Nat And The Haemophiliacs free porn video

Nat and the Haemophiliacs (c) 2008-2010 by Trismegistus Shandy This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Feel free to repost or mirror it on any noncommercial site or mailing list. You can also create derivative works, including adaptations to other media, or new stories using the same setting, characters and so forth, as long as you mention and point to the original story and release your own adaptations or new stories under this same license. This is a sequel to "Unpresentable Heroes" and "Nat and the Telepath". There are two more stories following this one (as of October 2010), "Nat and the Vigilante" and "Nat and the Housesitter". I have an unfinished draft of a sixth story, which is on the back burner while I work on other, unrelated stories. ----- "Good afternoon, Melanie," Nat Holcomb said as he entered his clinic. "Who's on the schedule today?" "Three guys and one girl," his secretary said. "But the first two guys -- take a look." The clinic was small, a storefront with a waiting area and Melanie's office in front, Nat's office/changing room in back, and a bathroom. There were three people sitting in the waiting area: a woman in her early thirties, maybe a little taller than Nat, wearing clothes that might have come from a thrift store but were neatly pressed, and two little boys, the younger maybe five or six and the older maybe eight or nine. The younger boy was absorbed in a hand-held video game, but the older one was eyeing Nat nervously. The woman had been reading a magazine when Nat came in, but was looking expectantly at him now. "Let's talk in my office for a minute," he said to Melanie annoyed. "Ma'am," he said to the other woman, "I'll be right with y'all in a few minutes." Once they were in the tolerably well soundproofed changing room (people sometimes made interesting, and occasionally loud, vocalizations when they were changed, though stunned silence was the more common reaction), Nat exploded. "Come on, Melanie, you know I don't take kids! Why didn't you send her packing? Or is she the lone girl on today's schedule?" "No, she doesn't want a change, just for her boys. The girl's appointment isn't until six, the other guy is at five; I haven't seen them yet, but both called recently to confirm. And this lady -- Margaret Voss," she said, referring to a folder she'd carried into the inner office, "she lied about her boys' ages to get the appointments for them. When she showed up with them and signed in I told her you wouldn't change anybody under eighteen, and tried to get her to leave, but she insists on talking to you." "All right," he said, sitting down in his deeply padded rolling chair. "Send her in. Just her, not the boys. And ring me if either of the other clients show up, to give me an excuse to hustle her out if I haven't gotten rid of her by then." Melanie left, and a few seconds later escorted the woman in. She looked nervous. "Your secretary said you wouldn't change anybody underage," she said without preamble, "and I know that makes sense for most people, but please listen --" "I'm listening." "My boys, Jack and Cecil, have haemophilia. Do you know how that works?" "It means their blood doesn't clot well, right? They tend to bleed way too much from minor injuries?" What does it have to do with me, Nat thought, but didn't ask, expecting she would get to that soon enough. "They aren't likely to bleed to death from a minor cut, but a major cut would be more dangerous to them than to a healthy person. Bruises are a more frequent problem; they get bad bruises on their arms and legs and feet, and in their joints, all the time, even wearing their protective shoes and stockings, even though they get infusions of clotting factor three times a week. Unlike most moms I don't scold them and send them outside to play when they sit around playing video games; they do enough hard playing on their own initiative to turn my hair grey." There were a few grey highlights, Nat noticed now. "I'm sorry," Nat said, "but I still don't see why you're here or why I should make an exception to my age limit for them." "It's simple. Haemophilia is sex-linked, genetically. I have the same haemophilia gene as my boys, and my brother who died of AIDS because of an infected infusion of clotting factor, and my maternal uncle who died of a cerebral haemorrage. But that gene doesn't affect my blood at all; it clots normally. And if you change my boys, it will cure their haemophilia." "I see," Nat said. "Are you sure about that? When my power first manifested the paranormality doctors did a bunch of tests on me and on the volunteers I changed, but there's a lot we still don't know about how it works. Maybe my secretary didn't already give you the disclaimers and contracts because they're under eighteen and she knew I wouldn't change them anyway, but if you haven't seen them, they're a mile long." "I'm sure your power will help them because I heard about you from an adult haemophiliac we know," she said. "He was their counselor at haemophilia camp for a couple of years. He -- she -- was tested for clotting factor levels after you changed her, and they were perfectly normal." "Well," Nat said, thoughtfully, "I won't say no yet, but I'm not going to change them right now. Let me do some research and think about it. Meanwhile, get a letter from their doctor saying he thinks this is necessary for their health. And I'll want to talk to both of them, privately, before I change them." "But we waited so long for this appointment, and I hear the wait has gotten even longer since I made it --!" "Yeah, the waiting list is over a year now, but don't worry. If I decide to change them I'll squeeze them in on a day I don't normally do changes, probably a Saturday. Meanwhile can you come back at seven next Wednesday? Not for the change, but for another consultation after I've talked to some people," (particularly my lawyer, he thought, and a haemophilia specialist, and this haemophiliac former client of mine) "and you've had a chance to talk to their doctor about that letter. And if you haven't already, I think you should give them a talk about the differences between girls and boys, and the reasons for them, sometime before next Wednesday. I don't want to have to explain all that myself." "I think they already know what it's appropriate for boys their age to know..." she said diffidently. "Make sure they know what girls their age should know, too. And then some. I don't want them blindsided when their first period comes on, saying 'Nobody warned us about this!'" "All right," she said. "Thank you for listening." "No problem. One other thing -- who was the adult haemophiliac you heard about me from?" "Randall Quinlan. Um -- she calls herself Rae Nan now." "Thanks," Nat said, scribbling the name down on a notepad. "I think that's all for now." He thought he might vaguely recall Quinlan, or at least her reaction to being changed: not the obvious delight most of the transsexuals show, or the stunned surprise followed by intense self-interest of the rich and curious, but something more like resignation. He'd wondered why she'd wanted the change, but by this time he'd quit asking people anything other than whether they were at least eighteen and could pay in advance, and, if female, whether they'd had a negative pregnancy test within the last day. (His power affected pregnant women oddly and unpredictably, and he'd resolved never to use it on one again.) Ms. Voss left, thanking Nat again on her way out, and Nat pulled an Odwalla energy drink from the mini-fridge to ingest while he waited for his next client, not due for almost two hours. He sipped the nutritious sludge thoughtfully, and added more notes to the pad below Quinlan's name: * Husband/father? Alive, married, divorced? His permission needed? * What do the boys think of it? Refuse if they don't like