The Dispossessed

by Ursula Le Guin

  “I don’t think,” Takver said, muffled in the bed, and defensively, “that Tir was a very strong person.”

  “No, he was extremely vulnerable.”

  There was a long silence.

  “No wonder he haunts you,” she said. “His play. Your book.”

  “But I’m luckier. A scientist can pretend that his work isn’t himself, it’s merely the impersonal truth. An artist can’t hide behind the truth. He can’t hide anywhere.”

  Takver watched him from the corner of her eye for some time, then turned over and sat up, pulling the blanket up around her shoulders. “Brr! It’s cold…I was wrong, wasn’t I, about the book. About letting Sabul cut it up and put his name on it. It seemed right. It seemed like setting the work before the workman, pride before vanity, community before ego, all that. But it wasn’t really that at all, was it? It was a capitulation. A surrender to Sabul’s authoritarianism.”

  “I don’t know. It did get the thing printed.”

  “The right end, but the wrong means! I thought about it for a long time, at Rolny, Shev. I’ll tell you what was wrong. I was pregnant. Pregnant women have no ethics. Only the most primitive kind of sacrifice impulse. To hell with the book, and the partnership, and the truth, if they threaten the precious fetus! It’s a racial preservation drive, but it can work right against community; it’s biological, not social. A man can be grateful he never gets into the grip of it. But he’d better realize than a woman can, and watch out for it. I think that’s why the old archisms used women as property. Why did the women let them? Because they were pregnant all the time—because they were already possessed, enslaved!”

  “All right, maybe, but our society, here, is a true community wherever it truly embodies Odo’s ideas. It was a woman who made the Promise! What are you doing—indulging guilt feelings? Wallowing?” The word he used was not “wallowing,” there being no animals on Anarres to make wallows; it was a compound, meaning literally “coating continually and thickly with excrement.” The flexibility and precision of Pravic lent itself to the creation of vivid metaphors quite unforeseen by its inventors.

  “Well, no. It was lovely, having Sadik! But I was wrong about the book.”

  “We were both wrong. We always go wrong together. You don’t really think you made up my mind for me?”

  “In that case I think I did.”

  “No. The fact is, neither of us made up our mind. Neither of us chose. We let Sabul choose for us. Our own, internalized Sabul—convention, moralism, fear of social ostracism, fear of being different, fear of being free! Well, never again. I learn slowly, but I learn.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Takver, a thrill of agreeable excitement in her voice.

  “Go to Abbenay with you and start a syndicate, a printing syndicate. Print the Principles, uncut. And whatever else we like. Bedap’s Sketch of Open Education in Science, that the PDC wouldn’t circulate. And Tirin’s play. I owe him that. He taught me what prisons are, and who builds them. Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to go unbuild walls.”

  “It may get pretty drafty,” Takver said, huddled in blankets. She leaned against him, and he put his arm around her shoulders. “I expect it will,” he said.

  Long after Takver had fallen asleep that night Shevek lay awake, his hands under his head, looking into darkness, hearing silence. He thought of his long trip out of the Dust, remembering the levels and mirages of the desert, the train driver with the bald, brown head and candid eyes, who had said that one must work with time and not against it.

  Shevek had learned something about his own will these last four years. In its frustration he had learned its strength. No social or ethical imperative equaled it. Not even hunger could repress it. The less he had, the more absolute became his need to be.

  He recognized that need, in Odonian terms, as his “cellular function,” the analogic term for the individual’s individuality, the work he can do best, therefore his best contribution to his society. A healthy society would let him exercise that optimum function freely, in the coordination of all such functions finding its adaptability and strength. That was a central idea of Odo’s Analogy. That the Odonian society on Anarres had fallen short of the ideal did not, in his eyes, lessen his responsibility to it; just the contrary. With the myth of the State out of the way, the real mutuality and reciprocity of society and individual became clear. Sacrifice might be demanded of the individual, but never compromise: for though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice—the power of change, the essential function of life. The Odonian society was conceived as a permanent revolution, and revolution begins in the thinking mind.

