He stepped off the path so he could get a better view of what was going on back of the rock. It was not one human back there, he saw after a moment, it was two. Well, that made sense-one for each traveling contraption on the other side of the boulder. But they were lying together in such a tangle of arms and legs that he had to look with three eyes before he was sure.

Under their outer layers, he saw, humans had the same pinkishtan skins they did on their faces-at least their legs, the uncovered parts, did. Ternat wondered what they were doing. Humans did a lot of strange things, but he had never seen them at anything so strange as this before.

They separated and got up off the square of woven stuff on which they had been lying. They quickly began putting on the outer layers for their legs. They were too engrossed in that to pay any attention to Ternat and soon had the task done.

Before they did, though, Ternat noticed they were different. The taller one had a dangling organ that reminded him a little of his own male parts, though those only came out when he was with a mate. He was sorry for the human for having only one, and thought it ludicrous for the thing to be sticking out there all the time.

Then he thought about the other human, the male without the organ… He suddenly stood stockstill in the field as the possible meaning of that sank in. Given what he had watched, it made only too much sense.

He hurried back to the path and started home as fast as he could go. Reatur had to hear this news right away. Maybe he would know what to do about it.

Pat Marquard put on her long johns as fast as she could; the skin on her thighs and calves, wherever they had not pressed directly against Frank’s, was all over gooseflesh. She pulled her pants over the thermal underwear and bent down to put her socks and boots back on. That was when she saw the Minervan. “We’ve been watched,” she told Frank.

“Huh?” His head jerked up; he had been tying his boots, too. “Oh, it’s just a native,” he said in relief. He grinned a lazy grin at her. “Maybe he learned something.”

“Maybe he did.” She rolled up the blanket, shivering briefly at the idea of fooling around without it on this planet full of permafrost, then carried it around the rock and strapped it behind her bicycle seat.

She wondered if the Minervan would come over and try to talk with them, but he seemed to have business of his own. With a touch of regret, she let him go on. Still, she supposed Irv had a point when he recommended against forcing contact on the natives. Things could get nasty if Athena’s crew made themselves unwelcome.

“Shall we get going again?” Frank climbed onto his bicycle.

So did Pat. “Sure.”

“Only way to keep warm is to keep moving,” Frank said as he began to pedal. He grinned again. “Well, almost the only way.”

“Uhhuh.” Pat looked at the ground instead of at her husband. The alleged path they were riding on was rough enough that he saw nothing out of the ordinary there. But while Frank whistled cheerfully and his breath steamed out as if it were the traditional aftersex cigarette smoke, Pat was anything but satisfied.

Frustration stretched her nerves taut. She had been so sure a couple of miles’ worth of isolation would let her find the release she needed, but it had not worked out that way. Now she didn’t know what to do.

She knew exactly when things had begun to go wrong: aboard Athena. She had always needed privacy to relax when she made love, and a curtain spread in front of a cubicle was not enough. Every noise from outside made her tense up, fearing-irrationally, she knew, but no less powerfully on account of that-that she and Frank would be interrupted. After most of a year, failure became as ingrained as success had been before.

It wasn’t, she told herself, that she didn’t love Frank. She did; she was sure of that. But it had been a long time now since she had left clawmarks on his back. She wondered if he still could turn her on.

She also rather wished she hadn’t thought about Irv just after yet another unsatisfactory time with Frank. From the noises she occasionally couldn’t help noticing on Athena, Irv had had no trouble keeping Sarah happy. Sometimes she wondered if the secret was transferable.

Reatur felt his claws dig into the smooth ice of the floor, a mute sign of his disbelief. “You’re sure?” he said for the third time.

“No, clanfather, I’m not sure,” Ternat repeated patiently, “but it looked to me as if the two humans were mating, and one of them seemed to have male mating parts-or rather, a single male mating part. Does that not imply that the other human is a female?”

“I suppose so,” Reatur said unwillingly. He still had trouble taking in what his eldest was telling him. “A female that acts like a male-by the gods, a female that has lived long enough to learn a male’s wisdom. Even from people as strange as humans are…” His voice trailed away.

“Why not just ask them?” Ternat said.

“Would they tell the truth? If I had that kind of female with me, would I admit it? It’s as unnatural as-as-“ Reatur stopped, at a loss for a comparison. He thought for a while, groping for a way to understand. “Maybe it means these females have never mated.”

“Then what were the two humans doing behind the rock?” Ternat asked. “Clanfather, you know as well as I, when the urge comes on you to mate, you mate.”

“And if you are a female, when you mate, you bud, and when you bud, you die. There is no other way. With us, with nosver, even with runnerpests it is so. How could it be different with humans?”

Ternat did not answer; he had no good reply to make. Reatur had no answers, either, only endless questions-and the same hopeless hope he always felt when he thought of the sorrow of the mates. What would Lamra be like, if somehow she could live on after the buds dropped from her? Reatur tried to imagine Lamra’s wild and sunny nature transformed by, say, Ternat’s years. He gave up; he could not make the mental leap.

Then he had another thought. As long as he was imagining Lamra surviving one budding, why not more than one? What would it be like, coupling with a mate who could appreciate the act with full wit, as well as skin? If the humans had that-

“They may be luckier than any people dreamed of being,” he said softly.

“Clanfather?” Ternat did not follow him.

“Never mind.” Reatur’s breath hissed out under his arms. “I suppose you’re right, eldest. I’ll just have to ask them.”

Ternat walking after him, Reatur began looking for a human. Usually he could not go down a hallway without stumbling over three of them; now that he wanted one, they were nowhere to be found. He finally saw one some ways off in the fields, pointing his picture-maker at a male pulling weeds between crop plants. The subject seemed uninspiring to Reatur.

When the human heard the domain master coming, he turned his head so his two poor trapped eyes would point the right way. The human hesitated before asking, “Reatur, yes?”

“Yes.” Reatur was not offended; he had trouble telling humans apart. This was one of the three that rumbled. “Irv?” he guessed. His odds of being right were better than one in three. He was certain neither the rumbler called Emmett nor the one called Frank cared about weeds.

“Yes,” Irv said, and Reatur felt pleased with himself.

The domain master turned an extra eyestalk on the male who was weeding. “Why don’t you go do that someplace else, Gurtz?” When Irv started to follow the male, Reatur muttered to himself. “You stay, Irv; I need to speak with you.”

“Reatur?.” The human plainly did not yet understand why the domain master had come to talk with him.

“You did well to get Gurtz out of the way, clanfather,” Ternat said. “The fewer who know of this, the better.”

“Yes, wouldn’t the gossip fly?” Reatur agreed. He gave his attention back to Irv, who was not following the conversation between the domain master and his eldest. Reatur tried to find a way to get around to his question an eyestalk at a time but saw no way to do anything but ask it straight. “Irv, are you a male or a mate?”