it? Or do it on their mother and doctor's say-so for their own good? * Can I cover my ass so the boys can't sue me if they still hate being girls when they turn eighteen? * Has Ms. Quinlan been spreading my name far and wide? Am I going to get lots of these cases? He clipped the note to the Voss boys' file, which Melanie had left on his desk, and went out to talk to his secretary again. "Can you look up this Randall or Rae Nan Quinlan? I think she was here five or six months ago, but I'm not sure exactly when." "Half a minute," she said, navigating to her database and querying for the surname. "Here you go. You changed him last September 19, he paid by cashier's check, she was your 248th client, and we haven't heard anything from her since then. A satisfied customer, apparently." The computer screen showed Quinlan's contact information, at least as of last September, and the before and after photos, which as usual were no better than most driver's license or passport photos. You could tell she was white and brunette, and not particularly skinny or fat, but you wouldn't be able to spot her in a crowd just from seeing the photo. "Copy down her number for me; I need to talk to her." "Why?" Melanie asked, surprised. Nat had never gotten in touch with a client again on his own initiative, though he'd occasionally had to talk to dissatisfied customers who hadn't read the disclaimers and wanted a refund or a free change-back. He read them the relevant passages in the disclaimers, had Melanie give them new appointments a year or more away, and sent them packing. "She referred Ms. Voss to me," he said, and explained about the haemophilia. Ms. Quinlan's number rang with no answer when Nat tried it, so he pulled out a couple of his textbooks and studied until the five o'clock client arrived. Soon after his six o'clock client left -- a repeat customer, a curiosity seeker who was vocally glad to be quit of bleeding, cramps and sore breasts -- he drove home, thinking, since he was less tired than usual after only two changes, that he might go for a run in the neighborhood before supper. Then he remembered he wasn't eating supper alone tonight. He hadn't been home five minutes when the phone rang. "Nat Holcomb," he said. "Does it still suit for me to come over?" Zach asked. "Yeah, your clothes are in the guest bedroom." Zach hung up, and a couple of minutes later walked out of the guest bedroom into the living room. Nat was on the phone with a nearby Chinese delivery restaurant when he entered. "You want Mongolian Beef, right?" he asked. "Sure," said Zach. A few months after he started this business, resigning himself to the fact that his secret identity had been blown, Nat had moved from Jonesboro into Atlanta, buying a fine old house in Virginia Highlands. The living room was large, with a high ceiling. Zach made himself comfortable on the large sofa and paged through a John Portman portfolio coffee table book while Nat finished placing the order. "So how's business?" Zach asked. "I've been trying to figure out a way to make that kind of money off my power, but not being able to take nonliving things with me is a bit of a limitation. And most people don't want to teleport naked with a naked stranger, even if it does save them a lot of hours waiting in security checkpoint lines and sitting in cramped planes." "You're probably better off keeping it secret as long as you can," Nat said. "I'm not sure all this money is going to help any when the people I've put in jail get out. Or Tachyon, for instance; he's mad at me for making him spend several months as a woman between the time I changed him and the time you and Captain Rapid arrested her..." "You mean you haven't heard?" "Heard what?" "They're letting him out early. His lawyer appealed, and showed that he'd already suffered over a thousand subjective years of imprisonment at his paranormal rate of consciousness." "I'd better be careful... You, too, I guess. He doesn't know your real name but he saw your face, didn't he?" "Yeah, and he could run around all over Georgia looking for me or the other officers who captured her, but I don't reckon it's likely." "No, if he wants revenge he would come after me first, since I'm the only one involved who's had their identity made public since then....You asked me about business: tell me something. Suppose, when you were eight years old, your Mom took you somewhere and said, 'Listen honey, this man is going to change you into a girl so you won't bleed to death', how would you take it?" "My great-grandma bled to death giving birth to my great-uncle," Zach replied after a moment's thought. "What's this about?" Nat explained about the haemophiliac boys. "So what do you think I should do?" "Man, that's tough. I'd say ask them, not their mom." "I've thought about that, but parents authorize medical procedures for their kids all the time, things the kids wouldn't want if anybody asked them. Not because they aren't good for them but because they're too young to think clearly about the costs and benefits. They just see how much it's going to hurt..." "Well, suppose you do change them. They're young, maybe they'll adjust pretty quick, right?" "No telling. I've never changed anybody that young before, so I don't know how they would react long-term. And I was never an eight-year- old boy, but if my Mom had told me when I was eight that they needed to change me into a boy to fix my appendicitis, or whatever, I would have thrown a fit. What about you?" "I would have run away as soon as I knew my Mama was planning something like that," Zach said. "I ran away once, when I was seven, on a lot less provocation. I walked six blocks before I got tired and went home." "Well, this is what I'm worried about," Nat said. "Suppose I change them, on their Mom's say-so over their objections, and then they never do adjust to it, and they still hate me when they grow up? They could sue me for all I'm worth, I guess, once they turn eighteen, but it's not the money and legal trouble that bothers me most, it's the idea I could make life hell for them for years and years. I started doing this to help people who were miserable being what they felt like was the wrong sex; I don't want to make more people miserable like that." "Yeah, that could happen. Well, what about keep in touch with them? Maybe tell them if they still don't like it after a few months or a year and they would rather be haemophiliac boys instead of healthy girls you'll change them back, even if their mom doesn't like it." "That might be a good idea. But... well, over the last few months I've started having qualms about some of what I'm doing. I mean, suppose something happens to me, either a random accident or I get killed or bad hurt while I'm on a Patrol job, then what happens to all those people I changed who were expecting me to change them back a while later, after they have some time to find out what it's like being of the other sex? The disclaimers they sign say I can't guarantee I'll ever be able to change them back, but a lot of people are getting changed on that expectation anyway, and I worry about them sometimes; I'd worry even more about those boys." "You think you might want to stop changing anybody but transsexuals?" "Maybe... Or maybe..." "What?" "Nothing," Nat said. "Nothing I've thought through clearly enough yet to talk about, even with you. Even with myself, hardly." ----- Next morning before leaving for school, Nat called Quinlan again. This time he got an answer, an alto voice: "Hello?" "Rae Nan Quinlan?" he asked. "This is she." "Ms. Quinlan, this is Nat Holcomb, the changer. If you don't mind I'd like to talk to you sometime." "I'm busy getting ready for work now." "I can't talk for long right now either. But do you mind getting together and telling me about why you changed and how you're adjusting since then? I ask because Margaret Voss told me you