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; they took us to the new federal building near the center of North Houston. We were separated almost at once. 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 bare but larger room and strapped into an upright chair. As uncomfortable as it was, I'm sure a Spanish inquisitor used it sometime in the past. Visions of torture flashed through my mind, but 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 IV in my right arm, adjusted the drip, and injected a syringe of something into the drug port.
“Veronal,” 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.
“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 pass through a gate for the second time. Is that clear?"
“But why? What is wrong with them?"
“Is that clear?” he repeated, ignoring my question.
“Yes.” What else could I say?
“See that you remember.” He turned and left without another word. Someone had already unstrapped my arms and taken off the instrument leads. I pulled myself to my feet, although I was still shaking from the effects of the veronal. Another agent opened the door.
“Come with me,” he said. I followed without arguing. My coordination was still not back to normal, and it was all I could do to stay on my feet. He walked me back by the route we had followed on the way in. We 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.
It was at that point that I began thinking of Donna and Russell as family. The thought of seeing them and getting Rita safely back home made me feel like a combat soldier suddenly being told that 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 instruction 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 bright sunlight. There were only a couple of 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 that you passed all the final exams. I threw open the front door and drank in the sight of the great room, feeling dizzy with relief. For once, Russell was there, comforting Donna while they both waited for news about us.
After we'd finished hugging, we sat and talked late into the night, worried about what the feds might do next. But, as Russell observed, we didn't have enough data to come to any firm conclusions.
Finally, Russell left for his bedroom. He had to be at the lab by six in the morning. Rita and I decided to call it quits for the night, too, but when we staggered together into our bedroom, Donna followed us inside as if she belonged there.
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* * *
Chapter Eleven
If I thought for even a second about ordering Donna to leave, the love and pleading in her big brown eyes changed my mind. While I stood staring, my exhausted mind still not functioning properly, Donna embraced me in a tight hug, then stepped back and began stripping off her clothes. Rita got a wicked grin on her face and soon clothes were flying all over the room.
I'm afraid I acted like a kid with a brand-new baseball mitt he can't wait to try, and Rita behaved like a girl who had been given a new doll for Christmas. Donna wanted only to make us both happy, separately and together. How long had Rita had the hots for Donna? Or had our session together provoked her desire? Or did the fact that Donna had once been a male incite Rita's desire? The changes the gate had brought were making life complex—and interesting.
At one point during our lovemaking, I watched in fascination as Rita lay in Donna's arms, shuddering as Donna kissed her breasts. Moments later, she took Donna's breasts in her hands and teased the nipples until they stood erect. As far as I knew, Rita had only been to bed with a woman once before, and she had never expressed a desire to repeat the experience. Now she couldn't seem to get enough. Her hands and mouth explored the soft mounds of Donna's breasts, fondling and kissing them and taking the nipples into her mouth like a hungry baby.
Like any man, I had to pause and recover from time to time, but the women were insatiable. Then, too, I was noticing that the gate might have turned Donna into a beautiful woman, but she still acted like a man in bed. She was aggressive and quick to assume the dominant role, with both Rita and me. To my surprise, I enjoyed it. Because of my mediocre looks, I've never been a big on the male macho thing. So I found it strangely exciting to submit to the desires of an attractive woman. I let her do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, and so did Rita. Rita was never one of those sweet little Southern belles who wait on the man to make the first move (I think they only exist in myth nowadays), but even she was learning things from our new bedmate.
When both of them made love to me at once, I closed my eyes and drowned in the wild sensations; I moaned each time Rita moved her lips slowly and sensually down over my penis, while at the same time Donna leaned over me with one of her breasts tucked in my mouth and the other in my hand. Waves of pleasure ran through my body, and I felt as if I were being washed to the shores of a heavenly paradise. When I finally fell into a thoroughly satiated sleep, they were still going at it.
* * * *
When I awoke after my night of pleasure, the reality of my arrest hit me twice as hard. I could tell Rita was having problems adjusting too. We spent most of the day hanging around the house, reluctant to venture too far from familiar ground. When Russell got back from the lab that night, he tried to help me remember some of the questions my interrogators had asked. All I could recall was vague voices coming to me from what seemed like a great distance.