  All this Shevek had thought out, in these terms, for his conscience was a completely Odonian one.

  He was therefore certain, by now, that his radical and unqualified will to create was, in Odonian terms, its own justification. His sense of primary responsibility towards his work did not cut him off from his fellows, from his society, as he had thought. It engaged him with them absolutely.

  He also felt that a man who had this sense of responsibility about one thing was obliged to carry it through in all things. It was a mistake to see himself as its vehicle and nothing else, to sacrifice any other obligation to it.

  That sacrificiality was what Takver had spoken of recognizing in herself when she was pregnant, and she had spoken with a degree of horror, of self-disgust, because she too was an Odonian, and the separation of means and ends was, to her too, false. For her as for him, there was no end. There was process: process was all. You could go in a promising direction or you could go wrong, but you did not set out with the expectation of ever stopping anywhere. All responsibilities, all commitments thus understood took on substance and duration.

  So his mutual commitment with Takver, their relationship, had remained thoroughly alive during their four years’ separation. They had both suffered from it, and suffered a good deal, but it had not occurred to either of them to escape the suffering by denying the commitment.

  For after all, he thought now, lying in the warmth of Takver’s sleep, it was joy they were both after—the completeness of being. If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.

  Takver sighed softly in her sleep, as if agreeing with him, and turned over, pursuing some quiet dream.

  Fulfillment, Shevek thought, is a function of time. The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal. The variety seeking of the spectator, the thrill hunter, the sexually promiscuous, always ends in the same place. It has an end. It comes to the end and has to start over. It is not a journey and return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell.

  Outside the locked room is the landscape of time, in which the spirit may, with luck and courage, construct the fragile, makeshift, improbable roads and cities of fidelity: a landscape inhabitable by human beings.

  It is not until an act occurs within the landscape of the past and the future that it is a human act. Loyalty, which asserts the continuity of past and future, binding time into a whole, is the root of human strength; there is no good to be done without it.

  So, looking back on the last four years, Shevek saw them not as wasted, but as part of the edifice that he and Takver were building with their lives. The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.

  11RODARRED, the old capital of Avan Province, was a pointed city: a forest of pines, and above the spires of the pines, an airier forest of towers. The streets were dark and narrow, mossy, often misty, under the trees. Only from the seven bridges across the river could one look up and see the tops of the towers. Some of them were hundreds of feet tall, others were mere shoots, like ordinary houses gone to seed. Some were of stone, others of
porcelain, mosaic, sheets of colored glass, sheathings of copper, tin, or gold, ornate beyond belief, delicate, glittering. In these hallucinatory and charming streets the Urrasti Council of World Governments had had its seat for the three hundred years of its existence. Many embassies and consulates to the CWG and to A-Io also clustered in Rodarred, only an hour’s ride from Nio Esseia and the National seat of government.

  The Terran Embassy to the CWG was housed in the River Castle, which crouched between the Nio highway and the river, sending up only one squat, grudging tower with a square roof and lateral window slits like narrowed eyes. Its walls had withstood weapons and weathers for fourteen hundred years. Dark trees clustered near its landward side, and between them a drawbridge lay across a moat. The drawbridge was down, and its gates stood open. The moat, the river, the green grass, the black walls, the flag on top of the tower, all glimmered mistily as the sun broke through a river fog, and the bells in all the towers of Rodarred began their prolonged and insanely harmonious task of ringing seven o’clock.

  A clerk at the very modern reception desk inside the castle was occupied with a tremendous yawn. “We aren’t really open till eight o’clock,” he said hollowly.

  “I want to see the Ambassador.”

  “The Ambassador is at breakfast. You’ll have to make an appointment.” In saying this the clerk wiped his watery eyes and was able to see the visitor clearly for the first time. He stared, moved his jaw several times, and said, “Who are you? Where—What do you want?”

  “I want to see the Ambassador.”

  “You just hold on,” the clerk said in the purest Nioti accent, still staring, and put out his hand to a telephone.

