There she had a choice of watching displays of cur-rently meaningless figures and tabulations on the temper atures, blood pressures, and pulse rates of about fif different life-forms, or surgical operations in progress that were visually disquieting and not calculated to luJ anyone to sleep.
In desperation, Cha Thrat tried the sound-only chan-nels. But the music she found, even when the volums was reduced to bare audibility, sounded as if it were coming from a piece of malfunctioning heavy machinery So it was a great surprise when the room alarm began reminding her, monotonously and with steadily increas-ing volume, that it was time to awaken if she required breakfast before her first lecture.
CHAPTER 4
The lecturer was a Nidian who had been introduced as Senior Physician Cresk-Sar. While it was speaking, it prowled up and down the line of trainees like some small, hairy, carnivorous beast, which meant that every few minutes it passed Cha Thrat so closely that she wanted to either fold her limbs in defensive mode or run away.
“To minimize verbal confusion during meetings with other-species entities,” it was saying, “and to avoid in-advertently giving offense, it is assumed that all members of the medical and support staff who do not belong to your own particular species are sexless. Whether you are addressing them directly or discussing them in their absence, you will always think of them as an ’it’. The only exception to this rule is when an other-species patient is being treated for a condition directly related to its sex, in which case the doctor must know whether it is male or female, or one of the multisexed species, if the proper treatment is to be carried out.
“I am a male Nidian DBDG,” Cresk-Sar went on, “but do not think of me as ‘he’ or ‘him’. Think of me as ‘it’.”
As the disgusting, hairy shape moved to within a few paces of her before turning away again, Cha Thrat thought that she would have no difficulty in thinking of this Senior Physician as “it.”
With the intention of finding someone less repulsive to look at, she turned her eyes toward the trainee closest to her — one of the three silver-furred Kelgians attending the lecture. It was strange, she thought, how the Ni-dian’s fur made her cringe inwardly while the equally alien covering of the Kelgian relaxed and calmed her like a work of great art. The fur was in constant motion, with long, slow ripples moving from the creature’s conical head right down to its tail, with occasional cross-eddies and wavelets appearing, as if the incredibly fine pelt was a liquid stirred by an unfelt wind. At first she thought the movements were random, but a pattern of ripples and eddies seemed to be developing the more closely shewatched.
“What are you staring at?” the Kelgian said suddenly, its translated words overlaid by the moaning and hissing sounds of its native speech. “Do I have a bald patch, or something?”
“I’m sorry, I had not meant to give offense,” Cha Thrat said. “Your fur is beautiful and I couldn’t help admiring it the way it moves—”
“Pay attention, you two!” the Senior Physician saidj sharply. It moved closer, looked up at each of them in turn, then went prowling down the line again.
“Cresk-Sar’s fur,” the Kelgian said softly, “is a sight. It makes me think that invisible and no doubt imaginary parasites are about to change their abode. It gives me a terrible psychosomatic itch.”
This time Cresk-Sar gave them another long look, made an irritated, snuffling sound that did aot translate, and continued with what it was saying.
“… There is a great deal of illogical behavior associated with sexual differences,” it went on, “and I must emphasize once again, unless the sex of a particular entity has a direct bearing on its course of treatment, the subject must be ignored if not deliberately avoided. Some of you may consider that such knowledge of another species would be helpful, conversationally useful during off-duty meetings or, as often happens in this place, when a particularly interesting piece of gossip is circulating. But believe me, in this area, ignorance is a virtue.”
“Surely,” said a Melfan trainee halfway down the line, “there are interspecies social occasions, shared meals or lectures, when it would be a gross act of bad manners to ignore another intelligent and socially aware person’s gender. I think that—”
“And I think,” Cresk-Sar said with a bark, or laugh, “that you are what our Earth-human friends call a gentleman. You haven’t been listening. Ignore the difference. Consider everyone who is not of your own species as neuter. In any case, you would have to observe some of our other-species people very closely to tell the differ-ence, and that in itself could cause serious embarrassment. In the case of Hudlar life-mates, who alternate between male and female mode, the behavior patterns are quite complex.”
“What would happen,” the Keigian beside her said, “if they should go, completely or partly, out of synchronization?”
From the line of trainees there were a number of different sounds, none of which registered on her translator. The Senior Physician was looking at the Kelgian, whose fur, for some reason, had begun to move in rapid, irregular ripples.
“I shall treat that as a serious question,” Cresk-Sar said, “although I doubt that it was intended as such. Rather than answer it myself, I shall ask one of you to do so. Would the Hudlar trainee please step forward.” So that, Cha Thrat thought, is a Hudlar. It was a squat, heavy life-form with a hard, almost featureless dark-gray skin, discolored by patches of the dried paint she had seen it spraying on itself before they had entered the lecture theater, and she had decided then that it was extremely careless in its application of cosmetics. The body was supported on six heavy tentacles, each of which terminated in a cluster of flexible digits, curled inward so that the weight was borne on heavy knuckles and the fingers remained clear of the floor.
There were no body openings that she could see, not even in the head, which contained eyes protected by hard, transparent shells and a semicircular membrane that vibrated to produce the creature’s words as it turned toward them.
“It is very simple, respected colleagues,” the Hudlar said. “While I am presently male, Hudlars are all sexually neutral until puberty, after which the direction taken is dependent on social-environmental influences,sometimes quite subtle influences that do not involva body contact. A picture of an attractive male-mode Hudi lar might impel one from neuter toward female mode, or the other way around. A conscious choice can be made if the career one intends to follow favors a particular sex. Unless one is mated, the postpuberty sex choice is fixed for the remainder of one’s life.
“When two adults become life-mates,” the Hudlar went on, “that is, when they join for the purpose of becoming parents and not simply for temporary pleasure, the sex changes are initiated shortly after conception. By the time the child is born the male has become much less aggressive, more attentive and emotionally oriented ward its mate, while its mate is beginning to lose the female characteristics. Following parturition, the process continues, with the father-that-was taking responsibility for the child while progressing to full female mode, and the mother develops all the male characteristics that will enable it to be a father-to-be.
“There is, of course, a time during which both life-mates are emotional neuters,” the Hudlar added, “but this is a period of the pregnancy when physical coupling is contraindicated.”
“Thank you,” the Senior Physician said, but held up a small, hairy hand to indicate that the Hudlar should remain where it was. “Any further comments, questions?”