The Mountain Cage (27 page)

A car was pulling into a spot in front of a store. Our driver put down his magazine and slowed the bus manually; he obviously knew his passengers wanted a look. Cars were not allowed in town unless a woman was riding in one; even I knew that. We waited. The bus stopped; a group of young men standing outside the store watched the car.

“Come on, get out,” a boy behind me said. “Get out of the car.”

Two men got out first. One of them yelled at the loiterers, who moved down the street before gathering under a lamppost. Another man opened the back door, then held out his hand.

She seemed to float out of the car; her long pink robe swirled around her ankles as she stood. Her hair was covered by a long, white scarf. My face grew warm with embarrassment and shame. I caught a glimpse of black eyebrows and white skin before her bodyguards surrounded her and led her into the store.

The driver pushed a button and picked up his magazine again; the bus moved on. “Think she was real?” one of the boys asked.

“I don’t know,” another replied.

“Bet she wasn’t. Nobody would let a real woman go into a store like that. If I had a girl, I’d never let her go anywhere.”

“If I had a trans, I’d never let her go anywhere.”

“Those trans guys—they got it made.” The boys scrambled toward the back of the bus.

“Definitely a trans,” Ellis said to me. “I can tell. She’s got a mannish kind of face.”

I said, “You could hardly see her face.”

“I saw enough. And she was too tall.” He sighed. “That’s the life. A little bit of cutting and trimming and some implants, and there you are—you don’t have to lift a finger. You’re legally female.”

“It isn’t just a little bit of cutting—it’s major surgery.”

“Yeah. Well, I couldn’t have been a transsexual anyway, not with my body.” Ellis glanced at me. “You could have been, though.”

“Never wanted it.”

“It’s not a bad life in some ways.”

“I like my freedom.” My voice caught on the words.

“That’s why I don’t like crossdressers. They’ll dress like a woman, but they won’t turn into one. It just causes trouble—you get the wrong cues.”

The conversation was making me uneasy; sitting so close to Ellis, hemmed in by his body and the bus’s window, made me feel trapped. The man was too observant. I gritted my teeth and turned toward the window. More stores had been boarded up; we passed a brick school building with shattered windows and an empty playground. The town was declining.

We got off in the business district, where there was still a semblance of normal life. Men in suits came and went from their offices, hopped on buses, strolled toward bars for an early drink.

“It’s pretty safe around here,” Ellis said as we sat on a bench. The bench had been welded to the ground; it was covered with graffiti and one leg had been warped. Old newspapers lay on the sidewalk and in the gutter with other refuse. One bore a headline about the African war; another, more recent, the latest news about Bethesda’s artificial womb program. The news was good; two more healthy children had been born to the project, a boy and a girl. I thought of endangered species and extinction.

A police car drove by, followed by another car with opaque windows. Ellis gazed after the car and sighed longingly, as if imagining the woman inside. “Wish I was gay,” he said sadly, “but I’m not. I’ve tried the pretty boys, but that’s not for me. I should have been a Catholic, and then I could have been a priest. I live like one anyway.”

“Too many priests already. The Church can’t afford any more. Anyway, you’d really be frustrated then. They can’t even hear a woman’s confession unless her husband or a bodyguard is with her. It’s just like being a doctor. You could go nuts that way.”

“I’ll never make enough to afford a woman, even a trans.”

“There might be more women someday,” I said. “That project at Bethesda’s working out.”

“Maybe I should have gone on one of those expeditions. There’s one they let into the Philippines, and another one’s in Alaska now.”

I thought of a team of searchers coming for me. If they were not dead before they reached my door, I would be; I had made sure of that. “That’s a shady business, Ellis.”

“That group in the Amazon actually found a tribe—killed all the men. No one’ll let them keep the women for themselves, but at least they have enough money to try for one at home.” Ellis frowned. “I don’t know. Trouble is, a lot of guys don’t miss women. They say they do, but they really don’t. Ever talk to a real old-timer, one that can remember what it was like?”

“Can’t say I have.”

Ellis leaned back. “A lot of those guys didn’t really like girls all that much. They had places they’d go to get away from them, things they’d do together. Women didn’t think the same way, didn’t act the same—they never did as much as men did.” He shaded his eyes for a moment. “I don’t know—sometimes one of those old men’ll tell you the world was gentler then, or prettier, but I don’t know if that’s true. Anyway, a lot of those women must have agreed with the men. Look what happened—as soon as you had that pill that could make you sure you had a boy if you wanted, or a girl, most of them started having boys, so they must have thought, deep down, that boys were better.”

Another police car drove past; one of the officers inside looked us over before driving on. “Take a trans,” Ellis said. “Oh, you might envy her a little, but no one really has any respect for her. And the only real reason for having any women around now is for insurance—somebody’s got to have the kids, and we can’t. But once that Bethesda project really gets going and spreads, we won’t need them anymore.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

Four young men, dressed in work shirts and pants, approached us and stared down at us silently. I thought of the boys I had once played with before what I was had made a difference, before I had been locked away. One young man glanced quickly down the street; another took a step forward. I stared back and made a fist, trying to keep my hand from shaking; Ellis sat up slowly and let his right hand fall to his waist, near his holster. We kept staring until the group turned from us and walked away.

“Anyway, you’ve got to analyze it.” Ellis crossed his legs. “There’s practical reasons for not having a lot of women around. We need more soldiers—everybody does now, with all the trouble in the world. And police, too, with crime the way it is. And women can’t handle those jobs.”

“Once people thought they could.” My shoulder muscles were tight; I had almost said
we
.

