Venus and the Seven Sexes

by William Tenn

  “Now,” he said, turning to me. “You know what stereos are?”

  “No, not quite. You see only one of us has ever conversed with humans before this, and we know little of their glorious ways. Our Book of Twos is almost bare of useful information, being devoted chiefly to a description of your first six explorers, their ship and robots, by the nzred fanobrel. I deduce, however, that stereos are an essential concomitant of an industrial civilization.”

  He waved the bottle. “Exactly. At the base of everything. Take your literature, your music, your painting—”

  “Pardon me,” I interposed. “But we have been able to build none of these things as yet. We are chased by so many—”

  “I was just spitballing,” he roared. “Don’t interrupt my train of thought. I’m building! Now, where was I? Oh, yes—take your literature, music and painting and you know what you can do with them. The stereos comprise everything in art; they present to the masses, in one colossal little package, the whole stirring history of human endeavor. They are not a substitute for art in the twenty-second century—they are the art of the twenty-second century. And without art, where are you?”

  “Where?” I asked, for I will admit the question intrigued me.

  “Nowhere. Nowhere at all. Oh, you might be able to get by in the sticks, but class will tell eventually. You’ve got to romp home with an Oscar now and then to show the reviewers that you’re interested in fine things as well as money-making potboilers.”

  I concentrated on memorizing, deciding to reserve interpretation for later. Perhaps this was my mistake, perhaps I should have asked more questions. But it was all so bewildering, so stimulating…

  “The stereos have gone a long way since the pioneering sound movies of medieval times,” he continued. “Solid images that appeal to all five senses in gorgeous panoramas of perception.”

  Hogan Shlestertrap paused and went on with even more passion. “And wasn’t it said that Shlestertrap Productions had their special niche, their special technique among the senses? Yes, sir! No greater accolade could be accorded a stereo than to say it had the authentic Shlestertrap Odor. The Shlestertrap smell—how I used to slave to get that in just right! And I almost always succeeded. Oh, well, they say you’re just as good as your last stereo.”

  I took advantage of the brooding silence that followed to clack my small tentacle hesitantly.

  The emissary looked up. “Sorry, fella. What we’ve got to do here is turn out a stereo based on your life, your hopes and spiritual aspirations. Something that will make ’em sit up and take notice way out in Peoria. Something that will give you guys a culture.”

  “We need one badly. Particularly a culture to defend us against—”

  “All right. Let me carry the ball. Understand I’m only talking off the top of my mind right now; I never make a decision until I’ve slept on it and let the good old subconscious take a couple of whacks at the idea. Now that you understand the technical side of stereo-making, we can start working on a story. Now, religion and politics are dandy weenies, but for a good successful piece of art I always say give me the old-fashioned love story. What’s the lowdown on your love-life?”

  “That question is a trifle difficult to answer,” I replied slowly. “We had the gravest communicative difficulties with the first explorers of your race over this question. They seemed to find it complicated.”

  “A-ah,” he waved a contemptuous hand. “Those scientific bunnies are always looking for trouble. Takes a businessman, who’s also an artist, mind you—first and last an artist—to get to the roots of a problem. Let me put it this way, what do you call your two sexes?”

  “That is the difficulty. We don’t have two sexes.”

  “Oh. One of those a-something animals. Not too much conflict possible in that situation, I guess. No-o-o. Not in one sex.”

  I was unhappy: he had evidently misunderstood me. “I meant we have more than two sexes.”

  “More than two sexes? Like the bees, you mean? Workers, drones and queens? But that’s really only two. The workers are—”

  “We Plookhh have seven sexes.”

  “Seven sexes. Well, that makes it a little more complicated. We’ll have to work our story from a—SEVEN SEXES?” he shrieked.

  He dropped back into the chair where he sat very loosely, regarding me with optical organs that seemed to quiver like tentacles.

  “They are, to use the order stated in the Book of Sevens, srob, mlenb, tkan, guur—”

  “Hold it, hold it,” he commanded. He conjugated with his bottle and called to a robot to bring him another. He sighed finally and said: “Why in the name of all the options that were ever dropped do you need seven sexes?”

