“The difference of the idea,” he said. “It was for that idea that I came here, too. For Anarres. Since my people refuse to look outward, I thought I might make others look at us. I thought it would be better not to hold apart behind a wall, but to be a society among the others, a world among the others, giving and taking. But there I was wrong — I was absolutely wrong.”
“Why so? Surely—”
“Because there is nothing, nothing on Urras that we Anarresti need! We left with empty hands, a hundred and seventy years ago, and we were right We took nothing. Because there is nothing here but States and their weapons, the rich and their lies, and the poor and their misery. There is no way to act rightly, with a clear heart, on Urras. There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and the wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is ‘superior’ to the other, or trying to prove it You cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate1 them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. You cannot touch another person, yet they will not leave you alone. There is no freedom. It is a box — Urras is a box, a package, with all the beautiful wrapping of blue sky and meadows and forests and great cities. And you open the box, and what is inside it? A black cellar full of dust, and a dead man. A man whose hand was shot off because he held it out to others. I have been in Hell at last. Desar was right; it is Urras; Hell is Urras.”
For all his passion he spoke simply, with a kind of humility, and again the Ambassador from Terra watched him with a guarded yet sympathetic wonder, as if she had no idea how to take that simplicity.
“We are both aliens here, Shevek,” she said at last. “I from much farther away in space and time. Yet I begin to think that I am much less alien to Urras than you are… Let me tell you how this world seems to me. To me, and to all my fellow Terrans who have seen the planet, Urras; is the kindliest, most various, most beautiful of all the inhabited worlds. It is the world that comes as close as any could to Paradise.”
She looked at him calmly and keenly; he said nothing.
“I know it’s full of evils, full of human injustice, greed, folly, waste. But ft is also full of good, of beauty, vitality, achievement. It is what a world should be! It is alive, tremendously alive — alive, despite all its evils, with hope:. Is that not true?”
He nodded.
“Now, you man from a world I cannot even imagine, you who see my Paradise as Hell, will you ask what my world must be like?”
He was silent, watching her, his light eyes steady.
“My world, my Earth, is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and gobbled and fought until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first. There are no forests left on my Earth. The air is grey, the sky is grey, it is always hot. It is habitable, it is still habitable, but not as this world is. This is a living world, a harmony. Mine is a discord. You Odonians chose a desert; we Terrans made a desert… We survive there, as you do. People are tough! There are nearly a half billion of us now. Once there were nine billion. You can see the old cities still everywhere. The bones and bricks go to dust, but the little pieces of plastic never do — they never adapt either. We failed as a species, as a social species. We are here now, dealing as equals with other human societies on other worlds, only because of the charity of the Hainish. They came; they brought us help. They built ships and gave-them to us, so we could leave our ruined world. They treat us gently, charitably, as the strong man treats the sick one. They are a very strange people, the Hainish; older than any of us; infinitely generous. They are altruists. They are moved by a guilt we don’t even understand, despite all our crimes. They are moved in all they do, I think, by the past, their endless past Well, we had saved what could be saved, and made a kind of life in the ruins, on Terra, in the only way it could be done: by total centralization. Total control over the use of every acre of land, every scrap of metal, every ounce of fuel. Total rationing, birth control, euthanasia, universal conscription into the labor force. The absolute regimentation of each life toward the goal of racial survival. We had achieved that much, when the Hainish came. They brought us… a little more hope. Not very much. We have outlived it… We can only look at this splendid world, this vital society, this Urras, this Paradise, from the outside. We are capable-only of admiring it, and maybe envying it a little. Not very much.”
“Then Anarres, as you heard me speak of it — what would Anarres mean to you, Keng?”
“Nothing. Nothing, Shevek. We forfeited our chance for Anarres centuries ago, before it ever came into being.”
Shevek got up and went over to the window, one of the long horizontal window slits of the tower. There was si niche in the wall below it, into which an archer would step up to look down and aim at assailants at the gate; if one did not take that step up one could see nothing from it but the sunwashed, slightly misty sky. Shevek stood below the window gazing out, the light filling his eyes.
“You don’t understand what time is,” he said. “You say the past is gone, the future is not real, there is no change, no hope. You think Anarres is a future that cannot be reached, as your past cannot be changed. So there is nothing but the present, this Urras, the rich, real, stable present, the moment now. And you think that is something which can be possessed! You envy it a little. You think it’s something you would like to have. But it is no real, you know. It is not stable, not solid — nothing is. Things change, change. You cannot have anything… And least of all can you have the present, unless you accept with it the past and the future. Not only the past but also the future, not only the future but also the past! Because they are reaclass="underline" only their reality makes the present real. You will not achieve or even understand Urras unless you accept the reality, the enduring reality, of Anarres. You are right, we are the key. But when you said that, you did not really believe it. You don’t believe in Anarres. You don’t believe in me, though I stand with you, in this room, in this moment… My people were right, and I was wrong, in this: We cannot come to you. You will not let us. You do not believe in change, in chance, in evolution. You would destroy us rather than admit our reality, rather than admit that there is hope! We cannot come to you. We can only wait for you to come to us.”
Keng sat with a startled and thoughtful, and perhaps slightly dazed, expression.
“I don’t understand — I don’t understand,” she said at last. “You are like somebody from our own past, the old idealists, the visionaries of freedom; and yet I don’t understand you, as if you were trying to tell me of future things; and yet, as you say, you are here, now!…” She had not lost her shrewdness. She said after a little while, “Then why is it that you came to me, Shevek?”
“Oh, to give you the idea. My theory, you know. To save it from becoming a property of the Ioti, an investment or a weapon. If you are willing, the simplest thing to do would be to broadcast the equations, to give them to physicists all over this world, and to the Hainish and the other worlds, as soon as possible. Would you be willing to do that?”
“More than willing.”
“It will come to only a few pages. The proofs and some of the implications would take longer, but that can come later, and other people can work on them if I cannot.”