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?"