Identity Matrix (1982) (14 page)

She considered that. "So you envied women. The pretty ones got all the attention, while the more open economy gave them all equal competition with men in the mar-ketplace and other options. You know, I wonder if we haven't hit on one of the basics of human behavior. Still, you know, it's a man's world in most respects. Men still run the country, most of the businesses, make most of the decisions, make more money and seem gen-erally freer to us women. Male culture dominates so much that the successful businesswomen really get there and stay there by imitating the men, being as aggres-sive, as macho, maybe, as they are."

"We begin as little babies, but there it departs. Everything in a boy's life is competition—winning. Sports. Fighting to establish pecking orders in gangs.

Showing off, But, you see, the necessary basic training is there because men can't do anything else. Women now have the same career choices as men, but they can opt not to work, to have and raise babies, their choices clear early in life. Men have only that sense of purpose in the job. Even if they marry, the law gives the man the obligation to support the wife and kids, and in a divorce gives the kids almost invariably to the mother while making Dad pay for it, even if Mom's a cultist murderer with a fifty-thousand-dollar-a-year job while Dad's a kind, devoted, loving ten-thousand-dollar-a-year janitor. He has no rights, only responsibilities, and no real options. No wonder men die so much earlier than women."

"It's no picnic as a woman, either," Dory responded. "We get the dolls, the toy stoves, the frilly little dresses. We rarely get the attention our brothers do, the prepa-ration for something big. Then along comes puberty and you get periods that make you feel yucky, and suddenly you can't go to the store alone.

If your parents aren't scared for you then you soon get scared yourself. Rape becomes a threat you live with. You envy your brother going downtown alone to pick up something at the store or take in a movie. The boys see you as a thing, not a person, and usually have only one thing in mind. I was seventeen before my parents would trust me out on a date after dark! And most girls have to decide in the college years-career or family. The pressure's big, you get hurt fast and often, and if, like me, you're good looking you're even more limited. It's understood you'll work for a while until you get married and settle down, but aside from modeling or show business or something like that you can get any job—if you want to pay the price for keeping it, and if you don't expect to go anywhere.

"Pretty women aren't supposed to be smart, and they don't have to be. You quickly learn what you're ex-pected to do to get what you want—and you either do it, or don't and go nowhere, or get married and settle down. You get a dozen passes just going to lunch. You wind up a prisoner in your own skin without options at all. You know, I really envied men. I had two older brothers and I really wanted to be one of them. Come and go when you please, free to pick and choose careers, free to be left alone in a crowded party if you wanted to be or go on the make if you felt like it. No period, no danger of getting pregnant, none of that."

I shook my head sadly from side to side. "The grass is always greener. You wonder how anybody winds up happy in this life, or satisfied, or content.

"Luck, mostly," Dory decided. "Enough people, enough combinations. But not either of us, it seems." She chuckled dryly. "How did two such miserable outsiders wind up together in this fix?"

I looked at her without comprehending. "Surely you were better off comparatively than me. You had a lot more of your life ahead of you, were still far along from making those choices. You had the potential to find hap-piness, a potential I really ended."

"No, Vicki," she responded gently. "It wasn't that way at all." She sighed and was silent for a moment, as if making a decision. Finally she shook her head slightly and mumbled to herself, "O.K. True confessions time, I guess." She looked back up at me. "What I'm going to tell you I've never told a living soul. I just really got to telling myself a few days ago, for real."

"You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to."

She shook her head. "No, I want to tell you. Particu-larly now." She sighed once more and looked a little thoughtful. "Look, I knew what growing up was supposed to mean, supposed to feel like. I had a lot of girl friends in the neighborhood, and they all had crushes on big pop stars or TV actors, things like that. Even on some local boys. I never did, but I figured I was just more picky, smarter, or something. I just stuck mostly, with my girl friends, never really feeling too comfortable around boys. I was a virgin until I was seventeen—that's weird in this day and time, but I never really thought it was until I hit college. I was sure horny all the time—the tension inside me was unbelievable. I tried a couple of boys in college—after all, I had my pick— but it just didn't do much for me. I never got off and hardly even got wet. I got to wondering if maybe most of this stuff I'd heard was bullshit, that women just faked it but didn't really get out of sex what men seemed to. But I could get myself off, and it felt great—but I felt like a freak."