  A car had just drawn up between the drawbridge gate and the entrance of the Embassy, and several men were getting out of it, the metal fittings of their black coats glittering in the sunlight. Two other men had just entered the lobby from the main part of the building, talking together, strange-looking people, strangely clothed. Shevek hurried around the reception desk towards them, trying to run. “Help me!” he said.

  They looked up startled. One drew back, frowning. The other one looked past Shevek at the uniformed group who were just entering the Embassy. “Right in here,” he said with coolness, took Shevek’s arm, and shut himself and Shevek into a little side office, with two steps and a gesture, as neat as a ballet dancer.

  “What’s up? You’re from Nio Esseia?”

  “I want to see the Ambassador.”

  “Are you one of the strikers?”

  “Shevek. My name is Shevek. From Anarres.”

  The alien eyes flashed, brilliant, intelligent, in the jet-black face. “Mai-god!” the Terran said under his breath, and then, in Iotic, “Are you asking asylum?”

  “I don’t know. I—”

  “Come with me, Dr. Shevek. I’ll get you somewhere you can sit down.”

  There were halls, stairs, the black man’s hand on his arm.

  People were trying to take his coat off. He struggled against them, afraid they were after the notebook in his shirt pocket. Somebody spoke authoritatively in a foreign language. Somebody else said to him, “It’s all right. He’s trying to find out if you’re hurt. Your coat’s bloody.”

  “Another man,” Shevek said. “Another man’s blood.”

  He managed to sit up, though his head swam. He was on a couch in a large, sunlit room; apparently he had fainted. A couple of men and a woman stood near him. He looked at them without understanding.

  “You are in the Embassy of Terra, Dr. Shevek. You are on Terran soil here. You are perfectly safe. You can stay here as long as you want.”

  The woman’s skin was yellow-brown, like ferrous earth, and hairless, except on the scalp; not shaven, but hairless. The features were strange and childlike, small mouth, low-bridged nose, eyes with long full lids, cheeks and chin rounded, fat-padded. The whole figure was rounded, supple, childlike.

  “You are safe here,” she repeated.

  He tried to speak, but could not. One of the men pushed him gently on the chest, saying, “Lie down, lie down.” He lay back, but he whispered, “I want to see the Ambassador.”

  “I’m the Ambassador. Keng is my name. We are glad you came to us. You are safe here. Please rest now, Dr. Shevek, and we’ll talk later. There is no hurry.” Her voice had an odd, singsong quality, but it was husky, like Takver’s voice.

  “Takver,” he said, in his own language, “I don’t know what to do.”

  She said, “Sleep,” and he slept.

  After two days’ sleep and two days’ meals, dressed again in his grey Ioti suit, which they had cleaned and pressed for him, he was shown into the Ambassador’s private salon on the third floor of the tower.

  The Ambassador neither bowed to him nor shook his hand, but joined her hands palm to palm before her breast and smiled. “I’m glad you feel better, Dr. Shevek. No, I should say simply Shevek, should I? Please sit down. I’m sorry that I have to speak to you in Iotic, a foreign language to both of us. I don’t know your language. I am told that it’s a most interesting one, the only rationally invented language that has become the tongue of a great people.”

  He felt big, heavy, hairy, beside this suave alien. He sat down in one of the deep, soft chairs. Keng also sat down, but grimaced as she did so. “I have a bad back,” she said, “from sitting in these comfortable chairs!” And Shevek realized then that she was not a woman of thirty or less, as he had thought, but was sixty or more; her smooth skin and childish physique had deceived him. “At home,” she went on, “we mostly sit on cushions on the floor. But if I did that here I would have to look up even more at everyone. You Cetians are all so tall!…We have a little problem. That is, we really do not, but the government of A-Io does. Your people on Anarres, the ones who maintain radio communication with Urras, you know, have been asking very urgently to speak with you. And the Ioti Government is embarrassed.” She smiled, a smile of pure amusement. “They don’t know what to say.”

  She was calm. She was calm as a waterworn stone which, contemplated, calms. Shevek sat back in his chair and took a very considerable time to answer.

