Not turning around he spoke in a shrill painful voice: "Say what you've got to say, Mr. Ai."

"May I ask you a question, sir?"

"Yes." He swayed from foot to foot as he stood facing the fire. I had to address his back.

"Do you believe that I am what I say I am?"

"Estraven had the physicians send me endless tapes about you, and more from the engineers at the Workshops who have your vehicle, and so on. They can't all be liars, and they all say you're not human. What then?"

"Then, sir, there are others like me. That is, I'm a representative…"

"Of this union, this Authority, yes, very well. What did they send you here for, is that what you want me to ask?"

Though Argaven might be neither sane nor shrewd, he had had long practice in the evasions and challenges and rhetorical subtleties used in conversation by those whose main aim in life was the achievement and maintenance of the shifgrethor relationship on a high level. Whole areas of that relationship were still blank to me, but I knew something about the competitive, prestige-seeking aspect of it, and about the perpetual conversational duel which can result from it. That I was not dueling with Argaven, but trying to communicate with him, was itself an incommunicable fact.

"I've made no secret of it, sir. The Ekumen wants an alliance, with the nations of Gethen."

"What for?"

"Material profit. Increase of knowledge. The augmentation of the complexity and intensity of the field of intelligent life. The enrichment of harmony and the greater glory of God. Curiosity. Adventure. Delight."