Assistant Mage Franklin Lewis Wickersham had already been passed over for tenure once, and he couldn't afford another setback. It would mean resigning himself to being a lowly undergrad alchemy instructor for the rest of his professional career. It would mean continuing to cut corners financially and never being able to afford the finer things in life. It would mean putting up with Belle's carping about luchre for the foreseeable future. It would mean the end of all his hopes and dreams for a better life.
Just yesterday, Manfredo Hawkins, head of the Alchemy Department, had approached Frank about the Ball. "Just a thought, old man. If you attended as a . . . well, as a member of the opposite sex, that might sit well with Edgard. I mean, of course, J. Edgard Hoosier, a high muckamuck with the First Royal Countinghouse, who just happens to be one of our major patrons. Contributed five million last year, he did, and his associates raised an additional ten. It's just that . . ."
"Just that what, Savant Hawkins?"
"Well, my good fellow, Edgard seems, ah, a bit eccentric in certain of his . . . preferences. His weakness happens to be men who have crossed the Great Divide and become women. No, no! I'm not speaking of transvestites, transgendrals, or even partial transforms. I mean complete parasexuals. It's the esthetic clash of sensibilities, the conflict between nature-given form and function, the cognitive dissonance that hits one between the eyes when things are not quite as they seem. In short, he's a throwback to the libertines of centuries past, and a randy old goat to boot. Calling him homogay or even bisexual couldn't begin to do him justice. More precise might be 'pansexual' or even 'omnisexual,' or perhaps just plain omnivorous. No, don't get me wrong. I'm not asking you to have carnal contact with the fellow . . . necessarily. Just satisfy his appetites to the point that, well, the point that he'll be amenable to our request, our request for increased funding this year."
"You're asking me to . . . transfeminize myself, then perform acts . . . intimate acts with this, this Edgard Moneybags fellow? You want me to prostitute myself" just because the school is short of money?
"No, Frank, not just for that . . . but because you owe me one."
He owed Mannie Hawkins more than one. Much more -- his career, his position at the school, his marriage to Cybele -- his very identity.
Frank had been a menial -- a broom pusher and a window washer -- when Hawkins had intruded into his life, and changed it irrevocably. The peremptory summons to a Savant's office, in fact, to a department head's office, had come as a total surprise. Could he have offended someone? Had he perhaps left the windows streaky in the Alchemy Building? What in the Sixteen Gehennas was this all about?
"How would you like to participate in an experiment, Frank?"
"A what? Surely you jest."
"I'm deadly serious, my good man, and you might want to mind your manners."
"My apologies, sir. Didn't mean to be rude. I know I'm only a clean-up man, but I do take pride in my work."
"Frank, just between the two of us, you strike me as being very intelligent, perhaps too intelligent for your assigned station in life. Well, possibly I can offer you a chance to improve yourself. What would you think of that?"
"Improve myself? That doesn't put the coin of the realm in my pocket. Just how much does this so-called experiment pay?"
"Only a nominal gratuity, unfortunately. Fifty ducats, to be exact. But it will change your life. My sincere pledge on that."
It involved mesmerism, of course. Deep mesmerism. Restructing a person's self-image and belief systems was analogous to doing major chirurgy, but in this instance it was psychic chirurgy. The subject's index of cogitation potential was at the high end of the normal range, so it was only a matter of adding about 30 MEQ-equivalent marks to bring him to the desired level. Certain abilities required enhancement. A newly concocted elixir, Neurpromazine-B, increased the nerve-impulse propagation speed, and as a side-effect, dissolved inhibitions against knowledge acquisition.
Frank lugged the stack of bound volumes into Savant Hawkins's antechamber.
"Heavy going, huh, squire?" the scrivener asked.
"I appreciate your concern, Mistress Amelia, but each of these has opened a new world to me. It's like getting the key to a magical doorway. I feel as though I were a child again, and everything feels new and fresh and waiting to be discovered. Me! This is the fellow who never had a single book in his house. The fellow who spent five hours a day watching the conjure-vision tube. The fellow who sleepwalked through life."
"So now you're the great intellect. My word, I'm impressed." Amelia sniffed. "The Savant will see you now."
"We're at a critical stage in the Pygmalion Project, Frank. You're easily as intelligent as many of the instructors at this university, and if you lack book learning, we're well on our way to remedying that. The question is, what's the next step?"
The next step was infiltrating Frank onto the faculty. Frank Williams assumed the identity of Franklin Lewis Wickersham, visiting Scholar of Bohemian Necromancy "from a major faculty back east." Some minor cosmetic chirurgy had effaced most of the resemblance to a former janitor (not that anyone takes any particular notice of the maintenance staff anyhow). That, and some diction lessons eased him into his new role.
". . . and your dissertations are due by the beginning of next week. That will be all for the day, ladies and gentlemen."
"Savant! Might I speak with you for a moment?"
Gennie de Haarlem, one of the lesser lights in the class, bounded up the steps to the podium of the lecture hall.
