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been equally correct in the long run. Only he had lacked the tools to prove it the Saeba variables and
the theories of uifinite velocity and complex cause. His unified field existed, in Cetian physics, but it
existed on terms which he might not have been willing to accept; for the velocity of light as a limiting
factor had been essential to his great theories. Both his Theories of Relativity were as beautiful, as valid,
and as useful as ever after these centuries, and yet both depended upon a hypothesis that could not be
proved true and that could be and had been proved, in certain circumstances, false.
But was not a theory of which all the elements were provably true a simple tautology? In the region of
the urt-provable, or even the disprovable, lay the only chance for breaking out of the circle and going
ahead.
In which case, did the unprovability of the hypothesis of real coexistence the problem which Shevek
had been pounding his head against desperately for these last three days, and indeed these last ten
years really matter?
He had been groping and grabbing after certainty, as if it were something he could possess. He had
been demanding a security, a guarantee, which is not granted, and which, if granted, would become a
prison. By simply assuming the validity of real coexistence he was left free to use the lovely geometries of
relativity; and then it would be possible to go ahead. The next step was perfectly clear. The coexistence
of succession could be handled by a Sae-ban transformation series; thus approached, successivity and
presence offered no antithesis at all. The fundamental unity of the Sequency and Simultaneity points of
view became plain; the concept of interval served to connect the static and the dynamic aspect of the
universe. How could he have stared at reality for ten years and not seen it? There would be no trouble at
all in going on. Indeed he had already gone on. He was there. He saw all that was to come in this first,
seemingly casual glimpse of the method, given him by his understanding of a failure in the distant past. The
wall was down. The vision was both clear and whole. What he saw was simple, simpler than anything
else. It was simplicity: and contained in it all complexity, all promise. It was revelation. It was the way
clear, the way home, the light.
The spirit in him was like a child running out into the sunlight. There was no end, no end&
And yet in his utter ease and happiness he shook with fear; his hands trembled, and his eyes filled up
with tears, as if he had been looking into the sun, After all, the flesh is not transparent. And it is strange,
exceedingly strange, to know that one's life has been fulfilled.
Yet he kept looking, and going farther, with that same childish joy, until all at once he could not go
any farther; he came back, and looking around through his tears saw that the room was dark and the high
windows were full of stars.
The moment was gone; he saw it going. He did not try to hold on to it. He knew he was part of it, not
it of him. He was in its keeping.
After a while he got up shakily and lighted the lamp. He wandered around the room a little, touching
things, the binding of a book, the shade of a lamp, glad to be back among these familiar objects, back in
his own world for at this instant the difference between this planet and that one, between Urras and
Anarres, was no more significant to him than the difference between two grains of sand on the shore of
the sea. There were no more abysses, no more walls. There was no more exile. He had seen the
foundations of the universe, and they were solid.
He went into the bedroom, walking slowly and a little unsteadily, and dropped onto the bed without
undressing. He lay there with his arms behind his head, occasionally foreseeing and planning one detail or
another of the work that had to be done, absorbed in a solemn and delightful thankfulness, which merged
gradually into serene reverie, and then into sleep.
He slept for ten hours. He woke up thinking of the equations that would express the concept of
interval. He went to the desk and set to work on them. He had a class that afternoon, and met it; he took
his dinner at the Senior Faculty commons and talked with his colleagues there about the weather, and the
war, and whatever else they brought up. If they noticed any change in him he did not know it, for he was
not really aware of them at all. He came back to his room and worked.
The Urrasti counted twenty hours in the day. For eight days he spent twelve to sixteen hours daily at
his desk, or roaming about his room, his light eyes turned often to the windows, outside which shone the
warm spring sunlight, or the stars and the tawny, waning Moon.
Coming in with the breakfast tray, Efor found him lying half-dressed on the bed, his eyes shut, talking
in a foreign language. He roused him. Shevek woke with a convulsive start, got up and staggered into the
other room, to the desk, which was perfectly empty; he stared at the computer, which had been cleared,
and then stood there like a man who has been hit on the head and does not know it yet. Efor succeeded
in getting him to He down again and said, "Fever there, sir. Call the doctor?"
"No!"
"Sure, sir?"
"No! Don't let anybody in here. Say I am ill, Efor."
"Then they'll fetch the doctor sure. Can say you're still working, sir. They like that."
"Lock the door when you go out," Shevek said. His nontransparent body had let him down; he was
weak with exhaustion, and therefore fretful and panicky. He was afraid of Pae, of Oiie, of a police search
party. Everything he had heard, read, half-understood about the Urrasti police, the secret police, came
vivid and terrible into his memory, as when a man admitting his illness to himself recalls every word he
ever read about cancer. He stared up at Efor in feverish distress,
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