"Happy? I'm ecstatic. I want to go back and see her right away!"

"Don't forget the people in stasis," Rissa interrupted. "We need to solve that problem first."

Impatience gripped me. I could see Rita again. Nothing else mattered.

"Amanda and I made a good start. We have at least three worlds to put them on."

"We need more. These people are too dangerous to stay on one planet.

We need to find more worlds, and then decide how to divide them up and who will watch 50

over which group."

"Fine." I rubbed my hands together. "Let's make a plan. As s oon as it's in place, I can go back to see Rita."

"Yes, a planning committee is exactly what we need. How about Donna, Randy and Terri, and Amanda."

As I nodded my agreement, Rissa knitted her brows together and squinted.

She looked as cute as a bug. Once the mental summons was sent, she smile d. "I know how much this means to you, Lee. I'm glad we could be alone when I told you."

Reverting back to her flirtatious female nature, she batted her eyelashes at me and smiled, creating a dimple on each cheek. It occurred to me that R ussell had a lot of fun with his Rissa persona. Having two bodies certainly expanded a person's horizons. Although Russell liked to stay male, he seemed happier as a fe male.

Another of the many mysteries that came with the sex gates. A trip through one was never simple. You ended up questioning everything-your sexual identity and what it meant, most of all.

Like many scientists, Russell was a loner of sorts. As a female, she alm ostalways sought me out first rather than one of the other men. I liked to pride myself on my abilities in bed as much as any man, but it was more than that. Th ere was a special bond between Rita, Russell, Donna, and me. We were friends, and lovers, and family.

The four of us had been in college, walking home from classes, on the day the sex gates first appeared. That was the day Don became Donna. Russell didn't go through, but he did spend years holed up in a laboratory trying to unlock the gates' secrets. The four of us became roommates and later moved to my parents'

house in Ruston, Texas. Then, I had to rush Rita through a gate to save her life after an assailant stabbed her. We became Rez and Li and learned to love each other in our new roles-until the horrible day when the United States and Brazil engaged in a brief nuclear war. The four of us were exposed to lethal doses of radiation and had to chance a trip through the gates. That's when Rita and I discovered we were Seconders-and Russell and Donna both vanished.

51

Rita and I were devastated. We thought Donna and Russell had vanished forever, but when Messler learned how to journey to the Nexus, he found them here.

Seems Russell's brilliant mind figured it out on the first trip through.

Sometimes I wondered what capricious fate set me down in the middle of two of the gr eatest geniuses the human race had ever produced. If the idea was to keep me humble, it was working. I once asked Russell which sex he preferred.

He shrugged. "I like either one so far as the sex goes, but I find I can I work with the sex gates better as a male."

Maybe he did. I could hardly discourage his perception since I benefited from his brilliance. But Rissa was happier-and cuter. I kept my thoughts t o myself.

Instead, I took her hand and led her over to the bed. I owed her a few more kisses while we waited for the others to show up.

We cuddled together on the big bed. As I began to relax, my thoughts drifted back to how I came to be here on this alternate world. Originally, the gate masters had set it up as the Nexus and control center for the sex gates on Earth.

We still didn't know why the gate masters sent the sex gates to Earth in the hundreds of thousands. The popular theory was that they wanted to try and save our world, which was coming apart at the seams from pollution and other social disasters. The gates brought violent upheavals, some of which were still playingthemselves out. But they also fostered a rebirth of science as well as n ew and flexible attitudes in society that made the world a better place to live.

So they'd helped us out, but they remained a mystery. Since coming to the Nexus we'd found records the gate masters had left behind. We, at least, knew that they were-or had been-human once upon a time.

Think of the incredible advancements in the last few hundred years as a result of the scientific method, then think how technologically advanced the human race might be if the principles of the scientific method had been discovered three or four thousand years earlier than they were on Earth. Such a technology would seem like magic to us, just as the sex gates did when they first appeared. I remember my own astonishment, shock and even horror when Don went through the green nimbus beneath one of those glowing turquoise arches and came out an instant later as an 52

eighteen-year-old woman.

The appearance of the sex gates revolutionized society in so many ways t hat, for a time, I made a decent living writing about the ramifications. On the down side, there were several occasions when I almost lost my life because of the changes they brought. Not everyone who fell into-or was thrown through-a sex ga te welcomed the change. Some went through because they were old and wanted to be you ng again, some because they were dying and wanted to live. Once they had a new body, they tried to go through again, to get their original sex back.

