Whose Body Is It, Anyway?
by Brandy Dewinter
Chapter 4 - Communications 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."
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