by Darrell Bain
"How can you be so sure?" Seyla asked. "Lots of scientists say the worst is over now and they won't rise much further."
"That's just government propaganda," Russell said. "The ice caps are still melting. You've been listening to too much political comment. None of the inland Congress critters want to spend their tax money supporting a bunch of fourth worlders."
"It won't just be the fourths," Rita contradicted.
I knew more political theory than she did. "You're right, hon, but most of the first and seconds can afford to move themselves when the time comes, and the thirds at least try to support themselves. Russ is right. Any inland politician who advocates spending anything more than token money on relocating the fourth worlders would get kicked out of office."
"So what?" Seyla said. "It's the right thing to do. They should realize that."
How do you explain to a political novice that representatives, given a very few exceptions, always vote in a way that assures them of re-election? It's just human nature to protect your livelihood, like the territorial instinct of the male half of our species, and even the female, to a lesser extent. Take a walk through any middle class neighborhood and observe how carefully fences and hedges delineate each individual home, or think how women so often dominate the decor and arrangements inside a home. It's all due to our territorial instinct, hard-wired into our genes.
Rita spoke up. She may not have understood politics, but she knew how contrary human nature could be. "Seyla, hon, Lee is right. There won't be any moves until the last moment and God's Chip alone knows what will happen then."
"I sure would hate to leave school," Russell said. He yawned.
"Better that than get killed in a riot when Old Houston starts moving north," I said.
"I suppose you're right. How will we support ourselves, though? It's not like Ruston is advertising for professionals to come to work there."
"I'll put some of my money with Dad-Edie's," I said. "We'll build a big enough home office so we can all work from it. And there's always farming."
"Ugh," Donna grimaced.
I molded her breast in my hand. "If things get bad, it might come to that. Better a well-fed farmer than a hungry mathematician."
Russell covered his mouth as he yawned again. He never seemed to get enough sleep. "If we're all agreed, I'm for bed." He got to his feet and Seyla followed him into his room.
The three of us finished our drinks and followed suit. As we were undressing, Rita remarked, "Poor Seyla. She is such an optimistic, trusting person. I'm afraid she is going to be in for a rude awakening before it's all over."
None of the three of us imagined how soon that awakening would come.
Chapter Twelve
Over the next several weeks, the country remained in more or less the same shape: shaky, but still holding together, although when the stories Russell had related broke, there was some localized insanity. After the webs began playing the second passers, I called Hortz at the federal building to see if I could do some pieces of my own, much as it grated me to have to ask for permission. I had a devil of a time tracking him down; he had left North Houston for Washington. I finally located him there and got his permission, subject to censorship by the local office. Democracy and freedom of the press at work. Right.
The locals didn't bother me much and Mary placed a couple of stories. I sent the money to Edie with instructions to use it to begin construction of a home office. She was tickled I was planning on moving back to Ruston. I hadn't mentioned yet that there might be five of us, or possibly just three or four. Seyla was still debating about the prospective move and I couldn't see Russell leaving her behind. I couldn't imagine myself doing that either, especially after the incident that took place a couple of weeks after our rum-laced conference.
Russell was at his lab, doing some more of what he called "useless damn measurements". Donna and Rita were off shopping for something or other. I was sitting on the small lounger, thinking amusingly to myself of how Donna had taken up the female habit of shopping as quickly as a hound dog snapping up a hushpuppy. When she was a male, she practically had to be forced into a store.
Seyla came home from class and dropped her briefcase by the door. She let loose an exasperated sigh.
"Hi," I said.
"Hey, Lee. What are you drinking?"
"Nothing right now," I said, "but I'll fix us one if you like."
"I like. Make it a strong one. This hasn't been a good day." She plopped down on the same lounger I had been using.
"What went wrong?" I asked from the bar.
"Our regular lab instructor went through the gate and we had to get a substitute. She programmed a wrong equation into the computer and fouled up everyone's experiments." She pointed to her briefcase. "That's why I brought that home. I can do them here, I think."
"Sorry," I said, handing her a full glass of my own special tension-relieving concoction. I sat down beside her.
"Thanks." She leaned her head against my shoulder. Strands of wavy brown hair tickled my upper arm. "Where's Rita and Donna?"
"On the perennial female quest: shopping for new clothes. At least I think that's what they're after."
She smiled. "You should try it occasionally." She fingered the worn threads of my shirt, then chugged her drink down and held out her glass for a re-fill.
"Better take it easy," I warned. "This stuff packs enough punch to make a mouse chase a cat."
"Good. That's just what I need."
I shrugged and poured us each another. She took the next one a little slower, but not by much. My bar expenses had increased considerably since the sex gates arrived.
"Is Russ on the way home?" I asked.
"No, damn it, he's staying at the lab tonight. Someone thought up a new instrument and they're going to run a test on the gate tonight. Not that it will do any good. I wish he would just forget it. I hate sleeping alone."
Seyla was obviously in one of her moods. "Sorry," I said.
