by Darrell Bain
At first sight, I thought it was some of the fourth worlders come in again from Old Houston who were causing all the commotion around the gate, but it was just the way they were dressed in leather and a heavy variety of silkskin that confused me. There was a small contingent of radical gays who frequented the campus and they were ones causing the trouble. They were fighting with a feminine lesbian group, or I should say, they had been fighting. Several women were stretched unconscious on the grass; a few more hung back with split lips or bloody heads while only one or two were trying to prevent the Radicals from causing more mayhem
There's no telling what rad gays will do when they decide to cause trouble. Their organization subscribes to the braindrug theory of behavior. They ingest that new drug which affects subconscious thinking, but also lowers inhibitions to a level about equal to that of a rabid dog.
One of them was laughing like a braying donkey. He had a girl in front of him with her arm twisted behind her back and was forcing her toward the gate, slowly, in order to build up apprehension and terror in his captive.
Russell shouted an oath and sprang forward while I was still trying to see if that was really Rita the rad had in his grasp. Russell hit the man from the side. He fell away from the gate, carrying the girl with him. She screamed and I recognized Rita's voice even though her face was hidden from view.
I'm not very good in an emergency. I didn't even think about the gun I was carrying. I just ran toward where Rita was struggling to get away. The rad pushed her face into the grass and kicked out at Russell's legs. He went down. I got close and chopped ineffectually at the rad's head. Someone shoved me from the back and I went down. While I was trying to regain my feet, I took a boot in the belly. I doubled up, gasping for breath.
"Throw them in, too," an excited voice shouted. Hands clawed at my back while I was grasping my belly, trying to suck in some air. I felt the hard contours of the pistol in my pocket. I folded my fingers around the butt as rough hands yanked me upright by my jirt collar just in time to see Russell go down again. I thumbed the safety off and fired twice at the two rads kicking him in the ribs and head. Both went down.
Sometimes my slight stature works to my advantage. I'm slender, but I do have muscles developed painfully by regular workouts. The man holding me by the jirt collar lost his grip and staggered away as I bent forward and twisted violently sideways. I shot him, too.
Russell tackled the one who was going after Rita again, undeterred by the popgun sounds of my gun. She had managed to struggle loose in the confusion and was trying to crawl away. I ran to her and caught a glimpse of Russell going down for the third time from a wild swing. Blood was streaming from both nostrils. I fired for the last time. That rad slumped slowly to the ground. Dad had taught me to handle firearms truly and well. I hadn't missed once. The rest of the gang broke and ran after my last shot.
"Lee, thank God. Oh, thank God you came." Rita was blubbering like a fundamentalist at the rapture. I folded her in my arms. I was trembling worse than she was from reaction.
A siren warbled in the distance.
Russell got to his feet, wiping at his bloody nose. "Come on, let's get out of here," he said. A red froth bubbled from his split lips.
I would rather have just collapsed and hung my head. I had just shot four men. One of them was moaning; the other three were as still as dead fish. I put my arm around Rita, as much to support myself as her; my legs were shaking like a newborn colt taking its first steps.
Russell got behind the wheel, still spitting out blood. I looked back as he drove away. The women were still there, tending to their comrades. As the siren warble came closer, I found the energy to hope none of them had taken down my license number; either that or someone had taped the action so I could claim self-defense in case the cops investigated. Probably they would just say good riddance and leave it at that; they didn't like the radical gays any more than anyone else did.
Back at the house, Rita tended Russell's wounds. She wasn't hurt, other than a sore shoulder from having her arm twisted and abrasions on one cheek where her face had been ground into the grass. I was bruised, but not bloody. I told the other two what had happened while Donna and Seyla made a round of drinks and Rita worked on Russell. If this kept up, we were all going to wind up alcoholics.
"What in chipping hell were you doing around that gate?" I asked. "Didn't you get enough excitement the other day?"
Rita was as subdued as anyone was ever likely to see her. "I just wanted to take some notes for class. I hung around for a while, then I guess I got a little too close and got grabbed."
"Why didn't you use the gun I gave you?" I demanded.
"I tried to," she said.
"Well, what happened?"
"It didn't work."
"What!" I stared at her. I keep my weapons in perfect condition.
"I forgot to take the safety off," she said in a very small voice.
"It's a good thing Lee and Russell found you in time; otherwise you would have wound up like me," Donna said.
"I doubt if Lee would appreciate it," Rita answered.
Appreciate it? I couldn't even imagine Rita as a man. For certain, I could never relate to her like Seyla was doing with Donna. "I don't even want to think about it," I said.
"Actually, it's turning out not to be so bad," Donna said. She entwined her fingers with Seyla's, getting a pat on the thigh in return.
Later, after we had showered and stretched out in bed, I voiced the big bedroom wall screen on and began searching for something to help us relax, but there was still nothing else on except news and commentary. Saturation news coverage is fine for an unprecedented phenomena like the appearance of the sex gates, but anything gets old after a while. It made me long for the days when you kept your games, movies and mood programs at home on memory cards like when I was a kid. In fact, I still had my old computer and a lot of programs but they were all back at Grandpa's house in my old room. I left the screen on, just loud enough for us to hear in case anything interesting happened.