referred her boys to me --" "Where do you want to meet?" "You could come to my office tomorrow or Friday after the last client of the day, or before the first client of the day, or we could meet for lunch or supper Thursday or on the weekend or sometime...? I could come as a woman if it makes you more comfortable." "Yes... I think that would be better. Thank you. There's a good Thai place near my apartment. What about Thursday at seven?" "OK." She gave him directions. ----- During a break between classes, Nat turned his cell phone on and checked his voice mail. There was Captain Rapid, telling him Tachyon had just been released from the State Penitentiary. "Be careful," he said. Nat wondered how, exactly, he was supposed to protect himself. He couldn't expect Captain Rapid to act as his personal bodyguard, especially when it was far from certain that Tachyon would go for revenge rather than just stealing more stuff or even, perhaps, going straight; but it wasn't obvious how anybody without super-speed could see Tachyon coming and do anything about him. He had only been able to see Tachyon (blurrily, but just clearly enough) in order to exercise his power on him because he and Captain Rapid were chasing each other in circles in a small space and occasionally tussling for a few milliseconds before breaking apart again. "What can y'all do to help?" he said. "Maybe I could wear a transponder for a while and you could watch the signal and jump and run if it suddenly moves faster than seventy miles an hour?" "That's probably a good idea," Captain Rapid said. "I'll have Metatech put something together; you can come in to our headquarters after classes, right?" "Sure. In two, three hours." Which would be subjective weeks for Tachyon, if he was at full speed. Unlike Captain Rapid and most other high-speed paranormals, he couldn't easily slow down to human normal speed for very long at a time, which was why his prison sentence had been considered cruel and unusual on appeal. But nothing unusual happened in the next few hours; Nat attended his next class, History of Architecture, rode MARTA from GSU to Buckhead station, and walked to the Georgia State Patrol Auxiliary's Atlanta headquarters. The weather was clear and sunny, though cool. Parvati told him Metatech had the transponder ready for him; he went down the hall to his lab, which he had been in only once before, on a tour of the place when he turned eighteen and signed up as a reservist. "You don't have to do anything special to make it work," Metatech told him, "and it's okay to get it wet. It's not a bug, it just tracks location and motion, and if you start moving faster than eighty miles an hour it will send us a distress signal. If you're going to be flying, switch the knob there to the second position just before the plane takes off and switch it back to the first position when you land. If you're going to be teleporting, switch to the third position just before the jump and back to the first position afterward." "I don't expect to be doing either anytime soon," Nat said. "I hang out with Zach sometimes, but we haven't jumped anywhere in a while, and anyway, his power would leave this thing behind. Do I just keep it in my pocket or what?" "Well, the best thing would be to keep it right next to you, under a patch of artificial skin. I've got some samples here, I think I can find a good tone match. Maybe on your belly. That way if Tachyon decides to grab you he's less likely to find it and remove it before hauling you off... though I'm kind of afraid if he does that it's bad business, and he might as well kill you where you stand. You don't have any powers besides the, ah, changing?" "No." "So, yeah, if he grabs you and carries you somewhere, the acceleration and deceleration could kill you outright or at least break some major bones and damage some internal organs. We don't know of him killing anyone before, though, so that's not really likely..." "Could you make it so it would also detect paranormal-speed motion in my vicinity? Then maybe if he's approaching me, still a few milliseconds away, it squawks, Captain Rapid notes the position and gets there pretty soon after Tachyon does...?" "I'll have to work on another one. That will be a bit trickier. Wear that for a day or three and I'll let you know when to come in again." After examining and rejecting several artificial skin patches that weren't quite the right color, Nat fixed the transponder to his belly, to the left of his belly-button, thanked Metatech, and left. On the walk back to the MARTA station, Nat called his lawyer, Peter Flannery, who also represented the GSPA and most of the law-abiding paranormals in north Georgia. "I know you told me not to change anybody under eighteen and so far I haven't, but an unusual case has come up. I'd like to pick your brains about it. When can you see me?" "Let's see... How about Friday afternoon at three?" "I'm seeing clients then. What's the next available?" "Hmm... Tuesday at ten?" "All right." Nat would have to skip a session of World History, but he was doing well enough in it that it probably wouldn't matter. ----- Everything went normally until Wednesday afternoon. Nat left school after his last class, went to his office, and changed the day's four clients: four transsexuals from San Francisco who had carpooled across the continent to save airfare. Since they all arrived together, though their appointments were technically at three, four, five and six, he changed them one after another with a short rest between, and was done for the day before four o'clock. They asked Melanie to do a group picture of them with Nat as well as the legally required individual before and after pictures. Once they left gone, Nat and Melanie went over some recent correspondence and phone calls -- another interview request, which he turned down, and an offer to pay his air fare and lodging costs for a trip to Amsterdam so he could change a number of people there, saving them the individual costs of travelling to Atlanta. He asked Melanie to talk with them and schedule the trip for sometime next summer when he didn't have any appointments scheduled yet. "Make it as long as necessary so I don't have to change more than four people a day," he said, "and none in the first twenty-four hours while I'm still jet- lagged. And don't schedule me any local appointments in the next forty-eight hours after I come home. Have them wire the payment for all the changes to you before I get on the plane to Amsterdam; I don't want to deal with collecting payment during the trip. And draft a letter to Peter Flannery, asking him to get in touch with a Dutch lawyer and make sure I'm covered." "Got it," she said, taking notes. "I think that's it." Nat picked up his laptop and book bag and headed for his car, followed a moment later by Melanie, who locked the door behind her. Nat was almost to his car when he felt a momentary strong breeze and a light touch, and then he was tripping, throwing his arms forward to catch himself. His book bag cushioned the impact on his right side, but he skinned his left hand on the pavement. "Are you all right?" Melanie asked frantically, running over, and then, "Oh, my God, what happened to you?" Nat's pants were down around his ankles. His boxers were still in place, thank God. "Tachyon, I think," he said, standing up carefully and pulling his pants up. "The super-fast guy you changed once?" "Right. And I changed her back later, after she was arrested, but he just got out of prison and apparently still doesn't like me." "You've got to get the GSPA to do something about him!" "Well, we're working on that." He didn't tell her about the transponder, in case Tachyon was still nearby and listening. On the way home he stopped at a drugstore and bought some hydrogen peroxide to put on his skinned hand, and called the GSPA. His cellphone was in the wrong