by Darrell Bain
"I'm sorry about that," I told her.
"You don't have to be sorry. Any male who could resist that flametop isn't taking his hormones regularly. I just mentioned it to show you how much of an idiot you're making of yourself."
"Donna will get over it." I said the first thing that popped into my mind. Me and my big mouth.
"Yes, she will, eventually. You're just not going to be very popular around here for a while." She stood up, and turned to go back inside.
"Wait," I said. "Listen, I'll talk to Donna and explain."
"Explain what? That you have bricks in your head?"
"About how I feel. About how she feels."
"Lee, you evidently haven't got a clue about how she feels."
"Yes I do," I argued. "I've known her longer than you have."
Rita closed her eyes and clenched her fists. She stood like that a moment, then opened her eyes and stared at me like a professor would at a student who failed to grasp a problem after a dozen explanations. "You know her that well, do you? Then I guess you must know that she's fallen in love with you." She turned on her heel and left me sitting out in the sun with an ache in my chest that wouldn't go away.
***
I guess Rita really did love me. When I finally did go into the house, she acted as if nothing had happened between us. I went into the study and got on line with my agent. I had never met her in person but the big screen in the study made it seem as if we were in the same room together. Mary Wright doesn't look as if she could convince an editor to even talk to her, much less buy anything. She is a small, dumpy woman in her mid-forties and dresses as if she were just one step up from joining the fourth worlders. She had gotten a good price for the Messilinda program, though, much more than I had expected.
"You've made a name for yourself, Lee. Now we need to exploit your reputation while you're hot," she said.
"I was just lucky," I told her.
"Never mind that. Now you're marketable. What else do you have on tap?"
"Nothing much," I had to admit. The professionals were covering the gate news much better than I could. I was only a fair amateur.
"Let me give you a project then. The webs and zines have been saturated with the sex change aspects of the gates. What they're looking for now is the scientific aspect, preferably from a personal angle. You already have a few science credits to your name, so it should be an easy sell. Do you know any scientists?"
Did I know any scientists? I had one living in my house. Russell would be glad to help, I thought. "Sure do. Let me check and get back to you. Okay?"
"Great. See you later." She was already taking another call as she cut the connection.
I decided to go see Russell right then. I hesitated for a moment as I came out of the study. Rita and Donna were sitting down with their heads together. They looked up as I came into the room. I tried to act nonchalant.
"I'm going to run over to the campus and talk to Russell for a while," I said.
"Tell him to come home occasionally, will you?" Donna said.
"Sure. I will." I gave Rita a quick kiss and without thinking much about it, pecked Donna on the cheek. A smile brightened her face, but it embarrassed me. I hoped she wasn't reading anything into it that wasn't there.
Seyla hadn't been around the house much the last couple days. I hadn't wondered about it, thinking she was just busy with school. She was having to back up and take a couple of prerequisite courses in order to qualify for the masters program in genetics. I found out what she was really up to when I walked into Russell's lab unexpectedly; I hadn't called to tell him I was coming.
He was busy, but not with lab work. He and Seyla were standing together in front of a screen with their backs to me, watching the results of what appeared to be some experiment play out. There were lots of graphs, lines and symbols flashing on the screen. They kept changing and forming new patterns, none of which made any sense to me.
Russell had an arm around Seyla's tiny waist. While I watched, he leaned down and whispered something into her ear. Seyla turned her face up and they kissed briefly but enthusiastically.
Well, Rita had told me that Seyla was missing sex with a man, but I hadn't imagined she would turn to Russell, nor him to her. They had always acted much like brother and sister around the house. I couldn't find any objection, of course; it just surprised me, that's all. I found myself wondering if Donna knew. Probably. Seyla was as honest as a Jesuit monk.
Somehow, Russell sensed my presence. He turned around, still holding Seyla by the waist. "Hi, Lee. What brings you around?" he asked.
"Something you may be able to help me with," I said. "I can come back later if you're busy."
"No problem. I can go over these results later, not that it will make me any wiser."
Seyla checked her thumb watch. "And I have to get to class. 'Bye, Russ, 'bye, Lee." She picked up her handbag and undulated out.
"When did this get going?" I asked, nodding toward the door Seyla was leaving through.
"Oh, here a few days ago," he said nonchalantly, as if it were hardly worth mentioning.
"Well, you couldn't do any better."
Russell grinned. "How would you know?"
"Just speculating," I said.
"Well, as it turns out, you're right. I can't understand why we didn't consider the idea sooner after Don went through his change."
"Me either," I agreed. "Why don't we go to your office? Is it free?"
"It is until the night shift comes on," he said. He had to share the little office with another doctoral candidate.
"What's your problem?" Russell asked as soon as he had cleared a stack of books and copy paper filled with equations from the other chair.
"No problem; my agent said I should talk to a scientist, that's all."
"What about?"
"Oh, how the brains are going about exploring the gates, what problems you're having and what you're planning on next; just about anything you've found out that hasn't already been reported a million times."
Russell laughed. "You've come to the wrong department. Philosophy is the next hall over."
