“A money economy based on the principle that each worker is paid as he deserves, for the value of his labor — not by capitalists whom he’s forced to serve, but by the state of which he’s a member!”
“Does he establish the value of his own labor?”
“Why don’t you come to Thu and see how real socialism functions?”
“I know how real socialism functions,” Shevek said. “I could tell you, but would your government let me explain it, in Thu?”
Chifoilisk kicked a log that had not yet caught. His expression as he stared down into the fire was bitter, the lines between the nose and the corners of his lips cut deep. He did not answer Shevek’s question. He said at last, “I’m not going to try to play games with you. It’s no good; anyhow I won’t do it. What I have to ask you is this: would you be willing to come to Thu?”
“Not now, Chifoilisk.”
“But what can you accomplish — here?”
“My work. And also, here I am near the seat of the Council of World Governments—”
“The CWG? They’ve been in A-Io’s pocket for thirty years. Don’t look to them to save you!”
A pause. “Am I in danger, then?”
“You didn’t realize even that?”
Another pause.
“against whom do you warn me?” Shevek asked.
“against Pae, in the first place.”
“Oh, yes, Pae.” Shevek leaned his hands against the ornate, gold-inlaid mantelpiece. “Pae is a pretty good physicist. And very obliging. But I don’t trust him.”
“Why not?”
“Well… he evades.”
“Yes. An acute psychological judgment. But Pae isn’t dangerous to you because he’s personally slippery, Shevek. He’s dangerous to you because he is a loyal, ambitious agent of the Ioti Government. He reports on you, and on me, regularly to the Department of National Security — the secret police. I don’t underestimate you, God knows, but don’t you see, your habit of approaching, everybody as a person, an individual, won’t do here, it won’t work. You have got to understand the powers behind the individuals.”
While Chifoilisk spoke, Shevek’s relaxed posture had stiffened; he now stood straight, like Chifoilisk, looking down at the fire. He said, “How do you know that about Pae?”
“By the same means I know that your room contains a concealed microphone, just as mine does. Because it’s my business to know it.”
“Are you also an agent of your government?”
Chifoilisk’s face closed down; then he turned suddenly to Shevek, speaking softly and with hatred. “Yes,” ho said, “of course I am. If I weren’t I wouldn’t be here, Everyone knows that. My government sends abroad only men whom it can trust. And they can trust me! Because I haven’t been bought, like all these damned rich Ioti professors. I believe in my government, in my country. I have faith in them.” He forced his words out in a kind of torment. “You’ve got to look around you, Shevek! You’re a child among thieves. They’re good to you, they give you a nice room, lectures, students, money, tours of castles, tours of model factories, visits to pretty villages. All the best. All lovely, fine! But why? Why do they bring you here from the Moon, praise you, print your books, keep you so safe and snug in the lecture rooms and laboratories and libraries? Do you think they do it out of scientific, disinterest, out of brotherly love? This is a profit economy, Shevek!”
“I know. I came to bargain with it”
“Bargain — what? For what?”
Shevek’s face had taken on the cold, grave look it had worn when he left the Fort in Drio. “You know what I want Chifoilisk. I want my people to come out of exile. I came here because I don’t think you want that, in Thu. You are afraid of us, there. You fear we might bring back the revolution, the old one, the real one, the revolution for justice which you began and then stopped halfway. Here in A-Io they fear me less because they have forgotten the revolution. They don’t believe in it any more. They think if people can possess enough things they will be content to live in prison. But I will not believe that. I want the walls down. I want solidarity, human solidarity. I want free exchange between Urras and Anarres. I worked for it as I could on Anarres, now I work for it as I can on Urras. There, I acted. Here, I bargain.”
“With what?”
“Oh, you know, Chifoilisk,” Shevek said in a low voice, with diffidence. “You know what it is they want from me.”
“Yes, I know, but I didn’t know you did,” the Thuvian said, also speaking low; his harsh voice became a harsher murmur, all breath and fricatives. “You’ve got it, then — the General Temporal Theory?”
Shevek looked at him, perhaps with a touch of irony.
Chifoilisk insisted: “Does it exist in writing?”
Shevek continued to look at him for a minute, and then answered directly, “No.”
“Good!”
“Why?”
“Because if it did, they’d have it”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. Listen, wasn’t it Odo who said that where there’s property there’s theft?”
“’To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.’ The Social Organism.”
“All right. Where there are papers in locked rooms, there are people with keys to the rooms!”
Shevek winced. “Yes,” he said presently, “this is very disagreeable.”
“To you. Not to me. I haven’t your individualistic moral scruples, you know. I knew you didn’t have the Theory down in writing. If I’d thought you had, I would have made every effort to get it from you, by persuasion, by theft, by force if I thought we could abduct you without bringing on a war with A-Io. Anything, so that I could get it away from these fat Ioti capitalists and into the hands of the Central Presidium of my country. Because the highest cause I can ever serve is the strength and welfare of my country.”
“You are lying,” Shevek said peaceably. “I think you are a patriot, yes. But you set above patriotism your respect for the truth, scientific truth, and perhaps also your loyalty to individual persons. You would not betray me.”
“I would if I could,” Chifoilisk said savagely. He started to go on, stopped, and finally said with angry resignation, “Think as you please. I can’t open your eyes for you. But remember, we want you. If you finally see what’s going on here, then come to Thu. You picked the wrong people to try to make brothers of! And if — I have no business saying this. But it doesn’t matter. If you won’t come to us in Thu, at least don’t give your Theory to the Ioti. Don’t give the usurers anything! Get out. Go home. Give your own people what you have to give!”
“They don’t want it,” Shevek said, expressionless. “Do you think I did not try?”
Four or five days later Shevek, asking after Chifoilisk, was informed that he had gone back to Thu. “To stay? He didn’t tell me he was leaving.”
“A Thuvian never knows when he’s going to get an order from his Presidium,” Pae said, for of course it was Pae who told Shevek. “He just knows that when it comes he’d better hop. And not stop for any leavetakings on the way. Poor old Chif! I wonder what he did wrong?”
Shevek went once or twice a week to see Atro in the pleasant little house on the edge of the campus where he lived with a couple of servants, as old as himself, to look after him. At nearly eighty he was, as he put it himself, a monument to a first-class physicist. Though he had not seen his life work go unrecognized as Gvarab had, through sheer age he had attained something of her disinterestedness. His interest in Shevek, at least, appeared to be entirely personal — a comradeship. He had been the first Sequency physicist to be converted to Shevek’s approach to the understanding of time. He had fought, with Shevek’s weapons, for Shevek’s theories, against the whole establishment of scientific respectability, and the battle had gone on for several years before the publication of the uncut Principles of Simultaneity and the promptly ensuing victory of the Simultaneists. That battle had been the high point of Atro’s life. He would not have fought for less than the truth, but it was the fighting he had loved, better than the truth.