pocket. "Tachyon's definitely out for revenge," he told Parvati, "but so far all he's done is pull my pants down in front of my secretary. Tell Metatech to hurry up on the other device, would you?" "I will," she said. "Take care of yourself." ----- Nat was on edge the rest of Wednesday and all day Thursday. He had felt something a bit scratchy when he got in the car after his accident, and when he got home that night and undressed he found a note tucked into the elastic of his boxers, with words pasted on ransom-note style: "more humiliation. To: follow" Thursday afternoon he left school after his last class, drove home, and changed; then she showered again before her meeting with Rae Nan Quinlan. She was rinsing her hair when suddenly the shower curtain was open. There were a number of mirrors set up at various angles in the bathroom, bedroom and living room, periscope-style; from her position in the shower Nat could see out of the big plate-glass window in the living room. Nobody was in the front yard, but there was a man walking a couple of dogs on the sidewalk. He didn't look toward the house, and odds were if he had he couldn't have seen Nat through the window and the long series of mirrors, but Nat instantly snatched the shower curtain closed again anyway, trembling. She had tried to exercise her power a moment after the shower curtain opened, but she felt nothing; Tachyon was already gone, out of range. Was Tachyon only planning to play a series of embarassing practical jokes, to counter Nat's changing him into a woman for several months (subjective decades, at least, for her)? Or did he have worse humiliation in mind? He could have raped her just now; at his super- speed it would have caused horrible injuries... Nat finished her shower and reached beyond the shower curtain for her towel. It wasn't there. She peeked out and saw that not only were there no towels hanging in the bathroom, the underwear she had laid out on the toilet seat was gone too. She stepped out quickly, picked up the nearest mirror and held its back against her as she walked into the bedroom, knocking over a couple of other mirrors. The clothes she had laid out weren't on the bed; she had to get other stuff out of the drawers and closet after closing all the the curtains and the bedroom door, which Tachyon had opened. Before she left for her meeting with Ms. Quinlan, she gathered up nine full-length mirrors and stashed them in the hall closet. Tomorrow she would call the GSPA and see if there were any reports of a bunch of mirrors being stolen from a home furnishings store somewhere. She called ahead. "Ms. Quinlan," she said, "this is Nat Holcomb. Right. Well, I was just fixing to leave the house, and I wanted to warn you, in case you wanted to call this off -- I'm being stalked by a super-speed paranormal called Tachyon. I don't know of any reason he would bother other people I'm hanging out with, but I thought you should know. So far he hasn't hurt me, just played embarassing tricks. Okay, see you in half an hour." When she walked out to her car, she saw the clothes and underwear she had laid out hanging from the branches of the dogwood in the front yard. She pulled them down, went back in the house and threw them in the dirty clothes pile before she left. ----- Entering the restaurant, Nat recognized Rae Nan Quinlan after a few moments looking around. She wasn't wearing makeup, and her brown hair was only a couple of inches longer than in the masculine cut shown in the picture taken just after her change. Ms. Quinlan didn't recognize Nat at first, until she introduced herself. "Thanks for changing to come see me," she said, "I appreciate it." "No problem," Nat replied. I just got almost raped in the shower, that's all. "Thanks for agreeing to see me. I wanted to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind, about why you wanted to change. Was it just because of the haemophilia and nothing else?" "Pretty much," she said. "I didn't want to be female per se, but I thought I could stand it, and I wanted to find out, at least, what it was like not to have to be so damn *careful* all the time. Periods suck, but they're no worse than the bruises I used to get all the time, and I like rock climbing and skateboarding and several other things I didn't dare do when there was no such thing as a minor accident. And not having to get infusions of clotting factor three times a week is a big plus." "So you think it was overall an improvement? You're not planning to come back to me for another change?" "Yeah, overall I think it's worth it. I would pay ten times as much if you could make me a non-haemophiliac guy, but given the real options I'm making the best of this." "So, have you been recommending me to other haemophiliacs? And parents of underage haemophiliac boys?" "Well, kind of. After you changed me and I got confirmation that it cured my haemophilia, I wrote an article for our regional haemophilia newsletter, and said I would keep people posted about what it was like and whether I still thought it was worth it after a while... and I've written a couple of more letters since then, saying, yeah, it's worth it at least if you're single like I was. I don't know if I would have considered it if I'd been married or had a steady girlfriend, but I'd broken up with my last girlfriend a month before I read about you in the paper, and then a few days later a light bulb went on: Hey, haemophilia is sex-linked!" A waitress approached them, asking what they wanted to drink; Nat ordered black coffee, Rae Nan Thai iced tea. When she left, Rae Nan continued: "So I made the appointment with you, and I told my doctor about it at my last appointment with him before then. He kind of grunted noncommitally the way he does and said, 'We'll see.' And then you changed me -- oh, God, it was so weird at first. It still feels that weird some mornings. I got my sister to teach me about women's clothes and tampons and stuff, but I drew the line at heels and makeup, at least so far. And I went back to my haemophilia doctor, the next appointment I could get, and he ordered the clotting factor tests, and when the results were back he said 'Your blood is perfectly healthy, ma'am. Get out of here and go find yourself a gynaecologist.'" "Um," Nat said, taking all this in. So far nearly all his clients fit into one of two categories: transsexuals and curiosity-seekers. Nearly all of the latter started out by making two appointments, a few days or weeks apart, and they almost never canceled the second appointment; most of those who didn't start out with two appointments made a second one pretty soon after he changed them. As far as he knew, Rae Nan was the only one who didn't like being female, but was willing to put up with it long-term for the sake of other benefits. Of course, there could be others like her. It had been a while since Nat consistently asked his clients why they wanted the change, and he had never until now followed up on them unless they contacted him, either to thank him or, more often, ask for a change-back appointment. "Well," she said, after a pause for thought, "Tell me something about Ms. Voss and her sons. Um, Jack and Cecil?" Rae Nan smiled. "They're good kids," she said. "I've been head counselor for the youngest boys at the haemophilia camp for a few years, and they were in my cabin the last three years. I mean, Jack was in my cabin for two years and then his brother came to camp for the first time last summer. Their Mom seems overprotective, like a lot of parents of kids with haemophilia -- with any disability, probably, but I don't have direct experience with others -- but they haven't let it stop them from being adventurous. Sometimes I felt like I was their overprotective Mom, having to hold them back from something dangerous two or three times a day. They'll complain and argue a little, but they usually listen when