“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.