The Sex Gates

by Darrell Bain;Jeanine Berry

  The possibilities interested me enough that I began to think about writing an article on the gates. The webs were bound to be receptive to the subject for a long time to come, and there were always newspapers and magazines. After getting my second degree in journalism I had had some small success with a few science articles (mostly of the Sunday supplement variety) and had sold a few short stories.

  I switched off the news and began creating a file on the subject of the gates, with subcategories for each of the ideas I wanted to write about. Within a few minutes I had to back up and rearrange the data in my phone; ideas were coming so thick and fast I couldn't talk fast enough to keep up. By the time I pulled into our driveway, my enthusiasm was running wild. Parking the car, I rushed inside, eager to share my newfound calling with Rita.

  Donna and Russell were locked together in an embrace on the small lounger. Donna's toga was around her waist, and Russell was caressing her bare breasts while they kissed.

  I stopped, shocked. They hadn't noticed me. As I watched, Russell moved his hand to Donna's waist and began sliding her toga down over her hips. They broke the kiss and Donna shifted, intending to help Russell finish undressing her. But when she moved, she saw me standing there.

  “Oh!” I saw that her face was flushed with sexual heat.

  Russell took his hands off Donna's body and turned around. “Lee! We didn't hear you come in.” He didn't seem to be embarrassed at all. If I knew him, he probably viewed it as an interesting experiment.

  I was more worried about what was going through Donna's mind. I'd thought his male mind in a female body would reject sex with another man, but it was beginning to look like the female sexual needs of that body were stronger than his earlier conditioning. I guess I couldn't blame her. If she tried to find a woman lover, her sexual options would be limited. And I couldn't expect her to live a celibate life. Still, Don and Russell? Maybe the sex gate had affected more than his body.

  While these thoughts flashed through my mind, Donna yanked her toga up over her breasts. “Don't look so stupefied, Lee. What am I supposed to do? Stop feeling anything sexual for the rest of my life?"

  “No, of course not.” I didn't want to tell her what I was thinking. I'd caught quite a view of her breasts just before she yanked up the toga. I turned away to hide my erection.

  What would Rita think if she knew? Probably it would amuse her; one of the advanced psych courses she was taking this semester was on the male sexual response.

  “Is anyone else home?” I asked.

  “Rita took my car a while ago to get some groceries. She should be back any time now,” Russell said.

  Three hours later, she still hadn't returned.

  * * * *

  “I'm getting worried.” I was pacing around the living room.. Why had they let her go out by herself? No, why hadn't I taken her with me?

  Russell took a logical approach. He turned to Donna. “Did she say where else she might go besides the grocery store?"

  “Oh, hell, I remember now. She said she might stop by campus and see if anything new was happening at the gate. I'm sorry, Lee. It slipped my mind until Russell mentioned it."

  “You stay here. Come on, Lee, let's go.” Russell always could think faster than me.

  We hurried outside, zapping the security system on behind us. I ran for my car and pawed in the glove compartment for my spare gun. We were rolling before I realized I should have brought the rifle from my room. Russell had never applied for a license, not that it mattered much in Texas. He was never interested in carrying.

  As we neared the gate, it became clear that yet another confrontation was going on. The college gate seemed to be a special focal point for demonstrators. The police were clearly overwhelmed by this latest struggle. Rita should have known better than to return here, but with her sheltered upbringing, she wasn't used to violence, or the idea of danger.

  The whole area around the gate was in chaos. We had to park the car and run the last block or so to get there. At first sight, I thought it was some Fourth Worlders from Old Houston causing all the commotion around the gate, but it was the way they were dressed in leather and silkskin, which confused me. A small group of radicals were causing the trouble. They were fighting with some conservatives and several people were stretched unconscious on the grass. Others had split lips or bloody heads. Only one or two conservatives were still on their feet, trying to stop the radicals from reaching the gate.

  There's no telling what rads will do when they decide to cause trouble. They are devotees of the new braindrug. It may put you in a state of bliss, but it also lowers your inhibitions to the level of a rabid dog.

  One of the rads was laughing like a braying donkey. He'd captured one of the spectators—a girl—and was forcing her toward the gate. The girl's face was twisted with terror.

  Russell swore and ran toward them. I froze in shock. Was that Rita?

  Russell hit the man from the side. He fell away from the gate, dragging the girl down with him. She screamed. It was Rita! I knew that scream, even though her face was hidden from view.

  I didn't even think about the gun I was carrying. I ran toward Rita, who was struggling to get away. The rad pushed her face into the grass and kicked out at Russell's legs. He went down. I chopped at the rad's head but missed. Someone shoved me from behind, and I went down. I struggled back up to my knees just in time to take a boot in the belly that doubled me up, gasping for breath.

  “Throw them in, too!"

  Hands clawed at my back. I clutched my gut and tried to suck in some air. My fingers touched the hard contours of the pistol in my pocket. I grabbed the butt as rough hands yanked me upright by my jirt collar. Russell went down again. I thumbed the safety off and fired twice at two rads who were kicking him in the ribs and head. Both went down.

