The Sex Gates Read online

  I hoped she would drop the idea of trying sex with me and find another man, but I saw no signs of it. She was taking all her classes at home so there was no need for her to go to the campus. Mostly she stayed home and studied. The main difference I noticed was that she didn't laugh or smile as much as she had before. I felt as if that was my fault, I but didn't know what to do about it so I let it go, hoping she would cheer up. The one thing she wanted, I wasn't prepared to give.

  This situation went on for several days. I didn't think anyone else knew what was causing Donna's mood of perpetual gloom until Rita broached the subject.

  We were sitting out on the front porch enjoying after-breakfast coffee and early morning sunshine. I like being outside so long as I'm around my own digs, but in southern Texas in the summertime you have to get your porch sitting done early. The heat and humidity will run you inside by midmorning.

  I finished my cup and picked up the carafe to fill it again. “More?’ I said to Rita.

  “No thanks. Lee, I want to talk to you."

  Uh-oh. The words every man dreads hearing. I could tell she was upset with me by the tone of her voice.

  “What about?” Already, I was beginning to suspect what the subject of our discussion would be.

  “You know what about. I can't believe you were so horrible to Donna."

  “Me? What did I do?"

  “You hurt her feelings. Badly. If I were her, I wouldn't even be speaking to you."

  “Are you talking about the way she was coming on to me last week?"

  “No, I'm talking specifically about four days ago when she asked you to make love to her and you refused. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

  “Do you two talk about every damn thing that happens around here?” It was a feeble attempt to get the conversation going in another direction.

  “Of course we do, with anything that matters. Didn't you and Donna used to gab about everything before the gates?"

  True, but he had been Don then. Before Donna changed, we had discussed every aspect of our lives, especially women, including Rita, and whichever girlfriend he was seeing at the moment.

  “Well, yes, now that you mention it, but it's different now."

  “It sure is. Donna has a broken heart. Your friend needs your help and you are ignoring the pain you are causing her."

  “Oh, come on now. I am not the only man in the world. If Donna wants to discover what it's like to be a woman in every way, I am sure someone else will be glad to help her out. Why doesn't she get on the phone and demand that Russell take a break from the lab? I've got a feeling he'd be more than happy to be her first."

  Rita looked stubborn. “I wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't end up with Russell eventually. But right now he isn't available. And she wants someone who has been her friend for years to help her through this critical moment of her life. That's you. I want you to make up with her."

  “Make up with her? We haven't even had a fight."

  “You hurt her. Why are you so impossibly stubborn sometimes? And so dense, I might add."

  “Dense in what way?” We seemed to be talking in circles. I couldn't understand what she was talking about.

  “Can't you tell how Donna feels about you? Couldn't you at least have tried? Even if you don't feel the same way she does, you could have done that much for her."

  “Rita, please, let's drop the subject. I don't tell you who to have sex with, do I? Donna was the best friend I've ever had. We practically lived together from our sophomore year on. I'd like to stay friends."

  “You sure pick strange ways of going about it."

  “I'm sorry. I wouldn't feel right having sex with her. It would be like—like..."

  “Like going to bed with a man, right?"

  “Sort of."

  “And yet you don't see a thing wrong with women making love to each other, do you? You enjoyed watching the night I had sex with another woman."

  “I can't help the way I was brought up.” Besides, Rita, of all people, should know that when it came to sex, we humans were full of contradictory behavior.

  “Don't blame it on your upbringing. Another thing, you didn't have any trouble with that hennaed redheaded evangelist did you? She only spent about a hundred years as a man.” Rita ‘s voice rose. She was about as angry as I had ever seen her, and she had nailed me good, right below the waterline.

  “I'm sorry about that."

  “You don't have to be sorry. Any male who could resist that flame-top needs to have his hormone levels checked. I only mentioned it to show you that your argument about Donna once being a man doesn't make much sense."

  “Donna will get over it.” Maybe it didn't make sense, but the thought of making love with my former best friend was still making me squirm.

  “Yes, she will, eventually. But you're not going to be very popular around here for a while.” She stood up, and turned to go back inside.

  “Wait. Listen, I'll talk to Donna and explain."

  “Explain what? That you have bricks in your head?"

  “About how I feel. About how she feels."

  “Lee, you evidently haven't got a clue about how she feels."

  “Yes I do,” I argued. “I've known her longer than you have."

  Rita closed her eyes and clenched her fists. She stood like that a moment, then opened her eyes and stared at me as if I were a student who had failed to grasp a problem after a dozen explanations. “You know her that well, do you? Then I guess you must know that she's fallen in love with you."

  She turned on her heel and left me sitting out in the sun with an ache in my chest that wouldn't go away.

  * * * *

  I guess Rita really did love me. When I went back into the house, she acted as if nothing had happened between us. I retreated into the study and got online with my agent. I had never met her in person, but the big screen in the study made it seem as if we were in the same room together. Mary Wright doesn't look as if she could convince any editor to buy from her. She is a small, dumpy woman in her mid-forties who dresses as if she were one step up from joining the Fourth Worlders. She had gotten a good price for the Messilinda program, though, much more than I had expected.

