3 x T

"Better to ally with the Rof Golani than to risk such filth spreading through our sphere," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said.

Maybe he had just been indulging in rhetoric, but Aissur Aissur Rus took him up on it. "An excellent suggestion, honored kin-group leader. Call them at once; we have already observed that they too know the proper response to this menace."

"As you say, Aissur Aissur Rus." Pawasar Pawasar Ras went over to a communications panel and started talking into it. Before long, the image of a gray-blue Foitan from Rof Golan appeared on the screen on front of him.

"What are kwopillot?" Je

"They are disgusting," Thegun Thegun Nug said. "I go to wash their reek from my fur." He stalked off.

Je

Aissur Aissur Rus made a noise that might have come straight from a wolf's throat. The translator rendered it with a sigh. Je

"So what are kwopillot, and why do you keep calling them such nasty names?"

"Wait a minute," Bernard Greenberg put in, his eyes lighting up. "This has to do with sex, doesn't it? Otherwise you wouldn't mind so much talking about it."

"You are, as usual, astute, human Bernard," Aissur Aissur Rus said with another of those bloodthirsty-sounding sighs. "Indeed, the matter of the kwopillot does turn on sex, or more precisely on gender."

He paused, plainly not eager to go on without being prodded further. Je

Aissur Aissur Rus still stood silent. He looked big and blue and unhappy. Je

The variant of the trader's standard question paid off. Aissur Aissur Rus said, "You know that my race is unusual among intelligent species, in that we are born female and become male after our thirtieth year, more or less."

"You said so, once, yes," Je

"The converse also holds, I assure you," Aissur Aissur Rus replied at once. He waggled his ears. "I thank you, human Je

Aissur Aissur Rus was the only Foitan Je

"I had not started yet," Aissur Aissur Rus said. "Indeed, I approach the task with considerable reluctance. You may perhaps have observed that we Foitani are somewhat reticent in discussing matters which pertain to the reproductive process. The Middle English term for such affectation of reticence, I believe, is Victorian, is it not?"

Je

"As may be," Aissur Aissur Rus said. "That, however, is at present irrelevant. Rather more to the point, one of the reasons we are as reticent as we are concerning reproductive matters is that they are relatively simple to disrupt among us."

"And kwopillot choose to disrupt them?" Greenberg pounced.

"Exactly so, human Bernard. For u

"Why would anybody want to do that?" Je

Sure enough, Aissur Aissur Rus said, "Kwopillot act as they do because, being afflicted with perversity themselves, they wish to have others with whom to share it."

"Wait a minute," Greenberg said. "Suppose you have a male, uh, kwopil. What happens after he gets older than the age at which he was supposed to turn male anyway? Isn't he pretty much normal from then on?"

"No," Aissur Aissur Rus said. "For one thing, the hormone treatments which made him a kwopil leave their mark: he never smells as a proper Foitan should. For another, how could he be normal even were that not so, when he has spent all his previous life in a gender u

"I see your point," Greenberg said slowly. So did Je

She asked, "How do you know these things, Aissur Aissur Rus? Are there still kwopillot among you? You said they were extinct."

"Sadly, I overstated," Aissur Aissur Rus admitted. "Every starfaring Foitani world knows them, and many of those still sunk in planet-bound barbarism. The modification techniques, as I said, are far from difficult. Depraved and wealthy individuals, anxious only for their own degenerate gratification, generally create the first ones on a world. But once there are kwopillot on a world, they make more like themselves. In a way, it is understandable?who else but others of their kind would care to associate with them?"

Je

Pawasar Pawasar Ras was talking to the gray-blue Rof Golani officer. He spoke too softly for Aissur Aissur Rus's translator to pick up what he was saying, but Je