Emergence

by Hammond, Ray

Dr Eon considered that Thomas Tye’s genital ambivalence made him an ideal candidate for gender reassignment. He diagnosed the child as exhibiting ‘dimorphism’ – the existence of two potential sexual identities in the same body. From the medical records and correspondence kept by the clinic at the time, it is clear that both parents were eager for the confusing anomaly to be cleared up as quickly as possible. The all-confident Dr Eon assured them that, providing they thought of their child as wholly female, the infant could grow up to become a happy and fulfilled daughter.

  The doctor recommended surgery that would reduce Thomas Tye’s undersized penis to the size of a semi-mature clitoris and re-route his urethra to a new opening in the appropriate female location. He also recommended cosmetic surgery which creates a pudenda, with skin and tissue folds characteristic of female genitalia fashioned from the unused scrotal sac. The doctor advised that it would be better to wait until the child reached her teenage years before constructing a pseudo-vagina from grafted intestinal tissue. The adult woman would be able to live a full sexual life, he averred, with the exception of being unable to have children.

  The reassignment surgery was carried out in June 1968 at the Pennsylvania University Hospital and during the procedure the surgeon also removed Thomas Tye’s undescended and newly redundant testicles.

  Applause and flashguns greeted their entrance and Haley and Jack paused briefly for the photographers. As they moved up into the main hall, they accepted glasses of champagne from a waiter’s tray, then Jack whispered ‘Good luck’ as Haley was whisked away from him to meet the important press people who had turned out to cover the launch. He wandered off by himself amongst the chattering guests crowding the gallery.

  High above him hung the newest exhibit: a one-thousandth scale model of a Solaris solar energy station. Its sails were fully unfurled and a large wall panel nearby explained the principles of solar capture and reflection. He noticed a small footnote explaining that the Solaris stations were still out of action while the long task of increasing the level of radiation shielding in orbiting satellites was in progress. It was not even suggested when – or if – this technology might ever be safely re-harnessed. The caption said nothing about who might then assume control of it.

  Thomas Eugene Tye II and his wife Mary Alana took their daughter, now two years old and renamed ‘Thomasina’, home two months later.

  Progress was not satisfactory. The two-year-old refused to wear dresses. She would not play with the feminine toys her parents bought her and she cried constantly at night Dr Eon’s records show that the follow-up visits Thomasina made to his clinic became increasingly difficult and, by the time she was four, the child would not consent to enter his consulting rooms or allow him to be anywhere near her. When she was four and a half years old she started to cut and pierce her body with sharp objects and by the age of five she would not wear any clothes. The child began defecating in public and mounting hysterical attacks on her parents, nursing staff and other household members. By August 1971 things were so serious that, from his office four hundred miles away, Professor Charles Eon advised the family physician to sign a committal order for her to become a secure patient in the exclusive Sandler Psychiatric Sanitarium. Her mother, already being treated with hallucinogenics and imipramine tricyclates for endogenous depression, committed suicide a few weeks later.

  Dr Eon had no further contact with his young patient. However, twenty years later his reputation began to suffer as stories of other, less wealthy and protected ‘reassigned’ children began to surface in the press. The vast majority of these were boys who, because of genital abnormalities at birth, had been reassigned as ‘female’ under the doctor’s guidance. Most had rebelled against their given sexual classification and, by the middle nineteen-nineties, Dr Eon had come to be regarded within his profession as a deeply misguided therapist and medical practitioner. Many parents of his child patients have dubbed him ‘evil’, and some have suggested that recently revealed evidence of the doctor’s own homosexuality may provide clues to the origin of his bizarre theories and to his personal motivation. He died last year at the age of ninety-four.

  It is not known when Thomas Tye resumed his male identity nor whether any further sexual-identity-related surgery was undertaken. It is likely, however, that he has been forced to use testosterone replacement therapy as part of a lifelong treatment.

  Two large screens on either side of the specially erected stage flickered into life. The buzz of the crowd lessened as Jack saw the face of Yoav Chelouche appear, standing in the Smithsonian. As well as providing the biography’s foreword, he was now lending it an additional global stamp of authority and approval.

