Whose Body Is It, Anyway?

by Brandy Dewinter

Chapter 4 - Communication Skills

     The first lesson I called up from the tutorial menu was a hypnodisk 
on moving in high heels.  I assumed that the heels would be the biggest 
challenge in moving appropriately for this new form.  It turned out that 
high heels had been popular in ladies' fashions at several times 
throughout Federation history, in fact, they were stylish on several 
planets at that time.  There were so many choices in fact, that I decided 
I had better weed out some options by also selecting for other 
characteristics that Titania had inflicted upon me.  

     I figured the next most significant factor was the constraining 
corset.  What else would I choose?  Women were a mystery to me, basically.  
I couldn't predict how the individual women I had known would react in most 
circumstances, and for sure didn't feel I could extrapolate to any general 
behaviors.  Differences in style or personality that seemed to be important 
signals they sent to each other were all unintelligible to me.  The 
selection of a corset for a second filter did weed out most of the options 
though, and I felt I was making progress.  Out of my remaining choices 
only a few also included long hair, loosely styled.  It seemed that the 
restrictions on motion inherent in high heels and a corset had typically 
been matched by tightly bound hairstyles.  I had never preferred those on 
women and was not about to change my own hair to something that looked 
painfully tight or needlessly ornate.  

     I hardly glanced at the remaining choices.  All seemed quite similar.  
The title images showed leggy girls in tight corsets with high heels and 
long, smooth hair.  They moved, in the short clips that explained the 
tutorials, with a sensually feminine grace, quite captivating really.  I 
picked the one that seemed the most extreme in height of heel and tightness 
of corset to prepare myself for any further "improvements" from Titania 
and had it downloaded to my terminal.  

     This had only taken a few moments, most of which was spent watching 
the info clips on the lessons, especially the one that had caught my eye.  
Still, Titania was growing impatient.

     "Come on, you've looked at enough of those pictures.  You need to 
start practicing."

     "Don't worry.  I'll have the skills and mannerisms to go with this 
body in a few minutes," I promised.  

     Taking the headband from the storage receptacle, I placed it to 
my temples.  As I did so, some of that hard black plastic formed on my 
head, preventing the pads from seating properly.

     "Damn it, Titania, we don't have time for this.  You need to keep 
out of the way and let these pads rest directly on my own skin."

     "Why?" she asked petulantly.

     "Because that's how I'll learn the skills I need," I answered, 
trying hard to keep my temper.

     "Oh, very well," she finally agreed, and the dark areas retreated 
from my head.  

     I fitted the headset again, making sure the pads were well clamped to 
my temples, and activated the disk. 

     When the disk file reached an end, I stood still for just a moment.  
"How long did that take?" I asked my symbiont.

     "You were . . . I don't know what to call it . . . unfocused for 
almost four minutes," she reported.

     "I suppose that's about right," I said.

     "Don't you know?" she asked.

     "No.  These disks, the ones that imprint behavior, are restricted to 
field agents and people like that.  The ones I've used before in my own 
job are just basic things, factual knowledge."

     It took me another couple of minutes before my eyes seemed to focus 
normally, and while I was recovering my gaze was drawn again to the vision 
of loveliness in the mirror.  Her eyes gradually cleared, returning to 
their luminous glory.  They seemed even more attractive somehow.  Perhaps 
it was the arch of amusement displayed by her elegantly shaped brows.  She 
put the headset away in a drawer that mirrored the one in my real quarters 
and then looked out of the mirror at me, studying me even as I was studying 
her.  

     The differences, while she stood there passively, were too subtle 
to enumerate yet still very dramatic.  In some way her posture, the 
positioning of her hips, the graceful tilt of her wrists, other things
that I couldn't quite name yet somehow noticed, now declared her 
femininity.  This effect was even more pronounced when she moved about the 
room.  Where the towering spikes at her heels had previously been a 
hindrance, they were now an accent for an elegantly stretched ankle, a 
gently swaying hip.  The image in the mirror pirouetted easily then ran 
her hands over her lush curves with obvious enjoyment.

     All of the sudden her face fell into a most unattractive frown 
of consternation as I woke from my passive observer status.

     "What's wrong?"  Titania asked.

