"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?" Then 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.
Whether any of it would be of any use in keeping the next round of the Suicide Wars from breaking out was another matter. Maybe the Great Ones would admire some of the sculptures produced by a planet-bound Foitani race with which Odern traded, but that would not keep them from hating the artists as so many vodranet. Maybe the Foitani from Odern made marvelously compact and clever holovid scanners, but that would not keep them from loathing kwopillot or, if the claims of the old imperial Foitani got loose among them?as was very likely?from despising themselves as altered versions of the original Foitani plan they had been trying for so long to emulate.