  “Well, at one time, we thought that all creatures required seven sexes as a minimum. After your explorers arrived, however, we investigated and found that this was not true even of the animals here on our planet. My ancestor, nzred fanobrel, had many profitable talks with the biologists of the expedition who provided him with theoretical knowledge to explain that which we had only known in practice. For example, the biologists decided that we had evolved into a seven-sexed form in order to stimulate variation.”

  “Variation? You mean so your children would be different?”

  “Exactly. You see, there is only one thing that all the ravening life-forms of Venus would rather eat than each other; and that one thing is a Plookh. From the other continent, from all the islands and seas of Venus they come at different times for their Plookh feed. When a Plookh is discovered, a normally herbivorous animal will battle a mighty carnivore to the death and disregard the carcass of its defeated opponent—to enjoy the Plookh.”

  Our civilizer considered me with a good deal of interest. “Why—what have you got that no one else has got?”

  “We don’t know—exactly. It may be that our bodies possess a flavor that is uniformly exciting to all Venusian palates; it may be, as one of the biologists suggested to nzred fanobrel, that our tissue contains an element—a vitamin—essential to the diet of all the life-forms of our planet. But we are small and helpless creatures who must reproduce in quantity if we are to survive. And a large part of that quantity must differ from the parent who himself has survived into the reproductive stage. Thus, with seven parents who have lived long enough to reproduce, the offspring inherits the maximum qualities of survival as well as enough variation from any given parent to insure a constantly and rapidly improving race of Plookh.”

  An affirmative grunt. “That would be it. In the one-sex stage—asexual is what the bio professors call it—it’s almost impossible to have varied offspring. In the bisexual stage, you get a good deal of variation. And with seven sexes, the sky must be the limit. But don’t you ever get a Plookh who isn’t good to eat, or who can maybe fight his way out of a jam?”

  “No. It would seem that whatever makes us delicious is essential to our own physical structure. And, according to the biologists of the expedition again, our evolutionary accent has always been on evasiveness—whether by nimbleness, protective coloration or ability to hide—so that we have never developed a belligerent Plookh. We have never been able to: it is not as if we had only one or two enemies. All who are not Plookh will eat Plookhh. Except humans—and may I take this occasion to express our deep gratitude?

  “From time to time, our Books of Numbers tell us, Plookh have formed communities and attempted to resist extermination by united effort. In vain; they merely disappeared in groups instead of individually. We never had the time to perfect a workable system of defense, to devise such splendid things as weapons—which we understand humans have. That is why we rejoiced so at your coming. At last—”

  “Save the pats on the back. I’m here to do a job, to make a stereo that will be at least an epic, even if I don’t have the raw material of a saga. Give me a line on how all this works.”

  “May I say that whether it is an epic or a saga, we will still be grateful and sing the greatness of your name forev
er? Just so we are set on the path of civilization; just so we learn to construct impregnable dwellings and—”

  “Sure. Sure. Wait till I get me a fresh bottle. Now—what are your seven sexes and how do you go about making families?”

  I reflected carefully. I knew full well what a responsibility was mine at that moment; how important it was that I give our benefactor completely accurate information to aid him in the making of stereos, the first step we must take toward civilization.

  “Please understand that much of this is beyond our ken. We know what seems to happen, but for an explanation we use the theories of the first flame ship’s biologists. Unfortunately, their theories were multiple and couched in human terms which even they admitted were somewhat elementary when applied to the process of Plookh reproduction. We sacrificed a whole generation of the fanobrel family for microscopic experimentation and only a broad outline was worked out. Our seven sexes are—”

  “I heard it was complicated,” Shlestertrap interrupted. “The biologists left five miles of figures in the Venusian Section of the Interplanetary Cultural Mission after they returned from this expedition. You see, there was an election right after that: a new party came in and fired them. I wasn’t going to wade through all that scientific junk, no sir! One of them—Gogarty, I think—pulled every wire there was to take this job away from me and come here in my place. Some people just can’t stand being out after they’ve been politically in for so long. Me, I’m here to make stereos—good ones. I’m here to do just what the prospectus of the Venusian Section called for—’bring culture to the Plookhh as per request.’ ”

  “Thank you. We did wonder why the Gogarty—pardon—why Gogarty didn’t return; he expressed such an enormous interest in our ways and welfare. But no doubt the operation of firing him by the new party after the election was far more productive in the human scheme of things. We have not yet advanced to the state of parties and elections or any such tools. To us one human is as omniscient and magnificent as the other. Of course, you understand all relevant data on human genetics?”

