The Sex Gates

by Darrell Bain;Jeanine Berry

  “Out the back way, quick!” I ordered. “Grab your guns on the way.” Russell wasn't a carrier. He snatched up his suitcase. I gave him a shove. “Get going. We'll be right behind you."

  Donna and Rez paused only long enough to arm themselves before we ran out the backdoor. We headed for the woods, keeping the house between the driveway and us. As we gained the concealment of the trees, a flash of light blossomed back toward town, followed a few seconds later by the clap of an explosion. The patrol car! I cursed as I realized I'd funneled several good men straight to their deaths. Somehow whoever was attacking us must have tapped into my conversation with the chief, either that or been extraordinarily well prepared; perhaps both. At any rate, that left no doubt in my mind that if we were caught, we would end up as dead as those poor patrolmen.

  I knew the woods, even in the dark, from all my teenage ramblings through it. We hurried down a deer trail, not stopping until we were well away from the house. Behind us, I heard crashing noises and gunshots as the Gaters began neutralizing the security system and breaking inside. I was sorry then that I hadn't put out the money for a mankiller bond with the system. Those bastards deserved to die if anyone did.

  When I heard Russell began to gasp for breath, I called a halt; his endless hours in the lab had left him out of shape.

  Russell dropped to his knees, sucking in huge lungfuls of air. “God, I didn't know they would be so close behind me."

  “We were lucky.” I touched my pistol to make sure it was still in its holster.

  “What do we do now?” Rez asked, deferring to me.

  I tried to make my mind work. It was a cinch the Gaters knew who we were, and they were certain to pass the information on to their cohorts. There was no chance of getting far without being recognized, and by all indications, a hunt was being conducted without worrying about the consequences. They would shoot Russell on sight. If Russ were missing, they would capture the rest of us to lure him out, and then kill us all.

  The night was quiet. The sounds of them breaking into our home had stopped. That was not a good sign. By now, they knew we had run out the back way and into the woods. They would be on our heels in a few minutes. Even as I struggled to come up with a plan, they were probably calling in extra help to surround this section of woods and hunt us down. The woods weren't that extensive. Farms or ranches were located on three sides of the strip of forest, and it ended inside a half mile at another ranch.

  What to do? What to do? This was a rural area. Even if the chief called out the militia, it would take many hours for help to reach us. And if they stopped at our house first, they would think we had been captured and hauled away.

  Suddenly, a name popped into my head. Whitley Horst, the NSC agent, my old nemesis. Would he send a team out if I called and told him I had vital information? Probably, but could they get here in time? Besides that, I was sure the Gaters were monitoring my phone code. If I called anyone, they could locate our position almost immediately from the satellite data. I didn't see any other choice, though.

  “Li? What are we going to do? We can't just stand here.” Donna's voice was shrill with fear.

  “I know. I'm calling the NSC. Horst may be able to help."

  “That bastard!” Rez spat.

  “I know, but he may be our only chance.” I racked my brain, trying to remember the code number. It had been too long; it was lost. I called the North Houston federal building and got a night operator. I wasted precious minutes convincing her that I had a national emergency and that she should immediately contact Whitney Horst. She relented only after I mentioned the explosion at the lab; apparently she had already heard about it.

  A few minutes later, Horst was on the phone. He already knew about the attack on the lab. I told him that Russ was with us, that we were fleeing my house after an attack by Gators, and that Russ carried information that could shake the world. When Horst heard that, he made me wait for several seconds while he activated a scrambler circuit so that only we could understand each other.

  “If you don't hurry, none of us will be here when you arrive,” I snapped as soon as the circuit kicked in.

  “All right,” he said. “I'm convinced. Hide as best you can. Security code will be Eagle Hawk. Got it? Eagle Hawk. I'll get a team on the way."

  “Let's go,” I said to the others. I remembered a little gully where I used to squirrel hunt. It was the best cover I could think of. I led the way. The gully was near the end of the stretch of forest, where a blacktop farm road separated it from the adjoining ranch. A few minutes later we were hidden below its banks, waiting for whatever would happen next. I was trembling and feared I wouldn't be able to hold my gun steady if I had to shoot.

  It wasn't long before the test came. The shadowy head and shoulders of a dark figure appeared silhouetted against the skyline at the top of the bank of the gully. Friend or foe? Surely the NSC couldn't be here already. As I watched him edge closer, I realized that as soon as the Gaters found the gully, it would strike them as an obvious place to hide. We would have been better off crouched in the woods somewhere.

  I fired over the figure's head and shouted, “Eagle!” hoping desperately for an answering “Hawk.” Instead, the shadowy shape flipped its rifle down in my direction and fired off a full clip. The shots went over my head. I pointed my gun and fired back twice, and the Gater toppled backwards. From above, I heard shouts of “Over here!” and nervous gunfire.

  We were hiding near the head of the gully. I debated whether to begin making a retreat toward the other end when from that direction came a voice. “Eagle,” it said, barely loud enough for me to hear.

  “Hawk,” I returned, relief washing over me like a warm shower after being out in a cold wind. How had they gotten here so fast? A man and a woman ran up to us, crouched low.

