, and he had always been right.
Conversation had stopped. Pae and Oiie were silent.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “The head is heavy.”
“How’s the gravity?” Pae asked, with the charming smile of a man who, like a bright child, counts on his charm.
“I don’t notice,” Shevek said. “Only in the, what is this?”
“Knees — knee joints.”
“Yes, knees. Function is impaired. But I will get accustomed.” He looked at Pae, then at One. “There is a question. But I don’t wish to give offense.”
“Never fear, sir!” Pae said.
Oiie said, “I’m not sure you know how.” Oiie was not a likable fellow, like Pae. Even talking physics he had an evasive, secretive style. And yet beneath the style, there was something, Shevek felt, to trust; whereas beneath Pae’s charm, what was there? Well, no matter. He had to trust them all, and would. “Where are women?”
Pae laughed. Oiie smiled and asked, “In what sense?”
“All senses. I met women at the party last night — five, ten — hundreds of men. None were scientists, I think. Who were they?”
“Wives. One of them was my wife, in fact,” Oiie said with his secretive smile.
“Where are other women?”
“Oh, no difficulty at all there, sir,” Pae said promptly. “Just tell us your preferences, and nothing could be simpler to provide.”
“One does hear some picturesque speculations about Anarresti customs, but I rather think we can come up with almost anything you had in mind,” said Oiie.
Shevek had no idea what they were talking about. He scratched his head. “Are all the scientists here men, then?”
“Scientists?” Oiie asked, incredulous.
Pae coughed. “Scientists. Oh, yes, certainly, they’re all men. There are some female teachers in the girls’ schools, of course. But they never get past Certificate level.”
“Why not?”
“Can’t do the math; no head for abstract thought; don’t belong. You know how it is, what women call thinking is done with the uterus! Of course, there’s always a few exceptions, Godawful brainy women with vaginal atrophy.”
“You Odonians let women study science?” Oiie inquired.
“Well, they are in the sciences, yes.”
“Not many, I hope.”
“Well, about half.”
“I’ve always said,” said Pae, “that girl technicians properly handled could take a good deal of the load off the men in any laboratory situation. They’re actually defter and quicker than men at repetitive tasks, and more docile — less easily bored. We could free men for original work much sooner, if we used women.”
“Not in my lab, you won’t,” said Oiie. “Keep ’em in their place.”
“Do you find any women capable of original .intellectual work, Dr. Shevek?”
“Well, it was more that they found me. Mitis, in North-setting, was my teacher. Also Gvarab; you know of her, I think.”
“Gvarab was a woman?” Pae said in genuine surprise, and laughed.
Oiie looked unconvinced and offended. “Can’t tell from your names, of course,” he said coldly. “You make a point, I suppose, of drawing no distinction between the sexes.”
Shevek said mildly, “Odo was a woman.”
“There you have it,” Oiie said. He did not shrug, but he very nearly shrugged. Pae looked respectful, and nodded, just as he did when old Atro maundered.
Shevek saw that he had touched in these men an impersonal animosity that went very deep. Apparently they, like the tables on the ship, contained a woman, a suppressed, silenced, bestialized woman, a fury in a cage. He had no right to tease them. They knew no relation but possession. They were possessed.
“A beautiful, virtuous woman,” Pae said, “is an inspiration to us — the most precious thing on earth.”
Shevek felt extremely uncomfortable. He got up and went over to the windows. “Your world is very beautiful,” he said. “I wish I could see more. While I must stay inside, will you give me books?”
“Of course, sir! What sort?”
“History, pictures, stories, anything. Maybe they should be books for children. You see, I know very little. We learn about Urras, but mostly about Odo’s times. Before that was eight and one half thousand years! And then since the Settlement of Anarres is a century and a half; since the last ship brought the last Settlers — ignorance. We ignore you; you ignore us. You are our history. We are perhaps your future. I want to learn, not to ignore. It is the reason I came. We must know each other. We are not primitive men. Our morality is no longer tribal, it cannot be. Such ignorance is a wrong, from which wrong will arise. So I come to learn.”