     "That hypno training, it's too strong.  I just wanted to keep from 
looking foolish.  If I move in accordance with the instructions of the 
tape, I'm entirely too feminine, too sensual.  What was that disk about, 
anyway?"

     I looked again at the label.  It was a standard training disk for 
field agents who needed to go undercover, providing instinctive responses 
appropriate for their assignment.  The particular one I had selected was 
labeled, "20th Century, American, Call Girl."  

     "What's a 'Call Girl'?" Titania asked, reading the label even as 
I did.

     "I don't know," I answered.  "I think it was some sort of 
communications worker, information-on-demand or something."

     The girl was pretty, too, the one that they had used as a model for 
the activities.  Titania had made my new appearance spectacularly 
beautiful so that had been another reason for selecting this particular 
tutorial.  

     "Well, no time to worry about that now," I said, turning away 
from the terminal.  "We have just enough time to make it to the 
Admiral's office, if we move like the tape said we should."

     The towering heels I wore did inherently limit my stride to something
more like the girl on the disk, but it seemed that the other required 
mannerisms retarded my progress even more.  Carefully placing each foot 
in a single narrow line required a pronounced hip motion just as the 
tutorial indicated, though that seemed to make moving in the heels easier.  
All the energy expended in secondary motions seemed wasted, though.  Why 
was it necessary to put that extra wiggle into each step?  And why was it 
appropriate to spend so much time flipping my hair, first over one shoulder 
and then the other?  And most of all, why was it appropriate to smile at 
each man we passed from behind heavy-lidded eyes, slowly licking my lips 
if the man returned the smile?    

     "That last man needs to see a doctor," Titania whispered in Xora's 
ear.  "His pulse rate and blood pressure were dangerously high."

     I turned back to see if the man truly needed help.  His eyes were 
lowered; fixed on the rippling globes at the top of all those legs Titania 
had given me, but he didn't seem to be in any pain.  Unless you counted 
the obvious discomfort behind his zipper, which for some reason I was 
noticing.  The man caught my backward glance and smiled again, but his 
expression turned to a sigh of some inexplicable loss when I stopped at 
the door to Admiral Jones' office.  

     "Well, his vital signs are stabilizing now," Titania reported.  
"It must have been some transient condition."

     "Right, whatever.  Well, here we are."  With that, I pushed another 
of the painfully harsh door announcement buttons.  A clear, penetrating 
soprano that signified a robosec invited me in.

     "Take a seat, please," the robosec invited.  "The admiral will be 
with you shortly."

     A melodious giggle, clearly not from the admiral, sounded from the 
inner office.  In another moment the door opened and Commander Tryx 
walked out, still looking back over her shoulder into the further room.

     "Why Jonesy," Tryx giggled again, "I didn't know you cared."

     "Get out of here," came a growl from the hidden room.  "And don't 
come back until you learn some manners."

     "That'll be a loooong time," Tryx promised, ducking as a wadded up 
chunk of paper whizzed by her head.

     She slid the door shut behind her as though she needed the protection, 
then turned to go.  Only then did she see me sitting in the anteroom chair. 

     "My, my, and who are you?" she asked.

     I stood up, still unsure why that required such a sinuous motion of 
hips and knees, and said, "It's me, Xora."

     "No!" Tryx denied the claim, but her eyes lit up with barely-contained 
humor.  "I never knew you had it in you, old boy."

     "Well, I suppose you could say that before yesterday, I didn't" I 
chuckled in turn, still compelled to trail a lazy tongue over my lips 
whenever someone smiled at me.  That caused yet another widening of Tryx's 
incredibly blue eyes.  

     "Have you seen the admiral yet?" she asked me.

     "No, my appointment is just now."

     Tryx gave a warm, but full giggle as she turned to go, murmuring 
more to herself than to me, "What I wouldn't give to sit in on this 
meeting."  

     *I wonder what she meant by that,* I mused.  

     "I'm sure I don't know," Titania replied.  "She's human, not a 
symbiont."  

     Just then the robosec called, "You can go in, now, Commander."