  “Does the Ioti Government know that I’m here?”

  “Well, not officially. We have said nothing, they have not asked. But we have several Ioti clerks and secretaries working here in the Embassy. So, of course, they know.”

  “Is it a danger to you—my being here?”

  “Oh no. Our embassy is to the Council of World Governments, not to the nation of A-Io. You had a perfect right to come here, which the rest of the Council would force A-Io to admit. And as I told you, this castle is Terran soil.” She smiled again; her smooth face folded into many little creases, and unfolded. “A delightful fantasy of diplomats! This castle eleven light-years from my Earth, this room in a tower in Rodarred, in A-Io, on the planet Urras of the sun Tau Ceti, is Terran soil.”

  “Then you can tell them I am here.”

  “Good. It will simplify matters. I wanted your consent.”

  “There was no…message for me, from Anarres?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I didn’t think of it from your point of view. If you are worried about something, we might broadcast to Anarres. We know the wave length your people there have been using, of course, but we haven’t used it because we were not invited to. It seemed best not to press. But we can easily arrange a conversation for you.”

  “You have a transmitter?”

  “We would relay through our ship—the Hainish ship that stays in orbit around Urras. Hain and Terra work together, you know. The Hainish Ambassador knows you’re with us; he is the only person who has been officially informed. So the radio is at your service.”

  He thanked her, with the simplicity of one who does not look behind the offer for the offer’s motive. She studied him for a moment, her eyes shrewd, direct, and quiet. “I heard your speech,” she said.

  He looked at her as from a distance. “Speech?”

  “When
you spoke at the great demonstration in Capitol Square. A week ago today. We always listen to the clandestine radio, the Socialist Workers’ and the Libertarians’ broadcasts. Of course, they were reporting the demonstration. I heard you speak. I was very moved. Then there was a noise, a strange noise, and one could hear the crowd beginning to shout. They did not explain. There was screaming. Then it died off the air suddenly. It was terrible, terrible to listen to. And you were there. How did you escape from that? How did you get out of the city? Old Town is still cordoned off; there are three regiments of the army in Nio; they round up strikers and suspects by the dozen and hundred every day. How did you get here?”

  He smiled faintly. “In a taxi.”

  “Through all the checkpoints? And in that bloodstained coat? And everyone knows what you look like.”

  “I was under the back seat. The taxi was commandeered, is that the word? It was a risk some people took for me.” He looked down at his hands, clasped on his lap. He sat perfectly quietly and spoke quietly, but there was an inner tension, a strain, visible in his eyes and in the lines around his mouth. He thought awhile, and went on in the same detached way, “It was luck, at first. When I came out of hiding, I was lucky not to be arrested at once. But I got into Old Town. After that it was not just luck. They thought for me where I might go, they planned how to get me there, they took the risks.” He said a word in his own language, then translated it: “Solidarity…”

  “It is very strange,” said the Ambassador from Terra. “I know almost nothing about your world, Shevek. I know only what the Urrasti tell us, since your people won’t let us come there. I know, of course, that the planet is arid and bleak, and how the colony was founded, that it is an experiment in nonauthoritarian communism, that it has survived for a hundred and seventy years. I have read a little of Odo’s writings—not very much. I thought that it was all rather unimportant to matters on Urras now, rather remote, an interesting experiment. But I was wrong, wasn’t I? It is important. Perhaps Anarres is the key to Urras…The revolutionists in Nio, they come from that same tradition. They weren’t just striking for better wages or protesting the draft. They are not only socialists, they are anarchists; they were striking against power. You see, the size of the demonstration, the intensity of popular feeling, and the government’s panic reaction, all seemed very hard to understand. Why so much commotion? The government here is not despotic. The rich are very rich indeed, but the poor are not so very poor. They are neither enslaved nor starving. Why aren’t they satisfied with bread and speeches? Why are they supersensitive?…Now I begin to see why. But what is still inexplicable is that the government of A-Io, knowing this libertarian tradition was still alive, and knowing the discontent in the industrial cities, still brought you here. Like bringing the match to the powder mill!”