"Whew!" Jennifer sagged against a box which Greenberg had neatly labeled foitani electronic widgets. "Far as I'm concerned, the diplomats are welcome to diplomacy. Give me a simple trading run any day."

"You said it, especially when the people we're supposed to keep from each other's throats are as all-around charming as the Foitani," Greenberg said. "Right now, I would kill for a beer; Foitani kibbles and water aren't my idea of a way to unwind."

Jennifer quoted Heinlein. "One more balanced ration will unbalance me."

"I second that," Greenberg said, approving of the sentiment without recognizing the source. He went on, "The other thing is, I don't know whether we ought to be encouraging the Foitani to make peace with each other or to slug it out. If they do band together and have the technology of the Great Ones to use, they could turn into a real handful for the human worlds to deal with. But I can't say I'm eager to think of myself as the fellow who touched off the second round of the Suicide Wars."

"I know." Jennifer turned and thumped her head against the box of widgets, "The trouble with the Foitani is, they have no notion of moderation whatever. Whatever they think, whatever they do, they think it or do it all out, and they're sure anybody who thinks or acts differently deserves nothing better than to have her world blown up. Still, setting them at each other's throats?"

"How could we look at ourselves in a mirror afterward?" Greenberg walked over next to Jennifer and thumped his head, too. "The thing is, as best I can tell, getting them to slaughter each other will be a lot easier than making any sort of peace. And if they do have peace among themselves, how do we keep them from attacking all their neighbors? That seems to be the way they use peace among themselves."

"From time to time, when I remember, I think I'd like to live through this, no matter how it turns out," Jennifer said.

"Me, too." Greenberg made the hair-pulling gesture he must have started using when he had more hair to pull. He said, "I'm going up to the living quarters and take a shower. Maybe once I soak my head, all this will make better sense. Somehow I doubt it, though."

Jennifer rode up the lift with him. As usual, just being in an area designed by humans for humans cheered her up. Even the noise of the plumbing in the refresher chamber as Greenberg washed himself reminded her of other trading ships and of planets where she'd lived. The sound of Foitani plumbing reminded her of nothing but kidnapping and fear.

Greenberg came out with a towel around his middle. "You want a turn?"

"At what?" With a mischievous smile, she pulled down the towel. When Greenberg reached for her, she skipped back. "There, you'll see, the communicator will buzz just as we get started." Her words didn't stop her from undoing the straps of her coveralls.

Just as they got started, the communicator buzzed. Jennifer said something rude. Greenberg said, "You might as well have had that shower." He sounded more resigned than martyred.

Voice replaced the insistent chiming. "Humans Bernard and Jennifer, this is Aissur Aissur Rus. I would like to consult with you concerning the new information presented by the?" He hesitated, plainly not wanting to call them either Great Ones or kwopillot. "?by the recently revived Foitani from the Great Unknown."

"Go ahead," Jennifer said, knowing perfectly well that he would go ahead whether she invited him to or not.

"Although analysis can at this stage be only preliminary, the data appear to possess validity."

"Do they?" Jennifer wasn't surprised. Solut Mek Kem and Nogal Ryn Nyr had seemed very sure of themselves. But if the Great Ones had originally been kwopillot, that made a hash of everything the successor races believed about themselves and their past. In an abstract way, she admired Aissur Aissur Rus for being able to acknowledge that. He had a lot of integrity, but he couldn't be very happy right now.

He said, "As I stated, they appear to." He wasn't going to concede anything he didn't have to, integrity or no. Jennifer supposed she couldn't blame him.

"If they were kwopillot, how did you get to be vodranet?" Greenberg asked. "Did a mutation spread through the species?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," Aissur Aissur Rus said, and said no more.

Having dealt with Foitani for some time, Jennifer suspected that abrupt silence meant he knew something he didn't care to let out. She tried to figure out what might make him reticent, and asked, "Was it by any chance an artificial mutation?"

More silence from the communicator. Greenberg drew his own conclusions from that and made silent clapping motions. Finally, Aissur Aissur Rus said, "If the records of the kwopillot are to be trusted, it was, yes." The translator was emotionless and Foitani from Odern didn't sound upset even when they were, but Jennifer knew he was anything but happy. He went on, "If they can be believed, our variety of Foitan was?engineered?for no better purpose than increasing the variety of sexual pleasure available to every individual."

"What's wrong with that?" Greenberg said, in spite of Jennifer's frantic shushing motions. With the Foitani attitude about sex, anything that had to do with sensual pleasure was automatically suspect.

Aissur Aissur Rus said, "I can conceive of no greater humiliation. How would you like it if your entire species had been deliberately redesigned, merely to allow a greater number of sexual opportunities to its members?"

Put that way, Jennifer thought, it didn't sound appetizing. It had to be all the more galling for the Foitani, who had spent the millennia since the Suicide Wars thinking their original configuration a horrible perversion.

"No wonder it is so easy to produce kwopillot," Aissur Aissur Rus went on. "They are, after all, merely a reversion to our former evolutionary pattern. If the Great Ones are to be believed, the origins of vodranet?our origins?sprang from the desire of some Foitani at the time to experience both male and female sexual pleasure, which are for us quite different in sensation. Others resisted the introduction of such a radical change into the germ plasm of the race, and the result?the result appears to have been the Suicide Wars."

Jennifer said, "Aissur Aissur Rus, of all the Foitani I've met, regardless of race, you strike me as the most adaptable. The new data from the Great Ones seem to have crushed you. What do the rest of your people think about what you've found out today?"

"Pawasar Pawasar Ras has gone into his quarters. He has spoken to no one. He has forbidden me to discuss this with any person. I have chosen to interpret that to include only Foitani. Our sexual difficulties and conflicts must be of merely academic interest to you humans."

"Not if we end up getting killed on account of them," Greenberg said.

"Yes, that might affect your thinking to some degree," Aissur Aissur Rus admitted. "Nevertheless, although I have always been one to favor the expansion of knowledge by whatever means become available?as witness my recruiting the two of you to help enter the Great Unknown?I would, for the sake of my species' future, be willing, indeed eager, to see that no mention of what we have learned here ever reached Odern."

"The only way to make sure of that would be to destroy the Vengeance," Jennifer said.

"Were it in my power, I would cheerfully do so," Aissur Aissur Rus said. "Unfortunately, however, the kwopillot are much more likely to destroy me. Perhaps the soundest course would be merely to string these discussions along until the fleets from Odern and Rof Golan arrive, and hope they can rid us of the Vengeance?and our problem?once and for all."

"If it is, you've just given the game away," Greenberg pointed out. "Or don't you think the Great Ones are monitoring your radio traffic?"