Master Of Space And Time

This probably takes a little explaining. You'd think that any man who wants to be a woman is basically homosexual. But — at least on the surface — this didn't seem to be true for me. My wanting to look like the blond Sondra was really a heterosexual impulse: the craving for a supreme merging with the object of desire. But what was I going to do now — spend all my time looking in mirrors and taking showers? More and more, I was realizing how badly I'd blown it.

There was quite a crowd of people up on the train station platform, most of them just regular citizens happy to be free of the slugs. The station-master assured me that a train for New York would be stopping in twenty minutes. I sat down on a bench outside the waiting room.

"Hi," said a man, sitting down next to me. He was nicely dressed and had a polite expression. "I'm sure glad those naked brains are gone."

"Me too," I said. "I hope things will go back to normal now. The mutant plants are gone, too, aren't they?"

"That's right. Those guys Fletcher and Gerber are really going to get it."

"Uh…" I tried to cover my confusion. I'd forgotten about that angle. As long as the Garybrains had run New Brunswick, Harry had been safe from the authorities. But now…

"Would you like a cigarette?" He drew out a pack of menthols and offered me one.

"Thanks," I said, accepting the cigarette and a light. His fingers brushed against my hand.

"My name's Brad. I'm a stockbroker in the city."

"I'm JoJo. I — I'm starting a new life."

"You don't have a husband?"

"No, but —"

"I'm surprised someone as gorgeous as you isn't married. Are you a model?" Brad smiled at me, his eyes flickering over my voluptuous curves. "I love your dress."

"Oh, I was in computers." I felt increasingly flustered.

"Brainy, too!" Brad gri

"No, no!" I squeaked. "I couldn't possibly."

"Tomorrow, then?"

Some cigarette smoke went down the wrong way and I went into a coughing fit.

Brad watched, smiling patiently. As far as he was concerned, anything I did was wonderful. "Can I get you some water, JoJo? A Coke?"

"No, I'm afraid I — " I lurched to my feet and gave him a smile. "I have to go."

"Well, all right. Another time, maybe. I'll be looking for you."

Feeling suddenly unsteady on my heels, I teetered into the waiting room. It was three-thirty. Ten more minutes until the train. I went and hid in the ladies' room.

The train, as it turned out, was filled with state troopers. They had come to make sure New Brunswick was really secure. Watching them get out, I realized that one of their first tasks was going to be the raiding of 501 Suydam Street, home of the mad scientist Harry Gerber. For the moment I was glad not to look like Joe Fletcher.

Fortunately my admirer didn't get in the same train car as I. I plumped myself down next to a cute brown-haired woman with big glasses. Her clothes were kind of tattered.

"Isn't it wonderful to be able to leave New Brunswick?" she said to me. "I feel like the last week has been a long bad dream."

"Do you live here?" I asked, ready for some pleasant girl talk.

"No, I was just visiting my boyfriend at Rutgers. He's a graduate student in engineering. My roommates must think I've been killed!"

"Yes," I said. "It's been awful. Did the aliens make you do anything that —"

"I don't want to think about it," the brunette exclaimed. "And all those rednecks showing up. I'm going to see my gynecologist as soon as possible. I bet they got after you too, what with your figure and blond hair."

"Yes," I lied. "Gary Herber made me go out in the streets at night. With the brains sliding around and everyone grabbing each other —"

"Men are so awful," said the woman next to me, her face momentarily close to tears. "Those brains were like men, the way they glue onto us and try to use us. Even my Tommy's like that, a little bit."

"Men are people too," I protested. "They just want to be happy like women do."

"Don't kid yourself, sister." My companion's voice took on a hard edge. "Men and women don't want the same things at all. When's the last time any man did something really romantic for you — without wanting to get paid back the same night?"

"You have to think about the genes," I said. I'd heard a theory about this. "Basically all a person wants is to perpetuate his or her genes. The best strategy for men is to have lots of children with lots of different women. The best strategy for women is have children and make sure the father stays around to help take care of them."

"Ha!" snapped the woman next to me. "Some man must have told you that. All a person wants is to perpetuate their genes. Boy, is that stupid."

"Well, yes," I said after a time. "I guess it is."

I got a taxi at Pe

"Sure thing, little lady."

I sat back and watched the buildings sweep past. People, people, people. And all of them thinking, all of them just as conscious as me. When I'd been a kid I'd always thought of grown-ups as a race apart — big meat robots, really. Then once, when I was in my twenties, my father had said something fu

"Look at them, Joe," my father had said. "They really look like they know what they're doing. I'd always thought I'd be like them someday. I'd always thought I'd get to be a grown-up. But I'm not. I still don't feel any different. I'm sixty and I still don't know what I'm doing."

As the years passed, I'd come to understand what my father meant. Even though I was almost forty, I still didn't feel like a grown-up. I didn't really feel much different from how I had in high school.

And now in the taxi I was thinking that the same thing is true for men and women. As a man I'd always assumed that women are somehow not like real people. Of course I never put it that baldly, but the feeling had been there all along.

Yet now here I was, with the tits and ass and lipstick — still just a person. The woman on the train — I'd never quite talked to a woman that way before, without the sex game somewhere in the background. As she'd unselfconsciously told me about her boyfriend and her job and her roommates, I realized something that I'd only seen in flashes before.

Everyone is just a person trying to be happy. Everyone is really alive.

What a liberation to know this! What a burden!

22. Strictly from Detroit

"Do you expect me to have sex with you?"

"Well, sure. I'd rather do it with you than with anyone else."

"The way I feel now, Joe, I'd rather do it with anyone else but you. How could you pull this on me?" She paced back and forth across the enormous living room. Outside the big French windows lay the wonderful clutter of Manhattan. "We could have been so happy." There were tears in her eyes.

"Come here, Nancy. Come sit on the couch with me."

"No. And you killed the fritter trees, too."

"They were taking over. You know that. That's what you got arrested for: distributing dangerous, nonapproved seeds."

"I suppose the police will be coming for me again?"

"I don't think so. I repaired the damages, and I erased all the documents relating to your case. With no documents and no more fritter trees or porkchop bushes, I don't see how —"

Someone was pounding on the door. It was the police, two of them.

"Hello, ladies," said the older of the two. He was a white-haired man with a weathered face. "Is this the residence of Joseph Fletcher?"