Anna, with a mechanical shiver of desire, says that we must go with him.
“Her?” says Jeannine, confused.
“Him!” says Anna in a strained contralto. The half-changed are very punctilious—sometimes about the changeds’ superiority and sometimes about their own genitals. Either way it works out to Him. He’s extraordinarily aware, for a man, of Jeannine’s shrinking and he resents it—as who would not? I myself am respectful of ruined lives and forced choices. On the street once Anna did not fight hard enough against the fourteen-year-old toughs who wanted his twelve-year-old ass; he didn’t go to the extremity of berserk rage, reckoning his life as nothing in defense of his virility; he forestalled—by surrender—the plucking out of an eye, the castration, the throat cut with a broken bottle, the being put out of his twelve-year-old action with a stone or a tire chain. I know a lot about Manlanders’ history. Anna made a modus vivendi, he decided life was worth it on any terms. Everything follows from that.
“Oh, you’re lovely,” says Jeannine, heartfelt. Sisters in misfortune. This really pleases Anna. He shows us a letter of safe-conduct he has from his boss—a real-man, of course—and putting it back in pink-brocaded evening bag, draws around him that fake-feather Thing which floats and wobbles in the least current of air-. It’s a warm evening. To protect his employer, the big boss (they are Men, even in the child-rearing business) has had to give Anna K a little two-way TV camera to wear in his ear; otherwise somebody would break his high heels and leave him dead or half-dead in an alley. Everybody knows that the half-changed are weak and can’t protect themselves; what do you think femininity is all about? Even so Anna probably has a bodyguard waiting at the entrance to The Knife. I’m cynical enough to wonder sometimes if the Manlanders’ mystique isn’t just an excuse to feminize anybody with a pretty face—but look again, they believe it; look under the padding, the paint, the false hair, the corsetry, the skin rinses and the magnificent dresses and you’ll see nothing exceptional, only faces and bodies like any other man’s. Anna bats his eyes at us and wets his lips, taking the women inside the suits to be real-men, taking me to be a real-man (what else can I be if I’m not a changed?), taking the big wide world itself to be—what else?—a Real-Man intent on worshipping Anna’s ass; the world exists to look at Anna; he—or she—is only a real-man turned inside out.
An eerie sisterliness, a smile at Jeannine. All that narcissism! Brains underneath, though.
Remember where their loyalties lie.
(Are they jealous of us? I don’t think they believe we’re women.)
He wets his lips again, the indescribable silliness of that insane mechanism, practiced anywhere and everywhere, on the right people, on the wrong people. But what else is there? It seems that Anna’s boss wants to meet me. (I don’t like that.) But we’ll go; we maintain our outward obedience until the very end, until the beautiful, bloody moment that we fire these stranglers, these murderers, these unnatural and atavistic nature’s bastards, off the face of the earth.
“Dearest sister,” says Anna softly, sweetly, “come with me.”
VIII
I guess Anna’s boss just wanted to see the alien poontang. I don’t know yet what he wants, but I will. His wife clicked in with a tray of drinks—scarlet skin-tights, no underwear, transparent high-heeled sandals like Cinderella’s—she gave us a homey, cute smile (she wears no make-up and is covered with freckles) and stilted out. Man talk. They seldom earn wives before fifty. Art, they say, has had a Renaissance among the Manlander rich, but this one doesn’t look like a patron: jowly, pot-bellied, the fierce redness of an athlete forced into idleness. His heart? High blood pressure? But they all cultivate their muscles and let their health and their minds rot. There is a rather peculiar wholesomeness to the home life of a Manland millionaire; Boss, for example, would not think of letting his wife go anywhere alone—that is, risk the anarchy of the streets—even with a bodyguard. He knows what’s due her. Their “women,” they say, civilize them. For an emotional relationship, turn to a “woman.”
What am I?
I know what I am, but what’s my brand name?
He stares rudely, unable to conceal it: What are they? What do they do? Do they screw each other? What does it feel like? (Try and tell him!) He doesn’t waste a second on the pink crosses in purdah; they’re only “women” anyhow (he thinks); I’m the soldier, I’m the enemy, I’m the other self, the mirror, the master-slave, the rebel, the heretic, the mystery that must be found out at all costs. (Maybe he thinks the three J’s have leprosy.) I don’t like this at all. J-one (Janet, by her gait) is examining the paintings on the wall; J-two and J-three stand hand in hand, Babes in the Wood. Boss finishes his drink, chewing on something in the bottom of it like a large teddy-bear, with comic deliberation: chomp, chomp. He waves grandly toward the other drinks, his wife having abandoned the tray on top of what looks for all the world like a New Orleans, white-enamelled, bordello piano (Whorehouse Baroque is very big in Manland right now).
I shook my head.
He said, “You have any children?” Pregnancy fascinates them. The rank-and-file have forgotten about menstruation; if they remembered, that would fascinate them. I shook my head again.
His face darkened.
“I thought,” said I mildly, “that we were going to talk business. I’d like to do just that. I don’t mean—that is, I don’t want to be unsociable, but time’s passing and I’d rather not discuss my personal life.”
He said: “You’re on my turf, you’ll Goddamn well talk about what I Goddamn well talk about.”
Let it pass. Control yourself. Hand them the victory in the Domination Sweepstakes and they usually forget whatever it is they were going to do anyway. He glared and brooded. Munched chips, crackers, saltsticks, what-not. Doesn’t really know what he wants. I waited.
“Personal life!” he muttered.
“It’s not really very interesting,” I volunteered,
“You kids screw each other?”
I said nothing.
He leaned forward. “Don’t get me wrong. I think you have a right to do it. I never bought this stuff about women alone having no sex. It’s not in human nature. Now, do you?”
“No,” I said.
He chuckled. “That’s right, cover up. Mind, I’m not condemning you. It’s only to be expected. Eh! If we’d kept together, men and women, none of this would have happened. Right?”