"Not interested. They have as many opinions as economists do, and just as contradictory."
"Physicists are fast joining their ranks. Actually, it's Seyla you should be talking to. The genetics department just came up with a prize. She was telling me about it right before you arrived."
"So tell me, too," I said.
Russell gazed at the ceiling. "A brand new projection. Average life span of sex-changed individuals should amount to a good deal more than a hundred years. And nothing but old age to slow them down."
That was about fifteen more years than the actuaries were giving us at the time, and the last decade or two was likely to be spotted with ailments of various sorts. "Nice," I said. "That's likely to induce a few extra doubters to take the plunge."
"More than a few, I should think. I'm going to have to get a new adviser. Doctor Holt went through yesterday and took off for Mexico this morning to start enjoying all that money he's saved up."
I hadn't told Russell I was recording. I wanted him to act natural. I would let him know before using any footage, of course. "That's great. Tell me more."
He spread his hands, palms up. "We still don't know a damn thing. All we can do is act like that character in the rabbit hole: believe several impossible things before breakfast."
"Such as?" I prodded.
"How about little green men from Mars? At least the color matches. Lee, when you have a phenomena you can't measure, all you can do is speculate. One theory is as likely to be right as the next one. Or as wrong."
"What's your opinion?" I was forgetting this was for potential publication. Talking to Russell was always fun.
"My opinion? Well, I don't think God has anything to do with the gates, for what that's worth. I'd rather believe in the Martians."
"Seriously?"
"No, of course not."
I grinned. "Actually,
there was both a book and a movie which came out way back in the last century about little green men from mars invading earth called Martians Go Home. Those aliens were obnoxious little gremlins and they couldn't be measured, either."
"Really? What was the final explanation?"
I grinned some more. "There wasn't any. One day, they just went back where they came from."
"Maybe the gates will too. Seriously, Lee, most scientists don't like to go out on a limb without some data."
"How do you expect to get any?" I asked.
"Easy. I'll use the tabwebs for evidence." We both laughed. The tabs have been alien crazy for the last fifty years, at least, without a hint of facts to back them up.
We talked a while longer, relating stories we had each heard about the gates; me more so than him. He hadn't watched nearly as much of the news as I had.
I told him about the fundamentalist Muslim country in the Mideast which had begun executing any woman caught going through a gate. Men going through were just gang-raped as they came out, then assigned to a harem. At that, I guess it would beat the executioner's sword, but not by much.
Russell told me none of the astronomical or weather satellites had recorded so much as a blip at the time the gates appeared. If they came from outer space, it was by some means other than distortion of space or the electromagnetic spectrum.
He asked me to tell him more about Messilinda and I did. He rolled his eyes appreciatively. "Some guys have all the luck. For the life of me, though, I can't see anything special about you that would cause her to drop her panties the first time you met."
"Actually, she wasn't wearing any," I said. "Did you hear about President Forbes asking Congress to fund a new program to produce what he called an 'Operational Spacecraft'?"
"About time," Russell grumbled. I agreed with his sentiments. As a kid, I had wanted to be an astronaut, but the financial crisis a few years ago had just about killed manned space travel, for the second or third time.
"Indonesia is threatening to invade the Philippines."
"I heard about that. Muslims versus Catholics. Nothing new there. What I'm worried about is all the religious mania right here at home."
"Yeah," I agreed. "Bible Belt mentality never dies. If we just knew anything about what happens to people who don't come out of the gates, we could-"
Russell snapped his fingers. "Hey! Here's a story I'll bet you haven't heard. There was this doctor from the Temple Medical Center, a man to begin with. He had gone through a gate once, and was a woman. Then she got mugged one night. The 'worlders poured acid over her face just for fun. Blinded her. She was so depressed, she walked into a gate again."
"What happened?"
"She came out the other side, perfectly normal, except that she had changed gender again and was a man, just like he started out as."
Now that was really news. People had stopped trying a second passage because no one ever returned from the attempt. "Has it been verified?" I asked, my voice rising with excitement.
"Yup. Matter of fact, I went to school with one of his kids. I called him and he told me it's the straight truth."
"Give me his name," I said. "And his address, if you know it."
"His name is Walter Renfrow, but it won't do you any good. He's claiming he doesn't know a thing other than he's back and can see again. But..."
"But what?"
"But some of his friends think he's holding back. I'd like to know myself. Here, just don't let on where you got this from." He pulled up the name and address from his comphone and transferred it to mine.
After that, I was in a hurry to leave. All I paused for was to tell him Donna and Rita wanted to see him a little more often. He said he and Seyla were going out that night but they would be in sometime. I almost ran home, intending to pack a bag and head for Temple the same day.
No one was around that I could see. I wanted to ask Rita to go with me, but if she wasn't handy, I would just have to leave her a note. I intended to get up there and see that doctor before word got out. The first person to make two trips through a gate!
I headed for my room, which was on the other side of the one Donna and Seyla occupied. Unaccountably, my stride shortened. I halted at their door, which was standing half open. Something impelled me to peek inside.