  A TV book-show host enlisted for the purpose stepped into the glare of the stage lights in the Earth Gallery to welcome the global television viewers and the book-launch guests in both London and Washington. Then he handed over to the president of the World Bank.

  Sensing someone at his side, Jack turned, smiled and bent down to kiss Felicity. She held Toby close to her by his red safety reins.

  ‘Unca Jack,’ cried Toby, stretching up his arms.

  Jack hoisted the boy up and sat him on his shoulders, so he could see his aunt over the heads of the crowd.

  Chelouche was looking more lugubrious than ever. ‘I am here to personally congratulate Haley Voss on the publication of a most significant and crucial biography,’ he began sonorously.

  Someone in Washington started the applause, and the guests in both cities immediately joined in. As it died away, Chelouche glanced quickly at his notes.

  ‘This is also a fitting occasion to announce that, during the last week, financial control of the Tye Corporation has now passed from us at the World Bank back to institutional and private shareholders, though many of its assets and operations had already needed to be sold to meet the corporation’s many legal liabilities. The restructured company is now registered here in the United States, in Delaware, so the World Bank’s custodianship of the corporation has thus come to an end.’

  There was more polite applause and he waited again until it abated.

  ‘This has been the first major test of United Nations solidarity in an era of ever-increasing corporate power. Directors of global corporations should therefore note that none of them can consider themselves or their companies beyond regulation or remedy. Over the next three years new international antitrust conventions will be drawn up and placed before the world’s nations for approval. This recent episode has severely tested the strength of our global economy – an economy technically outside the control or influence of any nation or group of nations – but, it seems, it possesses a resilience that has both surprised and delighted even me.’

  There was an outburst of laughter – on both sides of the Atlantic.

  ‘As well as being an enthralling account of the life of an extraordinary man, you will find End of Empire? provides invaluable insights into the business methods of our world today – both the acceptable and the unacceptable. I commend it to you.’

  As applause erupted again Jack proudly watched the diminutive figure of Haley, now heavily pregnant, as she walked out onto the stage.

  As this book goes to press Thomas Tye, now fifty-one, lies in a coma in a clinic on Hope Island. The left cerebral cortex of his brain was shattered by a bullet fired during the short-lived American-backed invasion and occupation of Hope Island. His body is maintained by life-support equipment at the insistence of Calypso Tye, his wife of one day at the time of the shooting, while researchers at Tye Life Sciences attempt to grow replacement neural tissue. His condition is officially described as deep anoetic coma. No official prognosis has been given but expert medical opinion considers it unlikely he will regain consciousness unaided. His interests are managed by a provisional committee headed by Calypso Tye with the help of consultants from the World Bank and a number of international management consultancies. Thirty-four former executives of the Tye Corporation and its subsidiaries are now on bail
pending trial at the International Criminal Courts of Justice in The Hague and Strasbourg for fraud, intellectual-property theft and human rights violations.

  Theresa Keane sat under the shade of a low tamarind tree in the sun-dappled garden of her villa on the slopes above Hope Town. Beside her lay the deactivated Sandra. Like most of the other companions on the island, her power pack had been removed. Despite this rude termination, the professor still liked to keep the bundle of artificial fur nearby.

  Theresa closed End of Empire? with a sigh and picked up another of the several books lying on a table beside her garden chair. It was World Brain by H. G. Wells, the volume Raymond Liu had sent her to reciprocate her gift of Descartes’s treatise. It was written in 1938 when the English novelist was entering old age and the world lay under the shadow of a looming global war. This edition had been published by Doubleday. She turned again to the passage Raymond had underlined in pencil:

  In the evocation of what I have here called a World Brain . . .

  A World Brain which will replace our multitude of uncoordinated ganglia . . .

  In that, and that alone is there any clear hope of a really Competent Receiver for world affairs.

  We do not want dictators, we do not want oligarchic parties or class rule, we want a widespread world intelligence conscious of itself.

  If you enjoyed Emergence, we would be really grateful if you could leave a review on the Amazon page and Goodreads.

  You might also be interested in The Black Hole:

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