they can tell an adult has a good reason for telling them something." "Have you talked to them about your change?" "Not to the boys, no. I last saw them at camp last summer. Ms. Voss talked to me at a fundraiser dinner last October, just a month or so after you changed me; the boys were away visiting their father for the weekend." That answered one of Nat's questions, at least partly: their father was alive, divorced or at least separated from their mother, but still involved with their lives. Nat wondered what he thought about their mother's plan, or if he even knew about it. "She didn't recognize me at first," Rae Nan continued, "and she introduced herself during the mixer. I told her who I was and what I'd done and what my doctor said afterward, and I asked her how her boys were doing, but it was a long time before she answered that question, because she pumped me for information all through supper. Details about you and how you work and how much you charge and what the tests showed when I went back to my haemophilia specialist and how I liked being a woman." "And did she ask you if you would recommend that she have her boys changed?" "Not really, but I suspected she was thinking about it, otherwise why would she ask for your contact information? I scrounged up your number when I got home, and emailed it to her, and she wrote back thanking me. I haven't talked to her since." "So what do you think about it? I mean, you voluntarily got yourself changed as an adult, and after seven months you still think it's worth it and you want to stick with it, but what if your Mom or Dad had told you when you were six or eight years old that they were going to have you changed into a girl to cure your haemophilia? No appeal; *fiat puella*." "I'm ambivalent," Rae Nan said after a period of staring unseeingly at the menu without opening it. "I mean, yeah, if my parents had imposed this on me when I was old enough to know what was going on and young enough to think of girls in terms of cooties, I would have fought them tooth and nail. But then -- I was old enough when I changed that I'm probably never going to get used to some aspects of being female, and yet I still think it's better than having haemophilia. If you change a prepubescent boy, I'm pretty sure he'll -- she'll get used to it long before she's done with puberty. I'd probably recommend that Mrs. Voss move to a different school district or put them in a different private school after they get changed, to give them a chance to make new friends among kids who don't know their history. I should email her, actually." "You do that." The waitress returned with their drinks and asked them if they were ready to order. Rae Nan ordered red curry and basil rolls without having ever opened the menu, apparently having eaten here before, but Nat had been so engrossed in conversation that she hadn't looked at the menu, and asked for a few more minutes. Just as the waitress was writing down Rae Nan's order, several things happened at once. The front door of the restaurant opened, a middle- aged man holding it for his companion to enter; there was a momentary rush of wind; and Nat's bra was suddenly dangling from the lamp over the table. Her blouse felt slightly disarranged; then she realized it wasn't tucked into her skirt. Also, her coffee cup was instantly empty before she'd taken a sip. He must have had my blouse off long enough to have a good look at me, she thought. Not as good as look as he had in the shower, but still! He didn't feel me up, though, or I would have burns... he must have been very careful getting them off and the blouse back on, I hardly felt it. She quickly tucked the bra into her purse. "Sorry," she said. "Just my paranormal stalker having a bit of fun." The waitress stared at her in mute horror, and left the table in a hurry. Nat excused herself, went to the restroom, replaced her bra and tucked in her blouse again. "What happened?" Rae Nan asked when she returned to the table. "Tachyon, my stalker, is a super-speed. He normally lives almost a thousand times faster than a normal human, but with an effort he can speed up to a hundred thousand times faster for a short period. He probably just strolled in through the door while it was open, pulled off my blouse and bra, put the blouse back on, drank my coffee, and walked out." "But that's... how can you live with that?" "I hope I won't have to for very long. The State Patrol Auxiliary is working on a way to track him and catch him in the act. We don't have proof it's him yet, it could be any of a dozen people with similar powers, but he's the only one with a motive to come after me. Anyway, I don't think I'll go out in public as a woman again until he's in jail." She briefly told Rae Nan about her involvement with the attempt to apprehend Tachyon, "Kinetica"'s eventual arrest some months later, and the curtailed prison sentence for multiple grand thefts. During supper (eventually served by a different waiter) the conversation drifted to Nat's occasional exploits as a reserve State Patrol officer (she preferred that term to "superhero"), particularly the alien invasion a couple of years ago, before returning to the Voss boys. "I'm worried about what will happen if they don't adjust to it as you think they will," Nat said. "And I'm not nearly as confident as you are that they will adjust, either quickly or slowly. Not long after I started this business someone sent me an article about a boy who was sex-reassigned as a baby, to compensate for an accidental mutilation of his genitals. She hated being a girl her whole life and wanted to change back as soon as she found out what had been done to her..." "But that was with surgery; crude superficial stuff, not like what you do at all." "I hope it would be different with my power, but I don't know. I haven't ever changed a child before and there's no telling if they would really adjust to it easier than adults do." "You could change them back if they still don't like it after a while. Make them give it a fair chance, two years at least." "A lot can happen in two years," Nat said. "My other job is a dangerous one. And then there's Tachyon; so far he's just been playing tricks, but if he wanted to kill me he could do it almost any time." "I guess he doesn't want to kill you, then?" Rae Nan said hesitantly. "Or he wants me to live in fear for a while first. But yeah, he's never killed anybody or hurt anybody seriously before, just stolen things and played tricks like this on people -- some he had a grudge against like me, some just random strangers as far as we know." Nat paid for supper, and they parted at the door of the restaurant. She changed as soon as she got home, even before she was completely undressed; she didn't want to take a chance on Tachyon coming back just then. But there were no more disturbances that night. ----- Early Friday morning, a couple of Fulton County police officers came by the house and picked up the stack of mirrors Tachyon had left in Nat's bathroom, bedroom, and living room. A few hours later, between classes, Nat was sitting on the toilet in the men's room of the student center when the door of the stall suddenly unlocked and swung violently open. He thought he saw a momentary blur in the air unlike the other times, Tachyon moving slower than usual for some reason, and he exercised his power. There was a former guy standing at the sink, looking in horror at herself, then at Nat. "Sorry," Nat said hastily, covering his crotch with the book he'd been reading. "Just a second and I'll change you back... I thought you were someone else..." He changed her and then shut the stall door. By this time his power and his business were well known all over the school, and he occasionally got requests from fellow students -- once even from a professor -- for free samples. He would smile politely, give them his business card, and