Donna was laying on top of the sheets with her head propped up on a couple of pillows, watching a women's fashion program. She was wearing one of the new nightgowns Seyla had picked out for her. It covered her, barely, but left little to the imagination.
I don't know how long I stood there before she looked away from the screen and saw me. It seemed like an eternity and I couldn't understand why I stayed frozen there instead of backing out and leaving.
"Why hello, Lee. Come on in," Donna said.
I walked slowly over to the bed. The closer I got, the more disoriented I became, as if I were breathing in pure oxygen. My eyes took in her figure and her liquid brown eyes that watched my approach with suppressed anticipation.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. She reached out and took my hand. Her touch was like an electric shock, sending tingles up my arm.
"Donna, I-you-you're lovely. You're as lovely a sight as I've ever seen." An eager surprised expression crossed her face. She tugged at my hand. I kicked off my shoes and lay down beside her. My mind was buzzing with desire. I couldn't take my eyes away from her.
"Lee, are you sure?" she asked.
"Oh, yes!" I said. I reached out to touch her and suddenly, her body was pressed against mine. Our lips met and it seemed as if I were tasting the nectar of the gods. I searched for her breasts and found them, firmly pliant beneath their flimsy covering. Her nipples came erect against the palm of my hand, sending waves of desire coursing through my body. She was the most desirable woman on earth and I felt as if nothing in the universe could prevent me from possessing her.
She sat up and pulled the nightgown over her head, baring her body to the feel and taste of my hands and lips. I felt my erection surge and become cramped inside my pants. I stripped them off and was free, hard and erect, pulsing with exquisite expectation. She held my head and brought my lips down to her breasts and moaned softly as I took each in turn into my mouth, exulting in the feel of my tongue twirling around the hard little buttons of her nipples. My mind had no thought of resistance; it was controlled by my body, as if my total essence were concentrated in my groin.
Donna reached down and took me in her hand and I was lost in a whirlpool of exquisite sensation. From a far distance, I suddenly realized she must have taken a pheromone, one of the very few proscribed drugs, but it made no difference at all. She was my world, my utmost fantasy, the girl of a hundred adolescent dreams. She pulled me over her, thighs spread and ready, and guided me inside her. My last coherent thought was that using a pheromone on me was cheating-and I was the most grateful man in the universe that she had.
Chapter Ten
The coupling with Donna lasted hours, I'm not sure how many. I ravished her. I couldn't get enough of her. And I told her I loved her, again and again, even while I knew it was the pheromone talking. She cried. She cried out at the pleasure she was giving and receiving. She told me she loved me and I believed her in the deepest depths of my soul. It was impossible not to believe her.
Everyone knows about the pheromone drugs. They had been declared illegal almost as soon as they were discovered, but that didn't stop them from being used, especially by the affluent. They were difficult to manufacture and horribly expensive. I guess every kid has fantasized about using a pheromone on a girl or guy but that's all it usually amounted to: fantasy. I had certainly never expected to be under the influence of a woman who had ingested a dose, and most especially would never have dreamed that Donna, my old friend, would stoop so low.
I gradually came to my senses sometime in the early hours of the morning. Donna was curled up on her side, sleeping like a zombie. One of the few side effects is a deep unconsciousness lasting several hou
rs after the drug wears off. I knew there was no chance of waking her up. I eased out of her bed, gathered my discarded clothes and shoes and crept back to my own bedroom while trying to sort out my thoughts through the film of exhausted satiation. I still couldn't imagine Donna using a pheromone to seduce me. In the first place, possession is good for some jail time and a stiff fine. In the second, I couldn't figure out where on earth she had gotten her hands on the stuff. North Houston is one of the most drug-free environs in the country. The few illegal mood changers were almost never seen here. In the final analysis, I didn't know whether to be sorry or glad she had used it on me. I hated the idea of such mendacity on her part, yet I knew the drug wouldn't have worked nearly so effectively had I not desired her in the first place. That's one of the other side effects. It will work, regardless, but the effect is greatly heightened if an attraction is there to begin with, which evidently it had been, gauging by my almost hysterical reaction.
I had no doubts now that Donna and I would become regular lovers. My prior reservations had been set aside like leftover meatloaf, never to be served again. How could I have been so stupid for so long? Just the thought now of being able to hug or kiss Donna, or tumble on the floor with her for that matter, without having to worry about her female embodiment was like having a final exam you aren't prepared for cancelled at the last moment. It gave me a great sense of relief and anticipation, like a child on the first day of summer. My chief concern now was Rita. How would this affect our relationship? Sure, she had urged me toward Donna, but did she really know how deeply I would care for her after the fact?
I tried to sneak into bed without waking Rita up, but she opened her eyes as soon as I touched the covers. She probably hadn't been able to sleep anyway with as much noise as Donna and I had made in the throes of ecstatic coupling.
"I was beginning to wonder," she said as I slid in beside her.
"Wonder what?" I asked.
She giggled. "Whether you were ever going to stop."