  For once, my slight stature worked to my advantage. I'm slender, but I work out. I bent forward and twisted violently sideways, breaking free of the man holding me by my jirt collar. I shot him, too.

  Russell tackled one who was going after Rita again. She managed to struggle loose and crawled away. As I ran to her, I saw Russell going down for the third time from a wild swing. Blood was streaming from both his nostrils. I fired and his attacker slumped to the ground. Dad had taught me to handle firearms well. I hadn't missed once. The rest of the gang broke and ran after my last shot.

  “Lee, thank God! Oh, thank God, you came.” Rita was blubbering like a fundamentalist at the Rapture. I folded her in my arms. I was trembling worse than she was. A siren warbled in the distance.

  Russell got to his feet, wiping at his bloody nose. A red froth bubbled from his split lips. “Come on, let's get out of here!"

  My legs felt shaky. I was about to collapse. I looked around and saw the four men I'd shot. One of them was moaning; the other three were still, their eyes open and unseeing in death. I leaned hard against Rita, and we stumbled away from the gate. People backed off, letting us go, as we headed down the block to the car.

  Russell got behind the wheel, spitting out blood. I looked back as he drove away. The conservatives were still there, tending to their comrades. The screaming sirens were getting closer. I prayed that none of them had taken down my license number. Maybe someone had taped the action. If so, I could claim self-defense if the cops investigated. Probably they would say good riddance and leave it at that; they didn't like the radicals any more than anyone else did.

  Back at the house, Rita tended to Russell's wounds. Her only injuries were a sore shoulder and abrasions on one cheek from falling to the ground. I was bruised, but not bloody. I described what had happened while Donna made a round of drinks and Rita worked on Russell. If this kept up, we were all going to wind up alcoholics.

  “What in hell were you doing around that gate?” I asked. “Didn't you get enough excitement the other day?"

  Rita reached for her drink with a trembling hand, her face subdued. “I wanted to take some notes for class. I got a little too close a
nd got grabbed."

  “Why didn't you use the gun I gave you?"

  “I tried to."

  “Well, what happened?"

  “It didn't work."

  “What!” I stared at her. I keep my weapons in perfect condition.

  She looked away, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I forgot to take the safety off."

  “It's a good thing Lee and Russell found you in time; otherwise you would have wound up like me.” Donna looked more upset than any of us. She knew from personal experience how it felt to have your life turned inside out.

  “Lee's glad I didn't,” Rita answered.

  Glad? Glad didn't begin to cover it. I couldn't even imagine Rita as a man. I could never relate to her the way Russell was doing with Donna. “I don't even want to think about it,” I said.

  Donna lifted her head a fraction, her eyes defensive. “I'm trying to make it work.” She shot a desperate glance at Russell and got a warm smile in return.

  * * * *

  Rita and I hit the shower and then stretched out in bed. I turned on the screen and began searching for something besides news to help us relax, but there was still nothing on except commentary. Saturation news coverage is fine for unprecedented phenomena like the appearance of the gates, but anything gets old after a while. It made me long for the days when I kept my games, movies and mood programs on ROMS. In fact, I still had my old computer and a lot of programs, but they were all back at Grandpa's house in my old room. I left the screen on, just loud enough for us to hear in case anything interesting happened.

  While we snuggled, I told Rita about the bright idea I had had on the drive back.

  She gave me a peck on the cheek. “I've wanted to see you write for a long time. This is the perfect topic."

  “That's what I think too. People will want to read about the human side of the gates. Something besides more commentary, I hope."

  “Maybe you should aim for the countries where people don't have access to the web like we do. Printed matter still goes over big in those areas."

  Right. The webs and ‘works didn't depend on cable anymore; everything was relayed by satellite directly to phones or home and office computers. The old Internet still worked, but communications companies had stopped servicing the wires and cables it depended on. This left Third and Fourth Worlders who were unable to afford receivers, not to mention phones, less and less able to relate to the world; print and what was left of the Internet were their only means of communication. It left them as cut off from the modern world as political prisoners in Siberia. For those unfortunates, interactive webs and works hadn't come close to replacing the printed word yet, though it was coming. Books and magazines were still being published, but not newspapers; they were in a steep decline in the civilized world, although they could still be found in primitive areas.

  From all the web programming I've described, you'd think everyone in the world knew exactly what was happening with the gates. That wasn't true. Despite all the frenzied reporting, there hadn't been much news from those parts of China controlled by fractious warlords, and parts of India may as well have been swallowed by a black hole for all we knew from there. News from the Middle East was spotty, and of course there wasn't much left of Africa to get news from. Disease, wars, plagues, global warming and industrial pollution had devastated that continent, leaving the birthplace of the human race a barren wasteland.

  Even where we did know what was going on, chaos and confusion was the rule rather than the exception. Except for France. The French embraced the gates as if they were a huge joke being played on the rest of the world.

  There still had not been any confirmed communication with the denizens inhabiting the gates, if they were inhabited, and we still knew nothing about their purpose.