"Yes?"
"I can't quite seem to wrap my mind around the Principle of Similarity, Savant Wickersham. Could you possibly illuminate it?"
"My dear child," he sighed, "it is only the basis for much of the industrial magick that supplies the motive force for our kingdom's economy. If two objects resemble each other in certain critical attributes, then there necessarily exists an underlying connection between them. It follows that manipulating the one object affects the other.
"Permit me to demonstrate." He picked up a sheet of vellum and formed it into a cone. "You see, this resembles -- in rough outward form only -- one of your sweet mammaries."
Gennie blushed scarlet.
"Now, observe as I stroke the palm of my hand over the surface of the parchment."
The young woman clasped a hand to her bosom and began giggling madly.
"As you see," he said, "you can actually feel the touch of my hand on your own . . . flesh."
"Does that mean, Savant," she forced out between giggles, "that if I should grasp my extended middle finger like so . . . "
There was a tingle in his loins as Wickersham felt her caress mirror itself in his . . . Damn! She did have a bit of the Touch, after all!
"Away with you, silly girl! You understand all too well." He couldn't resist giving her a quick swat on her pert behind as she fled out the door, still giggling.
Perhaps he should have taken her up on the implied offer. Belle wouldn't have particularly minded, not being the jealous sort, and it could have been one of his last opportunities for male-role sex for a good while . . . assuming things worked out as planned, that is.
In bed, listening to the soft breathing next to him, he began having doubts. Certainly there was nothing in the least bit sacred about gender roles -- men changed into women, and vice-versa -- all the time. Conjuration technology had long since blurred the distinction between the sexes, but, damn it, Frank liked being a man. Sure, he sometimes let other men penetrate him in his hind passage as the urge struck him, but that was commonplace, and it certainly had nothing to do with who he was, with his gender identity. Transmorphing all the way into an opposite-sex person, indistinguishable from any other woman physically, even capable of conceiving and bearing -- now that was something else again. But he could hardly refuse. A "request" from Hawkins was tantamount to an order.
Ah, well, it was still early and the night was long. He rolled over and awakened Belle with a gentle kiss.
A radical paragendric procedure is always a chancy undertaking. Frank was panting and perspiring freely, and not all of that was due to the stifling heat inside the sealed oaken cabinet within which he was confined. Hawkins had done this often enough that it was almost routine, or so he said. But still . . .
The droning incantations of chanting savants and their apprentices vibrated the walls of the enclosure and lulled him into a trance state. His mind drifted into a reverie of happier times and he remembered when Hawkins had introduced him to an unmarried sister of his, the woman who was to become the love of his life. Cybele was an aging spinster, much past marriageable age, but still somewhat maidenly in appearance due to heavy usage of costly youthening elixirs. She was desperately hungry, hungry for a companion. And Frank was her quarry.
An older woman. Much too old for him. Frank had been repulsed at first. But there was something about her eyes, her touch, the words she whispered in his ear, and . . . he had gradually fallen under her spell. Was it a potion in the tea she brewed for him? Was it the carnal pleasures her lush flesh hinted at? Was it the promised touch of burning-hot nether lips? Whatever the case, Frank was ensorceled, enslaved, and thoroughly besozzled by the magickal essence of her being, and Belle had never given him cause to regret a single moment of it.
He remembered the first time they had . . . loved. Frank had been visiting, and since the hour was growing late he had prepared to take his leave. Leaning over to give her a farewell buss on her lovely cheek, he was moved to the depths of his soul when she turned her head slightly to catch his lips on hers. The shock of it had nearly sent him into a swoon, and when he recovered his senses he was in her arms and the two of them were unclothed and it was the most natural thing in the world for him to enter her dark mystery and . . .
It was even hotter now, and breathing was like trying to inhale live steam. Now the impenetrable dark shattered in a silent detonation as Frank felt his body melt, then begin to reassemble, but something had gone wrong, badly wrong. . . .
"One, two, three . . . awaken!"
Francesca blinked her eyes. "Where . . . what . . . ?"
She was lying on a soft surface resembling a sort of bed, but with a smooth black covering. It wasn't leather, nor was it any other material she immediately recognized.
"Miss . . . "
A bearded man came into her field of view. He was wearing a tunic cut in an unfamiliar style, with matching pantaloons.
"I was getting a mite worried there. You failed to come out of the trance and I had to resort to . . . "
Two sets of memories clashed within her mind. She was . . . he was being magicked into a woman . . . being hypnotized to erase troubling delusions of living a different existence . . . of a world where sorcery and sex-change magic was commonplace and . . . and everything snapped into place.
What foolishness. No rational person believed in magic, and for a chemistry professor at the Highsmith Institute of Applied Technology to let herself slip into a fantasy world would be professional suicide. In fact, that was why she was undergoing intensive hypnotherapy. Therapy that had finally begun to sink in.
"Thank you, Doctor Frankenheimer. I'm feeling better now, and since the clock shows we're running late, I guess I'd best be on my way."
