"I haven't got another."

"Fish it out of that soup then and come on. It's hot in here."

The others stared at him with dour curiosity, knowing him a rich man, but they did not know him for a Commensal. I did not like his being there; he should have sent someone after me. Very few Orgota have any feeling for decency. I wanted to get him out of there. The shirt was no good to me wet, so I told a hearthless lad that hung about the courtyard to keep it on his back for me till I returned. My debts and rent were paid and my papers in my hieb-pocket; shirtless I left the island in the Markets, and went with Yegey back among the houses of the powerful.

As his "secretary" I was again re-registered in the rolls of Orgoreyn, not as a digit but as a dependent. Names won't do, they must have labels, and say the kind before they can see the thing. But this time their label fit, I was dependent, and soon was brought to curse the purpose that brought me here to eat another man's bread. For they gave me no sign for a month yet that I was any nearer achieving that purpose than I had been at Fish Island.

On the rainy evening of the last day of summer Yegey sent for me to his study, where I found him talking with the Commensal of the Sekeve District, Obsle, whom I had known when he headed the Orgota Naval Trade Commission in Erhenrang. Short and swaybacked, with little triangular eyes in a fat, flat face, he was an odd match with Yegey, all delicacy and bone. The frump and the fop, they looked, but they were something more than that. They were two of the Thirty-Three who rule Orgoreyn; yet again, they were something more than that.

Politenesses exchanged and a dram of Sithish lifewater drunk, Obsle sighed and said to me, "Now tell me why you did what you did in Sassinoth, Estraven, for if there was ever a man I thought unable to err in the timing of an act or the weighing of shifgrethor, that man was you."

"Fear outweighed caution in me, Commensal."

"Fear of what the devil? What are you afraid of, Estraven?"

"Of what's happening now. The continuation of the prestige-struggle in the Sinoth Valley; the humiliation of Karhide, the anger that rises from humiliation; the use of that anger by the Karhidish Government."

"Use? To what end?"

Obsle has no manners; Yegey, delicate and prickly, broke in, "Commensal, Lord Estraven is my guest and need not suffer questioning-"

"Lord Estraven will answer questions when and as he sees fit, as he ever did," said Obsle grinning, a needle hidden in a heap of grease. "He knows himself between friends, here."

"I take my friends where I find them, Commensal, but I no longer look to keep them long."

"I can see that. Yet we can pull a sledge together without being kemmerings, as we say in Eskeve—eh? What the devil, I know what you were exiled for, my dear: for liking Karhide better than its king."

"Rather for liking the king better than his cousin, perhaps."

"Or for liking Karhide better than Orgoreyn," said Yegey. "Am I wrong, Lord Estraven?"

"No, Commensal."

"You think, then," said Obsle, "that Tibe wants to run Karhide as we run Orgoreyn—efficiently?"

"I do. I think that Tibe, using the Sinoth Valley dispute as a goad, and sharpening it at need, may within a year work a greater change in Karhide than the last thousand years have seen. He has a model to work from, the Sarf. And he knows how to play on Argaven's fears. That's easier than trying to arouse Argaven's courage, as I did. If Tibe succeeds, you gentlemen will find you have an enemy worthy of you."

Obsle nodded. "I waive shifgrethor," said Yegey, "what are you getting at, Estraven?"

"This: Will the Great Continent hold two Orgoreyns?"

"Aye, aye, aye, the same thought," said Obsle, "the same thought: you planted it in my head a long time ago, Estraven, and I never can uproot it. Our shadow grows too long. It will cover Karhide too. A feud between two Clans, yes; a foray between two towns, yes; a border-dispute and a few barn-burnings and murders, yes; but a feud between two nations? a foray involving fifty million souls? O by Meshe's sweet milk, that's a picture that has set fire to my sleep, some nights, and made me get up sweating… We are not safe, we are not safe. You know it, Yegey; you've said it in your own way, many times."

"I've voted thirteen times now against pressing the Sinoth Valley dispute. But what good? The Domination faction holds twenty votes ready at command, and every move of Tibe's strengthens the Sarf's control over those twenty. He builds a fence across the valley, puts guards along the fence armed with foray guns—foray guns! I thought they kept them in museums. He feeds the Domination faction a challenge whenever they need one."

"And so strengthens Orgoreyn. But also Karhide. Every response you make to his provocations, every humiliation you inflict upon Karhide, every gain in your prestige, will serve to make Karhide stronger, until it is your equal—controlled all from one center as Orgoreyn is. And in Karhide they don't keep foray guns in museums. The King's Guard carry them."

Yegey poured out another dram around of lifewater. Orgota noblemen drink that precious fire, brought five thousand miles over the foggy seas from Sith, as if it were beer. Obsle wiped his mouth and blinked his eyes.

"Well," he said, "all that is much as I thought, and much as I think. And I think we have a sledge to pull together. But I have a question before we get in harness, Estraven. You have my hood down over my eyes entirely. Now tell me: what was all this obscuration, obfuscation and fiddlefaddle concerning an Envoy from the far side of the moon?"

Genly Ai, then, had requested permission to enter Orgoreyn.

"The Envoy? He is what he says he is."

"And that is—"

"An envoy from another world."

"None of your damned shadowy Karhidish metaphors, now, Estraven. I waive shifgrethor, I discard it. Will you answer me?"

"I have done so."

"He is an alien being?" Obsle said, and Yegey, "And he has had audience with King Argaven?"

I answered yes to both. They were silent a minute and then both started to speak at once, neither trying to mask his interest. Yegey was for circumambulating, but Obsle went to the point. "What was he in your plans, then? You staked yourself on him, it seems, and fell. Why?"

"Because Tibe tripped me. I had my eyes on the stars, and didn't watch the mud I walked in."

"You've taken up astronomy, my dear?"

"We'd better all take up astronomy, Obsle."

"Is he a threat to us, this Envoy?"

"I think not. He brings from his people offers of communication, trade, treaty, and alliance, nothing else. He came alone, without arms or defense, with nothing but a communicating device, and his ship, which he allowed us to examine completely. He is not to be feared, I think. Yet he brings the end of Kingdom and Commensalities with him in his empty hands."

"Why?"

"How shall we deal with strangers, except as brothers? How shall Gethen treat with a union of eighty worlds, except as a world?"

"Eighty worlds?" said Yegey, and laughed uneasily. Obsle stared at me athwart and said, "I'd like to think that you've been too long with the madman in his palace and had gone mad yourself… Name of Meshe! What's this babble of alliances with the suns and treaties with the moon? How did the fellow come here, riding on a comet? astride a meteor? A ship, what sort of ship floats on air? On void space? Yet you're no madder than you ever were, Estraven, which is to say shrewdly mad, wisely mad. All Karhiders are insane. Lead on, my lord, I follow. Go on!"

"I go nowhere, Obsle. Where have I to go? You, however, may get somewhere. If you should follow the Envoy a little way, he might show you a way out of the Sinoth Valley, out of the evil course we're caught in."