"She's very pretty," said Harkway, and suffered himself to be led off up the street. "Married?"
"No. She was engaged to one of our young men, but her father broke it off."
"Oh?" said Harkway. After a moment: "Political differences?"
"Yes. The young man joined the activists. The father is a conservative."
"That's very interesting," said Harkway. After a moment he asked, "Do you have many of those here?"
"Activists or conservatives? Or pretty girls?"
"I meant conservatives," said Harkway, coloring slightly. "I know the activist movement is strong here—that's why I was sent. We consider them dangerous in the extreme."
"So do I," said Cudyk. "No, there aren't many conservatives. Burgess is the only real fanatic. If you meet him, by the way, you must make certain allowances."
Harkway nodded thoughtfully. "Cracked on the subject?"
"You could put it that way," Cudyk told him. "He has convinced himself, in his conscious mind at least, that we are the dominant species on this planet; that the Niori are our social and economic inferiors. He won't tolerate any suggestion that it isn't so."
Harkway nodded again, looking very solemn. "A tragedy," he said. "But understandable, of course. Some of the older people simply can't adjust to the reality of our position in the galaxy."
"Not many people actually like it," said Cudyk.
Harkway looked at him thoughtfully. He said, "Mr. Cudyk, I don't want you to take this as a complaint, but I've gathered the impression that you're not in sympathy with the Minority People's League."
"No," said Cudyk.
"May I ask what your political viewpoint is?"
"I'm neutral," said Cudyk. "Apolitical."
Harkway said politely, "I hope you won't take offense if I ask why? It's evident, even to me, that you're a man of intelligence and ability."
Everything is evident to you, Cudyk thought wearily, except what you don't want to see. He said, "I don't believe our particular Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again, Mr. Harkway."
Harkway looked at him intently, but said nothing. He glanced at the signboard over the lighted windows they were approaching. "Is this the place?"
"Yes."
Harkway continued to look at the sign. Above the English "CHONG YIN'S TEA ROOM", and the Chinese characters, was a legend that read:
"That's a curious alphabet," he said.
"It's a very efficient one," Cudyk told him. "It's based on the design of an X in a rectangle—like this." He traced it with his finger on the wall. "Counting each arm of the cross as one stroke, there are eight strokes in the figure. Using only two strokes to a letter, there are twenty-eight possible combinations. They use the sixteen most graceful ones, and add twenty-seven three-stroke letters to bring it up to forty-three, one for each sound in their language. The written language is completely phonetic, therefore. But there are only eight keys on a Niori typewriter."
He looked at Harkway. "It's also perfectly legible: no letter looks too much like any other letter. And it has a certain beauty, don't you think?" He paused. "Hasn't it struck you, Mr. Harkway, that anything our hosts do is likely to be a little more sensible and more sensitive than the human equivalent?"
"I come from Reg Otay," said Harkway. "They don't have any visual arts or any written language there. But I see what you mean. What does the sign say—the same thing as the English?"
"No. It says, 'Yungiwo Ren Trakru Rith.' 'Trakru rith' is Niori for 'hospitality house'—it's what they call anything that we would call tea room, or restaurant, or beer garden."
"And 'Yungiwo Ren'?"
"That's their version of 'Chung kuo jen'[A]—the Chinese for 'Chinese.' At first they called us all that, because most of the original immigrants were from China; but they've got over it now—they found out some of us didn't like it."
Cudyk opened the door.
A few aliens were sitting at the round tables in the big outer room. Cudyk watched Harkway's face, and saw his eyes widen with shock. The Niori were something to see, the first time.
They were tall and erect, and their anatomy was not even remotely like man's. They had six limbs each, two for walking, four for manipulation. Their bodies were covered by a pale, horny integument which grew in irregular sections, so that you could tell the age of a Niori by the width of the growth-areas between the plates of his armor. But you saw none of those things at first. You saw the two glowing violet eyes, set wide apart in a helmet-shaped head, and the startlingly beautiful markings on the smooth shell of the face—blue on pale cream, like an ancient porcelain tile. And you saw the crest—a curved, lucent shape that even in a lighted room glowed with its own frost-blue. No Niori ever walked in darkness.
Cudyk guided Harkway toward the door at the far end of the room. "We'll see who's in the back room," he said. "There is usually a small gathering at this hour."
The inner room was more brightly lit than the other. Down the center, in front of a row of empty booths, was a long table. Three men sat at one end of it, with teacups and a bowl of lichee nuts between them. They looked up as Cudyk and Harkway came in.
"Gentlemen," said Cudyk, "may I present Mr. Harkway, who is here on a mission from the Minority People's League? Mr. Burgess, Father Exarkos, Mr. Ferguson."
The three shook hands with Harkway, Father Exarkos smiling pleasantly, the other two with more guarded expressions. The priest was in his fifties, grey-haired, hollow-templed, with high orbital ridges and a square, mobile mouth. He said, in English oddly accented by a mixture of French and Greek, "Please sit down, both of you ... I understand that your first evening here has been not too pleasant, Mr. Harkway. I hope the rest of your stay will be more so."
Burgess snorted, not quite loudly enough to be deliberately rude. His face had a pleasant, even a handsome cast except for the expression of petulance he was now wearing. He was a few years younger than the priest: a big-boned, big-featured man whose slightly curved back and hollowed cheeks showed that he had lost bulk since his prime.
Ferguson's pale face was expressive but completely controlled. The gambler's eyes were narrow and unreadable, the lips and the long muscles of the jaw showing nothing more than surface emotion. He asked politely, "Planning to stay long, Mr. Harkway?"
"That all depends, Mr. Ferguson, on—to be blunt, on what sort of a reception I get. I won't try to conceal from you the fact that my role here is that of a political propagandist. I want to convince as many people as I can that the Minority People's movement is the best hope of the human race. If I can find that there's some chance of succeeding, I'll stay as long as necessary. If not—"
"I'm afraid we won't be seeing much of you, in that case, Mr. Harkway," said Burgess. His tone was scrupulously correct, but his nostrils were quivering with repressed indignation.
"What makes you say that, Mr. Burgess?" Harkway asked, turning his intent, serious gaze on the older man.
"Your program, as I understand it," said Burgess, "aims at putting humanity on an equal basis with various assorted races of lizards, beetles and other vermin. I don't think you will find much sympathy for that program here, sir."
"I'm glad to say that, through no fault of your own, you're mistaken," said Harkway, smiling slightly. "I think you're referring to the program of the right wing of the League, which was dominant for the last several years. It's true that for that period, the M.P.L.'s line was to work for the gradual integration of human beings—and other repressed races—into the society of the planets on which they live. But that's all done with now. The left wing, to which I belong, has won a decisive victory at the League elections.