She paused here but I said nothing, having a feeling as to the direction she was going. It was most difficult to remember that she'd been in college only a year—and so all this was only fourteen or fifteen months at most, still very fresh to her. Despite the tiny thirteen-year-old body and childish voice she seemed so very much older than nineteen.

"After school ended last May, we had a big party off-campus to celebrate,"

she continued. "Lots of stuff around. Booze, pot, pills, coke, even opium, would you believe? I never really was much into that whole thing, but it was that kind of party, you know, and I drank a hell of a lot more than I should and did a little hash with the group and the next thing you know I'm rolling around on the floor making out passionately…" She sighed. "… With Mary Forester."

I nodded, although it felt very strange to hear it. She looked up at me and there was genuine anguish in her face.

"You see? Well, when I woke up on the floor much later there, I got out fast and went back to my little off-campus apartment. I was sick at myself as well as being hung over. I kept telling myself that it was the booze and drugs, and I had myself halfway believing it, but I didn't want to see any of those people again. I was embarrassed, afraid, I guess. I just wanted to run, get away—not home, either, although that's where I went. My folks were glad to see me, of course, and Mom was trying to fix me up with dates while Dad was talking about my future and all that and all I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and die."

"And after a month of hiding out, with your family pressing you to get out, you decided to pack off to Alaska."

She nodded. "Tommy Coyne wasn't at the party—he'd already gone home to Vancouver. I decided to call him, he invited me along on his trip to Glacier, and we managed to con my parents—not hard to do—into be-lieving it was a summer trip for college credit. There really was a course like that so I had all the brochures. Tommy was a nice guy who had the hots for me but we'd never made it. I figured this trip would not only let me sort myself out but maybe reassure me."

"It didn't, though," I guessed.

She nodded grimly. "It was worse. Even worse because he is such a nice guy. I knew it even before. That roll with Mary Forester had unlocked something in me and I found myself looking at women in a whole new way every time I passed them, talked to them, whatever. Look, I didn't want it. God! Here I was a sexy young woman in college with a bright future someplace and then this. Of course, once I came face to face with it I could see that it'd been that way all along. I just hadn't considered it, hadn't wanted to think about it. And now my whole world was crumbling around me. Choices closed, options closed. I walked out on Tommy without explaining—I just couldn't think of what to say, how to tell him—and caught the next boat through. I could've flown, but I wanted the trip, the time to think things through and sort things out. All I could think of was that I couldn't tell my parents—they wouldn't un-derstand, couldn't understand. They're conservative, solid, all that. The scandal alone would have killed Mom, at least. But I couldn't just turn my back on it, either. I wasn't cut out to be celibate. I was still trying to make my decisions, find a way out for myself short of suicide, when you showed up and gave me somebody else to think about. You know the rest."

I nodded. "And what about now? Has anything changed for the better?"

She smiled thoughtfully. "At first, as I said, I was real upset. I wasn't me any more. I wasn't really free. But where had I been going, anyway? The more I've thought about this, the better it seems, the more like a godsend. I'm somebody else and somewhere else. Cut off from the past completely. No matter what I do now, it's not my old problems. In a way this has solved my problems. I don't know if I'm going to still feel the same sexually or not —I rather think so—but I don't care any more. I can live that life if it's divorced, now and forever, from my family, friends, classmates." She sounded genuinely re-lieved, sincerely satisfied, although it was as if she herself were seeing all this for the first time.

"Dorian Tomlinson is dead," she breathed. "I'm free."

I looked at her and tried to smile a little. Dorian Tomlinson was dead and she was free, yes, perhaps. But Dorian Tomlinson was also looking at her and sitting very near her this very moment, imprisoning a very different sort of person with a different problem not at all resolved.