  “You've made a name for yourself, Lee. Now we need to exploit your reputation while you're hot,” she told me.

  “I was lucky."

  “Never mind that. Now you're marketable. What else do you have on tap?"

  “Nothing much.” The professionals were covering the gate news much better than I could. I was only a fair amateur.

  “Let me give you a project, then. The webs and zines have been saturated with the sex change aspects of the gates. Now they're looking for some scientific information, preferably from a personal angle. You already have a few science credits to your name so it should be an easy sell. Do you know any scientists?"

  Did I know any scientists? I had one living in my house. Russell would be glad to help, I thought. “Sure do. Let me check and get back to you. Okay?"

  “Great. See you later.” She was already taking another call as she cut the connection.

  I wanted to see Russell right away. As I came out of the study, Rita and Donna were sitting down with their heads together. They looked up. I tried to act nonchalant.

  “I'm going to run over to the campus and talk to Russell."

  “Tell him to come home occasionally, will you?” Donna said.

  “Sure. I will.” I gave Rita a quick kiss and bracing myself, pecked Donna on the cheek. A smile brightened her face. I hoped she wouldn't read anything into it that wasn't there.

  * * * *

  When I walked into Russell's lab, I found him standing in front of a screen with his back to me, watching the results of what appeared to be some experiment playing out. There were lots of graphs, lines and symbols flashing on the screen.

  Somehow, Russell sensed my presence. He turned around. “Hi, Lee. What brings you here?"

  “Something you may be able to help me w
ith. I can come back later if you're busy."

  “No problem. These results can wait awhile."

  I wanted privacy to talk to him. “Can we go into your office? Is it free?"

  “It is until the night shift comes on.” He had to share the little office with another doctoral candidate.

  “What's your problem?” Russell asked as soon as he had cleared a stack of books and papers filled with equations from the other chair.

  “No problem; my agent suggested I should talk to a scientist."

  “What about?"

  “Oh, how the brains are going about exploring the gates, what problems you're having, and what you're planning on next; I'm looking for anything you've found out that hasn't already been reported a million times."

  Russell laughed. “You've come to the wrong department. Philosophy is the next hall over."

  “Not interested. They have as many opinions as economists do, all of them contradictory."

  “Physicists are fast joining their ranks. Actually, you should be talking to the genetics department. They've come up with a prize. A friend of mine was telling me about it right before you arrived."

  “So tell me, too."

  Russell gazed at the ceiling. “A brand new projection. Average lifespan of sex-changed individuals should amount to well over a hundred years, give or take a few. And nothing but old age to slow them down."

  That was about fifteen more than the lifespan tables were giving us at the time, and the last decade or so was likely to be plagued with ailments. “Nice. Once that news gets out, a few extra doubters will take the plunge."

  “More than a few, I think. I'm going to have to get a new adviser. Doctor Holt went through yesterday and took off for Mexico this morning to start enjoying all that money he's saved up."

  I hadn't told Russell I was recording. I wanted him to act natural. I would let him know before using any footage, of course. “That's great. Tell me more."

  He spread his hands, palms up. “We still don't know a damn thing. All we can do is act like that character in Alice in Wonderland who tried to believe several impossible things before breakfast."

  “Such as?” I prodded.

  “How about little green men from Mars? At least the color matches. Lee, when you have a phenomenon you can't measure, all you can do is speculate. One theory is as likely to be right as the next one. Or as wrong."

  “What's your opinion?” I was forgetting this was for potential publication. Talking to Russell was always fascinating.

  “My opinion? For what it's worth, I don't think God has anything to do with the gates. I'd rather believe in the Martians."

  “Seriously?"

  “No, of course not."

  I grinned. “Actually, there was both a book and a movie back before the Millennium about little green men from Mars invading earth. They couldn't be measured, either.” I was talking about one of Grandpa's old science fiction novels. It was called Martians go home. Those aliens were obnoxious little gremlins.

  “Really? What was the final explanation?"

  I grinned some more. “There wasn't any. One day they went back where they came from."

  “Maybe the gates will, too. Seriously, Lee, most scientists don't like to go out on a limb without some data."

  “How do you expect to get any?"

  “Easy. I'll use the tabwebs for evidence."

  We both laughed. The tabs had been crazy about aliens for the last thirty years, at least, without a single fact to back them up. They still wrote about the Roswell crash as if it had actually happened.

  We talked a while longer, relating stories we had each heard about the gates. I actually had more to tell than he did. He hadn't watched nearly as much news as I had.

  I told him about the fundamentalist Muslim country in the Middle East where they were executing any woman caught going through a gate. But the gates were so well guarded there now—surrounded constantly by religious fanatics—that that wasn't likely to happen.

  He told me that none of the astronomical or weather satellites had recorded so much as a blip at the time the gates appeared. If they came from outer space, it was by some means other than distortion of space or the electromagnetic spectrum.

  Then he wanted to hear more about Messilinda. He rolled his eyes when I described her seducing me. “Some guys have all the luck. I barely have time to eat right now, much less have a sex life. For the life of me, though, I can't see anything special about you that would cause her to drop her panties the first time you met."

