Freighters came down only eight times a year, unannounced except to syndics actually working at the Port, so when the spectators were lucky enough to see one they were excited, at first. There might even be a freighter on the pad. There might be a gang to watch, offloading crates from track trucks at the warehouses. Adolescents, particularly, were drawn to it. Nowhere else could they see a sign that said No Trespassing. After all, it was the only boundary wall on their world. People often came out from the nearby city of Abbenay in hopes of seeing a spaceship, or simply to see the wall.
Looked at from the other side, the wall enclosed Anarres: the whole planet was inside it, a great prison camp, cut off from other worlds and other men, in quarantine.Ī number of people were coming along the road towards the landing field, or standing around where the road cut through the wall. It enclosed the universe, leaving Anarres outside, free. The wall shut in not only the landing field but also the ships that came down out of space, and the men that came on the ships, and the worlds they came from, and the rest of the universe. The dormitory looked durable, grimy, and mournful it had no gardens, no children plainly nobody lived there or was even meant to stay there long.
On the field there were a couple of large gantry cranes, a rocket pad, three warehouses, a truck garage, and a dormitory. Looked at from one side, the wall enclosed a barren sixty-acre field called the Port of Anarres. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on. Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared.
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