by Darrell Bain
Even as enervated as I was, I found I wanted to talk. "You don't sound worried," I said.
"Why should I be? I told you that's what you should have done to begin with."
"Well, I have to admit you were right." I felt a welling up of compassion and love for Rita, along with a bit of apprehension. Would I have been so generous? Had she induced Donna and I to come together because she wanted some distance between us? I hesitated, but had to ask. "Do you still love me?"
She threw an arm over my chest. "More than ever, you dope. I don't ever want to be separated from you. Or Donna either."
I felt a vast sense of relief, not snapping to the inclusion of Donna in her affirmation. I sighed. "I'm glad. I feel the same way. There's something bothering me, though."
"And what might that be, Mr. Stud?"
I had to tell her. "Donna seduced me with a pheromone. I'm sure of it," I said.
"No she didn't. I slipped it into her caddy before I left. I knew she would have a nightcap before going to sleep."
I set bolt upright, forgetting all about my tired body. "You did! Why? Why?"
She shrugged as if she had done nothing worse than give Donna a back rub before leaving. "I got tired of waiting on you to come to your senses. Are you sorry, or what?"
Somehow, the fact Rita had done the deed didn't seem nearly as upsetting as thinking Donna had. I sighed again, relieved. "No, I guess not, but I wish you hadn't taken the chance. What if you had gotten caught with it?"
"Why I would have just swallowed it down, seduced the cop and made my getaway. Don't you know women will do all sorts of crazy things when they're in love?"
"I didn't, but I think I'm learning." I dropped the subject since I couldn't possibly pretend I was displeased with the outcome. "Would you like to go to Temple with me in the morning?" That was the first time I had thought of Russell's revelation since stopping by Donna's open door.
"Sure, why not? What's going on there?"
"I'll tell you in the morning," I said. "Let's get some sleep or I'll never be able to drive."
I dozed off almost immediately. My dreams were beautiful.
***
Donna was still asleep when we left the next morning and we didn't try to wake her up, knowing the aftereffects of the pheromone would probably keep her in bed until noon. Russell and Seyla weren't there, either. They must have made a night of it. I wondered if either of them had been in on Rita's scam, but decided it would serve no useful purpose to ask. I was satisfied with the results, regardless of who had been involved. I found myself wanting to get the business taken care of as soon as possible so I could get back and see Donna.
I splurged on two complete natural breakfasts for us at McDonald's, then we got on the road. Temple is way up in Northeast Texas, a couple hours on the NAFTA, then another half hour or so on a state highway. On the way, I told Rita about the doctor who had managed what had heretofore been considered impossible, a second successful passage through a gate. She was as eager as I was to talk to him, though neither of us had figured out yet how to go about seeing him.
"I should have bought two doses of pheromone," Rita joked. "That way, I could slip it in his coffee or something and get the information out of him in bed."
"We don't know he has any, yet," I reminded her.
"Just a minor detail. He's the only person we know of so far who has managed two passages. Just examining his body or talking to him ought to tell us something."
"Okay, let's make that our strategy. All we want is a little time with him. We'll even offer him payment, if that's what he wants."
"You'll have to do the offering. I spent all my money on Donna yesterday."
I grinned. "Fine. I'll offer money; you offer him your tender young body."
"Don't joke. If it comes to that, I might." I couldn't decide whether she was kidding or not.
As it turned out, it made no difference. We were too late by hours. I managed a few words with his son by mentioning we had a mutual friend (without ever giving him a name). He was too distraught to ask. During the night, a squad of federal security agents had arrived and whisked his father away, citing some obscure code relating to national security. Their lawyer had been unable to find out where he was being held.
I recorded our brief conversation, added the necessary background information, and forwarded the packet to Mary while we made the drive back.
It hadn't been a complete waste of time. I knew Mary would find me an editor who would pay top dollar for the skit, and the drive itself was pleasant. The East Texas piney woods are still relatively unspoiled; in fact, since composite materials had become so universally used in construction, much of the old logged over timber was making a comeback.
I was feeling mellow and pleasantly satisfied, so much so I decided to call Dad and Mom and see how they were doing and if they were agreeable to us stopping on the way back.
I didn't recognize his voice when he answered the phone, of course. He had to tell me twice it was really him before I got it into my feeble mind that now, he was not only young again, but female besides. He-she-laughed about it and told us to come on by.
The folks looked sort of like a couple of my cousins. They still retained a semblance of familiarity as I remembered from old photos of when they were young, but it was like a distorted mirror image, with each of them looking as they would have had they been born the opposite gender.
Dad talked enthusiastically about the change as he-no, she, damn it-puttered around the kitchen, making coffee and setting out snacks (I had to keep actively sorting out who was whom-Dad had always left the kitchen chores to Mom. Maybe he was practicing tasks women still usually did, right or wrong).
"Son, you and Rita can't possibly imagine how good I feel now. You'll have to grow old and feeble yourselves before you understand how old age drains the sap from your body."
"You always told me experience compensated for age," I said.
