“I haven’t,” Bron said. “I just made up my mind about ... maybe an hour ago.”
“Then again,” the men went on, “some do make their decisions quickly. And it might interest you to know that many among these are our most successful cases—if they’re the proper type.” He smiled, nodded. “Now, as I was saying: How does the Y chromosome do it?”
“It has the blue prints on it of the amino acid order for the male sex hormones?” Bron asked.
“Now, you must get the whole idea of ‘blue-printing’ out of your mind. The chromosomes don’t describe anything directly about the body. They prescribe, which is a different process entirely. Also, that Y chromosome is, for all practical purposes, just the tail end of an X chromosome. No, it’s more complicated than that. One way that chromosomes work is that an enzyme created by one length will activate, so to speak, the protein created by another length, either on the same chromosome or on a different one entirely. Or, sometimes, they will inactivate another product from another length. If you want to use the rather clumsy concept of genes—and, really, the concept of gene is just an abstraction, because there are no marked-out genes, there are just strings of nucleotides; they’re not framed at all, and starting to read the triplets at the proper point can be a real problem—we can say that certain genes turn on, or activate, other genes, while certain other genes inhibit the activity of others. There is a complicated interchain of turning-off’s and turning-on’s back and forth between the X and Y—for instance, a cell with multiple Y chromosomes and no X’s can’t do this and just dies—which leaves various genes on both the X and Y active which in turn activate genes all through the forty-six that prescribe male characteristics, while genes that would prescribe certain female characteristics are not activated (or in other cases specifically inactivated). The interchange that would occur between two X chromosomes would leave different genes activated all over the X chromosomes that would in turn activate those female prescription genes and inactivate the male ones throughout the rest of the forty-four. For instance, there’s a gene that is activated on the Y that activates the production of androgen—actually parts of the androgen itself are designed along a section of the X chromosome—while another gene, which Y activates on the X, causes another gene, somewhere else entirely, to get the body up so it can respond to the androgen. If this gene, somehow, isn’t activated, as occasionally happens, then you get what’s called testicular feminization. Male sex harmones are produced, but the body can’t respond to them, so in that case you have a Y and a woman’s body anyway. This situation between the X and Y makes it logically moot whether we consider the man an incomplete woman or the woman an incomplete man. The arrangement in birds and lizards, for example, is such that the half-length chromosome is carried by the females and the full-length is carried by the males: the males are X-X and the females are X-Y. At any rate, one of the things we can do for a man is infect him with a special virus-like substance related to something called an episome, which will actually carry in an extra length of X and deposit it in all his cells so that the Y is, so to speak, completed and all those cells that were X-Y will now be, in effect, X-X.”
“What will this accomplish?”
“Astonishingly little, actually. But it makes people feel better about it. Many of these things have to come into play at certain times in the development of the body to have noticeable effect. For instance the brain, left to its own devices, develops a monthly cyclic hormone discharge which then excites the ovaries, in a woman, at monthly intervals, to produce the female harmones which cause them to ovulate. The introduction of androgen, however, makes that part of the brain stem develop differently and the monthly cycle is damped way down. The brain stem is visibly different during dissection—in women, the brain stem is noticeably thicker than in men. But the point is, once this development has occurred and the monthly cycle is surpassed, even if the androgen is discontinued, the brain doesn’t revert back. Things of this sort are very difficult to reverse. They take ten or twelve minutes of bubble—
micro-surgery. But that’s the way we do most of what we do. We try to use clones of your own tissue for whatever has to be enlarged—the uterus masculinus for your uterus; and we take actual germ plasm from your testes and grow-cum-sculpt ovaries from them—which is quite a feat. Have yow ever considered the difference between your reproductive equipment and hers—? Hers is much more efficient. At birth she’s already formed about five hundred thousand eggs, which, through a comparatively nonviolent absorption and generation process, reduces to about two hundred thousand by puberty, each waiting to proceed down into the womb—you know, practically ninety-nine percent of the data about what’s going to happen to ‘you,’ once the father’s genes meet up with the mother’s, is contained in the rest of the egg that’s nonchromosomal. That’s why the egg, compared to the sperm, is so big. You, on the other hand, produce about three hundred million sperm every day, out of which, if you’re prime breeding material, perhaps a hundred or so can actually fertilize anything. The other two hundred million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand and nine hundred are lethal mutations, pure wasted effort, against which the female has an antibody system (fortunately) that weeds the bad ones out like germs. In fact, stimulating this anti-body system further—you have it too—is the basis of our birth control system.” He coughed. “Topologically, men and women are identical. Some things are just larger and more developed in one than the other and positioned differently. But we begin by completing your X chromosomes. I say completing—you mustn’t think I’m catering to some supposed prejudice on your part where, because you want to be a woman, I’m assuming you think men inferior creatures and I’m buttering you up by downgrading—”
“I don’t think men are inferior,” Bron said. “I just want to be a woman. I suppose you’ll tell me that’s a type too.”
The man’s smile drew in just a little. “Yes, Ms Hel-strom, I’m afraid it is. But then, it’s not my place to judge. I’m only here to inform and council. Childbirth is only one of the things that can make a woman’s life more complicated than a man’s—but of course four out of five women today choose not to have children; does childbirth particularly interest you?”
“No.”
“Well, at least you’ll know you’re free to change your mind. Basically, however, you’ll be getting a much better designed, more complicated body. Treat it well, and all will go well with it. Treat it poorly, and, I’m afraid, because it is more complicated, there are more things that can go wrong with it. This can be a problem, especially to an inexperienced woman, a woman like you, Ms Helstrom, who is—how shall I put it? Not to the method born.”
Bron wondered how many times a day he put it exactly like that.
“But I hope you’ll accept the help I can give you, if only the information about the purely biological possibilities.” The man took a breath. “Of course, other methods have been devised for female-to-male transex-uals. But that probably doesn’t interest you ... ?”
“I had a friend,” Bron said. “He ... she ... well, he used to be a woman. Now he’s got a family, and at least one child. How did that come about?”
“Oh, there are quite a number of possibilities.” The man touched fingertips and nodded. “The simplest one, of course, is adoption. Then, there is a complicated process in which the germ plasm is induced to form all-X sperm, similar to the male bird or lizard. Was the child a daughter?”
Bron nodded.
“Then it’s quite possible. But we were talking about you. What would vou like us to do?”
“The whole thing.”
The man drew another breath. “I see.” But he was smiling.
“I want to be genetically, hormonally, physically a woman ...” He found his hands clutching each other. He released them and said, more softly: “Don’t you want to know my reasons?”