Just time enough to hop into her BMW sportster and meet Eddie Hoosier at the restaurant. She'd promised Manny, her department head, that she'd be sweet to the old fart so he'd pony up more grant money. Who knows -- might even hop into the sack with the dude if he didn't have bad breath.
* * *
BUYING TIME
It's a hundred dollars to use the sex machine in the public restroom. Insert a couple of fifty-dollar coins into the payment slot to remain anonymous, though of course it's more convenient to just let the data terminal do a neural scan and auto-debit your account.
A hundred bucks buys ten minutes. Upon payment approval, the mirror slides back, revealing an oval opening. Depending on the option chosen, the window gives access to either bare buttocks or an erect penis. That leaves the customer the choice of either penetrating or being penetrated.
I'm pretty conventional in my preferences, so I usually choose BUTTOCKS-FEMALE, and, depending on my mood at the moment, insert my hard flesh into either the exposed pussy or asshole. Every once in a while, I get an itch deep inside my gut and touch the selector for PENIS-(LARGE). Then I give in to my deepest, darkest desires and scratch that damn itch by easing myself down on a hard cock.
There's also the BUTTOCKS-MALE option for those preferring to fuck male ass. I've indulged in that often enough, but still find little essential difference between the sensation of being inside a male or a female ass. Real connoisseurs, though, claim that plundering a man's ass is the caviar of sex. Active-penetrative sex, anyway. That's likely somewhat of an exaggeration.
I stepped onto the Mu-metal platform and fed the last of my carefully hoarded spare change into the slot. I prefer the anonymity that cold, hard cash gives, and anyhow my e-bucks account has been flatlining lately. Being jobless does have its disadvantages.
The autosensing hydraulics adjusted my elevation to optimal height opposite the service window. This puts the customer's groin (or ass) directly opposite the the opening. What would I choose this time?
Well, why not? Since I was now flat broke, I might as well have caviar. I stroked the keypad and the window gave me access to a perfect ass.
Slowly, reluctantly I withdrew out of that buttery-smooth, pleasure-giving orifice. Caviar indeed! I was still horny and ready for another go, but my time was up. And I had other concerns. Such as where my next meal would come from and where I was going to sleep tonight. I girded my loins, drew on my breathing mask, and steeled myself to step out into the cold, heartless night.
I had to admit it -- I was an addict. A sex addict. I was no damn good at all at relating to real people, so that pretty much left the sex machines for physical release. And an unfortunate side-effect of being such a boob in social situations was that I couldn't hold down a job for very long. If there's anything more pitiful than a sex addict, it's got to be a friendless, jobless, flat broke sex addict.
I was about to go cry in my beer -- if I could scrounge together enough for a beer, that is -- when I caught the flashing notice on the sex machine display panel. NOW HIRING. Sex Machines, Inc. [SM, Inc.] has openings for Customer Service associates. Earn a good wage doing something you enjoy! Choose your own hours. No experience necessary. Just enter code SEXYY%543 to start an EXCITING and GLAMOROUS new career.
Customer service? I guess you might call it that, since it did involve "servicing customers." It had a much nicer ring to it than prostitution. Still, it was an intriguing notion, all the more so since I didn't have a hell of a lot of options.
I spent an hour filling out questionnaires on an ancient vintage input terminal in the potted-palm studded lobby of the SM, Inc. Tower. My employment history, references, general state of health, and sexuality index -- all the usual stuff. Though why did they need to access my genetic and psychometric profiles? It wasn't as if I were applying for a high-level security position, after all. But since I was hardly in a position to play stubborn, I thumbprinted the waivers.
The terminal printed out a visitor's pass. I was to report to room 13703. Hoowhee, the one hundred thirty-seventh floor. Moving up in the world, I was.
"Kindly step into the testing lounge, sir," the receptionist said. She was a cute little package, a tiny blonde with curves in all the right places. Her eyes were icy steel marbles.
The door clicked shut behind me. The only furniture in the room was a padded mechano-table with restraint devices at each corner. There was a very tall woman standing on the far side of it. She looked at me. Her eyes widened momentarily as if she knew me from somewhere, but I couldn't tell for sure.
"You are . . . Armin?"
I nodded.
"I am the regional SM staff supervisor and your examiner. You may address me as Galatea. Kindly undress. Comple
tely." Her voice was unyielding as granite.
"Come here. Spread your legs." She took my genitals in her hand and palpated them for what seemed like hours. Her touch was cold.
"Turn around. Bend over with hands on knees, and spread your legs. Keep perfectly still." I felt her probing between my ass cheeks, then something cool and slippery was being inserted into me.
"It's only a finger. Stop squirming! Now get up on the table and lie down. Please. Flat on your stomach. Spread-eagle your arms and legs."
Galatea took my left arm by the wrist and began fastening a strap around it. "Hey, what's going on?" I croaked.
The Syntax of Seduction Page 34