Chapter Seven

Most of the next day was taken with the testing we'd been told to expect. It was quite involved and elaborate, with all sorts of written exams—some forcing pretty bizarre choices—plus interviews, extensive questions on personal background and attitudes, everything. There were even a couple of very involved I.Q. tests, and those results they were willing to tell us. Mine was 162, down a couple of points from my old tests but well within the margin of error. Dory's was 144, lower than mine but still well above any norms, confirming my opinion of her. She was a little disappointed. "Not quite a genius," she grumped. "The story of my life."

We hadn't had much time to talk to each other, but after it was all over, a little after 5 in the afternoon, and we were in the cafeteria getting a bite to eat, she brought it up briefly.

"You know our talk last night?"

"Uh huh."

"I was pretty free with the same information today. I tell you, Vicki, it's like a gigantic weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I didn't even flinch at the word. I really do think, maybe for the first time in my life, that I like myself, that I'm at peace with myself."

I squeezed her hand. "I'm glad for you," I told her, and I really was.

She smiled back. "I know. The funny thing was, they didn't seem at all bothered by it. Lesbian. Such a weird word. They even told me there might be nothing really wrong at all. One of 'em said it was partly physiological—a function of brain development. I want to find out more about that angle. If I could know that for a fact it would kind of, well, knock out the last guilty stab wound."

I admitted I didn't know much about it, but I pointed out that IMC was probably the greatest assemblage of experts on the brain and human behavior ever assem-bled in one place—certainly assembled with such facili-ties and such a budget. She'd get her answers here.

We had the evening free, and Dory delighted in show-ing me around the luxurious facilities. She was almost a different person, half girl-child, half wise adult, but I knew that she'd probably slept solidly and without real worries or guilt for the first time in a couple of months the past night.

I found, too, that she was right about this body I wore. I don't know how many passes men made—I'm sure I missed some of them—but it was not only annoy-ing, I really did begin to feel like some kind of object, a pretty piece of art or sculpture. A part of me wanted to take one of them up on it, to really be a woman, but I wasn't one, not really.

We'd gotten up early and were, therefore, tired early. I had a message from Parch that we were cleared now and that we had tomorrow for the grand tour and then to work. Dory would be placed in a training program for technicians—she'd have her choice of several types—while I'd begin the process of making friends with, and trying to draw out, the mysterious Dan Pauley. I was looking forward to that.

In one way, at least, Dory's own revelations, her own emotional outpouring and honesty about herself to oth-ers, had done me some good. She no longer dreamed of getting this body back, and I was no longer a caretaker. That made things a little easier on me—I could begin to think of this as a permanent condition and make my plans accordingly. Still, I didn't want to think much beyond IMC, at least not right now. In a sense, I was where I would have wanted to be had I known of the place in my old existence. An encounter with aliens from another world was the most momentous act in the history of modern man, one that would forever change the way human beings saw themselves and their place in the universe. I was still a social scientist, and still wanted to be one, and, for that field as well as the others here, this was the place to be.

Parch met us after breakfast and took us down to Level 10, lower than we'd ever been allowed before. We were ushered into a large, spacious office even grander than Parch's, and the sign on the glass door read, "S. Eisenstadt, Ph.D.—IMC Project Director." I was a little shocked at that name—hell, I knew Stu Eisenstadt! He'd been on the faculty at Hopkins until mysteriously leav-ing for "government work" four years ago. Now I knew what that work was and where he'd gone.

He came out to meet us and I couldn't help thinking how little he'd changed.

He always reminded me of a fat Albert Einstein, even to a thin, reedy, and slightly ac-cented voice. He'd been in the United States most of his life but he still couldn't tell the difference between a V and a W.

He stopped when he saw us, gave a look of slight distaste, I thought, to Parch, then eyed us, eyes lighting up and a large smile growing under his bushy white moustache. "Vell, vell, vell! You bring me two beautiful ladies!"