     I marched, well, actually that body didn't seem very martial, 
especially with those imprinted skills.  Whatever.  I walked over to the 
door and rapped smartly on the frame.  At a snarled comment of some sort 
from within, I opened the door and made my loose-limbed way to the obvious 
visitor's chair.  Sitting in it seemed to occur in stages, with tight-
squeezed knees pivoting gracefully to one side while full hips swayed the 
other way.  All that motion seemed to make my rigid waist an eye-magnet as 
it settled smoothly into position.  Elegantly-long fingers brushed a 
thick handful of all that dark hair out of my face, as though caressing a 
delicate cheek before supporting it through an elbow resting easily on the 
arm of the chair.

     There was a long pause as all the moving parts settled into position 
before I heard my voice give a breathy, "Good morning, Admiral."

     "Uh, call me Jonesy, everyone does," he replied, the words spilling 
from his mouth by reflex.  His brain was obviously not in gear while his 
eyes were trying to lift from the oscillations still damping out in my new 
equipment.  

     He finally lifted his eyes to meet the laughing green ones I knew I 
displayed.  It was like I was watching someone else as my fingers took 
that moment to slowly pull a long strand of liquid midnight from over my 
shoulder and twirl it around my slender fingers.  That was both capture 
and release for Jonesy.  It focused his eyes on something a bit more 
mundane than my new shape, while at the same time freeing him from the 
display put out by my new skills.  

     "Goddamn, not *another* one," he grumped.

     "Pardon me, sir?" I asked.

     "What is it with you high-order pairings that you turn out to be 
the most arousing women in the galaxy?  First Tryx wraps that incredible 
waist in a skin-tight bodysuit, and then you come in here with motions 
that make my back hurt just to watch you."

      "Would you like me to give you a backrub?" I asked, my husky tones
laden with messages that only a eunuch would consider subtle.

     "Did she put you up to this?" Jonesy demanded.  "Who are you really?"

     "Who?"  I asked, honestly confused.  

     "Tryx.  She told you to come in here, instead of Xora, right?"

     "Sorry, Admiral, but I am Xora.  There seems to be more to adapting 
to the symbiont than I had expected."

     "Now that's an understatement," Jones replied.  "You seem to have 
changed even since our earlier call."

     "Oh, that," I responded.  Something from the disk training kept me 
from stammering, forcing my low, musical voice to a smooth flow of words.  
"Well, it's a long story.  Not all the changes I have incorporated into 
my experiments are immediately reversible.  To compensate, I absorbed a 
hypnotutorial in the interval since you called.  I may have picked the 
wrong one."  

     "Hrmph, well, I suppose that depends on what you wanted to get out 
of the tutorial.  I can confirm that you act like this new form is quite 
natural for you."

     "Thank you, sir."

     "Don't call me, 'sir'.  Too many of the rogues in this organization 
have made it clear what they think of authority figures.  I'll take Jonesy, 
if you please."

     "Yes, sir, uh, Jonesy."  

     With a sigh that seemed to claim the weight of the world on his 
shoulders, though that impression was undermined by a quick lick of his 
own lips as my new, um, bust levitated slowly during a somewhat deeper-
than-usual breath, Jones got into his briefing.

     "Have you given any thought to your first assignment?" he asked.

     "No, sir, uh, no, Jonesy.  I assumed you would have something for 
me to do."

     He nodded, then continued, "Obviously, with the low-order pairings 
there would be a period of acclimatization.  However, you and Commander 
Tryx don't seem to need that training.  Professor Inchbod's report on 
your ability to handle the test chamber was most positive.  Nonetheless, 
we do have an unusual situation with you.  Most of our field agents have 
already had training in codes, surveillance techniques, unarmed combat, 
that sort of thing.  It would seem that you should now go through that 
training."

     "It would seem?" I picked up on the key phrase.

     "Yes.  However, we have a particularly sticky situation that requires 
only observation.  If things go as expected, there won't be any need for 
the full range of field agent skills.  I had intended to hold it for 
Commander Tryx, but it may be that you could take it on instead."

     The arch of an elegant brow was my only response.  It provoked a 
bit of a flush in Jonesy's face, but a continuation of the briefing as 
well.  Though that continuation was actually a quite personal question.

     "How comfortable are you in the appearance of a woman?"

     "Comfortable?" I repeated, stalling for a moment.  "Well, there are 
no physical discomforts.  Before I took the hypnocourse there were some 
coordination concerns, but learning how to move acceptably seems to have 
damped out most of those.  If all that's required is the appearance of 
a woman, I think I can cope."