"Not your fault. Excuse me a minute. I want to change." She departed for her room, unbuttoning her blouse as she went. She returned a few minutes later, wearing a short black wrap with a row of tiny white touchtabs down the center. It looked good on her, accenting her light brown skin and short enough to display most of her nicely-shaped legs.
"That's something new, isn't it?" I asked. It really did look good, and even as young as I was then, I had sense enough to know women liked to be complimented on new clothes.
"Yup. First time I've worn it." She fingered the hem of the material between two fingers. "Here, feel. It's made out of that new velvetin stuff."
I bunched a fold of the cloth covering her upper thighs in my hand and rubbed it between my fingers. It felt like the thinnest and softest velvet ever devised.
"Nice. I'm sure Russell will appreciate it."
She finished her drink and leaned all her weight against my side. "You can appreciate it too, if you like, Lee." She ran her hand up and down the soft fabric of my old pair of jeans, stopping each time just before the point of no return.
Even so, I began to feel a rising excitement, wondering if she meant what I thought she did. An image formed in my mind of her and Donna in bed together, stimulating me like a trip to the topless beach at Galveston always did. She curled an arm up around my neck and drew my face down to hers. She parted her lips as I followed the pressure of her hand and brought my lips down to meet hers.
Her tongue was hungry in my mouth, frankly exploring with an eagerness I hadn't expected. She was usually so quiet and small and unassuming, I unconsciously expected her to react the same way when I embraced her. I was fooled as badly as Brer Fox with the Tarbaby. She caught my hand and brought it to her breasts. I hesitated for a moment, feeling guilty for making out with Russell's new girlfriend, but I'm just not built to resist an overture from a pretty girl, especially since I've had so few of them. I began exploring her breasts like a boy scout on his first trip into the mountains. The sensual softness of
the thin velvetin clinging to her breasts like a film of warm, soft gauze enhanced the excitement. She was small and delicate, but perfectly proportioned. I fumbled open the first few touchtabs of her wrap and slid my hand inside, curling my hand around her breast as if I were holding a holding a fine piece of jewelry.
Seyla broke away from our embrace abruptly, as if she had suddenly changed her mind. I was shaking with the unexpected desire, but I let her go reluctantly, thinking she had just gotten carried away and now wanted to stop. She stood up, while I remained where I was, surprised and frustrated, and beginning to feel that little tinge of guilt again.
I needn't have worried she wanted to stop. She reached for my hands and pulled me to my feet. "Come on. Hurry," she said, tugging me toward her room with one hand and running the fingers down the tabs of her wrap with the other. It dropped away from her and floated to the floor like a discarded handkerchief.
***
We were still in bed when I heard movements and voices from the common room. I suddenly realized we had been in bed for a long time.
"Uh oh," I said, feeling my heart jump. I had recognized Russell's bass rumble and began trying to think of a logical explanation, even though it was Seyla who had seduced me rather than the other way around.
Seyla stretched like a cat in the sun. "What's wrong?"
"I think the others just came home," I said, watching her eyes to see how she was going to react.
"Rita said you were conventional about sex," Seyla said. She sat up in bed, apparently no more concerned than if we had been playing spin the bottle.
"No I'm not," I said.
She leaned over and kissed me. "In some ways you're not. You just proved that. Come on, let's get up; I'm hungry. Maybe they brought something home to eat."
She was out the door before I was. Of course, all she had to put back on was her wrap. I got into jeans and shirt and followed her out a minute later.
Rita raised her brows at me when I came into the room, but didn't act as if she were upset. I think I blushed. In fact, I know I did.
I helped myself to a slice of the pizza they had brought back and sat down by Rita. She gave me a peck on the lips, then patted my thigh affectionately, as if I had done something nice for her. I wondered if I would ever learn to understand women in general and Rita in particular.
The big screen was already on. We had all become news junkies since the sex gates had appeared, like most of the population. China was in the news this time, or at least pieces of it. It had become balkanized several years ago, with various warlords and strongmen in charge of different areas. The old policy of one birth per family was still being enforced in some places; amended in others and abandoned completely in most of the country. In this case, we heard that if the first child was a girl, a family could try a second time for a boy, but only once. Gender selection was still almost unavailable, unlike our own and other countries, and second (and many first) girl children were being forced through gates in order to produce boys. Given their culture, I believe sex selection was happening even before the advent of the gates, and the breakup of the central government was due in no small measure to the misguided policy of forbidding it. An overabundance of men always leads to unrest, unlike the reverse-at least in our country. So far. In China, I had a vague image of ravening hordes of males invading neighboring countries in search of females a few years down the line, as well as tremendous future changes on the whole Asian continent.
"They are being ridiculous," Seyla said indignantly, listening to a warlord explain the new policy. "What's wrong with girl babies?"
I knew something about the reasons from my history studies. "Nothing, except that better than half the population of Asia are still forth worlders, even peasantry. A son is the assurance the parents will be taken care of in their old age."