"It does, but retaining all that knowledge and experience in a young body is sort of like how I felt when I switched from a typewriter to a computer. It's wonderful!" She danced a little jig by the kitchen stove. "I feel like I could fight a cage full of tigers!"
"How about you, Mrs., uh, Mr. Stuart?" Rita asked, stumbling over the correct gender.
He smiled at her.and rubbed her face. "I guess I am the mister now, aren't I? But please don't call us Mr. and Mrs. Stuart. I've told you that before and it sounds even sillier now when we're younger than you are. Anyway, physically, it's like Edie says, but I'm still having trouble adjusting to this body."
"Edie? Are you changing your names, too?"
Dad shrugged her youthful shoulders, then grinned. "Take a good look at me and see how you would like being called Ed."
I did. He resembled nothing so much as a young girl just ready to graduate from high school. I looked at Mom, a solid young man dressed in new jeans and long-sleeved work shirt with rolled up sleeves, just the way Dad used to dress. "Are you taking a new name too, Mom?"
"Yes. I guess we were lucky already having names that were easy to change. You can call me Bert now instead of Bertha or Mom." He smiled gently at me, as if knowing how disoriented I must be. I wondered how Grandpa would have felt about all this had he still been around.
Edie poured coffee and set out a plate of old-fashioned molasses cookies. (I began calling the folks by their new names during that visit and gradually grew comfortable with the idea; they no longer seemed like my parents, but rather like a brother and sister who were very close to me).
"What are your plans now?" I asked. Of course Dad's military retirement checks would stop after six months, but that still might leave them short before too long. Grandpa had left them a lot of money but not enough to support them through another whole life, especially with the way the markets were reacting to the changes wrought by the sex gates.
"We're thinking of going back into the military if they ever decide to accept sex-changed persons."
That made some sense. Th
e military had been Dad's whole life until he retired, and being female would present no hindrance. He had worked in weapons testing at first and later, as he rose in rank, procurement.
"Sounds like a good idea," I said. "Will you sell the house?" I hoped not. Every time I came back to visit, it was like leaving the twenty-first century and traveling back in time to a gentler, more reasonable society.
Edie rubbed her chin as if feeling for whiskers. "I hope we don't ever have to. In fact, we've been talking about asking you and Rita to move back here after you've finished with school, whether we go anywhere or not. Let me show you something." She got up from the table and brought a magazine back from her study. I recognized it at once: National Geographic, the one national magazine which never seemed to falter, regardless of how media reporting changed. I had grown up with it, and part of my interest in general science derived from it.
She thumbed through the pages until she found the article she was looking for, then handed it to me. Rita bent her head to study it with me. It was another piece about global warming. I read through it quickly, noting how the author emphasized the prominence of the scientists he quoted. There were maps, projecting the prospective new coast lines of the world at various times in the future, including America, and her personalized issue showed a localized section of the gulf coast.
The map displayed the Gulf of Mexico grown larger, with fingers extending well into Old Houston, and even took in bits of North Houston, like amoebic pseudopods searching out new territory. The date at the top of the map was not that many years in the future.
"The sex gates have sort of obscured this kind of reporting," Edie said, "but that doesn't mean the problem is going away. You kids-" she smiled when she said that, looking over at her young partner-"might be much safer here than North Houston before too much longer."
I could just imagine. Where would all the fourth worlders of Old Houston go when the waters covered their part of the city? How would they feed themselves or earn a living? The city was already at the boiling point with unrest caused by high unemployment and diminution of government handouts.
Rita looked very thoughtful. I don't know if I did or not, but I was. "We'll certainly consider it," I said. "If we do, there might be more than just, um, Rita and I."
"No problem. I'm planning on renovating and enlarging the place anyway, while money is still worth something."
"Do you think there's going to be another financial crisis?" Rita said.
Edie rubbed her chin again. "I don't see how we can avoid it. The sex gates have the whole world in an uproar, despite all the good they do." Dad had always been very smart with money; I saw no reason to disbelieve him.
We visited a while longer, then got back on the road. "Funny," I remarked after we turned onto the NAFTA highway and headed south. "That was like meeting old friends you haven't seen for a while. It's going to take me some time to get used to them as they are now."
"Just remember that you're not alone," Rita said. "People all over the world are going through the same adjustments. It's probably just as strange to them as it is to you."
Mary certainly worked fast. As we left Ruston, my program came up on the webs, almost all of them. Rita hugged me as if I had just won the Pulitzer Prize. She was a little premature with her congratulations. The program was abruptly cancelled and replaced with other reports, and the secret service was waiting on us when we pulled into the driveway.
***
Neither Rita nor I had ever been arrested, so it was a new experience for both of us, even though the agents didn't call it an arrest. Their spokesman said it was "protective custody". They hustled us into a government electrovan while Russell, Seyla and Donna watched from the front porch. There wasn't even any time to speak to them.
"I want a lawyer," I said to the chief agent, who had introduced himself as Whitney Hortz. He was seated in the captain's chair right in front of us. I twisted my wrists against the unpleasantly tight plastic bonds.