tell them to call his secretary for an appointment. He wondered if he would get in trouble for changing this hapless fellow student. By the time he finished his business and got out, the other man was gone. He got a call on his cell phone a little later, Metatech telling him that the other tracker was ready. After class he made a quick trip to the GSPA headquarters before going in to his office. The new device was only slightly larger than the old, and fit under a new patch of artificial skin. "Captain Rapid is carrying the other piece," Metatech explained; "when this one detects Tachyon -- or anybody else with a similar power -- nearby, it will call the other one and Captain Rapid will get to your position as fast as he can. Here, let's test it." He flipped an intercom switch and spoke: "Captain, are you ready for the equipment test?" The door of the lab banged open and shut in a moment and there was a rush of wind. Then Captain Rapid's voice spoke from the intercom. "It works. Even before I entered the lab my pager was squawking." "That's reassuring," Nat said. "We'll get him next time he shows up, I expect," the voice from the intercom continued. "See you soon, probably." But Tachyon played no further pranks the rest of the day, while Nat was at work or on the way home. He decided to stay home all weekend to avoid giving Tachyon an opening; he seemed to prefer humiliating Nat in front of other people when possible. When he opened the front door to go out and check the mail Saturday afternoon, he felt a momentary rush of wind again, and tried to exercise his power, but again Tachyon was already gone. When he got to the mailbox he found several articles of his (and her) underclothing in it, along with the mail, and another cut and pasted note: "tell me Where? I can find the people. who arrested me Else worse things happen" Another dog-walker looked oddly at Nat pulling the bundle of underwear and mail from his box. "Neighborhood kids," he explained. "Their idea of a joke." Captain Rapid showed up right then, spoiling Nat's mundane explanation and setting the dogs to barking. The dog-walker continued on her way, jogging. "Sorry I couldn't get here faster," he said. "I searched the area but I haven't found Tachyon." "Still just harmless pranks so far," Nat said, "but look at this." He showed the captain the note. "That's serious," he said. "I'll ask a few other super-speeds from Tennessee and Florida to come in and help out as bodyguards for you and... the others." He stopped himself before naming Zach and the other officers who had arrested Tachyon. Nat didn't leave the house again until Monday morning. Before the end of the day Saturday he had his bodyguard, Corporal Tom Geoghan of the Tennessee National Guard, Paranormal Unit. Geoghan had to maintain a large multiple of normal speed to keep his reflexes sharp enough to see Tachyon coming, so it was impossible to have a conversation with him. Nat sat around studying and reading a novel for the rest of the weekend. He had to remove and turn off the new transponder so it wouldn't constantly report false positives from Geoghan's presence. The only times he actually saw Geoghan clearly, as opposed to feeling the breeze as he passed on his patrols or seeing a blur as he sat eating, was when he slept; he would suddenly appear on the sofa, sleeping for thirty or forty seconds out of every hour, and then vanish again when he woke up. (Oddly, he sped up even faster while sleeping.) His laser rifle (no projectile weapon would do any good against someone like Tachyon) would be cuffed to his right wrist while he slept, locked with a passcode to keep Tachyon from grabbing it while he slept and using it against him. By evening he had eaten everything in Nat's refrigerator; Nat ordered a tall stack of pizzas at nine o'clock, which were delivered half an hour later and all gone by morning. Geoghan told him the next morning that he'd had to slow down due to hunger, thinking it probably safer to stay at his post with slower reflexes than to nip out for a few seconds for something to eat. As soon as the nearest pizza place opened Sunday morning, Nat ordered another batch of pizzas, and then more in the afternoon. This was getting expensive, but he didn't want to drive to a grocery store under these conditions, and the grocery delivery service he sometimes used didn't deliver on Sundays. Monday morning, Geoghan slowed down to ride to the MARTA station with Nat, then sped up again once they got out of the car, dashing around ahead of and behind Nat as he got on the train to school. They had just entered the building where Nat's first class of the day was held, Nat wondering what to tell his professors and fellow students about his blurry laser-rifle-wielding bodyguard, when Geoghan suddenly vanished again. A second later Nat's pants were around his ankles -- he managed to avoid tripping over them this time, but unfortunately his boxers were pulled down as well. And worse, there were mirrors set up ahead and, he soon realized, behind, to give people around the corner of the hall and in the nearest open classrooms a better view. He quickly bent over to pull his pants up again, and as he did so Corporal Geoghan appeared again, along with Captain Rapid. Geoghan was limping. Students were standing around staring at them. "Sorry, sir," Geoghan was saying. "Tachyon showed up and started to approach Mr. Holcomb, and I gave chase, out the door and up the street -- he was zigzagging through crowds so I couldn't get a clear shot. He's faster than me, I think, but he was letting me follow him... Then I tripped over a wire he'd stretched between a street sign and a fence on Courtland Street, and lost sight of him by the time I got up. While I was calling you, removing the wire so no one else would trip on it, and limping back here he must have returned and done this trick." Useful bodyguard you turn out to be, Nat thought, but didn't say. "Let's get out of this hall," he said. "One moment," Captain Rapid said, and vanished for a moment. "There, I've dusted the mirrors for fingerprints. Nothing, they're clean like the ones in your house." "We know who it is," Nat pointed out; "Geoghan saw him, right?" "Additional proof wouldn't hurt." A middle-aged professor emerged from one of the classrooms in whose door a mirror had been placed, and approached them. "What the devil is going on?" she asked angrily. Nat had taken Calculus 151 from her last year. "Sorry, Dr. Paulsen. There's this stalker, a paranormal who calls himself Tachyon --" He hesitated. "Tachyon was released from prison last Tuesday," Captain Rapid explained smoothly, showing his badge, "and we have just confirmed his identity with the paranormal stalker who has been harassing Reserve Officer Holcomb since Wednesday. Corporal Geoghan, here, of the Tennessee National Guard, is assisting us as Officer Holcomb's bodyguard." Dr. Paulsen eyed Geoghan's laser rifle dubiously. "Perhaps, Mr. Holcomb, you had better stay out of school for a few days until this stalker is apprehended. We do not want you drawing him to the school, much less a fight between him and your, ah, bodyguard. It would be disruptive at best." "I guess you're right, Dr. Paulsen," Nat said, relieved to get off so easily instead of being reported for indecent exposure or sexual harassment or something of the kind. "Can you let Dr. Linkletter and Dr. Sutherland know I'll be missing their classes today and why?" Captain Rapid vanished again, along with the mirrors. Geoghan, to compensate for his limp, boosted his speed factor so he was even blurrier than before. Before they returned to the MARTA station, Nat decided to go by the library and check out some books on haemophilia. Then he decided it would make more sense to go straight to the office than to go home first. On arrival, he ordered several pizzas, mostly for Geoghan, and ate a couple of