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The botanist snaps his fingers. "Of course! I didn't think of that."
"Do you mind," I say to this official, "telling us some more about ourselves?"
"I can't think why you keep it up," he remarks, and then almost wearily tells me the facts about my Utopian self. They are a little difficult to understand. He says I am one of the samurai, which sounds Japanese, "but you will be degraded," he says, with a gesture almost of despair. He describes my position in this world in phrases that convey very little.