  Our own government was struggling to formulate a policy. Apparently, lawmakers were beginning to realize the gates might be here permanently.

  The FBI had been ordered to help make a positive identification of sex-changed individuals. They were doing it through fingerprint confirmation after writing a new program that figured in the size differences of the prints of the new individual, depending on whether the switch was to male or female.

  Congress was considering a number of new laws. They wanted to suspend Social Security payments and Medicare to older individuals who changed sex after a six-month grace period; a similar law would do the same for retirees from government and the military. For once, something Congress proposed made sense to me.

  A few congressmen also wanted to make it a crime to prevent anyone from passing through a gate, similar to the old abortion clinic laws. I had my doubts that one would pass, or be effective if it did, considering what I had seen so far. There were too many gates, too many anti-gate factions. Other bills would never fly. Mandatory birth control? Preventing pregnant women from passing through the gates? No chance, I thought.

  I turned the screen off. It had been a long day.

  Rita ran her hand up and down my chest, then caught hold of my chin and turned my face around for a kiss. “I still haven't thanked you for saving me, Lee. I was that close to being pushed through the gate."

  “Russell's the one who saved you. If he hadn't reacted so quickly, you would have gone through."

  “I'm glad. I'm not ready for that yet."

  I stared at her. “Not ready? You mean you're actually considering it? Changing into a man?"

  “Oh, not yet. I want to have a couple of babies first, then maybe wait until they're grown.” She chuckled. “How do you think you would like me as a man? Would you still love me?"

  “How could I love a man?” I couldn't believe we were having this conversation.

  “Oh, men! Lee, I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about love."

  I didn't know how to separate the two, especially with her. I said so.

  “Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you. Listen, what would you do if you suddenly came down with an incurable disease? Roll over and die, or go through a gate?"

  What a choice. I didn't want to think about it. “What would you do?"

  “Take a chance on a gate, of course. I'm not in a hurry to die. Besides, don't you know that every woman in the world fantasizes about becoming a man, at least once in a while?"

  “They have? I mean, they do? Why?” It was news to me.

  “Oh, we don't really want to be men. But it's a pleasant fantasy. Think about the life most women still live, doing dirty dishes and diapers and cooking three meals a day and holding down a job for a lot less money than a man would make. Even with all that, women in America are pretty well off, but think of the rest of the world. Remember those Muslim women storming the gate? They hate the way they are treated—"

  I held up my hands. “So you want to be a man?"

  She laughed. “No way! It's a fantasy like I said. Being a woman has advantages men can't imagine. We were just discussing whether we'd even consider making a change, remember?"

  We were back to that. I still didn't want to talk about it. “I feel the same way about being a man that you do about being a woman. To me, we have all the advantages."

  Rita smiled. “Then neither one was us is going to be heading through the gate anytime soon."

  I was glad to hear that. “Count on it."

  We lay side by side in silence for a moment. I wondered if she was angry that I didn't have any desire to be a woman. I decided to offer an olive branch. “At least a woman can have a man she wants, whenever she wants, without having to go through all the preliminaries like a man has to."

  Rita rolled over to stare at me. “You think so, huh? It doesn't work like that for a woman. Women don't think about sex that way: see a man, get wet, and pull him into bed. There has to be some emotional involvement for a woman to even get interested, and so far as that goes, we don't get the man we want every bit as often as a man doesn't get a woman he gets turned on by."

  I took her hand in mine. “I guess men and women are different.” It w
as about as inadequate a statement as I have ever made.

  She pulled her hand free and rolled away from me, pulling the blanket over her shoulder. “You are so right. You don't know how different."

  Maybe so, but she was beginning to give me an idea. We didn't make love that night.

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  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  I never heard anything about the four men I shot. Apparently, no one with a recorder was nearby; either that or the authorities were too busy with other matters to worry about a few rads getting shot. It didn't bother me, other than a few bad dreams; as far as I was concerned, I had done what I had to.

  Over the next few months the world, or at least the more advanced portion of it, gradually began getting back to normal—or as normal as possible under the circumstances. The gates, over a hundred thousand of them, remained as enigmatic and inscrutable as ever.

  I didn't go back to any of my classes when the college re-opened, though the others did. Instead, I began submitting articles and stories to the web and zines. At first I didn't have much success, so it was a good thing I didn't need the money. When not attempting to break into print, I concentrated on research and added to my files, which were growing like Florida algae.

  With society in an uproar and the future uncertain, financial markets in the advanced countries teetered and tottered but never quite collapsed. I missed one annuity payment completely, and the next one barely made a discernible blip on my credit balance, but after that the amount gradually increased to almost half of what it had been before the gates.

  Pope Luke was assassinated. The new pope's first act was to rescind Pope Luke's encyclical, with one reservation: pregnant women were still forbidden to pass through a gate. Most Catholics were no longer excommunicated if they waited until the age of sixty or had an incurable illness before attempting the passage. Cardinals, priests and nuns were forbidden to go through the gate under any circumstances. Many resigned in protest, and some churches and dioceses had to close for lack of personnel.