To give some context here: 'Loyal to the Group of Seventeen' is a captured POW who is telling a story to the main characters in the hospital he's recuperating in, as part of a storytelling competition. He is from the enemy country "Ascia", which is a parody/version of Maoist China (the name comes from a typically Wolfean etymological joke: New Sun is set in South America, the reader eventually realizes, and the Ascians or 'shadowless' live near the equator where the sun casts less of a shadow); in particular, Ascians speak only in quotations from official propaganda (Maoists were notorious for quotation). Sort of Wolfe's reply to Newspeak. So when Loyal tells his story, "Loyal to the Group of Seventeen's Story—The Just Man", he speaks only in quotations and someone interprets for him.

The story simply recounts a commune whose inequitable distribution of work & food prompts the Just Man to travel to the capital and petition the mandarins there for justice, in the time-honored Chinese fashion, but he is rejected and while trying to make his case, survives by begging:

..."Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts."

"The just man did not give up. He returned to the capital once more."

"The citizen renders to the populace what is due to the populace. What is due to the populace? Everything."

"He was very tired. His clothes were in rags and his shoes worn out. He had no food and nothing to trade."

"It is better to be just than to be kind, but only good judges can be just; let those who cannot be just be kind."

"In the capital he lived by begging."

At this point I could not help but interrupt. I told Foila that I thought it was wonderful that she understood so well what each of the stock phrases the Ascian used meant in the context of his story, but that I could not understand how she did it—how she knew, for example, that the phrase about kindness and justice meant that the hero had become a beggar...

The story itself is simple but it's still one of the most interesting of the stories told within Book of the New Sun and comes up occasionally on urth.net. It's also often compared to a Star Trek episode: "Shaka, When the Walls Fell: In one fascinating episode, Star Trek traced the limits of human communication as we know it - and suggested a new, truer way of talking about the universe".