“Pardon, sir.” The flat metal voice shook in his brain, he felt the delicate fabric of the poem tear and go swirling off into darkness and forgetfulness. For a moment there was only the pang of his loss; he realized dully that the interruption had broken a sequence which he would never quite recapture.

“Pardon, sir, but Mr. Lombard wishes to see you.”

It was a sonic beam from the roboreceptionist which Lombard himself had given Vahino. The Cundaloan had felt the incongruity of installing its shining metal among the carved wood and old tapestries of his house, but he had not wanted to offend the donor—and the thing was useful.

Lombard, head of the Solarian reconstruction commission, the most important human in Avaikian System. Just now Vahino appreciated the courtesy of the man’s coming to him rather than simply sending for him. Only—why did he have to come exactly at this moment?

“Tell Mr. Lombard I’ll be there in a minute.”

Vahino went in the back way and put on some clothes. Humans didn’t have the completely casual attitude toward nakedness of Cundaloa. Then he went into the forehall. He had installed some chairs there for the benefit of Earthlings, who didn’t like to squat on a woven mat—another incongruity. Lombard got up as Vahino entered.

The human was short and stocky, with a thick bush of gray hair above a seamed face. He had worked his way up from laborer through engineer to High Commissioner, and the marks of his struggle were still on him. He attacked work with what seemed almost a personal fury, and he could be harder than tool steel. But most of the time he was pleasant, he had an astonishing range of interests and knowledge, and of course, he had done miracles for the Avaikian System.

“Peace on your house, brother,” said Vahino.

“How do you do,” clipped the Solarian. As his host began to signal for servants, he went on hastily: “Please, none of your ritual hospitality. I appreciate it, but there just isn’t time to sit and have a meal and talk cultural topics for three hours before getting down to business. I wish…well, you’re a native here and I’m not, so I wish you’d personally pass the word around—tactfully, of course—to discontinue this sort of thing.”

“But…they are among our oldest customs—”

“That’s just it! Old—backward—delaying progress. I don’t mean to be disparaging, Mr. Vahino. I wish we Solarians had some customs as charming as yours. But—not during working hours. Please.”

“Well…I dare say you’re right. It doesn’t fit into the pattern of a modern industrial civilization. And that is what we are trying to build, of course.” Vahino took a chair and offered his guest a cigarette. Smoking was one of Sol’s characteristic vices, perhaps the most easily transmitted and certainly the most easily defensible. Vahino lit up with the enjoyment of the neophyte.

“Quite. Exactly. And that is really what I came here about, Mr. Vahino. I have no specific complaints, but there has accumulated a whole host of minor difficulties which only you Cundaloans can handle for yourselves. We Solarians can’t and won’t meddle in your internal affairs. But you must change some things, or we won’t be able to help you at all.”