by Darrell Bain
"What!" all three said at once.
I grinned and stifled another bout of hysterical laughter only by biting a chunk out of my cheek. "Yeah. The gates will eventually disappear, one by one, and whoever went through them and got caught will come back out-and those who were hurt or sick will be cured, so long as there was enough of their minds left to control body functions."
"You mean...?" Rita couldn't go on. I knew she was thinking of Donna and Russell and Seyla, just as I was doing. I could see it plainly in her mind.
"Yes." I hugged her hard, as happy as she was going to be. "They will come back. I just can't say when. But when the gate they went into runs out of juice, so to speak, and disappears, they will be back."
Rita almost cracked a rib hugging me while Kellie and Trevor grinned and hugged each other. They were happy for us and anxious to meet our former family.
"It might be years and years," I warned, though I didn't think so. "But we can wait, now."
"No idea how long?" Trevor asked, serious now.
"Not a clue, except I got the idea it might be hundreds or thousands of years before the gates are all gone. In the meantime, they will still function just as they have been, with some disappearing from time to time."
"That's great!" Rita exclaimed. "But why? What were they put on earth for?
I was just finishing off my second very strong and large rum mix. Her question caused me to cough and spit out a mouthful of liquor. I came very close to starting that hysterical laughter again. Only the three puzzled and caring faces staring at me prevented it.
Rita was beginning to get a bit peeved. I had carefully kept what I had learned blocked off until I could talk about it without laughing like a crazy loon. "Can you let us in on the joke, or is it a private matter between you and the alien?"
"Pour me one more and I'll talk. You won't like it, though."
Rita didn't move from my lap; she let Kellie do the honors. I downed the libation in several huge gulps and felt my head begin to buzz.
"It's like this," I began. "That green blob we saw is the totality of an alien entity. It's useless to try to talk in terms of one intellect or a whole civilization contained in the cloud. I could never discern just what it is. But I did learn one thing. Even though they, or it, is incredibly more advanced than us, there still exists a reproductive drive of sorts. The Entity is in the process of creating another of its kind, sort of like a bud forming but not loose from the parent yet. And the offspring is learning about the universe by being allowed to play with anything interesting that comes along as they meander through the galaxy."
I didn't have to finish. Three mouths dropped open and three exclamations of surprise, horror and disbelief came out in tones I don't think I've ever heard before.
Rita got her equilibrium back first. "Jackson Lee Stuart, do you really mean that earth has been...become a...a playground for some chipping alien kid?"
I nodded, and opened my mind to all three of them, then added words, just to make it all absolutely clear-or as clear as I had been given to see. "Yep. The offspring actually has been using earth like a game, somewhat like a six year old learning to paint with water colors or a computer graphics program."
"But it has stopped now, right?" Kellie asked.
"Yes, so far as I was able to gather. The parent, or more accurately, the guide, has cancelled the program. And I'm almost certain it was because of it meeting us as Seconders. Before we went to it, it had been allowing its offspring to play unattended, so to speak, and apparently, it got somewhat out of hand."
"I should think so!" Rita exclaimed.
I kissed her. "Just be glad we were there as backup when the military ships got zapped. Otherwise, no telling what might have happened. We don't mean much more to them than bugs do to us."
"So why did they even talk to us-to you?" Trevor wanted to know.
I hesitated, trying to recover the gestalt of the alien as I had known it (but almost certainly what was only a very minute portion of its mentality). "Well, think of a human who routinely pays no real attention to bugs scurrying around his feet. But suppose one bug started acting peculiar? It might attract our momentary interest, mightn't it?"
"Well..."
I waved my drink, almost spilling what remained of it. "It was faintly surprised-impressed-or maybe just curious about our Seconder abilities. That made it pause and that moment gave us time to meld our minds. Perhaps that reminded it of how it became such a mighty intellect, who knows? Anyway, after that, it gave out a bit of information, then whisked us back home. And as it terminated the experiment, it granted a wish from the little bug the offspring had created."
"A wish?"
"I think so," I said. "Anyway, I got the impression that the gates which took Donna and Russell and Seyla will disappear soon. And we'll have our family back. Maybe."
"Why maybe?" Rita was squeezing my hand so hard, it hurt.
I looked up at her with what I hoped was optimism. "All three of them were very bad off, medically, perhaps worse than we were. They will return, and we can only hope they are alive when they do."
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Trevor had all kinds of difficulty getting permission to deorbit and land, especially after popping into earth's orbit so unexpectedly. Coming back down to earth wasn't quite the same as the takeoff; if you weren't careful, the spacecraft could plow into the earth at a speed that would cause a pretty big crater-with the passengers as part of it. When I asked Trevor what the problem was with communication, he replied, "All kinds of turmoil down there. Some gates have disappeared and the ones who had gone through and not come out have reappeared. Changed sex, of course." He chuckled. "I wonder what all those psychopaths are going to feel like being women?"
"Maybe the gates have cured them," Rita the optimist said.
