gender?'
"Male, naturally."
'That is what I was afraid of.'
"Afraid? Did you crave to have a neuter host?"
'No. You see, I am female.'
"Impossible!" Heem exploded. "Cross-gendered transfers do not occur. It must be a confusion of nomenclature."
'Cross-gendered transfers are not supposed to happen,' she jetted. Actually, she was probably sounding or lighting, but he perceived it as jetting. 'They even use transfer as a definition of gender, in questionable cases. As when an individual of a species changes back and forth at different stages of life, now male, now female, like the Mintakans. If a given aura arrives in a male host, it's male.'
"Agreed. Therefore, what you term female must in fact be male."
'Do males bear offspring, among your kind?'
"No. Females do that."
'Iâdo that.'
"You claimed you were a clone of a male!"
'I am. One detail was changed, after the cloning."
"Some detail! You could not consider yourself the same person, after that!"
'I had little choice in the matter, since it happened when conception was only hours past.'
Heem ignored her strange time-unit. "You would have grown completely apart from your other half!"
'No. We were raised as siblings, as I said before. We were treated identically. I was called male, so there would not be any fuss, but Jesse and I knew, always. When we matured, we lived apart from our peers, and anonymous to our neighbors. Which was not hard to arrange, since we were of the royalty. Our auras changed together, constantly interacting. Really a single aura with two bodies.'
There was an uncomfortable pause. "The transfer should not have taken," Heem jetted at last. "You should have arrived in a female host, or bounced."
'That's what I assumed would happen. If the transfer took, I would occupy a female host, or at least a neuter one, of Segment Thousandstar, and my brother's onus would have been abated. He had only to report for transfer; no more was guaranteed. If I bounced, then it would signify that the Thousandstar host had not been adequate, and the advance payment would forfeit to Jesse. I expected to bounceâand thereby save our family fortune without actually undertaking a mission for which I was not qualified.'
"They will knowâthe Society of Hosts will know that your body is female, when they exercise it."
'We prepared, just in case. Our old estate retainer, Flowers, was to take the body home for care, so no one else saw it. Lucky thing we set that up, I suppose.'
"But the fact that transfer did occurâto a male host! This can not be explained."
'It seems unique, certainly. My arrival was painful to us both; I must have come close to bouncing, but didn't quite make it. I still feel the effect; your system is basically hostile to my aura. I think the clone-factor must have made the difference. My aura was close enough to fool the machine, so it sent me through as a male, and your system had to accept me as a male even though I was not. Am not! Since the original entity, before cloning, was male, I could be considered as a male with an added X chromosome. Really, Jesse's aura is awfully close to mine. In the circumstancesâ'
"Your logic is female. It must be so," Heem jetted limply. "That would account for the initial unconsciousness we both suffered, and for the trouble we now have communicating. It is not that you are alien; it is that you are female, and therefore the most alien creature of all. Your mind does not operate in comprehensible fashion."
'In the circumstances, I'm disinclined to argue. I have brought three disasters upon you, and I don't know how to mitigate any of them.'
Heem rolled those disasters around in his mind. First, an unqualified individual, thereby serving as a liability instead of an asset, when he desperately needed an asset. Second, a creature of an anathema-species: one that consumed food. Third, a female. Three things in ascending order of mischief.
Yet was he blameless? He too was unqualified for
"Male, naturally."
'That is what I was afraid of.'
"Afraid? Did you crave to have a neuter host?"
'No. You see, I am female.'
"Impossible!" Heem exploded. "Cross-gendered transfers do not occur. It must be a confusion of nomenclature."
'Cross-gendered transfers are not supposed to happen,' she jetted. Actually, she was probably sounding or lighting, but he perceived it as jetting. 'They even use transfer as a definition of gender, in questionable cases. As when an individual of a species changes back and forth at different stages of life, now male, now female, like the Mintakans. If a given aura arrives in a male host, it's male.'
"Agreed. Therefore, what you term female must in fact be male."
'Do males bear offspring, among your kind?'
"No. Females do that."
'Iâdo that.'
"You claimed you were a clone of a male!"
'I am. One detail was changed, after the cloning."
"Some detail! You could not consider yourself the same person, after that!"
'I had little choice in the matter, since it happened when conception was only hours past.'
Heem ignored her strange time-unit. "You would have grown completely apart from your other half!"
'No. We were raised as siblings, as I said before. We were treated identically. I was called male, so there would not be any fuss, but Jesse and I knew, always. When we matured, we lived apart from our peers, and anonymous to our neighbors. Which was not hard to arrange, since we were of the royalty. Our auras changed together, constantly interacting. Really a single aura with two bodies.'
There was an uncomfortable pause. "The transfer should not have taken," Heem jetted at last. "You should have arrived in a female host, or bounced."
'That's what I assumed would happen. If the transfer took, I would occupy a female host, or at least a neuter one, of Segment Thousandstar, and my brother's onus would have been abated. He had only to report for transfer; no more was guaranteed. If I bounced, then it would signify that the Thousandstar host had not been adequate, and the advance payment would forfeit to Jesse. I expected to bounceâand thereby save our family fortune without actually undertaking a mission for which I was not qualified.'
"They will knowâthe Society of Hosts will know that your body is female, when they exercise it."
'We prepared, just in case. Our old estate retainer, Flowers, was to take the body home for care, so no one else saw it. Lucky thing we set that up, I suppose.'
"But the fact that transfer did occurâto a male host! This can not be explained."
'It seems unique, certainly. My arrival was painful to us both; I must have come close to bouncing, but didn't quite make it. I still feel the effect; your system is basically hostile to my aura. I think the clone-factor must have made the difference. My aura was close enough to fool the machine, so it sent me through as a male, and your system had to accept me as a male even though I was not. Am not! Since the original entity, before cloning, was male, I could be considered as a male with an added X chromosome. Really, Jesse's aura is awfully close to mine. In the circumstancesâ'
"Your logic is female. It must be so," Heem jetted limply. "That would account for the initial unconsciousness we both suffered, and for the trouble we now have communicating. It is not that you are alien; it is that you are female, and therefore the most alien creature of all. Your mind does not operate in comprehensible fashion."
'In the circumstances, I'm disinclined to argue. I have brought three disasters upon you, and I don't know how to mitigate any of them.'
Heem rolled those disasters around in his mind. First, an unqualified individual, thereby serving as a liability instead of an asset, when he desperately needed an asset. Second, a creature of an anathema-species: one that consumed food. Third, a female. Three things in ascending order of mischief.
Yet was he blameless? He too was unqualified for
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