  “Sure. You mean chromosomes and stuff?”

  I flapped my small tentacle eagerly. “Yes, chromosomes and stuff. Especially stuff. I think it is the part about ‘stuff’ that has made the whole subject somewhat difficult for us. Gogarty never mentioned it. All he discussed were chromosomes and genes.”

  “No wonder I got such a crash bio briefing! Let’s see. Chromosomes are collections of genes which in turn control characteristics. When an animal is ready to reproduce, its germ-cells—or reproductive cells—each divide into two daughter cells called gametes, each daughter cell possessing one-half the chromosomes of the parent cell, every chromosome in each gamete corresponding to an opposite number chromosome in the other. Process is called meiosis. Correct me if I’m wrong anywhere.”

  “And how can a human be wrong?” I asked devoutly.

  His face wrinkled. “In the case of humans, the female germ-cell has twenty-four pairs of chromosomes, one pair being known as the X chromosome and determining sex. It splits into two female gametes of twenty-four corresponding chromosomes, one X chromosome in each gamete. Since the male germ-cell—if I remember rightly—has only twenty-three identical pairs of chromosomes and an additional unmatched pair called the X-Y chromosome, it divides into two male gametes of twenty-four chromosomes each, of which only twenty-three have a twin in each gamete; the twenty-fourth being the X chromosome in one male gamete and the Y chromosome in the other. If a male gamete—or sperm-cell—containing an X chromosome unites with a female gamete—ovum, or egg-cell, the briefing guy called it—carrying an X chromosome, the resultant zygote will be female; but if the Y chromosome gamete fertilizes the ovum, you have a male zygote. They really jammed that stuff in me before they let me leave Earth. Lectures, sleep-sessions, the whole bit.”

  “Exactly,” I said enthusiastically. “Now in our case—”

  “I recall something else, come to think of it. The Y is supposed to be a slightly undeveloped or retarded chromosome and it makes the gamete containing it a little weaker or something. The sperm-cell with the X chromosome is faster and stronger and has a better chance of fertilizing the ovum. It also shows why women can take it better than men and live longer. Simple. How’s it work with you?”

  The extended conversation was making me giddy, and the atmosphere of the dome—with its small vapor content—dried my faculties. However, this was a historic occasion: no personal weakness must be allowed to interfere. I stiffened my tentacles and began.

  “After the matrimonial convention, when the chain is established, each sex’s germ-cells are stimulated into meiosis. The germ-cell divides into seven gametes, six of them with cilia and the seventh secreted either inside or outside the Plookh, depending on the sex.”

  “What’s this chain?”

  “The chain of reproduction. The usually stated order is srob (aquatic form), mlenb (amphibian), tkan (winged), guur (plant-like), flin (a burrower), blap (tree-dweller). And, of course, the chain proceeds in a circle as: srob, mlenb, tkan, guur, flin, blap, srob, mlenb, tkan, guur, flin, blap, srob—”

  Hogan Shlestertrap had grasped his head with his hands and was rocking it slowly back and forth. “Starts with srobs and ends with blaps,” he said, almost inaudibly. “And I’m a—”

  “Srobb,” I corrected him timidly. “And blapp. And it doesn’t necessarily start with one and end with another. A birth may be initiated anywhere along the chain of a family, just so it passes through all sexes—thus acquiring the necessary chromosomes for a fertilized zygote.”

  “All right! Please get back to chromosomes and sanity. You just had a germ-cell dividing—a srob’s, say—into seven gametes instead of a decent two like all other logical species use.”

  “Well, so far as our weak minds can compass it, this is the chromosome pattern worked out by Gogarty and his assistant, Wolfsten, after prolonged microscopic examination. Gogarty warned my ancestor, nzred fanobrel, that it was only an approximation. According to this analysis, the germ-cell of a given sex has forty-nine chromosomes, seven each of Types A, B, C, D, E, F, six of Type G and one of Type H—the last, Type H, being the sex determinant. Six mobile gametes are formed through meiosis—each containing an identical group of seven chromosomes of Types A through G—and a seventh or stationary gamete containing chromosomes A, B, C, D, E, F, and H. This last Gogarty called the female or H gamete, since it never leaves the body of the Plookh until the fully fertilized cell of forty-nine chromosomes—or seven gametes—is formed, and since it determines sex. The sex, of course, is that of the Plookh in whose body it is stationary.”

