"These are vodranet." Solut Mek Kem pointed to the Foitani delegations from Odern and Rof Golan. "They are depraved and disgusting."
"They call you kwopillot, and say you're perverted and revolting," Greenberg said. "We needed a good deal of work, but we finally got them to explain what kwopillot were. I'm not of your species; I make no judgments about what's right or wrong as far as your sexual habits go. But right or wrong, they're an important issue here, one the human Jennifer and I need to understand. Could you please explain to me what makes these Foitani vodranet?"
"Explain to us as well," Aissur Aissur Rus added. "This is not a word my people comprehend."
"Nor mine," Voskop W Wurd said. "What could be vile enough for a stinking kwopil to despise?"
"You could," Nogal Ryn Nyr told him. Aissur Aissur Rus at least grasped the concept of diplomacy, even if he didn't always use it very well. Voskop W Wurd hadn't a clue, and infuriated other people with his own aggressive lack of tact.
"Stay calm, everyone," Jennifer said, wondering how she and Greenberg could make the Foitani stay calm if they didn't feel like it when they were about the size and disposition of a like number of bears. She went on, "We're here to discuss your disagreements rationally, after all." She wished disagreements about sexual habits more readily lent themselves to rational discussion.
"Let's try again," Greenberg said. "Foitani from what is now the ship Vengeance, what are vodranet? We can't have any kind of discussion if we don't all understand what our terms mean."
"Discussing matters pertaining to reproduction is not our custom under most circumstances," Solut Mek Kem said—a view he had in common with Pawasar Pawasar Ras, though he didn't know it. "It is doubly unappetizing when attempting to evaluate manufactured monstrosities such as vodranet."
The Great One obviously bought tact from the same store that had sold it to Voskop W Wurd. The Rof Golani Foitan yelled, "You're the monster, kwopil!"
Greenberg yelled, too. "Enough!" Trying to outshout a Foitan was like trying to hold back a spaceship with bare hands, but he gave it a good game go. "Let Solut Mek Kem finish, will you? You can say whatever you want when he's done."
Fortunately, Aissur Aissur Rus supported him. "Yes, calm yourself, Voskop W Wurd. Gather intelligence before commencing operations." Advice set in a military context seemed to get through to the warleader. He snarled a couple of more times, but subsided.
"Solut Mek Kem?" Jennifer said.
But Solut Mek Kem, again like Pawasar Pawasar Ras, refused to go on. He gestured toward Nogal Ryn Nyr. Let the flunky do the dirty work, Jennifer thought—some attitudes crossed species lines. After a couple of false starts, Nogal Ryn Nyr said, "An unfortunate discovery made long ago is that the sexual physiology of Foitani is all too easy to alter."
"That is true enough," Aissur Aissur Rus said. "The problem of kwopillot would not exist were it otherwise."
"We, obviously, perceive it as the problem of vodranet," Nogal Ryn Nyr said. "And with greater justice, for, after all, vodranet represent a distortion of the original Foitani pattern, which is to say, ourselves."
Jennifer needed a second to grasp the implications of that. The Foitani from Odern and Rof Golan caught on quicker. The bellows of outrage they emitted, however, were so loud and so nearly simultaneous that they overloaded her translator, which produced a noise rather like an asthmatic warning siren.
Finally Voskop W Wurd outroared everyone else. "You lie as bad as you smell! We are the true Foitani, the true descendants of the Great Ones, not you wrongsex badstink perverts."
"Were you there in those days, vodran?" Nogal Ryn Nyr shot back. "How do you know whereof you speak? We can prove what we say, just as, regrettably, you appear to have proved to us the existence of the Suicide Wars and their long and painful aftermath."
"Who would believe proof from a kwopil?" Yulvot L Reat said. By all signs, his charm easily matched that of Voskop W Wurd.
"The suggestion is implausible on the face of it," Aissur Aissur Rus said, more politely but just as certainly. "How is it that all modern Foitani worlds are populated by normal Foitani—Foitani I would judge normal, at any rate—and kwopillot are universally reckoned aberrations?"
