by Darrell Bain
"Oh. Sure." The change.
"I'm not sure you do," Donna said. "You can't understand what it's like to have a man's mind in a woman's body. I can." She hesitated, then continued. "For instance, you avoid looking at me, as if I might crawl all over you if you gave me any encouragement."
Was that what had been making me so uneasy around her? I didn't think so. It was just-oh chips in hell, I didn't know what it was, but certainly not that.
Donna saw my troubled expression. "Relax, Lee. I may have a woman's body, but I still have a man's mind. You know?"
"Seyla! That's why…" My big mouth again.
"Yes, Seyla. I still think of her as my girl. I can't help it."
"You mean you and Seyla are… Never mind. None of my business." I wasn't used to talking to a strange woman about sex. I felt like a kid caught watching a porn site on the web.
Donna laughed. "It's damn funny. I might not have been able to go through with it if I hadn't had so much wine last night."
"I'm surprised Seyla let you. I didn't know she was inclined that way," I said.
"I didn't either. And she's not, ordinarily, or at least I don't think so. I think at first, she was just trying to get me used to being a woman, then what with all that wine, we sort of got carried away."
"Be damned." That was all I could think of to say, but I couldn't help wondering what it had been like. It must have been pretty unique, though. Most men (at least the ones I've talked to) are fascinated with the idea of lesbian relationships and will go to great lengths to watch them having sex together, either virtually or in reality. I think it has something to do with the male psyche. We're naturally more sexually attuned to visual stimuli than women and watching lesbians in action sort of gives you a double dose.
Donna continued on, as if she were still my old male friend. "You know, I was surprised at how differently a female experiences sex. It's not something a man thinks very much about."
Do you know? She was right. I thought about my sexual encounters with Rita. Sure, I noticed when she had an orgasm, or when she was excited and how and where she liked to be touched and stroked, but it was all like feedback while playing at a virtual arcade, where you relate almost entirely to the sensations impinging on yourself and never consider how the game characters would feel while getting excited or hurt or mad or whatever. Of course, the characters aren't real, but that's my point. Have you ever wondered what your partner in a virtual sex scene is experiencing? Of course not. You're too involved with your own awareness. I wondered if women felt the same way. Something else came to mind. I didn't know exactly how to say it.
"Uh, Donna, do you think you'll ever try it like, you know, with someone besides Seyla?"
Donna got a serious expression on her face, seen dimly by me under the street lights.
"Do you mean will I ever try it with a man? Christ, Lee, I don't know. Right now, it doesn't seem possible, but I haven't been a woman very long. Ask me again some other time."
I was glad to hear she wasn't considering the idea. It made me feel a whole lot better.
The liquor store was still open and it stocked enough munchies so we decided to wait until daylight to shop for more substantial food. The clerk kept giving Donna the eye while we waited for my comphone to mesh with the store's computer. It made me wonder if he were gay until I came back to earth. Ordinarily, it should have taken only a few seconds for my comphone to connect with his machine but minutes passed before it finally confirmed I was solvent.
"It's been slow all evening," the clerk said, scanning the length of Donna's figure.
Donna smiled. "No problem."
We picked up our packages and left. I could feel the clerk's eyes follow Donna out the door. Once outside and out of hearing, she laughed nervously. "That's going to take some getting used to. I felt like I was being undressed by a dirty old man on a prime time webwork."
For some reason, I wanted to go back and punch that clerk. He had no business staring at her like that.
***
We got back to the house just in time to learn another interesting fact about the sex gates. While Rita was cracking a bottle of Texas Valley, a webporter broke away from the crowds around the Vatican. They were larger than ever and still waiting on the Pope to tell them what to think.
"...definitely confirmed. Pregnant women can enter the sex gates and make the gender change with no problem. The fetus, however, doesn't come along, no matter how close to term the woman may be. This presents an interesting point. How many desperate women or girls will enter the gates in order to terminate an unwanted pregnancy? Will the certainty of instantaneously becoming male deter them? Now stand by for a statement from the Pope."
"If I were destitute, it certainly wouldn't deter me," Seyla said firmly.
"Do you really mean that?" I asked. Curiosity is my middle name.
Seyla's face was set in grim lines. "I certainly do. You would, too, if you worked at the hosclinic like I do and saw those poor girls coming in with nothing more than skin and bones holding them together. And the poor babies. We can't afford to even try to save the majority of them, not that it would do any good. Most of them are addicted to Greenweed when they're born."
I knew about that. Greenweed was the drug of choice for our fourth worlders. It was cheap and not that addictive to adults, and had little side effects, other than hyperactivity during the euphoria. Children were another case. Up until puberty, the weed was highly addictive and passed easily through the placental barrier during pregnancy. Once addicted, kids became lethargic and began losing their reasoning power, just like an oldster suffering from senility. After a while, they stopped wanting to live.
***
We stayed up as late as we could, hoping that one of the webs or nets would come on with an explanation of who or what was behind the gates, but none ever did, other than a few of the wilder tabwebs, all of which claimed exclusive, definite proof that either God, the Devil or aliens were behind them. We paid no attention to them, of course.