  “Of course,” Shlestertrap murmured and conjugated long and thoughtfully with the bottle.

  “It has to be, since that is the only H chromosome in the final zygote. But you know that for yourself. In fact, operating with a human intelligence, you have probably anticipated me and already extrapolated the whole process from the few facts I have mentioned.”

  Moisture gathered at the top of our civilizer’s head and rolled down his face in the quaintest of patterns. “I understand you,” he admitted, “and of course I’ve already figured out the whole thing. But just to make it clear in your own mind, don’t you think you might as well continue?”

  I thanked him for his unfailing human courtesy. “Now, if it is a srob with whom we start our chain, it will transmit one of its six mobile gametes to a mlenb where the gamete will unite with one of the mlenb’s A through G cells, forming what Gogarty called a double-gamete or pre-zygote. This pre-zygote will contain seven pairs of A through G chromosomes, and, in the body of the tkan—next in the chain—it will unite with a tkan mobile gamete forming a triple-gamete with seven triplets of A through G chromosomes. It proceeds successively through the rest of the sexes capturing a seven-chromosome gamete each time, until, when it is transmitted to the blap, it contains forty-two chromosomes—six A’s, six B’s and so on through to six G’s. At this point, the sextuple ga
mete loses its cilia; and unites, in the blap, with the stationary H gamete to form a forty-nine chromosome zygote which, of course, is of the blap sex. The egg is laid and it hatches shortly into a baby blap, guarded—when at all possible—and taught in ten days all that its parent can teach it about surviving as a blap Plookh. At the end of ten days, the half-grown blap goes its way to feed and escape from danger by itself. At the end of a hundred days, it is ready to join a family and reproduce in full adulthood.

  “The chain may be said to begin at any point; but it always travels in the same direction. Thus a flin will transmit the original seven-chromosome gamete to the blap of his chain where it will become a double-gamete; the blap will transmit the double-gamete to the srob, who will make it a triple-gamete; eventually, in this case, the process will come to fruition on the vines of the guur resulting in a guur zygote. Was not Gogarty clever, even for a human? He suggested, by the way, that it was possible we were not really a seven-sexed creature, but seven distinct species living in a reproductive symbiosis.”

  “Gogarty was a damned genius! Hey, wait a minute! Srob, mlenb, tkan, guur, flin, blap—that’s only six!”

  At last we were getting to the interesting part. “Quite so. I am a representative of the seventh sex—a nzred.”

  “A nzred, huh? What do you do?”

  “I coordinate.”

  One of the robots scurried in in answer to his yell. He ordered it to bring a case of these bottles of whiskey and to place it near his chair. He also ordered it to stand by, prepared for emergencies.

  This was all very enjoyable. My information was creating even more of a sensation than that described by my ancestor, nzred fanobrel. It is not often that we Plookhh have an opportunity to sit thus with an animal of a different species and provide intellectual instead of gustatory diversion.

  “He coordinates! Maybe they can use a good expediter or dispatcher?”

  “I fulfill all of those functions. Chiefly, however, I coordinate. You see, a mlenb is primarily interested in winning the affections of a likely srob and finding a tkan whom he can love. A tkan merely courts a mlenb and is attracted to a good guur. I am responsible for getting a complete chain of these individuals in operation, a chain of compatibility where perfect amity runs in a complete circle—a chain which will produce offspring of maximum variability. Then, after the matrimonial convention, when the chain is established, each sex begins to secrete its original germ with the full forty-nine chromosomes. A busy time for nzredd! I must make certain that all germ-cells are developing at a uniform rate—each sex attempts to fertilize seven H gametes in the course of a cycle—and the destruction of one individual in the middle of the cycle means the complete disarrangement of a family except for the gametes which he has already passed on in multiple state. Replacement of an eaten individual with another of the same sex, the remainder of whose family has been wiped out, is occasionally possible with the aid of the chief of his sex.”