“Excuse me, Ms Helstrom,” the man said, touching Bron’s arm lightly, “but why don’t we take care of your body first?”
The drugs they gave her made her feel like hell. “Walk back home,” they’d suggested, “however uncomfortable it feels,” in order to “freeze in” to her new body. As she ambled in the early morning, among the alleys of the unlicensed sector, Bron passed one, and another, and then another reclamation site. Yellow ropes fenced the damages. The maintainance wagons, the striped, portable toilets (like exotic ego-booster booths) waited for the morning workers. The wreckages kept sending her ill-focused memories of the Mongolian diggings; somehow the phrase “The horrors of war ...” kept playing in her mind, like the chorus of a song whose verses were whatever bit of destruction her drug-dilated pupils managed to focus on behind the gauzy glare.
She went through the underpass—the light-strip had been fixed: the new length was brighter than the old—and came out to squint up at the sensory shield which, here and there across its violet, blushed orange, silver, and blue. The wall of the alley, a palimpsest of political posters and graffiti, had been gravity-damaged. Scaffolding had already been set up. Several workers, in their yellow coveralls, stood around sucking on coffee bulbs.
One looked at her and grinned (But it was a woman worker. You’d think something would have changed) as Bron hurried by. If she looked like she felt, she’d been lucky to get a smile.
The horrors of war passed through her mind for the millionth time. Her legs felt stiff. They had cheerfully assured her that as soon as the anesthetic wore off, she would be as sore as if she had had a moderately difficult natural childbirth. They had assured her about a lot of other things: that her hormones would take care of the fatty redistribution (as well as the bushy eyebrow) in a couple of weeks, all by themselves. She had wanted further cosmetic surgery to remove some of the muscle fiber in her arms; and could they make her wrists thinner? Yes, they could ... but wait, they had told her. See how you feel in a week or so. The body had undergone enough trauma for one six-hour—or rather, one six-hour-and-seventeen-minute—session.
With one hand on the green and red, stained-glass door of Serpent’s House, a conviction arrived, with drug-hazed joy which slid her toward tears: “I don’t belong here,” and which finished, like a couplet she expected to rhyme, “despite the horrors of war,” but didn’t.
Walking down the corridor, she realized, with a sort of secondary amusement, she didn’t know where she belonged. All ahead was adventure—she awaited a small thrill of fear—like taking off from Mars for the Outer Satellites, among three thousand others; she had been afraid then ... There was no fear, though. Only a general muzzy pleasure, along with the incipient physical discomfort, which kept getting mixed up with one another.
In the room, she took off all her clothes, opened out the bed, lay down on it, and collapsed into sleep—
“Hello, I saw your door open and the light on so I—” Lawrence, halfway through the door, stopped, frowned.
Bron pushed up on one elbow and squinted.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought ... Bron?”
“What is it?”
“Bron, what in heavens have you ... Oh, no—You haven’t gone and ...” Lawrence stepped all the way in. “What got into you? I mean, why—?”
Bron lay her head back on the pillow. “I had to, Lawrence. There are certain things that have to be done. And when you come to them, if you’re a man ...” The drugs were making her laugh—“you just have to do them.”
“What things?” Lawrence asked. “Really, you’re going to have to do some explaining, young ... young lady!”
Bron’s eyes closed. “I guess it was something you said, Lawrence—about only one woman in five thousand still being around. Well, if you were right about the percentages of men too, one woman in five thousand isn’t enough.” Bron closed her eyes tightly, then tried to relax. “I told you, that crazy Christian was right; at least about the woman not understanding. Well, I can. Because I’m—I used to be a man. So, you see, I can understand. The loneliness I was talking about, it’s too important. I’ll know how to leave it alone enough not to destroy it, and at the same time to know what I can do. I’ve had the first-hand experience, don’t you see?”
“You’re drugged,” Lawrence said. “You must have some sort of real reasons for doing this. When you’ve slept off the anesthetic, perhaps you’ll be so good as to explain.”
Bron’s eyes opened. “I have explained. I ... the horrors of war. Lawrence, they brought home something to me. We call the race ... what? Humanity. When we went to rescue the kids, at Audri’s co-op ... to save those children and their mothers? I really thought I was doing it to save humanity—I certainly wasn’t doing it for myself. I was uncomfortable, I kept wanting to turn away, to leave them there, to quit—but I didn’t ... ! Humanity. They used to call it ‘mankind’. And I remember reading once that some women objected to that as too exclusive. Basically, though, it wasn’t exclusive enough! Lawrence, regardless of the human race, what gives the species the only value it has are men, and particularly those men who can do what I did.”
“Change sex?”
“What I did before ... before, when I was a man. I’m not a man any more, so I don’t need to be modest about it What I’ve been through in the war, and the torture and terror leading up to it, the bravery demanded there, because of it. That showed me what real manhood was.
“And it’s the most important thing the species has going for it. Oh, I know, to a lot of you, it’s all silly. Yes, Alfred’s dead. So is that crazy Christian. And that’s terribly tragic—both of them. It’s tragic when men die; it’s that simple. But even in the face of such tragedy, though you can’t think of any logical necessity to go out and save a house full of children and their mothers, there are metalogical ones: reasons, they’re called. I guess my doing that or keeping my mouth shut under torture probably looks very dumb to you. But I swear to you, Lawrence, I know the way I know that here is my own hand—with every subjective atom of my being—it isn’t dumb; and it’s the only thing that isn’t. And in the same way, I know that only the people who know it like I know it, real men (because there’s no other way to have it; that’s part of what I know), really deserve more than second-class member—
ship in the species ...” Bron sighed. “And the species is dying out.” Her mouth felt dry and the ghost of a cramp pulsed between her legs. “I also know that that kind of man can’t be happy with an ordinary woman, the kind that’s around today. When I was a man, I tried. It can’t be done.” She shook her head. “One out of five thousand isn’t enough ... Why did I do it?” Bron opened her eyes again and frowned at the frowning Lawrence. “I did it to preserve the species.”
“Well, I must say, my dear, you have the courage of your convictions! But didn’t it occur to you that—?”
“Lawrence, I’m tired. Go away. Shall I be cruel? All right. I’m just not interested in doddering, old homosexuals. I never was, and I’m particularly not interested in them now.”
“That’s not cruel. In your position, it’s just silly. Well, I’ve never thought your sense of personal tact was anything but a disaster zone. That obviously hasn’t changed. Nevertheless, I am still your friend. You know of course, you won’t be able to stay here now. I mean, except as a guest. I’ll register you as mine as soon as I leave. I’m sure they’ll let you keep the room for a while, but if they get another application from some guy, you’ll have to move out. If that happens and you haven’t found a place by then, you can bunk in with me—till one or the other of us threatens murder. It’s been a while since I slept chastely beside a fair young thing, but then, I’ve never—”