“But they can’t. Put a woman up against a man, and the man’ll always win.” Ellis draped an arm over the back of the bench. “And there’s other reasons, too. Those guys in Washington like keeping women scarce, having their pick of the choice ones for themselves—it makes their women more valuable. And a lot of the kids’ll be theirs, too, from now on. Oh, they might loan a woman out to a friend once in a while, and I suppose the womb project’ll change things some, but it’ll be their world eventually.”

“And their genes,” I said. I knew that I should change the subject, but Ellis had clearly accepted my pose. In his conversation, the ordinary talk of one man to another, the longest conversation I had had with a man for many years, I was looking for a sign, something to keep me from despairing.

“How long can it go on?” I continued. “The population keeps shrinking every year—there won’t be enough people soon.”

“You’re wrong, Joe. Machines do a lot of the work now anyway, and there used to be too many people. The only way we’ll ever have more women is if someone finds out the Russians are having more, and that won’t happen—they need soldiers, too. Besides, look at it this way—maybe we’re doing women a favor if there aren’t as many of them. Would you want to be a woman, having to be married by sixteen, not being able to go anywhere, no job until she’s at least sixty-five?”

And no divorce without a husband’s permission, no contraception, no higher education—all the special privileges and protections could not make up for that. “No,” I said to Ellis. “I wouldn’t want to be one.” Yet I knew that many women had made their peace with the world as it was, extorting gifts and tokens from their men, glorying in their beauty and their pregnancies, lavishing their attention on their children and their homes, tormenting and manipulating their men with the sure knowledge that any woman could find another man—for if a woman could not get a divorce by herself, a man more powerful than her husband could force him to give her up if he wanted her himself.

I had dreamed of guerrillas, of fighting women too proud to give in, breeding strong daughters by a captive male to carry on the battle. But if there were such women, they, like me, had gone to ground. The world had been more merciful when it had drowned or strangled us at birth.

Once, when I was younger, someone had said it had been a conspiracy—develop a foolproof way to give a couple a child of the sex they wanted, and most of them would naturally choose boys. The population problem would be solved in time without having to resort to harsher methods, and a blow would be leveled at those old feminists who had demanded too much, trying to emasculate men in the process. But I didn’t think it had been a conspiracy. It had simply happened, as it was bound to eventually, and the values of society had controlled behavior. After all, why shouldn’t a species decide to become one sex, especially if reproduction could be severed from sexuality? People had believed men were better, and had acted on that belief. Perhaps women, given the power, would have done the same.

We retreated to a bar when the sunny weather grew cooler. Ellis steered me away from two taverns with “bad elements,” and we found ourselves in the doorway of a darkened bar in which several old and middle-aged men had gathered and two pretty boys dressed in leather and silk were plying their trade.

I glanced at the newscreen as I entered; the pale letters flickered, telling me that Bob Arnoldi’s last appeal had failed and that he would be executed at the end of the month. This was no surprise; Arnoldi had, after all, killed a woman, and was always under heavy guard. The letters danced on; the President’s wife had given birth to her thirteenth child, a boy. The President’s best friend, a California millionaire, had been at his side when the announcement was made; the millionaire’s power could be gauged by the fact that he had been married three times, and that the prolific First Lady had been one of the former wives.

Ellis and I got drinks at the bar. I kept my distance from one of the pretty boys, who scowled at my short, wavy hair and nestled closer to his patron. We retreated to the shadows and sat down at one of the side tables. The tabletop was sticky; old cigar butts had been planted on a gray mound in the ashtray. I sipped my bourbon; Ellis, while on the job, was only allowed beer.

The men at the bar were watching the remaining minutes of a football game. Sports of some kind were always on holo screens in bars, according to Sam; he preferred the old pornographic films that were sometimes shown amid war coverage and an occasional boys’ choir performance for the pederasts and the more culturally inclined. Ellis looked at the screen and noted that his team was losing; I commented on the team’s weaknesses, as I knew I was expected to do.

Ellis rested his elbows on the table. “This all you came for? Just to walk around and then have a drink?”

“That’s it. I’m just waiting for my car.” I tried to sound nonchalant. “It should be fixed soon.”

“Doesn’t seem like enough reason to hire an escort.”

“Come on, Ellis. Guys like me would have trouble without escorts, especially if we don’t know the territory that well.”

“True. You don’t look that strong.” He peered at me a little too intently. “Still, unless you were looking for action, or going to places with a bad element, or waiting for the gangs to come out at night, you could get along. It’s in your attitude—you have to look like you can take care of yourself. I’ve seen guys smaller than you I wouldn’t want to fight.”

“I like to be safe.”

He watched me, as if expecting me to say more.

“Actually, I don’t need an escort as much as I like to have a companion—somebody to talk to. I don’t see that many people.”

“It’s your money.”

The game had ended and was being subjected to loud analysis by the men at the bar; their voices suddenly died. A man behind me sucked in his breath as the clear voice of a woman filled the room.

I looked at the holo. Rena Swanson was reciting the news, leading with the Arnoldi story, following that with the announcement of the President’s new son. Her aged, wrinkled face hovered over us; her kind brown eyes promised us comfort. Her motherly presence had made her program one of the most popular on the holo. The men around me sat silently, faces upturned, worshipping her—the Woman, the Other, someone for whom part of them still yearned.

We got back to Marcello’s just before dark. As we approached the door, Ellis suddenly clutched my shoulder. “Wait a minute, Joe.”

I didn’t move at first; then I reached out and carefully pushed his arm away. My shoulders hurt and a tension headache, building all day, had finally taken hold, its claws gripping my temples. “Don’t touch me.” I had been about to plead, but caught myself in time; attitude, as Ellis had told me himself, was important.