It wasn't that simple. For a long time, anyone who attempted a second trip through to reverse the change didn't make it; they simply vanished, seemingly forever. Eventually (because we Seconders are rare), a few people made it. One of them was Messler Scribner, a hundred-year-old man. He beat the odds by making it through the first time; no one else that old ever did. And then he beat the odds again and survived a second trip.

Messler was a towering genius and a master of intuition. He had made a huge fortune playing hunches. He used his wealth to protect himself and a few others who managed a second pass through a gate. Along the way, the media named us 'Seconders'.

In those early years, our primary enemy was the government. As usual, the powers-that-be couldn't abide a few people being able to do something that theycouldn't. We kept the other powers we were developing as a result of multiple passages a secret. We were able to read the surface thoughts and emotions of others. We would face a backlash of fear if that became common knowledge.

As it turned out, it hardly mattered-we were hunted, harassed, killed , and imprisoned. Jealousy and fear are terrible human emotions, and we had triggered them both. Our ability to use the sex gates made us effectively immortal.

Sure, you could shoot us dead, but if we grew old or sick and could make it to a sex gate-a new life began. The normals hated us.

As if having the government after us wasn't bad enough, the churches got into the act. The Church of the Gates became our sworn enemy-an ironic fact since Messler had originally founded that church to provide an umbrella of religious 53

protection that would ensure free access to the gates. He made the gates a part of his new religion, effectively protecting the gates under the Constitution. But after Messler became a Seconder he abandoned the church and, in time, it turned against Seconders.

Laws were passed against us everywhere and many Seconders lost their freedom. Messler's fortune protected him until finally he chanced the sex gates once too often-and joined the ranks of those who had vanished. Messler was not the sort to go quietly into the night, though. He left behind explicit instructions in case he ever vanished. To my surprise, he left his fortune to me, with Rita as his se condary beneficiary.

Lots of people in the church and the government probably burned the midnight oil wondering why Messler had left his wealth to a moderately successful Texas journalist who made his living writing about the sex gates. But Messler had always believed Rita and I were special in some way-another of his hu nches.

"It's a good thing Messler is so intuitive, isn't it?"

Rissa had been following my thoughts. She wasn't as good at it as som e of the others, simply because her telepathic abilities hadn't been enhanced by as many passages through the sex gates as most of us. On the other hand, she didn't really need much more mind power.

"Yeah, he thought of a lot of things."

And he was a cantankerous old fart. I kept that thought to myself. Truth was, Imissed him. Hell, I'd even had sex with him once, years ago, when he was a woman and I was a reporter interviewing him. Messler always got a kick out of the fact that he'd seduced me. I'd give anything to hear his sly laughter again.

I had too many decisions to make that could use his experience.

"He was-is-a great man," Rissa said.

I raised my brows in question. "Do you think he's alive?"

"Depends on what you mean by living."

"Able to, oh, let's see-able to do this."

I surrounded one of her firm breasts with my hand and molded it into the curve of my palm. Rissa closed her eyes, a delighted expression on her face. I toyed 54

with her nipple and watched it harden. She opened her eyes again and grinned at me.

"Believe me, I wish we could, but Donna and the others will be here i n a second."

Smiling, I caressed her breast. She shook her head, but closed her eyes again and arched her back, purring like a kitten getting her fur stroked .

"I expect Messler to return some day," she added.

"Really?"

"Probably. Especially in light of another attribute of the gates I've discovered."

"Oh?"

"Mm. Don't stop. We have at least another minute-and that's a long time."

She covered the hand I had on her breast with her own, pressing it into the resilient softness. "I might think better as a man-when it comes to mathematics-but I so enjoy being a woman."

Laughing, I bent over, pushed the silk away and took her nipple into my mouth. I sucked at the stiff flesh and was rewarded with a hiss of pure pleasure. She pushed my head away.

"Stop that! Now I can't think at all. I'm trying to say something serious here. I believe there's an upper limit to how much our intelligence and savant abilities can develop. There's a point that's like a barrier."

I watched her breast jiggle as she pulled the sheet up around her. "A nd no Passing Go, no matter what the dice show?"

Rissa laughed. "Not without going to jail-and in this game, I doubt there would be a Get Out Of jail Free card. That's where the change into so mething not human occurs, the change we've sensed can happen."

My good mood vanished. "Maybe that's what happened to the ones who are stuck in limbo. They changed into something that isn't human."

