You kill the boss and you become the boss. We must change that mind. The old slave mind, boss mind.
We have got to change it, Mr. Envoy. With your help. The Ekumen's help."
"I'm here to be a link between your people and the Ekumen. But I'll need time," he said. "I need to learn."
"All the time in the world. We know we can't
turn the boss mind around in a day or a year. This is a matter of education." She said the word as a sacred word. "It will take a long time. You take your time.
If we just know that you will listen."
"I will listen," he said.
She drew a long breath, took up her knitting again. Presently she said, "It won't be easy to hear us."
He was tired. The intensity of her talk was more than he could yet handle. He did not know what she meant. A polite silence is the adult way of signifying that one doesn't understand. He said nothing.
She looked at him- "How are we to come to you? You see, that's a problem. I tell you, we are nothing-We can come to you only as your nurse. Your housemaid. The woman who washes your clothes. We don't mix with the chiefs. We aren't on the councils. We wait on table. We don't eat the banquet."
"Tell me —" he hesitated. "Tell me how to start.
TW 168 T*-SI A Man of the People
Ask to see me if you can. Come as you can, as it... if it's safe?" He had always been quick to learn his lessons. "I'll listen. I'll do what I can." He would never learn much distrust.
She leaned over and kissed him very gently on the mouth. Her lips were light, dry, soft.
"There," she said, "no chief will give you that."
She took up her knitting again. He was half-asleep when she asked, "Your mother is living, Mr. Havzhiva?"
"All my people are dead."
She made a little soft sound. "Bereft," she said. "And no wife?"
"No."
"We will be your mothers, your sisters, your
daughters. Your people. I kissed you for that love that will be between us. You will see."
"The list of the persons invited to the reception, Mr. Yehedarhed," said Doranden, the Chiefs chief liaison to the Sub-Envoy.
Havzhiva looked through the list on the hand-screen carefully, ran it past the end, and said,
"Where is the rest?"
"I'm so sorry, Mr. Envoy — are there omissions?
This is the entire list."
"But these are all men."
In the infinitesimal silence before Doranden replied, Havzhiva felt the balance of his life poised.
"You wish the guests to bring their wives? Of course! If this is the Ekumenical custom, we shall be delighted to invite the ladies!"
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Yeowan men said "the ladies," a word which Havzhiva had thought was applied only to women of the owner class on Werel. The balance dipped. "What ladies?" he asked, frowning. "I'm talking about women. Do they have no part in this society?"
He became very nervous as he spoke, for he now knew his ignorance of what constituted danger here. If a walk on a quiet street could be nearly fatal, embarrassing the Chief’s liaison might be completely so. Doranden was certainly embarrassed — floored. He opened his mouth and shut it.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Doranden," Havzhiva said,
"please pardon my poor efforts at jocosity. Of course I know that women have all kinds of responsible positions in your society. I was merely saying, in a stupidly unfortunate manner, that I should be very glad to have such women and their husbands, as well as the wives of these guests, attend the reception. Unless I am truly making an enormous blunder
concerning your customs? I thought you did not segregate the sexes socially, as they do on Werel. Please, if I was wrong, be so kind as to excuse the ignorant foreigner once again."
Loquacity is half of diplomacy, Havzhiva had already decided. The other half is silence.
Doranden availed himself of the latter option, and with a few earnest reassurances got himself away. Havzhiva remained nervous until the following morning, when Doranden reappeared with a revised list containing eleven new names, all female. There was a school principal and a couple of teachers; the rest were marked "retired."
"Splendid, splendid!" said Havzhiva. "May I add A 170 A
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one more name?" — Of course, of course, anyone Your Excellency desires — "Dr. Yecon," he said.
Again the infinitesimal silence, the grain of dust dropping on the scales. Doranden knew that name. "Yes," he said.
"Dr. Yeron nursed me, you know. at your excellent hospital. We became friends. An ordinary nurse might not be an appropriate guest among such very distinguished people; but 1 see there are several other doctors on our list."
"Quite," said Doranden. He seemed bemused.
The Chief and his people had become used to patronising the Sub-Envoy, ever so slightly and politely. An invalid, though now well recovered; a victim; a man of peace, ignorant of attack and even of self-defense;
a scholar, a foreigner, unworldly in every sense: they saw him as something like that, he knew. Much as they valued him as a symbol and as a means to their ends, they thought him an insignificant man. He agreed with them as to the fact, but not as to the quality, of his insignificance- He knew that what he did might signify. He had just seen it.
"Surely you understand the reason for having a bodyguard, Envoy," the General said with some
impatience.
"This is a dangerous city. General Denkam, yes, I understand that. Dangerous for everyone. 1 see on the net that gangs of young men, such as those who attacked me, roam the streets quite beyond the control of the police. Every child, every woman needs a bodyguard- I should be distressed to know that the safety which is every citizen's right was my special privilege."
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The General blinked but stuck to his guns. "We can't let you get assassinated," he said.
Havzhiva loved the bluntness of Yeowan honesty. "I don't want to be assassinated," he said. "I have a suggestion, sir. There are policewomen, female members of the city police force, are there not? Find me bodyguards among them. After all, an armed woman is as dangerous as an armed man, isn't she? And I should like to honor the great part women played in winning Yeowe's free-
dom, as the Chief said so eloquently in his talk yesterday."
The General departed with a face of cast iron.
Havzhiva did not particularly like his bodyguards. They were hard, tough women, unfriendly, speaking a dialect he could hardly understand. Several of them had children at home, but they refused to talk about their children. They were fiercely efficient. He was well protected. He saw when he went about with these cold-eyed escorts that he began to be looked at differently by the city crowds: with amusement and a kind of fellow-feeling. He heard an old man in the market say, "That fellow has some sense."
Everybody called the Chief the Chief except to his face. "Mr. President," Havzhiva said, "the question really isn't one of Ekumenical principles or Hainish customs at all. None of that is or should be of the least weight, the least importance, here on Yeowe. This is your world."
The Chief nodded once, massively.
"Into which," said Havzhiva, by now insuperably yyAs, 172 a®
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loquacious, "immigrants are beginning to come from Were! now, and many, many more will come, as the Werelian ruling class tries to lessen revolutionary pressure by allowing increasing numbers of the underclass to emigrate. You, sir, know far better than 1 the opportunities and the problems that this great influx of population will cause here in Yotebber. Now of course at least half the immigrants will be female, and I think it worth considering that there is a very considerable difference between Werel and Yeowe in what is called the construction of gender — the roles, the expectations, the behavior, the relationships of men and women. Among the Werelian immigrants most of the decision-makers, the people of authority, will be female. The Council of the Hame is about nine-tenths women, I believe. Their speakers and negotiators are mostly women. These people are coming into a society governed and represented entirely by men. I think there is the possibility of misunderstandings and conflict, unless-the situation is carefully considered beforehand. Perhaps the use of some women as representatives — "