William Tenn - Venus and the Seven Sexes

I suppressed every logical impulse that told me to flee; however frightened, I must act like a representative of the civilized race which we Plookhh were becoming. I stood before the brinosaur’s idiotically gleeful face and inquired: “What about the Shlestertrap? For the sake of all Plookhh, already eaten and as yet unhatched, answer me quickly, O flin!”

From somewhere within the immense throat, the flin’s voice came painfully indistinct through the saliva which blocked its path. “Shlestertrap is going back to Earth. He says you must—”

The monster gulped and the bulge that was once a flin slid down the great neck and into the body proper. Only then, when he had burped his enjoyment and the first faint slaver of expectancy began in regard to me—only then, did I use the power of my helical tentacle to leap to one side and into a small grove of trees.

After swinging his head in a lazy curve, the brinosaur, morosely certain that there were no other unalerted Plookhh in the vicinity, turned and flapped slowly down the mountain. The moment he entered the screaming floods, I was out of concealment and detailing a party of three nzredd to follow me to the dome.

We picked our way painfully across a string of rocks, in a direction which, while leading away from the tenth highest mountain, would form part of a great arc designed to lead us to the dome across dry land.

“Can it be,” one of the youngsters asked, “that Shlestertrap, observing our careful obedience to the principles laid down in the stereo, has decided that we have irrevocably joined the chain that must produce civilization and that his work is therefore finished?”

“I hope not. If that were true,” I replied, “it would mean, from the rate of development I have observed, that our civilization would not make itself felt for several lifetimes beyond mine. Possibly he is returning to Earth to acquire the necessary materials for our next stage, that of technology.”

“Good! The cultural stage through which we pass, while obviously necessary, is extremely damaging to our population figures. I am continually forced to revise my Book of Sevens in unhappy decrease of Plookhh. Not that the prospect of civilization for our race is not well worth the passing misery I feel at attending my first matrimonial convention two days from now. I only hope that our guur finds a comparatively small great spotted snake!”

Thus, discoursing pleasantly of hopes almost as delightful as the Hope—of a time when the power of Plookh domination would shake the very soil of Venus—we rolled damply the long distance to the dome. I lost only one assistant before the robot picked us up with his beam, and scurried rapidly to Shlestertrap’s interior compartment.

The place was almost bare: I deduced that most of the mission’s equipment had already been carried to the flame ship. Our civilizer sat on a single chair surrounded by multitudes of bottles, all of whom had already been conjugated to the point of extinction.

“Well,” he cried, “if it isn’t little plookhiyaki and his wedded nzred! Didn’t think I could say that, did you? Sit down and take a load off your nzred!” I was glad to observe that while his voice was somewhat thick, his attitude seemed to express a desire to be more communicative than usual.

“We hear that you return to Hollywood California U.S.A. Earth,” I began.

“Wish it was that, laddie. Wish it was that little thing. Finest place in the universe—Hollywood Calif etcetera. Nope. I been recalled, that’s what I been. The mission’s closed.”

“But why?”

“This thing—Economy. At least that’s what they said in the bulletin they sent me. ‘Due to necessary retrenchment in many government services—’ Don’t you believe it! It’s those big busybodies! Gogarty’s probably laughing his head off down in Sahara University: he’s the guy started all that hullabubballoo about me in first place. And me, I gotta go back and start life all over again.”

Here he put his head down between his arms and shook his shoulders. After a while, he rolled off the chair and onto the floor. A robot entered, carrying a packing box. He set Shlestertrap back in the chair and left, the heavy box still under his arm.

I could not help a slight feeling of pride at the sight of the awe with which the two young nzredd regarded my obvious intimacy with the human. They were more than a little confused by his alien communicative pattern; but they were as desperately determined as I to memorize every nuance of this portentous last conversation. This was fortunate: the fact that their versions of this affair agreed with mine helped to strengthen my position in the difficult days that lay ahead.

“And our civilizing process,” I asked. “Is it to stop?”

“Huh? What civil—Oh, that! No, sir! Little old Shlesty’s taken care of his friends. Always takes care. Got the new stereo ready. One fine job! Wait—I’ll get it for you.”

He rose slowly to his feet. “Where’s a robot? Never one of ’em around when you want one of ’em around. Hey, Highsprockets!” he bellowed. “Get me the copies of the stereo in the next room or something. The new stereo.

“Got it all cut yesterday,” he continued, when the robot had given him the packages. “Didn’t really finish it the way I wanted to; but when bulletin came, I just sent all your actor friends on home. I don’t work for nothing, I don’t. But I sat up and cut it into right length, and what do you know? It came out fine. Here.”

I distributed the packages equally among the three of us. “And does it contain that wonderful device you mentioned—The Old Switcheroo?”

“Contains nothing else but. As neat a switcheroo on an original plot as Hogan Shlestertrap has ever turned. Yop. It’s got all you need. You just notice the way I worked it and pretty soon you’ll be making stereos in competition with Hollywood. Which is more than I’ll be doing.”

“We do not even faintly aspire to such heights,” I told him humbly. “We will be sufficiently grateful for the gift of civilization.”

“Thass all right,” he waved a hand at us as he swayed. “Don’t thank me. Thank me. In those two stereos you have two of the finest love stories ever told, and done by the latest Hollywood methods from one of its greatest directors in his grandest—What I mean to say is, they told me to mission you some culture and I missioned you culture and if they don’t like it, they can—”

At this point, he crumpled suddenly into a huddle upon the chair. We waited patiently for any further disclosures, but, as he seemed preoccupied with a peculiarly human manifestation, we made our departures with no further formality.

Once safely away from the dome, I instructed my assistants to hurry to our two distant installations and prepare them for immediate projection of our new stereo.

“Remember,” I called after them. “Any change the First Stereo has made in our way of life will be as nothing to what will be done by The Old Switcheroo.”

And I was right. The introduction of The Old Switcheroo—

I saw it myself for the first time along with over a hundred other Plookhh upon our mountain. After it was over, I was as bereft of speech as the rest. After a long pause in which no one dared to comment, the nzred nzredd suggested I project the First Stereo again with The Old Switcheroo immediately following so that we could compare them more easily.

This was done, but it proved of little help.

The problem is for you to solve. May my recounting of the entire history of the relationship between Hogan Shlestertrap and myself be of some value in finding a solution! I am old, and, as I have said, ripe for the gullet; you have been hatched in the very midst of this preliminary period of our culture—it is for you to find the way, the way that must be there, out of this impasse in which we shuttle unreproductively.