"The reason is painful to me but nonetheless obvious," Nogal Ryn Nyr said. "It appears that, insofar as the Suicide Wars had winners, those winners are vodranet. No doubt massacres on planets reduced to barbarism completed the overthrow of normality by—your type."
In her mind, Jennifer saw mobs of big, green-blue aliens rampaging through bombed-out cities, sniffing like bloodhounds for the hated scent of those different from themselves. Would there have been massacres at a time like that? By all she knew, the Foitani were appallingly good at massacres; they almost seemed the chief sport of the species, as battleball was for humans. The picture Nogal Ryn Nyr painted had an air of verisimilitude that worried her.
It convinced Voskop W Wurd, too; he said, "You deserve being massacred."
"We thought the same of vodranet, I assure you," Nogal Ryn Nyr said. "Our chief mistake appears to have been waiting too long before attempting to stamp you out."
"I will believe none of this without proof," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said. "Nothing impedes you from making any claim you like, simply for the purpose of improving your own position at these discussions."
Solut Mek Kem tossed a silvery wafer onto the table, then, after some hesitation, another one, the latter in the direction of Voskop W Wurd and Yulvot L Real. "Here are the data," he said. "Shall we adjourn until you have put them in your computers and had the opportunity to evaluate them?"
"Let's wait one Gilver day—no more," Greenberg said. "Remember, fleets are on the way. You can start the fighting all over again, if you like."
Jennifer waited for Voskop W Wurd to say that was a good idea. But even the Rof Golani warleader kept quiet. He picked up the little data storage device as if it were a bomb. In a way, it was, for it seemed likely to blow away his misconceptions of his species' past. The four modern Foitani were quiet and thoughtful as they left the Harold Meeker's cargo bay. When they were gone, the Great Ones left, too.
"Whew!" Jennifer sagged against a box which Greenberg had neatly labeled foitani electronic widgets. "Far as I'm concerned, the diplomats are welcome to diplomacy. Give me a simple trading run any day."
"You said it, especially when the people we're supposed to keep from each other's throats are as all-around charming as the Foitani," Greenberg said. "Right now, I would kill for a beer; Foitani kibbles and water aren't my idea of a way to unwind."
Jennifer quoted Heinlein. "One more balanced ration will unbalance me."
"I second that," Greenberg said, approving of the sentiment without recognizing the source. He went on, "The other thing is, I don't know whether we ought to be encouraging the Foitani to make peace with each other or to slug it out. If they do band together and have the technology of the Great Ones to use, they could turn into a real handful for the human worlds to deal with. But I can't say I'm eager to think of myself as the fellow who touched off the second round of the Suicide Wars."
"I know." Jennifer turned and thumped her head against the box of widgets, "The trouble with the Foitani is, they have no notion of moderation whatever. Whatever they think, whatever they do, they think it or do it all out, and they're sure anybody who thinks or acts differently deserves nothing better than to have her world blown up. Still, setting them at each other's throats—"
"How could we look at ourselves in a mirror afterward?" Greenberg walked over next to Jennifer and thumped his head, too. "The thing is, as best I can tell, getting them to slaughter each other will be a lot easier than making any sort of peace. And if they do have peace among themselves, how do we keep them from attacking all their neighbors? That seems to be the way they use peace among themselves."
"From time to time, when I remember, I think I'd like to live through this, no matter how it turns out," Jennifer said.
"Me, too." Greenberg made the
hair-pulling gesture he must have started using when he had more hair to pull. He said, "I'm going up to the living quarters and take a shower. Maybe once I soak my head, all this will make better sense. Somehow I doubt it, though."
Jennifer rode up the lift with him. As usual, just being in an area designed by humans for humans cheered her up. Even the noise of the plumbing in the refresher chamber as Greenberg washed himself reminded her of other trading ships and of planets where she'd lived. The sound of Foitani plumbing reminded her of nothing but kidnapping and fear.
Greenberg came out with a towel around his middle. "You want a turn?"
