"Anyhow, we want to stay until we've gotten over the last hurdle."
Tex wandered on into the second room. "Hey, Oz-come look at this."
Matt and Oscar joined him. There were rows of little closets down each side, ten in all, each with its own curtain. "Oh, yes, our eating booths."
"That reminds me," said Matt. "I thought you had wrecked everything, Oz, when you started talking about eating. But you pulled out of it beautifully."
"I didn't pull out of it; I did it on purpose."
"Why?"
"It was a squeeze play. I had to shock them with the idea that they were indecent, or looked that way to us. It established us as 'people,' from their point of view. After that it was easy." Oscar went on. "Now that we are accepted as people, we've got to be awfully careful not to undo it. I don't like to eat in one of these dark little cubbyholes any better than you do, but we don't dare take a chance of being seen eating-you don't dare even fail to draw the curtain, as one of them might come popping in. Remember, eating is the only sort of privacy they observe."
"I get you," agreed Tex. "Pie with a fork."
"Huh?"
"Never mind-it's a painful memory. But Matt and I won"! slip."