slices of one while he started reading. Melanie arrived at two and was surprised to find Nat already present, more so by the blurry figure of Geoghan. Geoghan slowed down briefly to let Nat introduce him. "I need to figure out a way to stop Tachyon," Nat said after Geoghan had sped up again. "Geoghan's doing his best but Tachyon is faster; I'm pretty sure if he puts on full speed, Geoghan would look like a turtle and me like a statue. Captain Rapid can't match his top speed, either; he was only able to arrest her that one time because he was freshly rested and she was tired." "Can you set a trap for him?" Melanie suggested. "Give him a reason to slow down or stay in one place for long enough for you or someone else to capture him?" Nat thought. "Maybe I could." He scribbled a brief note and held it up; Geoghan instantly slowed down to talk. "Sir?" Nat explained his plan. Geoghan was dubious; "I'll have to clear it with the Captain." "Do that," he said. Geoghan blurred, and a few seconds later he said, "He says it might work. Let us know when." Nat's first client of the day arrived shortly afterward. Nat insisted on Geoghan staying in the waiting room while he saw clients; there was no way into the inner office except through the waiting room, so he could easily guard against Tachyon from there. After dismissing his first client, Nat wrote out a couple of notes and secreted them on his person where Tachyon would find them if he were to pull the pants-around-the-ankles trick again. "Slow down and talk to me at 8:00 pm tonight or 8:00 am tomorrow, at home. I'll try to get rid of the bodygard so I can talk to you. Promise to leave me alone and I'll tell you where to find the people who arrested you." That evening after his last client left, Nat stayed a few minutes, then left the office at the same time as Melanie, preceded a millisecond before by Geoghan, who took to patrolling the parking lot in a blur. Nat locked the door behind them, then turned and walked toward his car, more than half expecting Tachyon to strike again before he got there. He wasn't disappointed. As before, Geoghan vanished, probably having spotted Tachyon and pursued him. He didn't get far; Nat saw him sprawled in the parking lot across the street, at the same instant as he felt a rough handling all over. He still couldn't actually *see* Tachyon, but the moment he felt the tugging he exercised his power. An instant later Nat was naked, except for his shoes and a tatter of his pants through which his belt was still threaded. Little patches of his clothes, cut up in pieces from an inch to eight inches wide, were scattered all around the parking lot. "Excuse me, boss," said a tenor voice. Melanie was crouching behind his car, hiding from view of the street as he frantically tried to adjust his too-tight pants. Nat changed him back. "Sorry," he said, hurrying over to hide behind the car as well. "I'm not sure if I got Tachyon that time or not." Geoghan returned; he was shirtless, and in a moment Nat found Geoghan's shirt wrapped around his waist. "Thanks," he said to the guardsman. "Can you let us back into the office?" he asked Melanie, embarrassed. "I have a change of clothes there. I'm not sure where my keys or anything else that was in my pockets is." Melanie let them in and Nat hurried into his inner office. One good thing about this last trick; taking time at his highest speed to carefully cut up all of Nat's clothes, Tachyon couldn't possibly have failed to notice the notes tucked into his pants. "I'm not much use, am I?" Geoghan said bitterly as Nat emerged from the office, dressed again. "I knew his top speed was better than mine, but I didn't know he could do that...! He let me spot him; I speeded up to my max, aimed and told him to halt. He strolled away, and I fired -- or pressed the trigger anyway; he'd removed the power pack from my rifle without me noticing! I took off after him, he let me almost catch up, then vanished, and I tripped, my feet tied together and a bag over my head. -- At least I found this stuff," he said, handing over Nat's keys, wallet and cellphone. "They were scattered around the parking lot along with the bits of your clothes. I put the rags in the dumpster." "Don't worry about it," Nat told him. "You've done the best you could. I'm pretty sure at this point all Tachyon wants to do is embarass me, not kill me, or he would have done it by now. So I don't guess I need you anymore. Eventually he's got to get bored with this." Nat went home without Geoghan. He left his front door unlocked while he ate supper, turned on the transponder again, then sat at the dining room table continuing to read one of the books he'd checked out that day. As the second hand on the dining room clock reached eight o'clock, Tachyon appeared in the chair across from him. Nat instantly used his power on him. Tachyon looked at herself momentarily, shrugged, and looked at Nat. "I haven't got long," she said. "Who are the others? What's Captain Rapid's civilian name, and Polyphonia's? Who was the teleporter, and the guy with the force fields?" "Never mind that," Nat said, "Turn yourself in again and I'll change you back." "Thanks to you, kid, I've been a woman a lot longer than you've been alive. It was annoying as hell for the first decade or two, but I eventually got used to it. It's so long ago it will probably take me a while to get used to it again, but I know I can live with it. Now tell me what you promised." How long was it, subjectively, for Tachyon/Kinetica between the time Nat changed him and the time she got arrested? Nat clearly hadn't thought through this part clearly enough. "What are you planning to do to them? The same things you've been doing to me?" "You caused me humiliation and embarassment; I returned the favor. It's been a hobby of mine for the last subjective decade or so since I got out of prison. It doesn't take much time, a few hours every six months or a year. The others put me in a small room with nothing interesting to look at and almost nothing to read -- I kept requesting long lists of books from the prison library, and they kept insisting on giving me one at a time, one book every three or four subjective years; I read all of them to tatters, even the ones that weren't worth more than one or two readings, which was most of them. After that happened a few times they quit letting me check out books entirely. And I was there for more than a thousand years. You have no *idea* how much I want to make them suffer the same way. It's impossible, of course, except maybe with Captain Rapid, but I'll do as much as I can. The teleporter will be a particular challenge; I might have to save him for last. Who are they?" "You deserved prison for all the thefts you'd committed," Nat said, "I won't say you deserved anywhere near a thousand years, but the length of your sentence isn't the State Patrol officers' fault. Why direct your anger at them instead of the judge or the parole board, who gave you the excessive sentence and then kept you in prison for so long...?" "Oh, I've been finding little ways to annoy that judge. Just misplacing things to make him think he's going senile; nothing too obvious yet, because I wanted to take care of you and particularly the officers who arrested me first, since they would be more challenging. But when I'm done with them, the judge will suffer. Stop stalling; who are they?" She flickered for a moment. "You're setting something up. Tell me right now or I'll trash your house, rip all your clothes to bits and leave before your trap springs." Nat hoped the trap was already in the process of springing; in fact he wondered what was taking them so long, but he didn't want to take any chances. He started giving her the misinformation he'd been making up and memorizing for consistency. "Captain Rapid's real name is Roger Daniels," he said, "he lives in Buckhead not far from the