“Who? Shevek? Is it really? How dear of you to call! I don’t mind waking up at all if it’s you.”

“You were sleeping?”

“Sound asleep, and I’m still in bed. It’s lovely and warm. Where on earth are you?”

“On Kae Sekae Street, I think.”

“Whatever for? Come on out. What time is it? Good Lord, nearly noon. I know, I’ll meet you halfway. By the boat pool in the Old Palace gardens. Can you find it? Listen, you must stay, I’m having an absolutely paradisial party tonight.” She rattled on awhile; he agreed to all she said. As he came out past the counter the shopwoman smiled at him. “Better take her a box of sweets, hadn’t you, sir?”

He stopped. “Should I?”

“Never does any harm, sir.”

There was something impudent and genial in her voice. The air of the shop was sweet and warm, as if all the perfumes of spring were crowded into it. Shevek stood there amidst the cases of pretty little luxuries, tall, heavy, dreamy, like the heavy animals in their pens, the rams and bulls stupefied by the yearning warmth of spring.

“I’ll make you up just the thing,” the woman said, and she filled a little metal box, exquisitely enameled, with miniature leaves of chocolate and roses of spun sugar. She wrapped the tin in tissue paper, put the packet in a silvered cardboard box, wrapped the box in heavy rose colored paper, and tied it with green velvet ribbon. In all her deft movements a humorous and sympathetic complicity could be sensed, and when she handed Shevek the completed package, and he took it with muttered thanks and turned to go, there was no sharpness in her voice as she reminded him, “That’s ten sixty, sir.” She might even have let him go, pitying him, as women will pity strength; but he came back obediently and counted out the money.

He found his way by subway train to the gardens of the Old Palace, and to the boat pool, where charmingly dressed children sailed toy ships, marvelous little craft with silken cordage and brasswork like jewelry. He saw Vea across the broad, bright circle of the water and went around the pool to her, aware of the sunlight, and the spring wind, and the dark trees of the park putting forth their early, pale-green leaves.

They ate lunch at a restaurant in the park, on a terrace covered with a high glass dome. In the sunlight inside the dome the trees were in full leaf, willows, hanging over a pool where fat white birds paddled, watching the diners with indolent greed, awaiting scraps. Vea did not take charge of the ordering, making it clear that Shevek was in charge of her, but skillful waiters advised him so smoothly that he thought he had managed it all himself; and fortunately he had plenty of money in his pocket. The food was extraordinary. He had never tasted such subtleties of flavor. Used to two meals a day, he usually skipped the lunch the Urrasti ate, but today he ate right through it, while Vea delicately picked and pecked. He had to stop at last, and she laughed at his rueful look.

“I ate too much.”

“A little walk might help.”

It was a very little walk: a slow ten-minute stroll over the grass, and then Vea collapsed gracefully in the shade of a high bank of shrubs, all bright with golden flowers. He sat down by her. A phrase Takver used came into his mind as he looked at Vea’s slender feet, decorated with little white shoes on very high heels. “A body profiteer,” Takver called women who used their sexuality as a weapon in a power struggle with men. To look at her, Vea was the body profiteer to end them all. Shoes, clothes, cosmetics, jewels, gestures, everything about her asserted provocation. She was so elaborately and ostentatiously a female body that she seemed scarcely to be a human being. She incarnated all the sexuality the Ioti repressed into their dreams, their novels and poetry, their endless paintings of female nudes, their music, their architecture with its curves and domes, their candies, their baths, their mattresses. She was the woman in the table.

Her head, entirely shaved, had been dusted with a talc containing tiny flecks of mica dust, so that a faint glitter obscured the nakedness of the contours. She wore a filmy shawl or stole, under which the forms and texture of her bare arms showed softened and sheltered. Her breasts were covered: Ioti women did not go outside with naked breasts, reserving their nudity for its owners. Her wrists were laden with gold bracelets, and in the hollow of her throat a single jewel shone blue against the soft skin,

“How does that stay there?”

“What?” Since she could not see the jewel herself she could pretend to be unaware of it, obliging him to point, perhaps to bring his hand up over her breasts to touch the jewel. Shevek smiled, and touched it. “It is glued on?”

“Oh, that. No, I’ve got a tiny little magnet set in there, and it’s got a tiny little bit of metal on the back, or is it the other way round? Anyhow, we stick together.”

“You have a magnet under your skin?” Shevek inquired with unsophisticated distaste.

Vea smiled and removed the sapphire so he could see that there was nothing but the tiniest silver dimple of a scar. “You do disapprove of me so totally — it’s refreshing. I feel that whatever I say or do, I can’t possibly lower myself in your opinion, because I’ve already reached bottom!”

“That is not so,” he protested. He knew she was playing, but knew few of the rules of the game.

“No, no; I know moral horror when I see it. Like this.” She put on a dismal scowl; they both laughed. “Am I so different from Anarresti women, really?”

“Oh, yes, really.”

“Are they all terribly strong, with muscles? Do they wear boots, and have big flat feet, and sensible clothing, and shave once a month?”

“They don’t shave at all.”

“Never? Not anywhere? Oh, Lord! Let’s talk about something else.”

“About you.” He leaned on the grassy bank, near enough to Vea that he was surrounded by the natural and artificial perfumes of her body. “I want to know, is an Urrasti woman content to be always inferior?”

“Inferior to whom?”

“To men.”

“Oh — that! What makes you think I am?”

“It seems that everything your society does is done by men. The industry, arts, management, government, decisions. And all your life you bear the father’s name and the husband’s name. The men go to school and you don’t go to school; they are all the teachers, and judges, and police, and government, aren’t they? Why do you let them control everything? Why don’t you do what you like?”

“But we do. Women do exactly as they like. And they don’t have to get their hands dirty, or wear brass helmets, or stand about shouting in the Directorate, to do it.”

“But what is it that you do?”

“Why, run the men, of course! And you know, it’s perfectly safe to tell them that, because they never believe it They say, ‘Haw haw, funny little woman!’ and pat your head and stalk off with their medals jangling, perfectly self-content.”

“And you too are self-content?”

“Indeed I am.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Because it doesn’t fit your principles. Men always have theories, and things always have to fit them.”

“No, not because of theories, because I can see that you are not content. That you are restless, unsatisfied, dangerous.”

“Dangerous!” Vea laughed radiantly. “What an utterly marvelous compliment! Why am I dangerous, Shevek?”

“Why, because you know that in the eyes of men you are a thing, a thing owned, bought, sold. And so you think only of tricking the owners, of getting revenge—”

She put her small hand deliberately on his mouth. “Hush,” she said. “I know you don’t intend to be vulgar. I forgive you. But that’s quite enough.”

He scowled savagely at the hypocrisy, and at the realization that he might really have hurt her. He could still feel the brief touch of her hand on his lips. “I am sorry!” he said.