The young Shevek arrives in Abbeney, the center of life and science on Anarres. The city is different from others he has lived in because it is in the middle of a green plain and because it seems more filled with life and activity. He is going to the Central Institute of the Sciences, where he will study with Sabul. He is given a single room in the dormitory, a luxury that makes sense only in light of his need to study in solitude. Sabul immediately begins to teach him Iotic, one of the languges of Urras, and the language of the Urrasti scientists with whom Sabul and the other scientists correspond. He also cautions Shevek that he must keep what he is learning to himself: This is not knowledge to share with.....
