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It's not in the Organic Style."
"No wonder I never heard any professional music while I lived in Northsetting. But how can they
justify this kind of censorship? You write music! Music is a cooperative art, organic by definition, social.
It may be the noblest form of social behavior we're capable of. It's certainly one of the noblest jobs an
individual can undertake. And by its nature, by the nature of any art, it's a sharing. The artist shares, it's
the essence of his act. No matter what your syndics say, how can Divlab justify not giving you a posting
in your own field?"
"They don't want to share it," Salas said gleefully. "It scares 'em."
Bedap spoke more gravely: "They can justify it because music isn't useful. Canal digging is important,
you know; music's mere decoration. The circle has come right back around to the most vile kind of
profiteering utilitarianism. The complexity, the vitality, the freedom of invention and initiative that was the
center of the Odonian ideal, we've thrown it all away. We've gone right back to barbarism. If it's new,
run away from it; if you can't eat it, throw it away!"
Shevek thought of his own work and had nothing to say. Yet he could not join in Bedap's criticism.
Bedap had forced him to realize that he was, in fact, a revolutionary; but he felt profoundly that he was
such by virtue of his upbringing and education as an Odonian and an Anarresti. He could not rebel
against his society, because his society, properly conceived, was a revolution, a permanent one, an
ongoing process. To reassert its validity and strength, he thought, one need only act, without fear of
punishment and without hope of reward: act from the center of one's soul.
Bedap and some of his friends were taking off a decad together, going on a hiking tour in the Ne
Theras. He had persuaded Shevek to come. Shevek liked the prospect of ten days in the mountains, but
not the prospect of ten days of Bedap's opinions. Bedap's conversation was all too much like a Criticism
Session, the communal activity he had always liked least, when everybody stood up and complained
about defects in the functioning of the community and, usually, defects in the characters of the neighbors.
The nearer the vacation came the less he looked forward to it. But he stuck a notebook in his pocket, so
he could get away and pretend to be working, and went.
They met behind the Eastern Points trucking depot early in the morning, three women and three men.
Shevek did not know any of the women, and Bedap introduced him to only two of them. As they set off
on the road toward the mountains he fell in beside the third one. "Shevek," he said.
She said, "I know."
He realized that he must have met her somewhere before and should know her name. His ears got
red.
"Are you being funny?" Bedap asked, moving in on the left, "Takver was at Northsetting Institute with
us. She's been living in Abbenay for two years. Haven't you two seen each other here till now?"
"I've seen him a couple of times," the girl said, and laughed at him. She had the laugh of a person who
likes to eat well, a big, childish gape. She was tall and rather thin, with round arms and broad hips. She
was not very pretty; her face was swarthy, intelligent, and cheerful. In her eyes there was a darkness, not
the opacity of bright dark eyes but a quality of depth, almost like deep, black, fine ash, very soft. Shevek,
meeting her eyes, knew that he had committed an unforgivable fault in forgetting her and, in the instant of
knowing it, knew also that he had been forgiven. That he was in luck. That his luck had changed.
They started up into the mountains.
In the cold evening of the fourth day of their excursion he and Takver sat on the bare steep slope
above a gorge. Forty meters below them a mountain torrent rattled down the ravine among spraywet
rocks. There was little running water on Anarres; the water table was low in most places, rivers were
short. Only in the mountains were there quick-running streams. The sound of water shouting and
clattering and singing was new to them.
They had been scrambling up and down such gorges all day in the high country and were leg-weary.
The rest of their party were in the Wayshelter, a stone lodge built by and for vacationers, and well kept
up; the Ne Theras Federative was the most active of the volunteer groups that managed and protected
the rather limited "scenic" areas of Anarres. A firewarden who lived there in summer was helping Bedap
and the others put together a dinner from the well-stocked pantries. Takver and Shevek had gone out, in
that order, separately, without announcing their destination or, in fact, knowing it.
He found her on the steep slope, sitting among the delicate bushes of moonthorn that grew like knots
of lace over the mountainsides, its stiff, fragile branches silvery in the twilight. In a gap between eastern
peaks a colorless luminosity of the sky heralded moonrise. The stream was noisy in the silence of the
high, bare hills. There was no wind, no cloud. The air above the mountains was like amethyst, hard, clear,
profound.
They had been sitting there some while without speaking.
"I've never been drawn to a woman in my life as I have been to you. Ever since we started this hike."
Shevek's tone was cold, almost resentful.
"I didn't mean to spoil your vacation," she said, with her large childish laugh, too loud for the twilight.
"It doesn't spoil it!"
"That's good. I thought you meant it distracted you."
"Distracted! It's like an earthquake."
"Thank you."
"It's not you," he said harshly. "It's me."
"That's what you think," she said.
There was a longish pause.
"If you want to copulate," she said, "why haven't you asked me?"
"Because I'm not sure that's what I do want."
"Neither am I." Her smile was gone. "Listen," she said. Her voice was soft, and had not much timbre;
it had the same furry quality as her eyes. "I ought to tell you." But what she ought to tell him remained
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