"Mr. Stuart, let me inform you of something: under National Security Directive 3011-4A, signed into law this morning by President Forbes, you are not entitled to legal representation. We are allowed to hold you sixty days before taking you to court and another sixty with a judge's concurrence."
"That's not fair!" Rita cried.
Perhaps not, but I decided not to argue. Besides all the laws passed after the constitutional amendment to the bill of rights (which was supposed to make fighting terrorism easier, but didn't), so many other laws were being passed and signed by the President concerning the sex gates in one fashion or another that a body couldn't keep up with them all. And that doesn't even count the old Homeland Security laws still on the books, which were being used in ever more tortured interpretations. Governments pass restrictive laws in direct proportion to the probability of threats to their power and possibility of being thrown out of office. And I already was sure of the reason we had been arrested: Doctor Walter Renfrow, the first person known to have passed successfully through a gate twice.
I used both my bound hands to touch Rita for reassurance. "Don't worry, hon. We haven't done anything wrong."
"That remains to be seen," Hortz said. He wasn't smiling. No one said anything else.
The drive didn't take long; just to the new federal building near the center of North Houston. We were separated almost immediately. I protested and was told to shut up.
I was placed in a small holding room and left alone for an hour or so. There was nothing else in the room except a hard, wooden bench. I sat for a while, then got up and paced, gnawing nervously at the plastic cuffs still holding my wrists together while I wondered and worried about what they were doing to Rita.
An ordinary looking young man in a white coat finally came for me, accompanied by two huskies dressed in business suits. I was led into another slightly larger room and strapped into an upright chair which looked as if it might have been used by a Spanish Inquisitor sometime in the past. Fortunately, there are less painful methods of eliciting information nowadays. The man in the white coat attached wires and leads to various portions of my anatomy with clips and tape. He started an I.V. in my right arm, adjusted the drip, then injected a syringe full of something into the drug port. "Veronal Plus," he said, the last thing I clearly remember.
I have a vague impression of questions being asked but can remember very little of what I said. An indeterminable time later, I became aware that my thoughts were becoming clear. I focused my eyes on a figure standing in front of me.
Hortz stared at me like a bug under a microscope. Government agents weren't very polite back in those days, not after all the constitutional amendments had been ratified that favor law enforcement officials-not that security people ever paid that much attention to the constitution in the first place.
"Mr. Stuart, It is my determination that you and Miss Hernandez present no threat to the country at the present time. Let me be very frank, though. There will be no more information distributed by you to the webs concerning Doctor Renfrow; not now, nor in the future. In fact, you are instructed under the provisions of Security Directive 3017-7B to cease all investigation of persons now or in the future who may successfully pass through a gate for the second time. Is that clear?"
"But why? What in the Big Chip's name would it hurt to write about it?"
"Is that clear?" he repeated, ignoring my question.
"Yes," I said, about the only possible response under the circumstances. Besides, I knew the information couldn't be suppressed long, not once it was on the web.
"See that you remember." He turned and left without another word. Someone had already unstrapped my arms and taken off the instrument leads. I got unsteadily to my feet, still feeling the effects of the truth serum I had been injected with. Another agent opened the door.
"Come with me," he said. I followed docilely. He walked with me back by the route we had followed on the way in and wound up at the entrance to the federal building. Rita was waiting for
me there, half-supported by a female agent. Her eyes were as glassy as new marbles.
"Lee!" She came into my arms and began crying. I patted her back and kneaded her shoulders.
"If you feel stable enough, you're free to go," the female agent said. She didn't have to tell me twice. There was nothing I wanted more in the world right then than to get away from that place and back home to my family.
I think it was that point where I began thinking of my friends and lovers as family. Just the thought of seeing them and getting Rita safely back home made me feel like a combat soldier suddenly being told his suicide mission had been cancelled.
It took a few minutes to catch a cruising taxi. I held Rita in my arms and let her cry herself out as the driver followed my instructions back to the house. On the way, we passed a gate sitting like a lonely artifact on the turf of Central Park, sparkling in the westering sunlight. There were only a couple people approaching it as if they intended to enter. Nearby, a delegation of several young men and women in conservative white dress smiled and encouraged them. They wore bright red circular emblems on their chests with a neat CG in white letters centered inside the circles, the icon of Messilinda's Church of the Gates. Her religion was really catching fire.
Homecoming was like the first day of semester break after you've been assured you passed all the final exams. We partied, all five of us, late into the night. When Rita and I finally called it quits, we each took a Nohang pill and staggered unsteadily into our bedroom. Donna followed us inside as if she belonged there.
Chapter Eleven
Alcohol increases desire and lowers efficiency, as the old adage goes, but there weren't any Nohang pills back when it was first quoted. It took the pills a few minutes to begin working, leaving the residual desire intact, but bringing back the ability.
I'm afraid I acted like a kid with a brand new baseball mitt he can't wait to try and Rita, like a girl who has been given a new doll for Christmas. Donna happily accommodated us both, separately and together. How long had Rita had the hots for Donna? Or had our session together just provoked her desire? Or did the fact Donna had once been a male incite the desire? I made a mental note to ask Rita the first chance I got, then immediately forgot about it.
