"I know," Ellis agreed. "Our cultural geometry was always triangular."
"Exactly. So how can Mirrh-Yahn break the news to his dry little fiancee back home? We're accustomed to inconstancy and to incontinence. We sing corny songs about girls who write jilting letters to their men in service. Our opera flaunts Perkinses and Mesdames Butterfly, and the fact that we enjoy them shocks the ascetic pants off the Martians. Did you know that their population control quota demands a strictly equal sex-ratio, so that there's never more than one boy for one girl from the beginning? Mirrh-Yahn simply hasn't it in him to leave Yrml dangling. He'd feel a renegade for the rest of his life."
"Mirrh-Yahn," Ellis noted. "Obviously he's willing enough, if you're on a first-name footing."
"I can't call him Yahn any longer, like a stranger. Mirrh-Yahn is a compromise."
Ellis rummaged in his desk and brought out a personnel folder. "Dossier on J. Frederic Thomas, our young man on Mars. Maybe we can turn up an angle through him."
The exchange ambassador's folder was neither interesting nor helpful. J. Frederic Thomas stood revealed as a dwarfish scholastic type, complete with massive glasses and receding hairline.
"He looks more Martian than Terran," Leila said. "Is that deliberate?"
"Mars sent us a man specially bred to fit into our culture, didn't they? Simple job here to turn up a Martian type. Matter of fact, J. F.'s reports show he fits in up there like a native."
"Check with him, then," Leila said. "Though I can't imagine what help we can expect from a wizened little stick like that."