"Well, you will soon see for yourself, Marlow. Yes, I know there are peculiar stories about the place. There are about all places. The young pilots who have been there tell some amusing tales about it." "Yes. They say the people there are very polite." "That is the honorable ancestor of all understatements. One of the pilots, Conrad, told us that the inhabitants must always carry seven types of eyeglasses with them. None of the Puds, you see, may ever gaze directly on another. That would be the height of impoliteness. They wear amber goggles when they go about their world at large, and these they wear when they meet a stranger. But, once they are introduced to him, then they must thereafter look on him through blue glasses. But at a blood relative they gaze through red, and at an in-law through yellow. There are equally interesting colors for other situations." "I would like to talk to Conrad. Not that I doubt his reports. It is the things he did not report that interest me." "I thought you knew he had died. Thrombosis, though he was sound enough when first certified." "But if they are really people, then it should be possible to understand them." "But they are not really people. They are metamorphics. They become people only out of politeness." "Detail that a little." "Oh, they're biped and of a size of us. They have a chameleon-like skin that can take on any texture they please, and they possess extreme plasticity of features." "You mean they can take on the appearance of people at will?" "So Bently reported." "I hadn't heard of him." "Another of the young pilots. According to Bently, not only do the Puds take on a human appearance, they take on the appearance of the human they encounter. Out of politeness, of course." "Quite a tribute, though it seems extreme. Could I talk to Bently?" "Also dead. A promising young man. But he reported some of the most amusing aspects of all: the circumlocutions that the Puds use in speaking our language. Not only is the Second Person eschewed out of
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