Rissa shook her pretty head. "I sort of doubt it, but we'll see before long. The time is close when they either have to be turned loose or-"

"Die?"

"Something like that. Whatever happens, I know that if we don't get them out 55

we'll never see them again. Never."

I remembered a pair of big, dark eyes, shining with compassion. My Rita'

s eyes. I swallowed the lump in my throat. "Rita would never forgive me for that."

Rissa's voice turned gentle. "I know, Lee. Most of us agree with Rita. It's the logistics we're worried about, not to mention what they will be like when we release them."

"You have no idea?"

"None that I'm sure enough of to share. They may come out perfectl y fine, but it's more likely they will be changed, or dead, or come out as someth ing we haven't thought of."

She shrugged, forgetting to hold on to the sheet. I grinned as her breas ts appeared again. Her nipples were taut with desire. I was horny from my last passage and wondered if there was time to mount an assault, but she turned her head as if listening to something.

"They're almost here. Maybe together we can come up with a new idea or two."

She pulled me out of the bed and twitched her nose in a conscious parody of an old flat media character named Janie or Jeannie who could work magic. Only her magic was of the quantum kind. The bed vanished and loungers appeared.

I blinked in surprise. The room had a new shape. It resembled my old hou se near the campus of North Houston University, the one we lived in way back when the sex gates first appeared. Even the big cooler and bar separating it and the kitchen area from the lounging area was the same. My mouth dropped open when I spotted my old beat-up bar stools, pulled up to the bar where a pass-through to the kitchen allowed me to set drinks and meals on the countertop without going around.

Rissa laughed at the expression on my face. Russell never had much of a sense of humor, but as Rissa, she constantly surprised me. We were laugh ing together when the others arrived.

Rissa used her talent for manipulating the quantum flux to recreate the iridescent sundress she'd worn the other day. I struggled to make some clothes appear on my body. I succeeded, but Donna covered her eyes when she came 56

through the wall and saw me.

"Oh, my God!" she screeched. "Call the fashion police."

I looked down. I was wearing a pair of slacks adorned with pictures of writhing snakes and a shirt covered with fuzzy caterpillars. Now where in hell ha d I dredged that apparition from my mind?

"Oops! Sorry, Donna."

Feeling embarrassed, I tried again. A nimbus of light sprang up around my body. I swept a casual glance downward and found myself dressed in a purple gown with spaghetti straps.

I looked up at the sound of feminine giggles. Randy, Terri, and Amanda h ad followed Donna through the wall. At the sight of me in a dress, Terri clapped her hand over her mouth, but couldn't control her giggles. Her shoulders shook and the mass of blonde curls that surrounded her face vibrated as she tried to contain her fit of laughter. It was unusual for one of Messler's cool corporate lawyers to lose control, but I couldn't blame her. At her side, Randy lifted both eyebrows and wiggled them in an amused fashion, but managed not to laugh. He was the other half of the legal team that once served Messler. They became my lawyers-and then friends and lovers-when I inherited Messler's wealth.

Amanda threw a look of amused superiority my way and strode over to a lounger, ignoring all of us. I narrowed my eyes at her, troubled by the glow on her skin. It was the look of someone fresh from a sex gate. Had she made another trip in the brief time we'd been apart? It was dangerous to go through the gate too often, or too soon after a previous trip. I was starting to worry about her obsess ive pursuit of perfection.

Terri threw her arms around me for a hug, still giggling, and distracted me with a warm kiss. "You look like some cross-dresser," she chuckled .

"Lee, Lee." Rissa clucked her tongue at me like a mother hen.

Shaking her head, she waved her hand. I found myself wearing a pair of cutoffs and a brown pullover, which almost matched my rust-colored hair.

I tugged down on the pullover, a little peeved that we had to bother with clothes anyway. We didn't need clothes in the temperature-controlled world of the Nexus, but Rissa 57 wanted to have a serious discussion and didn't want our libidos to get in the way.

"Have a look," Rissa invited, and a mirror appeared on the wall.

I frowned at my reflection. I might not be a hunk as a man but I'm a damned good-looking woman. I save my mirror-gazing time for days when I'm female.

Donna passed by the mirror, patting her bouncy curls into place, and grabbed m y shoulders.

"One of these days you have to learn how to dress yourself," she joked, with a saucy grin. She planted a wet kiss on my mouth, gave my behind a familia r squeeze, and plopped down on a lounger beside Rissa.

"Hello, love." Rissa's voice purred with tenderness as she welc omed Donna.