"At what?" With a mischievous smile, she pulled down the towel. When Greenberg reached for her, she skipped back. "There, you'll see, the communicator will buzz just as we get started." Her words didn't stop her from undoing the straps of her coveralls.
Just as they got started, the communicator buzzed. Jennifer said something rude. Greenberg said, "You might as well have had that shower." He sounded more resigned than martyred.
Voice replaced the insistent chiming. "Humans Bernard and Jennifer, this is Aissur Aissur Rus. I would like to consult with you concerning the new information presented by the—" He hesitated, plainly not wanting to call them either Great Ones or kwopillot. "—by the recently revived Foitani from the Great Unknown."
"Go ahead," Jennifer said, knowing perfectly well that he would go ahead whether she invited him to or not.
"Although analysis can at this stage be only preliminary, the data appear to possess validity."
"Do they?" Jennifer wasn't surprised. Solut Mek Kem and Nogal Ryn Nyr had seemed very sure of themselves. But if the Great Ones had originally been kwopillot, that made a hash of everything the successor races believed about themselves and their past. In an abstract way, she admired Aissur Aissur Rus for being able to acknowledge that. He had a lot of integrity, but he couldn't be very happy right now.
He said, "As I stated, they appear to." He wasn't going to concede anything he didn't have to, integrity or no. Jennifer supposed she couldn't blame him.
"If they were kwopillot, how did you get to be vodranet?" Greenberg asked. "Did a mutation spread through the species?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes," Aissur Aissur Rus said, and said no more.
Having dealt with Foitani for some time, Jennifer suspected that abrupt silence meant he knew something he didn't care to let out. She tried to figure out what might make him reticent, and asked, "Was it by any chance an artificial mutation?"
More silence from the communicator. Greenberg drew his own conclusions from that and made silent clapping motions. Finally, Aissur Aissur Rus said, "If the records of the kwopillot are to be trusted, it was, yes." The translator was emotionless and Foitani from Odern didn't sound upset even when they were, but Jennifer knew he was anything but happy. He went on, "If they can be believed, our variety of Foitan was—engineered—for no better purpose than increasing the variety of sexual pleasure available to every individual."
"What's wrong with that?" Greenberg said, in spite of Jennifer's frantic shushing motions. With the Foitani attitude about sex, anything that had to do with sensual pleasure was automatically suspect.
Aissur Aissur Rus said, "I can conceive of no greater humiliation. How would you like it if your entire species had been deliberately redesigned, merely to allow a greater number of sexual opportunities to its members?"
Put that way, Jennifer thought, it didn't sound appetizing. It had to be all the more galling for the Foitani, who had spent the millennia since the Suicide Wars thinking their original configuration a horrible perversion.
"No wonder it is so easy to produce kwopillot," Aissur Aissur Rus went on. "They are, after all, merely a reversion to our former evolutionary pattern. If the Great Ones are to be believed, the origins of vodranet—our origins—sprang from the desire of some Foitani at the time to experience both male and female sexual pleasure, which are for us quite different in sensation. Others resisted the introduction of such a radical change into the germ plasm of the race, and the result—the result appears to have been the Suicide Wars."
Jennifer said, "Aissur Aissur Rus, of all the Foitani I've met, regardless of race, you strike me as the most adaptable. The new data from the Great Ones seem to have crushed you. What do the rest of your people think about what you've found out today?"
"Pawasar Pawasar Ras has gone into his quarters. He has spoken to no one. He has forbidden me to discuss this with any person. I have chosen to interpret that to include only Foitani. Our sexual difficulties and conflicts must be of merely academic interest to you humans."
"Not if we end up getting killed on account of them," Greenberg said.
"Yes, that might affect your thinking to some degree," Aissur Aissur Rus admitted. "Nevertheless, although I have always been one to favor the expansion of knowledge by whatever means become available—as witness my recruiting the two of you to help enter the Great Unknown—I would, for the sake of my species' future, be willing, indeed eager, to see that no mention of what we have learned here ever reached Odern."
"The only way to make sure of that would be to destroy the Vengeance," Jennifer said.