  “This way,” the man said. “Hurry. Stay down.” he spotted Russell's suitcase. “Is this your data?"

  “Yes,” Russell said.

  “Good, give it to me and come on."

  Russell handed it over without hesitation.

  We began running down the bottom of the gully where water had washed a path free of vines and brush. A ripping sound of gunfire followed our retreat and limbs and branches shattered above our heads.

  Two more men joined us at the end of the gully. One of them took the suitcase and hurried away. He dropped to the ground and crawled over the bank on his stomach. I lost sight of him as he slithered away. The other three stayed behind, urging us to cover behind a tangled heap of trees, probably washed there by a spring flood. I was wondering why we all hadn't gone with the other man, but I forgot all about him as a withering volley of gunfire raked into the logs, sending woodchips flying.

  “Stay down, don't risk yourselves unless they charge,” the leader said. “Help is on the way."

  I hoped he was right. We kept our heads down while a constant barrage of gunfire from the Gaters chewed at the logs like energetic beavers.

  “They're going to charge,” he warned. “Get ready.” I wondered how he could be so certain, but he was right. They came directly at us, over both banks of the gully and along the dry streambed, firing wildly. Fortunately, most Gaters aren't carriers; these must have been newly armed. Most of the bullets went zinging off into the forest. We stopped the first charge dead in its tracks, dropping a number of them, and causing the rest to scramble for concealment.

  A few minutes later, the man gave us a second warning. “They're getting ready again. This time keep your heads down."

  Keep down? If we kept down they would overrun us for sure. I started to rise up and a strong muscular hand shoved my face into the dirt. I sputtered and spat, struggling to get away. From behind us, I heard the bursting rattle of mob guns firing in unison and screams of terror and pain in front of us.

  Abruptly, the hand was gone from my neck. I looked up just in time to see the three men and the woman who had saved us scurrying away, miraculously dodging the bullets that chewed up the earth a
round them. They vanished around the curve in the gully bottom just as a gang of agents poured over the edge of the wall above us, shouting, “Eagle, Eagle!"

  The NSC reinforcements, or what I thought were reinforcements, had arrived just in time. They surrounded us, three of them forming a tight shield around Russell. My sides heaved as I tried to catch my breath.

  “All right, let's go,” one of the men said.

  “Wait a minute. I want to thank the other men. They saved our lives.” I looked around in the moonlight, wondering where they had run off to and why.

  “What other men?” a flinty voice demanded. “We're the only NSC agents here."

  “Then who...?” I forgot the matter as I heard Donna moan. I twirled and saw her gripping her arm. Blood was dripping from it, dark drops appearing almost black in the wan light. I broke away from the hands trying to restrain me and went to her. Her left forearm was shattered, but the bullet hadn't torn it up too much; she was in pain and going into shock.

  I refused to say anything else until they got us out of the woods. They evacuated us in a helicopter and even then, all I could tell them was that four unidentified figures, three men and a woman, had come upon us, given the codeword and led us in the fight.

  Three hours later I was still trying to explain it to Whitney Horst. He was furious when Russell told him that he had given away the suitcase with the model light computer and all the painfully preserved notes of his experiments and calculations. Our four unidentified saviors had made a clean getaway. Horst grilled us for several more hours until I finally told him that we weren't answering any more questions. There was nothing left to tell.

  I picked Donna up from the hospital as soon as her surgery was over and took her home. She had a cast on her arm and was dopey from the anesthesia and bone-healing injection Otherwise, Tyson said, she was fine—no permanent damage had been done. We put her to bed, only too glad to turn in to try to get some sleep ourselves. We didn't have to worry about another attack. There were enough NSC agents surrounding the house to break a battalion.

  Horst came back the next morning for more debriefing, interrupting us as we were trying to repair some of the damage done by the Gaters when they broke in. I had already called our security service to get the system re-installed and working again. This time I put up the bond for their mankiller system.

  Horst was still furious that the suitcase had slipped through his hands. After another hour of questioning, he gave up. “I don't understand it,” he confessed. “Who the hell were they? How did they manage to get our code? And how did they manage to get away so easily?"

  When he finished cursing, he put Russell under arrest. But he soon discovered that it no longer mattered.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Long after that terrible night, we found out that it was a consortium of Seconders who pulled off the coup. All we knew at the time—soon after the attack—was that an anonymous group posted all of Russell's notes and designs on the web, designating them as public domain. At the same time, they disclosed that a militant sub-branch of the Gater church was behind the sabotage at the university laboratory.

  The Gater militants had converted one of Russell's team to their brand of Luddite theology. He, in turn, had fouled up their tests and passed on the information to superiors. When Russell found out what they were doing, they were forced to strike, determined to prevent any hint of the possibility of faster than light travel being made public. I thought of Messilinda, and her gentle way of espousing her teachings; she had never preached violence, nor resistance to others doing scientific research; she had simply believed that it was irrelevant to their beliefs.