While we snuggled, I remembered and told Rita about the bright idea I had had on the drive back.
She gave me a peck on the cheek. "That sounds like a good idea. I'll bet most people are just watching and listening and not recording much."
"That's my thought, too," I said. "I really believe there may be a market once things settle down, if they ever do. For something besides commentary, I hope."
"There's bound to be. Think of all the fourth worlders who don't have access to the web like we do. Printed matter ought to go over big in those areas."
Right. The 'webs and 'works didn't depend on cable anymore; everything was relayed by satellite directly to comphones or home and office computers. The old internet was still in operation, but communications companies had stopped servicing the wires and cables that part of it depended on. This left third and fourth worlders unable to afford the expensive receivers, not to mention comphones, which nowadays, did everything but spoon sugar into your coffee. They had become less and less able to relate to the world. Print and what was left of the internet were their only means of communication. It left them as cut off from the modern world as political prisoners in Siberia. Besides those unfortunates, interactive webs and works hadn't come close to replacing the printed word yet, though you didn't have to be a rocket scientist to see it coming, what with the electronic ink companies growing so rapidly. Books and magazines were still being published almost as prolifically as ever, though not newspapers; they were in a steep decline in civilized portions of the world, though not so much in other places.
I guess I've been relating this account as if everyone in the world knew exactly what was happening with the gates. That wasn't true at all, or at least we didn't know if it was. Despite all the frenzied reporting, there hadn't been much definitive news from those parts of China controlled by their fractious warlords, and parts of India may as well have been swallowed by a black hole for all we knew from there. Midea
st news was spotty, and of course, there wasn't much left of Africa to get news from. Disease, wars, plagues, global warming and industrial pollution had devastated that continent as thoroughly as Sherman's march did Georgia in the Civil war.
And where we did know what was going on, chaos and confusion was the rule rather than the exception, except for le belle France. The French embraced the sex gates as if they were banks handing out free money. They thought the gates were a huge joke being played on the rest of the world.
There still had not been a confirmed communication with the denizens inhabiting the gates, if they were inhabited, and nothing had yet been learned of their purpose.
Our own government was beginning to make a little sense, here and there, as if some lawmakers were beginning to think the gates might turn out to be a permanent phenomena, though as usual, politicians swam with the tide.
The FBI had been ordered to make their facilities available for positive identification of sex-changed individuals. They were doing it through fingerprint confirmation after hastily writing a new program to take into consideration the size differences of prints of new individuals, either larger or smaller than the original, depending on whether the change had been from male to female or the reverse. And, of course, DNA identification still worked, even after genetic disorders and shuffling of the X and Y chromosomes.
Congress was considering a number of new laws. The ones of interest concerned suspension of Social Security payments and Medicare to changed individuals after a six month grace period; a similar law would do the same for retirees from government and the military. For a change, something Congress came up with made sense to me. Another proposed law would make it a crime to prevent anyone from attempting to pass through a gate, similar to the old abortion clinic laws. I had my doubts that one would pass, or be effective if it did, considering what I had seen so far. Too many gates, too many anti-gate factions. Enforcement would be prohibitively expensive. Other bills being considered or looking for sponsors would never fly. Mandatory birth control? Prevention of pregnant women from passing through the gates? No chance, I thought.
I turned the screen off. It had been a long day.
Rita ran her hand up and down my chest, then brought my face around for a kiss. "I still haven't thanked you for saving me, Lee." She shivered. "I was that close to being pushed through the gate."
"It was Russell as much as me," I said. "If he hadn't reacted so quickly, you would have gone through."
"I'm glad. I'm not ready for that yet."
"Not ready? You mean you're actually considering it? Changing into a man?" I couldn't believe what she had said.
"Oh, not yet. I want to have a couple babies first, then maybe wait until they're grown." She chuckled. "How do you think you would like me as a man? Would you still love me?"
"How could I love a man?" I said.
"Oh, men! Lee, I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about love."
I guess I didn't know how to separate the two, at least with her. I said so.
"Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you. Listen, what would you do if you suddenly came down with an incurable disease? Just roll over and die, or go through a gate?"
What a choice. I didn't want to think about it. "What would you do?" I countered.
"Take a chance on a gate, of course. I'm not in a hurry to die. Besides, don't you know every woman in the world has wished she was a man, at least once in a while?"
"They have? I mean, they do? Why?" It was news to me.