Finally, lack of sleep and the renewed supply of wine sent us to bed. According to the President, everyone was supposed to go back to work the next day. I wondered if that applied to school. If so, Seyla and Donna would have an afternoon in-person class to attend, while Rita and I could plug in from home. I doubted Donna would go; I didn't think she was ready yet to face the notoriety she was sure to attract. On the other hand, maybe she would. By now, she was bound to have some company.
Rita and I showered together and used the opportunity to examine each other's bruises to see if they were fading. They were, and when I washed off the bandage, I noticed the gash on my rib cage was almost healed.
I had neglected (or forgot) to shave the previous morning. I picked up a beard cloth and wiped my whiskers off. Rita doesn't like bristles.
"Any of it left?"
I rinsed the cloth out gently and passed it to her. She wiped her legs and under her arms and tossed the used up cloth into the compost chute.
After we were in bed, and as worn out as I was, I still couldn't sleep due to thinking of Donna and Seyla having sex together. I wondered if Rita knew about it. She had already been asleep when I heard that cry from their room. I couldn't stand not knowing, but I went about asking her in a roundabout way.
"Have you noticed that Donna seems to be adapting pretty well, considering her circumstances?"
Rita shifted her body closer to me. "Why shouldn't she be?"
"Well, considering she was a man just a day or two ago, and the way she acted at first, I wouldn't have expected it."
"It's not a crime to be a woman," Rita said.
"I didn't say that."
"You were acting like it, at first. But you're doing better." She reached over and patted my stomach.
"Seyla never did seem to have any trouble," I said.
Rita sat up in bed. Her breasts swayed attractively in the night-lit room as she adjusted her position. "Lee, sometimes, I think you're retarded. Are you trying to ask me w
hether I'm aware Donna and Seyla are having sex with each other?"
"It was on my mind," I admitted.
"Don't tell me you're bothered by it. I know better." There was no arguing with that. A few months ago when we had thrown a house party, she and I and a female guest had wound up in bed together. The girl had been more interested in Rita than me, but it had been enjoyable. I still remember how excited I had become while watching the other woman kiss and fondle Rita. Unfortunately, I had overindulged that night and my other recollections were rather vague. Rita had told me about it though. According to her, she had accepted the incident as a psychological experience for herself, one she admitted to rather enjoying that once.
"I'm not bothered. I was just curious, that's all." She always seems to be one step ahead of me.
"Well, put your curiosity to bed. I'm sleepy." She leaned down to kiss me, then stretched out and snuggled her back up against me. I slid my hand across her waist and up to cup her soft, warm breast. Sleep came easily after that.
Chapter Five
Rita was already gone from the bedroom when I finally woke up the next morning. I checked the time and saw it was already after nine, way past the time I'm usually up and around.
I threw off the covers and hurried to the bathroom. All I really needed there was to take a piss and some Listerpaste for my teeth. I grabbed a package, opened it and bit down. My mouth tingled as it burrowed beneath my gum line and bubbled away the overnight accumulation of gook. While it was working, I ran a brush through my abominable hair. The only thing I liked about it was it was just thick and wavy enough that it didn't take much care, so long as I kept it cut reasonably short, which I did. Some deodorant, a quick rinse to wash away the listerpaste residue and I was done.
Someone was going to have to do laundry before long; either that, or I was going to have to buy some more clothes. I threw on my last pair of clean jeans (the pair with the red piping I wore when I wanted to dress up) and pulled on a square-cut jean jirt with rolled up sleeves and side pockets. I snapped the two bottom closures so my gun wouldn't drag the pocket down so obviously. I transferred it and the clips to the jirt, clipped on my comphone and hurried out to the living room, hoping someone was ready for breakfast. I felt as hungry as a hyperactive shrew.
Neither of the screens were lit and it was immediately obvious why not: Russell was back, and bless his soul, he had stopped by McDonald's on the way and brought breakfast. He was already cramming sausage and biscuits into his mouth as if he were a hungry farmer and hadn't eaten since the fall harvest.
"Russell! What's going on!" I yelled. I was excited to see him back, even if his wrinkled clothes and the blond stubble and long tangled hair did make him look like something the cat had dragged home. His eyes were veined with red, too.
"Mmph," he answered around a mouthful of biscuit and sausage. He swallowed the whole mouthful, then got some intelligible words out. "Lots. Let's eat first and I'll tell you."
I bent over to kiss Rita and sat down with my legs crossed beneath the table. One day, I'm going to replace it; I think some refugee family must have owned the house before I rented it. It has only one setting, low to the floor and you have to sit on the carpet or a cushion to eat from it.
I dug in. Russell had splurged on real pork sausage rather than the usual wheat and soybean synthetic. He must have been starving.