“There's something peculiar going on,” he said, as if we hadn't already been given ample demonstration of the fact.
“Yeah. They're treating Doctor Renfrow as he had changed into a little green Martian while he was in the gate."
Russell's brow creased in a frown. “You know, maybe that's what they do think."
“That he turned into an alien? Come on, Russ, be serious."
“Not really an alien, but I am being serious. I'll bet there's something about him that has the government upset. If the first trip changes your sex, what might the second trip change?"
“Well, it changes you back. And he looked normal, according to his son,” I reminded him.
“A spayed cat looks normal on the outside, too, but that doesn't mean it is."
I shrugged. “Whatever, I've been told to leave it alone. I intend to do as I was told. I don't want to ever go to jail again.” One experience was enough to last me a lifetime.
“They won't be able to keep it secret,” Russell declared. “Scientists talk. I'll find out what it's all about before the week is out."
I had to agree with him there. The government may be able to cancel web or network programs they disagree with, but web communications between individuals are impossible to control, let alone censor.
* * * *
Russell was on campus during much of the next several days. It gave Rita, Donna and I a lot of time to explore our three-way relationship. I asked Rita once what it was about Donna that had drawn her into the sexual relationship.
“Don't tell me you're against it.” She lifted an eyebrow and smiled.
“Not at all. Just curious.” I was, too.
“Let's put it like this: I always cared about Don, partly because I loved you so much and he was your friend, but also because he was an attractive, sexy guy in his own right. Then, when Don became Donna and fell in love with you, I naturally got even closer to her."
“Why closer?"
She grinned wickedly. “Maybe it's the perverted psych major in me. But I wanted to see how a man in a woman's body would make love—and how better than to be in bed with him and a man."
I stared at her, and she met my gaze without flinching. Who would have guessed Rita would be so brazen about sex? “I never suspected you were that way."
“I'm not ‘that way,’ as you put it. It was more than an experiment. I care about Donna."
“A lot of people would think that was strange."
Rita's eyes flashed. “For your information, women have loved each other since we came down out of the trees. Finally, our culture is reaching a level where it can be expressed more or less openly, and not necessarily in a physical sense. Why do men always have to think of women in terms of sex?"
“Because you're sexy, I guess."
Her anger vanished. “Lee, you're so typically male I should write a paper on you.” She wrapped an arm around my neck and hugged me, taking the sting out of her words. I touched her lips, thinking how lucky I was.
My curiosity wasn't quite satisfied, though. Thinking quickly over what she had said, I asked, “What about Russell? Are you going to fall in love with him, too?"
“Now what brought that up?"
“Well,” I hesitated. I was learning that Rita didn't need much encouragement to talk when it came to sex. “When we got back from being under arrest, I had a strong feeling that the four of us were like a family now."
Rita looked thoughtful. “I felt the same way. And I know Donna thinks Russell is sexy in his own quiet way."
For an instant, I felt angry. Donna was my lover. Then I remembered that Donna was only now learning what it meant to be a woman. And she deserved someone who would be as committed to her as I was to Rita. But then, would we still stay lovers? Would Russell be open to a foursome? For that matter, did Russell still think of Donna as a man, or did he see the attractive woman she was becoming?
I couldn't figure out all the nuances; the gate was bringing too many mindbending changes. Besides, I didn't really care who had sex with whom. But I didn't want to see anyone get hurt.
Rita mussed my hair and smiled enigmatically. “Don't worry about it. One of these days when you're old and gray and decide to go through a gate you'll discover more about women than you ever thought possible."
I left it at that. I didn't tell her that I wasn't planning on going through a gate when I got old. I liked being male too much, especially right now.
* * * *
The government's secret soon came out the way Russell predicted it would. One evening ten days after our arrest, he came home from school with a big grin on his face. He grabbed Rita first, then Donna, kissed them both with a loud smack, then still keeping an arm around Donna's waist, said, “Gather ‘round, folks, I've got some news!"
Letting go of Donna, he sprawled into the depths of the big easy chair. He took her drink from her and drained it.
“Must be important,” I said, sitting down across from him and leaning forward.