     Then one of those heavy-lidded glances smoldered for a moment as 
I went on, "Of course, I'd need some additional, um, instruction if 
anything more than appearance were involved."

     *God, did I just offer to let him teach me about sex?* I gasped 
internally.

     "That's what it sounded like to me," snickered Titania.  "You're 
not a very nice girl."

     *I'm not a girl at all!* I claimed frantically.

     "You'd have a hard time convincing Jonesy of that," Titania giggled.  
"Oh, dear," she continued, "I think that hypnotraining has influenced me 
as well."

     The flush on Jonesy's face was more pronounced than ever, but after 
a moment he managed a gruff, "Yes, quite.  Well, here's the situation.  
The planet of Machovia has applied for Federation membership.  According 
to our charter, we have to grant them at least associate membership if 
they comply with our protocols on human rights.   Frankly, they don't seem 
to.  On Machovia it seems that women are little more than chattel slaves.  
However, the representatives from that planet have found loopholes in the 
protocols that they claim justify their social structure."

     "Loopholes?" I urged him on.

     "Yes.  Well, it seems that Machovian women are often, perhaps even 
usually kept in restraints of one form or another.  When we told the 
Machovians that this was unacceptable, they claimed that only prisoners 
were restrained, and that this was acceptable under the protocols.  
They also pointed out that our charter grants Federation planets the 
right to define and enforce their own internal laws.  If they define 
some sort of law that results in essentially all women becoming criminals 
and subject to restraints, we can't stop them."  

    "What about the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments?" I 
asked.

     "Well, as widespread as restraining women is on Machovia, the 
criterion for unusual becomes vague; a planetary culture issue and they 
have the right to do what they think is best.  However, you have hit the 
key issue.  We can deny them membership if the punishments are deliberately 
cruel, without justification through proportionate effectiveness at 
legitimate goals like prevention of escape.  Our legal precedents for 
cruelty focus on two issues.  Anything done expressly to cause pain is 
cruel.  Restraints may be uncomfortable, but they must be loose enough 
to avoid deliberate pain and adjusted frequently enough to prevent 
discomfort from becoming acutely painful.  The second legal issue deals 
with sexual relationships.  Any form of forced sex, or sex as a condition 
for privileges or release is expressly forbidden."

     "I see," I said, though really I had no idea where this was headed.

     "Oh, good," Jonesy said with a sigh of relief.  "I'm glad you're 
willing to consider it."

     "Consider what?" I asked.

     "Why, going to Machovia in the guise of a woman, of course.  So 
that you can see for yourself, on our behalf, if any cruelty exists.  
Commander Tryx indicated that it would be no problem to deal with 
restraints through her symbiont.  In fact, she said, the symbiont 
could even protect her from most forms of cruelty, at least until help 
arrived.  I can assure you we would come to your aid immediately, if 
you need us."

     "You want me to go to someplace where they're likely to slap me in 
chains at the least excuse, just to see how far they go when I'm 
helpless?" I spluttered.

     "That seems to sum it up pretty well," Jonesy agreed.

     I was just about to tell him where he could put that idiotic mission, 
when my mouth locked shut on me, instantly filling with that damnable 
rubbery mass again.

     *I though we agreed you weren't going to do this sort of thing to 
me anymore,* I snarled mentally.

     Titania's whisper in his ear had a note of urgency I had not heard 
before, "I'll let you go in just a second, but I had to have a chance to 
talk before you refused the mission.  Please, don't turn it down before 
I have a chance to talk with you."

     Titania sensed my consent even before a coherent thought was formed 
and I felt myself able to talk again so quickly that Jones never realized 
what had just occurred.  

     "I'd like some time to think about it," I declared.

     "Very well," the admiral agreed.  "When can you let me know?"

     "Can you have some of the reports on Machovia sent to my 
terminal?" I asked

     "Of course," Jones agreed.  "I'll do that right away."

     "Then I'll let you have my answer in the morning."

     With that, I swayed to my feet with that same sinuous grace I had 
shown on entering.  An automatic heavy-lidded smile caressed the admiral 
as I made my way to the door.  His flush returned in full force, and as I
left the room I heard him muttering again, "God damn, sure as hell IS 
another one.  Like I needed two of those bombshells in my organization."