The girls were taking it slower, being careful not to dribble crumbs on their clothes. I say clothes, but Rita was the only one of the three in street dress. She was wearing red slacks and a white, short-sleeved silkskin blouse. There are only a minority of women who can get away with silkskin garments, at least on their upper bodies. The stuff is flimsy and clings to every inch of skin it contacts. . Even without being transparent, it reveals every bit of a woman's body. Only young (or augmented) women and girls wore tops made from it because of the way it covered their breasts. Any sag or abnormality was instantly noticeable. Fortunately for Rita (and me), she didn't have any. Seyla had on one of her old wraps and Donna was wearing a new one, which she must have bought the day before, a shimmering, translucent blue thing which probably weighed less than an ounce. It looked good on her, at least from what I could see of her body above the table. I wondered momentarily how she felt wearing it rather than the shorts she used to wear to breakfast. To me, there's hardly anything more sensuous than feeling a woman's body beneath satin or silkskin; it occurred to me right then I hadn't the slightest idea of what it felt like to be wearing it rather than admiring it on a woman.
Russell polished off the last biscuit, then covered his mouth as he came out with a huge yawn. "Wow, I think I could sleep until doomsday."
"Not yet you can't," I said. "I want to hear what you've been doing first."
"Nothing as exciting as what you guys have been up to," he said. Evidently, the girls had already told him about getting caught up in the riot at the campus gate. He yawned again. "Okay, if someone will make a pot of coffee, I'll fill you in. Not that I know much." He glanced up at the wall screens and zapped both of them on but left the sound muted.
By the time we cleared off the table and got it out of the way, the coffee was ready.
Russell took a sip of his. "Gah. I've drank too much of this stuff. It's starting to taste like scorched cabbage."
"That's your problem. Come on, give," I said.
He looked pensive for a moment. "I think I'm going to start over and go for a doctorate in electronics instead of physics."
"Why do you say that?" Rita asked.
"Because I've just found out I don't know a damn thing about physics. Or put it another way; everything I thought I knew has turned out to be wrong."
"In what way?" I asked.
"Well, start at the beginning. In the first place, the gates appeared instantaneously all over the world at exactly the same time. We can't slow the pics down enough to show a bit of difference."
He glanced up at the wall screens. One of them was showing a crowd shoving against one side of a gate. The individuals next to it were blinking away like sparks from a fire. "See that? There's obviously not enough room inside to contain an apparatus that can cause all the changes. Besides, they come out the other side at the same time as they go in, as near as we can tell." He looked toward the screens again. "By the way, most of our information came in over the web. We haven't been doing anything at the lab yet, other than trying to correlate and organize the data.
"Obviously, the inside of the gates must be folded into some sort of hyperspace where the sex changes and medical cures take place."
"Why do you say 'obviously'?"
He looked pained. "Sorry. That's just a theory. For all I know, Santa Claus may be whisking them to the North Pole and letting his elves do the work. Next, I guess you've already learned from the news that the gates are indestructible, at least by any means we know. Nothing hurts them. In fact, up until the time I left the lab, no one has even managed to get a sample of whatever material they're made of. Nothing will penetrate the surface, not even diamond drill bits."
"Can't you try something else, like X-Ray diffraction?"
"We've tried everything. That's what's so chipping frustrating. We can't measure anything."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing. They don't reflect or emit any kind of radiation."
Now I knew better than that. "They must reflect light. We can see them."
"They don't reflect anything! Not radar, not light waves, not sonar, not shortwave or anything else that's been tried. They don't emit anything, either."
"That's impossible," I said, Russell's exact words from when we had first seen the gate on campus.
"Yeah, so is the square root of minus one."
"They must be solid, though," Donna commented. "I saw a club bounce off that one where we got into the riot."
"Yup, as solid as granite-and as insubstantial as a rainbow. More. We know what causes a rainbow."
I thought it over. "What you're telling us then, i
s we're imagining them?"
"I'll guarantee you we're not," Donna said. "Look at me."
Russell glanced at her, not trying to avoid the obvious as I had done at first (and still was, to an extent). "Yeah, and guess what? Nothing, and I mean nothing can enter the gate except humans and whatever they're wearing or carrying at the time, and none of that comes out with the person on the other side. Scientists are all going crazy. The best idea we've come up with so far is that the gates were placed here by a race of aliens so far beyond us, we may as well be amoebas by comparison. But that brings up even more problems, like the speed of light and so forth."
"Has anyone been able to communicate with them yet?" Seyla asked. "The government keeps talking about it."
Russell gave a tired shrug. "How can you communicate when there's no spectrum known to man that affects them? Point a radar, radio or sound wave at them and it's like they're not even there."
"How about telepathy?" Rita asked. She believed in it; I didn't.
"You're welcome to try. Others already have. No results; not unless you believe the tabwebs." His grin turned into another yawn. "Look, guys, that's all I can tell you. I'm going to get some sleep." He drained the last of his coffee, grimaced at the taste and headed off to his room. He paused at the door and turned around. "Oh, I almost forgot. There's one more thing: the sats have pieced together pictures of all the land mass on earth now. They've counted hundreds of thousands of the damn things."
That didn't make sense. "How did the satellites manage to take pictures if the gates don't reflect light?"
"You tell me," Russell said. "I know lots of people who would be interested in your explanation." He closed the door behind him.
I poured another cup of coffee and sat back down by Rita, admiring the way the silkskin blouse clung to her breasts. Someone turned the sound back up on the screens. On one of them, I watched flames rising from the fourth world section of a large city. I couldn't tell where it was, and the graphie doing the commentary didn't say.