I held my tongue. I had gotten no sign at all that the minions of the sex gates were interested in curing us, even though they did repair almost all physical ailments during a passage. But that was just the alien kid playing around. It had been a learning process for the alien offspring and that's all. It could have just as well had the sex gates give us ailments as cure them. The benefits we derived from a passage were purely arbitrary, and becoming Seconders, as we had, was an unexpected and fortuitous (for us) outcome. That's my opinion, anyway.
***
It took several days, but eventually, we got landing instructions from Edwards with an alternate at the Van Horn private spaceport in West Texas. Why we were routed to either is something I didn't understand; the spacecraft could have landed just as easily at North Houston International, but I guess they still weren't used to bringing in spaceships. However, we were going back to solid land and it didn't matter. As it was, we came down at the Van Horn Spaceport rather than Edwards, a place in far Southwest Texas which used to be almost unpopulated until private space travel came along, mostly offering suborbital and orbital rocket rides to rich thrill seekers. It was expanding by leaps and bounds now, though, with the advent of real space travel. Several companies were gearing up to offer tourist expeditions to other solar systems.
Messler was there to greet us, his old cynical smile bigger than ever-but it looked much better on him as a woman, which he was now. He-she, I mean-stepped out of her limousine, displaying most of the sleek length of her lovely legs and stood upright, arms wide open for an embrace. I stepped into them, and as our lips touched, so did our minds. And then I knew what the smile was about. I turned her loose quicker than I would have dropped a live grenade in order to rush forward and grab Donna and Russell as they emerged from the limousine, both of them grinning so hugely, it's a wonder the top of their heads didn't topple off. I don't know which of us got to them first, Rita or me, but it really didn't matter.
I was still wiping away tears between hugs and kisses when I stopped and stood dead still, my mind reaching out to them. And sure enough, they had both become Seconders! I should have realized it immediately. We had already been told tha
t all of the gates which had disappeared disgorged the people who had gone into them and not come out, and naturally had switched sexes on them as they always did. And of course, since Donna and Russell went in as male and female, they would have come out with Russell as a female and Donna a male. Obviously, they had gone through another gate to change back to what they were the last time we had been together, a thoughtful gesture on Donna's part, but a terrible risk for Russell: he didn't know he would become a Seconder! It was much later when he told me that there hadn't been as much risk as I assumed there had been. Using my knowledge of the encounter with the alien entity that I had relayed to Messler from space as soon as we were in contact, combined with his own discoveries, made him think he knew how to pull off the trick. And he had been right; but God's chips, it must have taken more courage than I had ever gave Russell credit for. I learned right then that you don't have to pack a weapon or fight a war to display bravery; in fact, his deliberate decision to risk his very life to prove a theory and to please the family took more guts than I would ever have.
***
Trevor and Kellie were being just as supportive as they could be while Rita's smiles and happy laughter gradually faded, as mine did, because the family wasn't complete yet. I hadn't touched Messler's-Messilinda's-mind I mean, since the first sight of Donna and Russell and I was scared to now. It was Rita who spoke for us all, once we were in the limo and traveling toward where Messilinda's private jet was parked.
"Did Seyla-did Seyla not make it?" She said the words in a voice so low, I could barely hear her. I didn't even try to find out from Messilinda's mind; I was scared of what it would reveal.
Messilinda leaned back in the plush seat and ordered a drink for all of us, even though we wouldn't have time to finish them before transferring to his jet. "Yes, she made it, but she came back through a little the worse for wear."
"What happened?"
"That bullet from the assassin hit an artery and she was damn near drained of blood by the time you got her to a gate. It affected her brain in some small ways the gate didn't cure for some reason, even though it fixed her wound up perfectly. She-or he, rather-is in rehab already and the docs say he should make a full recovery. He can decide then about chancing another passage."
I put that on hold, but in the back of my mind, I made a note to persuade her not to try, at least until Russell and Messilinda had thoroughly integrated my new knowledge with everything else known about Seconders. No sense taking chances. Suddenly, I became eager to see what she would look like as a male and felt a teasing tickle from Rita touch my mind. I turned and smiled at her. The sex gates had changed me more than I would ever have believed possible. As they had all of us.
I kept one thought to myself, not wanting to spoil the happy reunion. I wondered privately that if this much turmoil could be caused by an alien kid just playing around, what else might we run into in the vast eternity of space? Perhaps we should proceed more cautiously in our explorations of the galaxy. The next time we encounter intelligence out there, we might not be so lucky.
Epilogue
The story doesn't end here, of course. Before any of the NSA goons had a chance to grab me, I put everything I knew and everything Russell and Messler had learned on the web, giving the knowledge freely to the world. There was turmoil and strife and violence anew, but once it sank in that the sex gates would eventually disappear, one by one over many, many years, and that in the meantime, there was a good chance that a fair proportion of the population could eventually attain Seconder status, things quieted down. Seyla made a full recovery and using our new knowledge, managed another passage through a gate and became a Seconder like the rest of us. Rita is pregnant with our first child and I'm looking forward to settling down and becoming an old family man, albeit in a rather large and somewhat unorthodox family; but God's chips, what wonders I've seen since the first appearance of the sex gates! Destiny only knows what our son will grow up to experience. Shucks, maybe next time, I'll be the one who has the baby. In the meantime, the whole universe is waiting.
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