“Oh sure,” I said. (Those chemical-surgical castrati)
“Now you do,” he said. “You’re more reactionary than we are. You won’t let women lead the domestic life. You want to make everyone alike. That’s not what I visualize.”
He goes into a long happy rap about motherhood, the joys of the uterus. The emotional nature of Woman. The room is beginning to sway. One gets very reckless in hysterical strength; the first few weeks I trained, I broke several of my own bones but I know how to do it now. I really do. My muscles are not for harming anyone else; they are to keep me from harming myself. That terrible concentration, That feverish brightness. Boss-Idiot has not talked to anyone else about his grand idea; he’s still in First Cliche’ stage and any group discussion, however moronic, would have weeded out the worst of them. His dear Natalie. His gifted wife. Take me, now; he loves me. Yes he does. Not physically, of course. Oh no. Life seeks its mate. Its complement. Romantic rubbish. Its other self. Its joy. He won’t talk business tonight. Will he ask me to stay over?
“Oh, I couldn’t,” says the other Jael. He doesn’t hear it; there’s a gadget in Boss’s ear that screens out female voices. He’s moved closer, bringing his chair with him—some silly flub-dub about not being able to talk the length of the room. Spiritual intimacy. Smiling foolishly he says:
“So you like me a little, huh?”
How terrible, betrayal by lust. No, ignorance. No—pride.
“Hell, go away,” I say.
“Sure you do!” He expects me to act like his Natalie, he bought her, he owns her. What do women do in the daytime? What do they do when they’re alone? Adrenalin is a demanding high; it untunes all your finer controls.
“Get away,” I whisper. He doesn’t hear it. These men play games, play with vanity, hiss, threaten, erect their neck-spines. It sometimes takes ten minutes to get a fight going. I, who am not a reptile but only an assassin, only a murderess, never give warning. They worry about playing fair , about keeping the rules, about giving a good account of themselves. I don’t play. I have no pride. I don’t hesitate. At home I am harmless, but not here.
“Kiss me, you dear little bitch,” he says in an excited voice, mastery and disgust warring with each other in his eyes. Boss has never seen a real cunt, I mean as nature made them. He’ll use words he hasn’t dared to use since he was eighteen and took his first half-changed in the street, mastery and disgust mingling. That slavish apprenticeship at the recreation centers. How can you love anyone who is a castrated You? Real homosexuality would blow Manland to pieces.
“Take your filthy hands off me,” I say clearly, enjoying his enjoyment of my enjoyment of his enjoyment of that cliche’. Has he forgotten the three lepers?
“Send them away,” he mutters in agony, “send them away! Natalie can do them,” forgetting gender in his haste. Or perhaps he really thinks they are my lovers. Women will do what men find too disgusting, too difficult, too demeaning.
“Look,” I say, grinning uncontrollably, “I want to be perfectly clear. I don’t want your revolting lovemaking. I’m here to do business and relay any reasonable message to my superiors. I’m not here to play games. Cut it out."
But when do they ever listen!
“You’re a woman,” he cries, shutting his eyes, “you’re a beautiful woman. You’ve got a hole down there. You’re a beautiful woman. You’ve got real, round tits and you’ve got a beautiful ass. You want me. It doesn’t matter what you say. You’re a woman, aren’t you? This is the crown of your life. This is what God made you for. I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to screw you until you can’t stand up. You want it. You want to be mastered. Natalie wants to be mastered. All you women, you’re all women, you’re sirens, you’re beautiful, you’re waiting for me, waiting for a man, waiting for me to stick it in, waiting for me, me, me.”
Et patati et patata; the mode is a wee bit over-familiar. I told him to open his eyes, that I didn’t want to kill him with his eyes shut, for God’s sake.
He didn’t hear me.
“OPEN YOUR EYES!” I roared, “BEFORE I KILL YOU!” and Boss-man did.
He said, You led me on.
He said, You are a prude. (He was shocked.)
He said, You deceived me.
He said, You are a Bad Lady.
This we can cure!—as they say about pneumonia. I think the J’s will have sense enough to stay out of it. Boss was muttering something angry about his erection so, angry enough for two, I produced my own—by this I mean that the grafted muscles on my fingers and hands pulled back the loose skin, with that characteristic, itchy tickling, and of course you are wise; you have guessed that I do not have Cancer on my fingers but Claws, talons like a cat’s but bigger, a little more dull than wood brads but good for tearing. And my teeth are a sham over metal. Why are men so afraid of the awful intimacies of hate? Remember, I don’t threaten. I don’t play. I always carry firearms. The truly violent are never without them. I could have drilled him between the eyes, but if I do that, I all but leave my signature on him; it’s freakier and funnier to make it look as if a wolf did it. Better to think his Puli went mad and attacked him. I raked him gaily on the neck and chin and when he embraced me in rage, sank my claws into his back. You have to build up the fingers surgically so they’ll take the strain. A certain squeamishness prevents me from using my teeth in front of witnesses—the best way to silence an enemy is to bite out his larynx. Forgive me! I dug the hardened cuticle into his neck but he sprang away; he tried a kick but I wasn’t there (I told you they rely too much on their strength); he got hold of my arm but I broke the hold and spun him off, adding with my nifty, weighted shoe one another bruise on his limping kidneys. Ha ha! He fell on me (you don’t feel injuries in my state) and I reached around and scored him under the ear, letting him spray urgently into the rug; he will stagger to his feet and fall, he will plunge fountainy to the ground; at her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down dead. Jael. Clean and satisfied from head to foot. Boss is pumping his life out into the carpet. All very quiet, oddly enough. Three J’s in a terrible state, to judge from their huddling together; I can’t read their hidden faces. Will Natalie come in? Will she faint? Will she say, “I’m glad to be rid of him, the old bastard?” Who will own her now? You get monomaniacal on adrenalin. “Come on, come on!” I whispered to the J’s, herding them toward the door, buzzing and humming, the stuff still singing in my blood. The stupidity of it. The asininity of it. I love it, I love it. “Come on!” I said. Pushing them out the door, into the corridor, out and into the elevator, past the fish swimming in the aquatic wall, evil, svelte manta-rays and groupers six feet long. Poor fish! No business done today, God damn, but once they get that way there’s no doing business with them; you have to kill them anyway, might as well have fun. There’s no standing those non-humans at all, at all. Jeannie is calm. Joanna is ashamed of me. Janet is weeping. But how do you expect me to stand for this all month? How do you expect me to stand it all year? Week after week? For twenty years? Little male voice says: It Was Her Menstrual Period. Perfect explanation! Raging hormonal imbalances. His ghostly voice: “You did it because you had your period. Bad girl.” Oh beware of unclean vessels who have that dirty menstrual period and Who Will Not Play! I shooed the J’s into the Boss-man’s car—Anna had long ago disappeared—skeleton keys out of my invisible suit with its invisible pocket, opened the lock, fired the car, started up. I’ll go on Automatic as soon as we get to the highway; Boss’s I.D. will carry us to the border. No trouble from there.