  I wondered where she (or he, now) was and whether he had been behind our rescue. He was one of the slowly increasing numbers of Seconders. They were still viewed with suspicion by authorities, though none of them had ever posed any kind of threat to the government. However, the government's suspicion and resentment was normal, considering the second passers were potentially immortal (based on limited data, of course), and immune to questioning.

  For the next several days, until the security system was again up and working, I insisted that one of us remain awake at night to monitor the screens; the NSC agents had been withdrawn soon after Russell's data was made public. Donna was exempted; she would be dopey for another week until the bones in her arm were fully healed.

  On my night of monitor duty, I wrote up our exploits for the adventureweb. It was an immediate bestseller in North America, making me a wealthy woman.

  * * * *

  The second evening, after the security system was back up, and I knew we could all go to bed that night without worrying, I declared a celebration. Well-armed and wary, I ventured out for the first time to restock our supply of rum and mix, but the streets were peaceful.

  We had batted around the happenings after the lab explosion at the university among ourselves, but not as a group. When I returned, Russell had a scienceweb program on, turned low. It was far more technical than my Sunday supplement pieces, but not so mired in jargon that a person of average education couldn't follow it. On screen, a graphie was explaining, using other graphics, what some of the new technology growing out of Russell's light research would mean.

  “See that?” He gestured at the screen, where the graphie (depicted as a curvaceous young lady) was wearing the prospective light computer on a chain around her neck. It was smaller than the palm of my hand. She gave it orders and a visual display appeared in midair, a comfortable viewing distance from her eyes. She switched by voice to various web programs, called up files, and talked. Her words appeared immediately on the display.

  “Impressive,” I admitted, “but computers that small with projected holovision screens have been in the planning stages for years."

  He waved a hand. “Keep watching."

  I did. Another graphie, a male this time, appeared alongside the first, with a background clearly indicating that he was on Mars. They began talking—with no time lag.

  “How do they manage that?” Rez asked.

  “They don't, yet. This is simulated, but it won't be long, now. My notes were clear, and I heard earlier this evening that all the computer companies are rushing to get a version on the market first."

  I sipped at the rum, savoring the tart sweetness of the mix. This would be a revolution, not having to carry around a phone nor having to hook into a screen for visual—and communicating faster than light. “How much do you think they'll cost? For that matter, how long will a charge last?"

  Russell grinned. “With all the companies competing, and as simple as the concept is—now that we understand it—they should cost a lot less than phones do. As far as the power source goes, I've suggested inductive body heat. Shucks, they could even be implanted. Then you wouldn't even need to remember to carry them, or take them off at night for sleeping or, um, other things.” He ran his hands up and down Donna's shapely thigh. She leaned against him with her eyes closed, awake, but not taking part in the conversation.

  “Amazing. How do they work?” Rez should have known better than to ask that question. I hadn't bothered, knowing there was no way I would understand the theory.

  “Why don't we just say that we didn't understand the properties of the photon nearly as well as we thought we did. That same misunderstanding is going to give us faster than light travel within a year or two."

  “I'm more interested in how this is going to affect the Fourth Worlders,” Rez said.

  “To start with, phones will soon be as obsolete as a twentieth-century computer. I suspect someone will come up with the idea of distributing them free to the needy. That will open up the web to the Fourth Worlders at last. I can only hope once they are on the web, they'll make some use of the educational opportunities. Public schools will snap the phones up, too; as a result, education will get better, even with the miserable funding you see now. And, oh, I don't know, there a
re so many possibilities. It will take time for the changes, though. Don't expect results overnight."

  Rez beamed a grateful smile in Russell's direction. “I don't know why we can't. Just getting those poor folks into the web is a big step in the right direction, if for no other reason than the availability of cheap entertainment. That may put a stop to a lot of drug use."

  “Let's hope so. At any rate, changes are coming."

  I'm not as much of an idealist as Rez. I confess that I was much more interested in the prospects of interstellar travel. “Russ, you said the new computers would be cheap. How about FTL? Will it cost enough that it will have to be a government program?"

  “Nope, it shouldn't. Oh, I'm sure some governments will get involved, but so should a lot of private investors. The best thing about it is that takeoff can be arranged from earth. No gravity well to fight. Then, too, think of all the raw materials available in the asteroids or on the moons of the heavy planets."

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought we were talking about FTL."

  “We are. Saturn, Sirius, the center of the galaxy, or a whole new galaxy. There shouldn't be any limitations.” He grinned like a three-year-old with a bright, shiny new toy to play with.

  That called for another drink. If what he was saying turned out to be true ... I stared up at the ceiling, my mind already in outer space, imagining some incredible adventures as I soared to new worlds in my trusty ship. Rez recognized my expression. It was the same one I often wore after reading or watching a good science fiction program.

  “Come back to earth, Ms. Star Trek.” He shook his head at me. “Haven't you had enough adventures lately?"

  He had something there. Did I really want to go out into space, exploring new worlds and possibly fighting for my life against some ten-eyed monstrosity? Now that fiction was turning into fact, I didn't know if I really had the guts to go first. But if not first, maybe later. To have the opportunity to find out what was out there in the galaxy would be like a Fourth Worlder winning the lottery, a wildly improbable occurrence suddenly coming true.