GSPA headquarters. I don't know his address offhand." Tachyon (Kinetica?) flickered again, and appeared again with a legal pad from Nat's desk in front of her. "Go on." "The teleporter is from Valdosta; his name is Lucius Barnes." Kinetica's hands flickered and another line appeared on the legal pad. "Polyphonia is Pauline Kinkaid; she's a part-time music teacher at Stephens County High School in Toccoa when not on duty with the Patrol. As for Shaper, the force field guy, I'm sorry, I don't know his real name. I've heard he uses his force fields to change his appearance so he doesn't need a mask." "Thank you," Kinetica said, and vanished along with the top page from the legal pad. There was a high-pitched sound, shouting and screaming and wrestling speeded up a thousand times, from the area of the front door. Nat hurried to the door, knowing logically that it wouldn't do any good, that it would be over before he got there as surely as if he had strolled. The scene did look less frantic than it had sounded a moment ago, though all the super-speeds were still a bit blurry. Nat couldn't tell the blurs apart, but knew that they were Captain Rapid, Corporal Geoghan, and Officers Lyle and Papadopoulos of the Florida State Patrol, who had been bodyguarding Shaper and Polyphonia for the last couple of days. Kinetica was sitting on the ground, handcuffed to the dogwood which she had festooned with Nat's underwear last Thursday. Captain Rapid slowed down to talk to Nat. "Thanks," he said, "it worked more or less perfectly. The ambulance should be on the way for Tachyon, or should I say Kinetica; she got a few laser burns on her way out the door. But at her usual speed they might be mostly healed before she gets to the hospital anyway." "I wonder how much good arresting her is going to do," Nat said. "They're not going to put her in prison for a significant amount of time after the way her last sentence was overturned, are they?" "I don't know," Captain Rapid admitted. "You never can predict what a judge is going to do. Maybe the recording of her threatening the judge will help." "I'd better not change her back yet, with her body busy healing from those burns. Let me know later if she wants to change back when it's safe." ----- Tuesday morning Nat drove to Peter Flannery's office for his appointment. Hedging like mad in all directions, Flannery basically said that it was reasonably likely the Voss boys could not successfully sue Nat when they turned eighteen if their mother obtained a letter from their doctor beforehand saying the change was a medical necessity, or if they themselves gave consent for the procedure. Failing that, he strongly advised Nat not to change them. Nat skipped his second Tuesday class as well, since by the time he got through at Flannery's office he would have been late for it anyway, and went straight home. Later in the day he got a call from Parvati at the GSPA, saying that, indeed, Kinetica wanted to be changed back. She was in the Paranormal Containment wing of the Fulton County Jail. Nat then called the jail and talked to several people before arranging to come in on Thursday morning to talk with Kinetica again and perhaps change her. Wednesday evening after his five and six o'clock clients left (a couple who wanted to take turns bearing their children in the interest of fairness), Nat found Ms. Voss waiting when he emerged from his office. "Come on in, Ms. Voss," he said. She followed him into the office, her sons waiting apprehensively in the outer office with Melanie. "I haven't had a chance to talk to a haemophilia specialist," Nat said, "I've been busy with a personal problem that's come up, but that's solved now, I think. But I talked with Rae Nan Quinlan and I talked with my lawyer. Have you got a letter from yours sons' doctor?" "Yes," she said, drawing an envelope from her purse, "here it is." Nat read it. It was noncommital; the doctor acknowledged that there was some evidence that Nat's power might cure haemophilia in some cases, and said that if it worked for the Voss boys, the improvement in their physical health might be considered worth the inconveniences, but that he could not speak to the psychological effects of the procedure, that lying outside his specialty. He stopped far short of saying that their lives were in danger if they didn't get a cure for haemophilia soon. "This isn't enough," Nat said, "not by itself. I'm not going to change them unless they want me to. Have you convinced them?" "I don't know," she said sadly, "I don't think so. Not Jack, anyway. Cecil wavers." "What about your husband? Ms. Quinlan gave me to understand that you were divorced; is that right?" "Yes, four years ago. I have custody; you don't need his permission, just mine." "Well, that may be true, but I'll want a letter from a judge or lawyer saying so, if one or both of the boys agree to be changed. And I'll want some guarantees from you as well..." ----- Fifteen minutes later Ms. Voss left Nat's office. "Melanie," he said, "send Mr. Jack Voss in, please." Treat him like an adult, more or less; it might help. The older boy got up and approached the door of the inner office hesitantly, apparently afraid of Nat. "Are you going to change me into a girl?" he asked apprehensively. "Not now, anyway," Nat said, "and maybe not ever. I just want to talk." They went into the office and sat down. "Do you understand why your Mom wants me to change you?" Nat asked when they were settled. "She thinks it will fix the haemophilia," Jack said. "She said you changed our counselor Randall into a lady and it cured him. Um, her?" "Yes. I spoke with her last week and she was mostly happy about the change. She said she could do a lot of things now that she couldn't do before because they were too dangerous for someone with haemophilia. I think she mentioned rock-climbing and skateboarding. And your doctor thinks there's a good chance it could cure you too. But nobody's going to force you. I told your Mom I would change you if your doctor said it was absolutely necessary, or if you agreed to it. And your doctor just said it would be helpful, but it isn't necessary. So it's up to you." Jack shook his head. "I don't want to be a girl." "Again, I'm not going to change you if you don't want me to, but I want to make sure you understand the decision you're making. Why don't you want to be a girl?" He looked at Nat as though he were an alien. "Because I'm a boy." A pretty good reason, actually, Nat thought. But, still. "Has your Mom talked to you about the differences between girls and boys?" Jack nodded. "She gave us a long talk Sunday afternoon... I thought I didn't want to be a girl before. Now I'm sure. It sounds gross, bleeding down there." "It sure is," Nat admitted. "But Ms. Quinlan, your counselor, told me she thought it wasn't as bad as all the bruises she used to get sometimes, and not much worse than getting stuck for infusions of clotting factor. Let me tell you something else. I made your Mom promise me that if you agree to let me turn you into a girl, she won't force you to act all girly. You'll have to wear girl clothes, particularly underwear, because boy clothes just won't fit you anymore, but you don't have to wear pink or lacy or frilly things or skirts. We compromised on one point; you'd have to wear a dress to church, or if you're going to a wedding or funeral or something, but otherwise you can wear any kind of girl clothes that fit you. "That's not as bad as I thought, I guess, but I still don't like it. I mean, my friends wouldn't want to play with me if I were a girl. I'd have to play with girls, stupid girl games." "Not really," Nat said. "Not all girls are alike; you just have to show your friends that you're the same person and still like the same kinds of games and are still good at them. Better, maybe, because you don't have to be as careful about bruises and cuts. When