“Remember that doc who went through the gate twice, then got arrested by the Secret Service?"
As if I could forget. Russell was only teasing me—he laughed and went on. “They didn't get a damn thing out of him! Veronal, scopalamine, pentathol, hypnosis, you name it, they came up blank. And it finally got out, just like I told you it would. The web is warping with the story."
I didn't get it. “What's the big deal if he doesn't know anything, other than that he managed to come out of a gate twice?"
“The big deal is that none of the drugs had any effect on him. It was like trying to question a catatonic. He never said word one. Not only that. They took him to some government lab and tested him physically forty ways from zero. He's perfectly normal and human; gene analysis matches his original identity exactly, allowing for the elimination of some detrimental recessives."
“Have they let him go?” Maybe I could get that interview now.
“Nope, but they probably will, eventually. The private lines are talking about a couple of other similar cases. One of them was kinda cute. This Arab woman sneaked out of her house, bribed a guard and went through a gate. Naturally, she turned into a male. The way the story reads, her husband grabbed her and tossed her back into the gate. She made it through the second time and came back out a woman again."
“I'll bet she's mad as hell,” Rita said.
“That's not the story we're getting. She didn't seem to mind at all and went right along with the inevitable questioning; she offered no resistance, the same as our case. But she didn't talk, either."
“Could this be the beginning of a trend?” Donna seemed interested, but not anxious. A few months ago she would have bolted for the gate, but I think she was beginning to enjoy being a woman by then.
“I doubt it, though it's a little early to tell yet. Statistically, ninety-nine point et cetera percent of those who have tried a second passage never come back. Even if it is a trend, at this rate, it will take years to gather enough of a statistical universe to understand why a few make it but the vast majority don't. Shucks, we're still not even sure why some don't come back from the first attempt."
“There's still something peculiar about this,” I said. “Whoever heard of a person able to clam up under veronal?"
“Name me one thing that isn't peculiar about the gates,” Russell challenged. “This is one more puzzle to add to all the others."
I nodded my head. “So what else have you heard?"
“Probably not much that you haven't. Our funding got cut, though."
“How come?"
Russell waved the hand holding his drink. “Something about Congress not being able to come up with the money next year. We're going on half rations now so we can keep operating if that turns out to be the case."
Rita looked skeptical. “I would think the government would have plenty of money. Social Security and Medicare payments must be way down."
“You haven't been keeping up with the news,” I said. “What they've saved, they've spent on the military, gate research and the space program."
“Yeah, isn't that great?” Russell said. “After all this time, they've finally decided to fund every kind of space research and production imaginable. Hell, they're even talking about
reviving the Nerva and Orion projects."
Neither of the women knew what he was referring to. I might not have if I hadn't been such a science fiction buff. Nerva and Orion were both nuclear-propelled rocket projects cancelled way back before the Millennium.
I frowned. “If that's the case, Washington must be swinging toward the alien origin of the gates."
“That's what I hear, though what purpose our dinky little space programs will serve in figuring out anything about the gate technology, I have no idea."
“Can I quote you as an ‘informed source’ on this?” Mary was agitating for another piece from me ever since the last one was pulled.
“Hell, you can quote me by name if you want to. Scientists are webbing all over the place about it, for and against."
“Which position do you favor?"
“Oh, well, I say go for it. For all we know, the gates may disappear tomorrow, and we'd be that far ahead at least. If the damn dumb politicians had spent the money in the first place, we'd have so much industry in space by this time that we could support every Fourth Worlder on earth, whether they ever worked a lick or not."
I agreed. Democracy has many virtues, but foresight isn't often one of them.
Russell leaned back and sighed, his exhaustion showing on his face. “Well, that's my scoop for the day. What are you folks hearing?"
I wondered whimsically whether anyone in the physics department ever turned on a news program. If they did, you couldn't prove it by Russell.
“Men are beginning to outnumber women, in this country anyway, and probably in most of the others regardless of what they're saying. If that keeps on, the gates may wind up solving the overpopulation problem,” Rita said.
“Messilinda's Gate Church is still gaining converts. They've gone national and are beginning to pick candidates to run in the next election,” I said.
Russell made a face. “How can people believe in that nonsense?"
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