The Female Man

"You, Janet, were almost impossible to find. The universe in which your Earth exists does not even register on our instruments; neither do those for quite a probable spread on either side of you; we have been trying for years to find out why. Besides you are too close to us to be economically feasible. I had located Jea

"Genetic patterns sometimes repeat themselves from possible present universe to possible present universe; this is also one of the elements that can vary between universes. There is repetition of genotypes in the far future too, sometimes. Here is Janet from the far future, but not my future or yours; here are the two of you from almost the same moment of time (but not as you see it!), both of those moments only a little behind mine; yet I won't happen in the world of either of you. We are less alike than identical twins, to be sure, but much more alike than strangers have any right to be. Look at yourselves again.

"We're all white-ski

What you see is essentially the same genotype, modified by age, by circumstances, by education, by diet, by learning, by God knows what. Here is Jea

Yet we started the same. It's possible that in biological terms Jea

No layman would entertain for a moment the notion that he beheld four versions of the same woman.

Did I say a moment? Not for an age of moments, particularly if the layman were indeed a man.

"Janet, may I ask you why you and your neighbors do not show up on our instruments? You must have discovered the theory of probability travel some time ago (in your terms), yet you are the first traveler. You wish to visit other universes of probability, yet you make it impossible for anyone to find you, let alone visit you.

"Why is that?"

"Aggressive and bellicose persons," said Janet with care, "always assume that unaggressive and pacific persons ca

"Why is that?"

VI

Over trays of pre-cooked steak and chicken that would've disgraced an airline (that's where they came from, I found out later) Jael sat next to Jea

"Does it matter?" said Miss Reasoner ironically, raising her silver eyebrows.

"This war, that war, isn't there always one?"

"No," said Janet.

"Well, hell," said Jael more genuinely, "the war. If there isn't one, there just was one, and if there wasn't one, there soon will be one. Eh? The war between Us and Them. We're playing it rather cool just now because it's hard to work up an enthusiasm for something forty years old."

I said, "Us and Them?"

"I'll tell you," said Sweet Alice, making a face. "After the plague--don't worry; everything you eat is stuffed with anti-toxins and we'll decontaminate you before you go-besides, this all ended more than seventy years ago-after the bacteriological weapons were cleaned out of the biosphere (insofar as that was possible) and half the population buried (the dead half, I hope) people became rather conservative. They tend to do that, you know. Then after a while you get the reaction against the conservatism, I mean the radicalism. And after that the reaction against the radicalism. People had already begun gathering in like-minded communities before the war: Traditionalists, Neo-Feudalists, Patriarchalists, Matriarchalists, Separatists (all of us now), Fecundists, Sterilists, and what-have-you. They seemed to be happier that way. The War Between the Nations had really been a rather nice war, as wars go; it wiped the have-not nations off the face of the earth and made their resources available to us without the bother of their populations; all our machinery was left standing; we were getting wealthier and wealthier. So if you were not one of the fifty percent who had died, you were having a pretty good time of it. There was increasing separatism, increasing irritability, increasing radicalism; then came the Polarization; then came the Split. The middle drops out and you're left with the two ends, hein? So when people began shopping for a new war, which they also seem to do, don't they, there was only one war left. The only war that makes any sense if you except the relations between children and adults, which you must do because children grow up. But in the other war the Haves never stop being Haves and the Have-nots never stop being Have-nots. It's cooled off now, unfortunately, but no wonder; it's been going on for forty years-a stalemate, if you'll forgive the pun. But in my opinion, questions that are based on something real ought to be settled by something real without all this damned lazy miserable drifting. I'm a fanatic. I want to see this thing settled. I want to see it over and done with. Gone. Dead.

"Oh, don't worry!" she added. "Nothing spectacular is going to happen. All I will do in three days or so is ask you about the tourist trade in your lovely homes. What's wrong with that? Simple, eh?