"Were it in my power, I would cheerfully do so," Aissur Aissur Rus said. "Unfortunately, however, the kwopillot are much more likely to destroy me. Perhaps the soundest course would be merely to string these discussions along until the fleets from Odern and Rof Golan arrive, and hope they can rid us of the Vengeance—and our problem—once and for all."
"If it is, you've just given the game away," Greenberg pointed out. "Or don't you think the Great Ones are monitoring your radio traffic?"
"I say nothing they could not reason out for themselves," Aissur Aissur Rus answered. "They are depraved and perverse; they are not foolish." That was a distinction most humans would have had trouble drawing; Aissur Aissur Rus was able to be dispassionate even over matters that involved his passions.
"The other thing is, you don't think even full warfleets could beat the Great Ones, so you'd better talk with them," Jennifer said.
"You overstate the case," Aissur Aissur Rus said. "I am in doubt as to the likely outcome. The same must hold true for the kwopillot, else they would feel no need to continue discussions with us."
"You may well be right about that," Jennifer said.
"You humans have sexual deviants; I read of them in some of the materials in your course, human Jennifer. How is it that you have failed to destroy yourselves as a result of this fact?"
"That's a good question," Jennifer said slowly. Aissur Aissur Rus had a knack for asking good questions. That was probably how he'd come to be a leader of the team investigating the Great Unknown. He'd even gotten answers to his questions there, though by now he wished he hadn't.
Greenberg said, "One difference between Foitani and humans is that humans who differ sexually don't stand out in any obvious way like smell. When we fight, we fight about things like religion or politics or race, not sex."
Jennifer had what she thought for a moment was a brilliant idea. Then she realized that if it were all that brilliant, the Foitani would have thought of it for themselves. She threw it out anyway, to let Aissur Aissur Rus shoot it down if he wanted to: "Is there any chance that you and the kwopillot could put on perfumes that would keep you from going berserk at each other's odors?"
"There are no records of this succeeding," he answered. "The pheromones are most distinctive and most different. In any case, we need to be able to perceive these pheromones if we are to function sexually."
"Just a thought," Jennifer said, remembering that she had been about to function sexually before Aissur Aissur Rus called. She wasn't even angry at the Foitan; by now, she was used to getting interrupted.
For a miracle, Aissur Aissur Rus gave up about then and broke the connection. Grinning—he must have been thinking along with her—Greenberg stepped close. "Shall we try again, and see who calls next?"
"Sure, why not?" The
n she asked, "What all do you have in the cargo bay, anyhow? A proper science fiction hero—or even heroine—would be able to improvise his way out of trouble with something that had been sitting there all along, just waiting to be used."
"You're welcome to look," Greenberg answered. "If you think you can improvise a way out of this mess with a bunch of trade junk, go right ahead and try."
"Maybe another time," Jennifer said. "Thing was, SF writers had the habit of putting things that would really help into cargo bays. I've got the feeling that real life isn't so considerate."
"The only thing real life has been considerate about is giving me the chance to fall in love with you. Even then, the damned Foitani keep calling at the wrong time."
"They aren't calling right now," Jennifer said softly.
"So they're not. Let's enjoy it while we can."
* * *
"What are you doing, human Jennifer?"
"Just examining cargo," she answered. Since the Foitan on the communicator had known her name, it was probably someone from Odern. Whoever it was, he had to have been monitoring her through some of the spy gear aboard the Harold Meeker. If she and Greenberg could sell that alone to one of the more paranoid human intelligence services, they would show a profit for the trip. The only problem there was getting the goods to the marketplace.
Armed with Greenberg's labels, with the computer to give her more details about what was in each crate or box or plastic bag, and with a pry bar, she wandered through the cargo bay, opening packages that looked interesting. A lot of them were interesting: pelts and spices and books and works of art and electronics. She knew she would have had trouble assembling such a rich variety of goods while keeping everything of high quality, as Greenberg had. He deserved his master rating. Somebody back in human space would be sure to want everything the Harold Meeker carried, and want it enough to pay highly for it.
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