"Think about it a minute. How would you like to live your whole life in an environment where almost any man who cares to can physically overpower you? Think about doing dirty dishes and diapers and cooking three meals a day and holding down a job like a lot of women do, at wages usually less than a man in a comparable job would draw. Women in America are pretty well off, but think of the rest of the world. Remember those Muslim women storming the gate? They hate the way they are treated. How would you like to have a period four or five days a month for thirty-five or forty years? Or go through the inconvenience of pregnancy or the pain of childbirth? Think about all the rape and child abuse in the world-"
"Stop, I give up," I said. Boy, she was really wound up. Did women really resent even half of what she had said? Resent being female? It seemed to me most of the things she mentioned were just a normal part of being a woman, like a man being expected to do the really heavy chores and work and to provide protection and a safe environment for a woman to be a woman in. And there were compensations.
"Everything you said might be true-"
"It is true," she said flatly.
"Still, there's another side to it. At least a woman can have a man she wants, whenever she wants, without having to go through all the preliminaries like a man has to do."
"You think so, huh? It doesn't work like that for a woman. Women don't think about sex like that: see a man, get wet, pull him into bed. There has to be some emotional involvement for a woman to even get interested, and so far as that goes, we don't get the man we want just as often as a man doesn't get the woman he's after."
"I guess men and women are different," I said, about as inadequate a statement as I have ever made in my life.
"You are so right. You just don't know how different."
Maybe so, but she was beginning to give me an idea. We didn't make love that night.
Chapter Seven
I never did hear anything about the four men I had shot. Apparently, there hadn't been anyone with a recorder nearby; either that, or the authorities were too busy with other matters to worry about a few gay rads getting killed. It didn't bother me, other than a few bad dreams; so far as I was concerned, I had just done what I had to do.
Over the next few months, the world, or at least the more advanced portion of it, gradually began getting back to normal. Or as normal as was possible under the circumstances. The gates remained as they were, hundreds of thousands of them, as enigmatic and inscrutable as ever. Nothing else of significance had been learned and there was still no communication with them.
I didn't go back to any of my classes when the college reopened, though the rest of the gang did. Once things began to quiet down a little, I began submitting articles and stories to the web and zines, without much success. Fortunately, I didn't need the money. When not writing, I added to my files, which were growing like Florida algae blooms.
The financial structures of the advanced countries teetered and tottered but never quite collapsed. I missed one annuity payment completely and the next one barely made a discernible blip in my credit balance, but after that, the amount gradually increased until now, it was up to almost half of what it had been before the gates.
Pope Luke was assassinated. The College of Cardinals almost got lynched before they finally sent the signal to the world that a new earthly representative of God had been elected. His first act was to rescind the previous Pope's encyclical, giving heavenly credence to the gates, with a few reservations: pregnant women were still forbidden to enter. Sex changed persons were no longer excommunicated if they waited until age sixty or had an incurable illness before attempting the passage. Cardinals, priests and nuns were forbidden entrance under any circumstances (more of them resigned and some churches and dioceses had to close for lack of personnel to run them).
Protestants were still divided; fundamentalist sects railed against the gates; more liberal sects accepted them. Demonstrators still protested, but were no longer quite so violent. Automatic camcorders were set up near every gate in America to record events surrounding them. After a goodly number of protestors went to jail or were executed for murder of individuals attempting to go through the gates, the violence slacked off considerably.
Almost half the population of the country over seventy years old took a chance on the gates. Most of them came through with young bodies of a different gender. More than three-quarters of those over eighty opted to try the gates, even though their chances of success diminished
the older and/or sicker they were when they entered. It seemed when the black camel came near and prepared to kneel, it scared the object of its attention into taking chances with the gates instead of dying. When it got to that point, another forty or fifty years of life, even living in a body of the opposite sex, didn't stand in their way.
The medical profession suffered huge unemployment as hospitals and doctors' offices closed, and it was still increasing. The preliminary reports of perfect health of the changed individuals proved exactly correct: so far, not a single illness had been detected in a sex changed person. It was too soon to tell yet whether the new young people were aging, though a few scientists claimed to have measured a shortening of the telomeres of chromosomes of some cells after divisions, which would indicate a normal aging process. Others thought the new bodies would last far into the future. I reserved my opinion.
A large percentage of the physically impaired population; paraplegics, quadriplegics, the blind and deaf and those missing limbs or scarred by burns, opted for the gates. Almost all of them reappeared in healthy new bodies. As soon as news of this got around, parents of mentally retarded children began pushing them through the gates. This didn't work quite as well; many of them never came out again. Those who did, however, were mentally normal. Scientists and statisticians were trying to find out what the defining characteristics were.
The Supreme Court ruled (again) that same sex individuals had a constitutional right to a legally binding marriage, upholding laws already passed by most states. The court was simply accepting reality. The bodily changes did nothing to change sexual orientation, at least not immediately. Like Donna, if you were a male to begin with, you still gravitated toward females, even after changing into one, and the opposite also held true. That naturally led to a huge increase in homosexuality, though the definition of the term was no longer quite the same as it had been. In both cases, though, almost half the changed persons (if you could trust the polls) eventually experimented, or were planning to experiment, with the opposite sex. That fact, after it was discovered, was going to cause me trouble, though I didn't know it yet.
