William Tenn - Venus and the Seven Sexes

Abruptly, the room darkened and a tiny spot of white expanded into the full-color, full-sound, full-olfactory and slightly tactile projection we have come to know so well. For some reason, the humans who make these stereos neglect almost completely the senses of taste, brotch, pressure and griggo—although the olfactory appeal stimulates an approximation of taste and an alert individual may brotch satisfactorily during an emotional sequence. The full-color—yes: it should be obvious that humans use only three primaries instead of the existing nine because they consider it a civilized simplicity; the very drabness of the combinations of blue, red and yellow, I believe, is a self-imposed limitation instituted as a challenge to their technicians.

As the human figures came to seeming life before me, I began to understand what Hogan Shlestertrap had meant by a “story.” A story is the history of one or more individuals in a specific cultural matrix. I wondered then just how Shlestertrap would derive a story from the meager life of a Plookh; he had known so few of us. I did not know of the wonderful human sense of imagination.

This story, that I saw on that awesome first day of our civilization, was about their two sexes. One representative of each sex (a man, Louis Trescott—and a girl, Bettina Bramwell) figured as the protagonists of the film.

The story concerned the efforts of Bettina Bramwell and Louis Trescott to get together and lay an egg. Many and complex were the difficulties this pair faced, but, at last, having overcome every obstacle, they were united and ready to reproduce.

Through some oversight, the story ended before the actual egg-laying; there was definite assurance, however, that the process would be under way shortly.

Thus, the first stereo I had ever seen. The colors sharpened in company with the sound of this obscure business called music, then all faded and disappeared. The lights returned to the room and the robots attended to the projectors. I went back to Shlestertrap, quivering with new knowledge.

“Sure,” he said. “It’s good. It’s good enough, considering the budget. Now, look, I have an idea for a stereo. It’s got to jell and whatnot, but meanwhile it’s an idea. What’s the animal you bugs are most afraid of?”

“Well, in the Season of Twelve Hurricanes, the strinth and sucking ivy do a large amount of damage to our race. In the other hurricane seasons—which are the worst for us, after all—the tricephalops, brinosaurs or gridniks—”

“Don’t tell me all your troubles. Put it this way: which animal are you afraid of most right now?”

I considered lengthily. Ordinarily, the question would have given me thought material for two days; but The Great Civilizer was shifting from foot to foot and I griggoed his impatience. A decision was necessary; this may have been my mistake, my offspring, but remember we might never have received any of the benefits of civilization if I had taken more time to determine which creature was eating most of us at that season.

“The great spotted snakes. Of course, it is feared only by the nzredd, mlenbb, flinn and blapp. At this time, guurr are eaten principally by tricephalops, while srobb—”

“All right. Spotted snakes. Now let’s go to the observation corridor and you point one out to me.”

In the room where I had entered the dome, I extended my optical tentacles toward the transparent roof.

“There, almost directly above me. The animal which has half swallowed a dodle and is being attacked by gridniks and sucking ivy.”

Shlestertrap faced upwards and shivered. At the sight of us, the creatures scrabbled even more frantically on the dome’s structure, continuing to eat whatever they had been eating when we entered. The sucking ivy dragged the great spotted snake away.

“What a place,” Shlestertrap muttered. “A guy could make a fortune here with an anti-vacation resort. ‘Come to this home away from home and learn to giggle at your nightmares. All kinds of dishes served, including you. Be a guest of the best digestions. Everybody to his taste and a taste to fit everybody.’ ”

I waited, while his human mind explored concepts beyond my primeval grasp.

“OK. So that was a great spotted snake. I’ll send a crew of robots out to get some shots of one of those babies that we can process into the stereo. Meanwhile, what about the cast?”

“Cast?” I fumbled. “How—what kind of cast do you mean?”

“Actors. Characters. Course I understand that none of you have any experience, even in stock, but I’ll treat this like a De Mille documentary. I’ll need a representative of each one of your sexes—the best in its line. You should be able to dredge them up with beauty contests or whatever you use. Just so I get seven of you—all different.”

“These can be obtained through the chiefs of the various sexes. The nzred tinoslep will be the new nzred nzredd and a replacement for the mlenb mlenbb should have been chosen if enough mlenbb dared to congregate in the marshes. And this is all we need to do to take the first movement toward civilization?”

“Absolutely all. I’ll write the first story for you—it’s only mildly magnificent right now, but I’ll have plenty of time to work it up into something better.”

“Then I may leave.”

He called for a robot who entered and motioned me in front of a machine much like a stereo projector.

“Sorry I can’t send a robot to protect you down the mountain, but we’re only half unpacked and I’ll need all of them around for a day or two. All I have here are Government Standard Models, see; and you can’t get any high-speed work out of those babies. To think that I used to have eighteen Frictionless Frenzies just to clean up around the house! Oh well, a sick trance isn’t glorious Mondays.”

Admitting the justice of this obscure allusion, I tried to reassure him. “If I am eaten, there are at least three nzredd who can replace me. It is only necessary for me to get far enough down the mountain to meet a living Plookh and inform him of your—your character requirements.”

“Good,” he told me heartily. “And I’m pretty sure I can play ball with any of your people who speak English fairly well. That sews up that: I’d hate to leave my stuff lying around in crates any longer than I have to. Dentface, throw a little extra juice into that beam so the kid here can get a big head start. And, once you get him out, quick-quick turn the dome back on fast, or we’ll have half the empty stomachs on Venus inside trying to work us into their ulcers.”

The robot called Dentface depressed a lever on the beam projector. Just as I had turned wistfully toward it in the hope that my meager mentality could somehow preserve an impression of the mechanism that would enable us to adapt it to our pressing needs, I was carried swiftly through a suddenly opened section of the dome and deposited halfway down the mountain. The opening, I observed as I got to my tentacles and rolled away from a creeper of sucking ivy, was actually an area of the dome that had temporarily ceased to exist.

I was unable to reflect further upon this matter because of the various lunges, snaps and grabs that were made at me from several directions. As I twisted and scudded down the tenth highest mountain, I deeply regretted Hogan Shlestertrap’s need of the robots for unpacking purposes.

This, my children, was the occasion on which I lost my circular tentacle. A tricephalops, it was—or possibly a large dodle.

Near the marsh, I observed that my remaining pursuer, a green shata, had been caught by a swarm of gridniks. Accordingly, I rested in the shadow of a giant fern.

A scrabbling noise above me barely gave me time to stiffen my helical tentacle for a spring, when I recognized its source as the blap koreon. Peering from the lowest fan-leaf, he called softly: “The nzred shafalon has come from the dwelling of the human who was to give us many and mighty weapons, yet still I see him fleeing from empty bellies like the veriest morsel of a Plookh.”