Chapter 38: The Wicked Flee Where None Pursue

Billie’s new body was both feminine and slender. Neither Billie nor myself were recognizable as a married couple. Gem and Mae were also given new bodies and new identities. We had a series of safe houses, sometimes nothing more than a hidden with a secret entrance where we could spend a few hours in peace. And I changed cars so often that I lost track. Our luggage was minimal—most of what we needed was left in dead drops or the safe houses. Billie and I deliberately avoided making contact with Gem and Mae so that we didn’t compromise each other, filing our reports in a vacuum.

Somehow we managed to avoid drawing attention to ourselves.

“You know that this is illegal?” Billie was naked. She hated clothes and was nude whenever possible. “It’s called sodomy.”

“I thought it was called cunnilingus.”

“You’d be surprised to know that a blow job is regarded as perversion, as mental illness.”

“I didn’t pay attention until this year,” I admitted. “I stayed clear of anything to do with sex because of the orphanage and California’s Eugenics laws. I don’t believe it was only 20,000—those were just those in the official record as forced.”

“Jackie, why does it matter? There were at least ten times that number of voluntary sterilizations, possibly a hundred times—and ‘voluntary’ didn’t count as ‘forced.’ If I had remained a man, I would have been sterilized to cure my homosexuality. It would have been voluntary, of course.”

There was no way to tell that Billie had ever been male. Even her chromosomes were two “X’s” — for that matter, so were mine even though I was otherwise all male. Neither one of us had body hair, and Billie’s breasts were small, delightful cones. We had enough downtime to thoroughly explore each other’s bodies. Billie amused herself by listing the number of sex laws we broke. We both could pass ourselves off as high school kids—which brought up juvenile hall and stays at mental institutions where people would attempt to “cure” us.

Meanwhile, I was able to trace the assassination team. I had expected Cuban exiles. They were French? Well, Corsicans. No wonder they vanished. I accidentally found two more kill teams—and how the teams were funded. Follow the money!

“Who isn’t in on the coup?” I asked. “We can start from that end.”

Millionaires has contributed enough funds to field an army. Among them were big names in the Press.