"Don't they even have Social Security?" she asked, as if fourth worlders in Asian countries were identical to our own, even though Social Security was just about then reaching a historical minimum. The influx of so many illegal immigrants, and the periodic granting of citizenship in return for potential votes to keep politicians in office, had upset many of our government institutions.
"They don't have Social Security as we think of it," I told her.
"Well, I still think it's horrible. What will all those boys do when they grow up?"
"What they're doing now. Jockeying for power so they can compel women to come to their neck of the woods."
"Think of the girls. They'll certainly have a choice," Donna said.
I shook my head. "More likely, we'll see more sex slavery there since Genghis Khan went on a rampage, not to mention, invasions of their neighbors. Anyway, it's nothing to worry about now."
"Yes, let's change the subject," Rita said. She confiscated the last two slices of pizza and brought one back to me.
She didn't get a chance to say what she wanted to talk about because another program broke into the news. It showed a series of mob scenes, blacks and Hispanics with a scattering of whites, overrunning the few federalized guards near a succession of gates, posted there to guarantee passage. The female guards were taken prisoner; the male guards were tossed into the gates, then taken prisoner after they emerged as naked females. There were sporadic attempts at censoring the rape scenes that followed, mostly unsuccessful, as if the technician couldn't keep up with events. It was several moments before the city was identified. Los Angeles again. That polyglot city would riot at the drop of a hat.
"What on earth do they think they're doing?" Rita asked.
No one said anything. The newshead answered her question. It was a citywide fourth worlder uprising. They were attempting to capture all the gates in the city and control entry for ransom. Food and jobs were their main demands. Food, the country could manage, but I wondered where they thought jobs would come from when they had no skills an employer needed. The gap between fourth worlder knowledge and education and that of the rest of the population was as wide as that between a feudal baron and his serfs. The problem had been growing for decades and there was no solution in sight. There was certainly no money for make-work jobs. The country had supported too many elderly and supposedly disabled for too many years, until it came near to going completely broke. We were still suffering the pains of the financial crash that resulted. Facts wouldn't stop a mob though, and never had. It would just have to play itself out.
As we watched, the scene flicked to another city. I recognized the Denver City Center immediately. Fourth worlders had caught the mania there, too, though they didn't seem to be quite so organized as the ones in Los Angeles, which made sense, since their gangs weren't nearly so monolithic as those in the bigger city.
Seyla watched with an expression of a child who had just been wrongfully spanked. "Those poor people. Don't they know they can't possibly win? They will just make things worse for themselves."
"It's frustration and resentment," Rita said, answering her own query of a moment before. "When you don't have anything and see little chance for improvement, yet can look around and see how much better off others are, you're always ready to lash out."
I tended to agree with her. If I had been raised in the fourth world, I might be out there rioting myself, even if I knew it wouldn't lead to any solution.
Russell came in, looking not nearly so tired as the last time I had seen him. He saw us all staring raptly at the screen and didn't say anything until after he had rummaged in the cooler and made himself a sandwich.
"I thought you were going to be gone all night," Seyla said.
"Problems with the instrument. Dr. Jones doesn't know as much about gravity as he thinks he does." He sat down by Donna. "I heard there was rioting in a couple of cities," he added.
More than a couple. Baton Rouge was the next one we saw. That city's population had been hugely swollen the last few years by refugees heading north as New Orleans slowly flooded, and it looked as if every single one of them were involved. There, though, they wer
e being battled by recruits from The Church of the Gates. We saw a brief flash of Messilinda urging her followers to help the police and militia. If Baton Rouge was an example, the Gaters were turning to with a will.
President Forbes used the national webwork to break in with a ten minute exhortation, pleading for calmness and consideration, coupled with the announcement he was federalizing National Guard units in the states where "unrest" was occurring.
"These goddamned gates!" Russell exploded. "What in hell is behind them? All they've caused so far is a hell of a lot of chaos."
"And a second chance at life for a lot of old people," Rita said.
"Not to mention a chance for a lot of women in the world to get out from under the yoke," Donna added. I think she was finally realizing that females in other parts of the globe didn't have it as easy as she did.
"Good and bad," I said. "A lot of life, a lot of death. And change. This old globe hasn't been so upset since the great depression or the war years."
"Yeah, and whoever or whatever put the gates here must have known this was going to happen," Russell said.
I disagreed. "How can you say that? Maybe this is a game to them, like Chaos Calling." That was a popular web game at the time, where the idea was to dream up a random factor and toss it into a given social situation, scoring points for the most change you could induce, either by violence, political machinations or other means.
"Whatever. You're right, Lee. We still don't know a damn thing. That's a good analogy, though."
I felt a lot of sympathy for Russell. It must be frustrating to have everything you have been taught in your chosen field tossed upside down and not be able to get a handle on how or why. It must have been for him like it would have been for a deeply religious person to have it proven beyond doubt that God either didn't exist, or didn't care. I don't know which would be worse to a believer.
"I still think God must have something to do with them," Seyla said.