  “Actually, she wasn't wearing any. Did you hear about Forbes asking Congress to start up the clipper production line again?"

  “About time,” Russell grumbled. I agreed with his sentiments. As a kid, I had wanted to be an astronaut, but the financial crisis a few years ago had killed manned space travel. Now the mystery of the gates was stirring interest in outer space again.

  “Indonesia is threatening to invade the Philippines."

  “I heard about that. Muslims versus Catholics. Nothing new there. What I'm worried about is all the religious mania right here at home."

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Bible-belt mentality never dies. If we knew anything about what happens to people who don't come out of the gates, we could..."

  Russell snapped his fingers. “Hey! Here's a story I'll bet you haven't heard. There was this doctor from the Temple medical center. He went through a gate a few months back. New life, right? Then one night he got mugged. The ‘worlders poured acid over his face for fun. Blinded him. He was so depressed he walked into a gate again."

  “What happened?” I knew the answer even as I asked the question. I felt a thrill somewhere between anticipation and fear. Just when you thought you understood the gates, something unusual would happen.

  “He came out the other side, perfectly normal, except that he had changed gender again."

  Now that was really news. People had stopped trying a second passage because no one had ever returned from the attempt.

  “Has it been verified?” I could hear my voice rising with excitement.

  “Yup. Matter of fact, I went to school with one of his kids. I called him and he told me it's the straight truth."

  “Give me his name. And his address, if you know it."

  “His name is Walter Renfrow, but it won't do you any good to talk to him. He's claiming he doesn't remember a thing about what happened, other than that he can see again. But..."

  “But what?"

  “But some of his friends think he's holding back. I'd like to know myself. Here, don't let on where you got this from.” He pulled up the name and address from his phone and transferred it to mine.

  After that, I was in a hurry to leave. I only stayed long enough to tell him that Donna and Rita wanted to see him a little more often. He said he would make an effort to spend a more time with Donna. No doubt he was planning a scientific investigation of her adjustment.

  I almost ran home, intending to pack a bag and head for Temple the same day. I wanted to ask Rita to go with me, but when I arrived home, there was no one around that I could see. I was disappointed that Rita wasn't handy, but decided leave her a note. I intended to get up there and see that doctor before word got out. The first person to make two trips through a gate!

  I headed for my room, which was across the hall from Donna's. As I passed, I noticed her door was half open. My stride shortened and something impelled me to peek inside.

  Donna was lying on top of the sheets with her head propped up on a couple of pillows, watching a women's fashion program. All she was wearing was a filmy nightgown. The thin silk covered her, but revealed every curve.

  I was standing in the doorway, frozen, staring at the soft swell of her breasts when she looked away from the screen and saw me. The moment stretched into eternity, but I couldn't seem to make my legs move.

  “Why hello, Lee. Come on in.” Donna's voice was low and seductive. She stretched her body, arching her back so that her breasts lift
ed towards me, their fullness straining against the thin nightgown. She slid one hand across the silken sheets in an inviting gesture.

  My legs started working again. I staggered over to the bed, moving like someone in a dream. The closer I got, the more disoriented I became, as if I were breathing in pure oxygen. I felt dizzy. My eyes drank in her voluptuous breasts, slim waist and long legs. Her liquid brown eyes watched my approach with suppressed anticipation.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed. She reached out and took my hand. Her touch was like an electric shock, sending tingles up my arm.

  “Donna, I—you—my God, you're beautiful. You're as lovely a sight as I've ever seen.” Why had I never realized how desirable she was until this moment?

  An eager excitement lit up her face. She tugged at my hand. I kicked off my shoes and lay down beside her. My mind was buzzing with desire. I couldn't tear my gaze away from her.

  “Lee, are you sure?"

  “Oh, yes!"

  I reached out to touch her and suddenly her body was pressed against mine. Our lips met and it seemed as if I tasted the nectar of the gods. I searched for her breasts and found them, firmly pliant beneath their flimsy covering. Her nipples became erect against the palms of my hands, sending waves of desire coursing through my body. She was a warm, desirable woman and I would let nothing on earth prevent me from possessing her, not even the thought of who she once was.

  She sat up and pulled the nightgown over her head, revealing her naked body to the feel of my hands and the taste of my lips. I felt my erection surge and become cramped inside my pants. I stripped them off, and my penis came free, hard and erect, pulsing with exquisite expectation. She brought my head down to her breasts and moaned softly as I took them each in turn into my mouth, exulting in the feel of my tongue twirling around the hard little buttons of her nipples. The thought of stopping never entered my mind; my body was in total control, and all I knew or felt was concentrated in my groin.

  Donna reached down and took me in her hand, and I was lost in a whirlpool of exquisite sensation. Somewhere off in the far distance a voice was shouting a warning that she had taken a pheromone, one of the very few proscribed drugs, and that this lust I felt was a trick of chemistry. I ignored it. She was my world, my utmost fantasy, the girl of a hundred adolescent dreams. She pulled me over her, thighs spread and ready, and guided me inside her. My last coherent thought was that if using a pheromone on me was cheating, I was grateful to be tricked.