I tried to read it on her face. She was a very pretty girl, though young. Raven-black hair, a tan complexion, even, white teeth, full lips, big black eyes capable of considerable expression. And very well developed in spite of her being only sixteen. But she was a woman and treachery could not be far off. Anybody can tell you that treachery and beauty go hand in hand. That's why you have to kill songbirds wherever found. But where women are concerned, it's the other way around. Where killing is concerned, they always choose me as the first target of choice. Piled onto earlier experience, Krak with her hypnohelmets, Miss Pinch with her red pepper and even dear Utanc with her credit cards proved that beyond any doubt whatever! I was learning to be wary. Nurse Bildirjin undoubtedly had something up her sleeve!
She straightened up her tray and gave it a push toward the door. She smiled at me very cheerfully: a very bad sign!
Then she went to the foot of the bed.
She lifted the sheet slightly and looked up under it. "That's what I wanted to see," she said.
Oh, Gods! What had she looked at?
They HAD done something!
It was too much for my already unbalanced wits. I screamed, "PRAHD! PRAHD! PRAHD!"
Nurse Bildirjin was smiling all over herself. "If you mean Doktor Muhammed," she said, citing his Earth name, "I'll get him for you. Oh, this is great."
In under a minute young doctor Prahd (alias Doktor Muhammed Ataturk) came in, followed by Nurse Bildirjin.
He walked over and exposed my chest. There were a couple cup bandages there. He pulled them off and took some chest hair with them.
"You had me under another twenty hours!" I raved at him. "What have you done now that you haven't already done?!"
He pulled the sheet down further, found two more cups on my abdomen and pulled them off. "Tube holes. They've healed very nicely. After you come out of a Magnaspeed, the tube holes have to be closed and healed."
The strap across my lower middle was in the way. He pulled the upper part of the sheet back across my chest. He went down to the foot of the bed and, just like Nurse Bildirjin, lifted the sheet slightly and looked. "Oh, yes," he said. "You've done very well."
Oh, my Gods, what were they looking at? I knew Crobe. I went into terror. "What have I done very well?" I screamed.
"Get the mirror," he said to Nurse Bildirjin.
She had it right there. She held it by my knees and adjusted it. Young doctor Prahd lifted the sheet with the air of a theater manager introducing a new play.
I looked in the mirror.
I almost fainted.
I looked again. I shrieked, "You've made me into a horse!"
"No, no," he said, with professional calm. "That's simply normal. You are so used to one testicle not being there and the other drawn up into the body that a normal scrotum and actually having testicles may look strange to you."
"But the LENGTH of IT!" I screamed.
"Sultan Bey," said Prahd, "you don't seem to trust me. Your skin is all new, your old mis-set broken bones are mended, your vital organs are all fixed up. And although it was a great temptation, I didn't even change your face; I only removed some warts and scars. You will just look a bit brighter and fresher. You still aren't very good looking, so don't be alarmed."
"No, no!" I shouted. "I mean those HUGE genitals!" I could still see them in the mirror. I was aghast!
"Oh, my," tut-tutted Prahd. "Don't you ever take showers with other men? You must be awfully unobservant. For your home habitat, a tumescent size of ten inches is not overly large. Many on Earth have them that size—even bigger. I assure you that your previous one-inch tumescence was too small."
"Oh, I know you cellologists!" I cried. "You couldn't resist doing something strange!"
Prahd thought it over carefully. Then he pushed his straw-colored hair off his face. "No, not really. Of course, you may feel a little more vigorous. Your muscle tone will improve."
"Oh, you can't fool me!" I cried. "You did something peculiar! I'm sure of it!"
He thought once more. Then he seemed to remember something. He turned his bright green eyes on me depreciatingly. "Oh, yes. The catalyzer. It was a pretty complex scene getting all the nerve ends sorted out on the first testicle after it was grown from the gene pattern. And I did leave the other one in the growexpeditor a bit too long. But it won't produce in excess of more than half a pint of semen."
"WHAT?" I screamed.
"But," he said reasonably, "that's no more than a horse furnishes at one time."
"I knew it!" I wailed. "You've turned me into a horse!"
"No, no, no," he said soothingly. "It's completely human. You will produce completely human babies. Really, Sultan Bey, you should trust me. Horses are completely out of style. They have quite enough of them. You are now just a well-equipped male. Of course, you may have the urge to do it a little more often than you used to. And you can probably do it more than once in the same night. But truly, I think you'll find it quite all right."
"Oh, my Gods!" I wept. "I am sure all this will change my whole personality."
"What?" he said, his bright green eyes shooting wide in astonishment.
"Yes," I sobbed. "Ask any Earth psychologist. All a personality is, is the product of cells. One has urges. They come from the reptile brain, the censor and the id. And all that is made up of cells. You have changed my cells and so you have utterly altered my whole character."
"Ah," he said. "In your case especially, how I wish that that were true. Unfortunately, you are just mouthing the superstitions of an uninformed primitive cult: you find it on many backward planets. They try to make men believe that character is inherent and passed on by an evolutionary chain or some such nonsense. In some witch-doctor cults they even go so far as to say a man is totally the effect of his cellular inheritance and therefore can't be changed. It's a way of excusing their inability to mold character. When people try to hold them responsible for creating a criminal society that way, they just glibly say 'a man is just the product of his cells.' It obscures the fact that they are just too incompetent and too criminal themselves to mold character and teach right from wrong.
"Ah, no, Sultan Bey. If cells and glands were all there was to life, I'd be a God, wouldn't I? And I'm not. I'm just a poor cellologist, unpaid, but doing my job anyway, and without even a thank-you from my superior, but suspicion undeserved."
He dropped the sheet. He looked at me. "It's a very sad thing that personality can't be changed just by shifting a few cells. Particularly in your case. But," and he smiled bravely, "one does what one can to relieve pain and make people happier. And I do hope that your increased activity potential doesn't have violent consequences for others or this planet." He brightened up. "Well! That one was successful. You can be up and around and leave whenever you like."
He set the example and inarched out the door.
Chapter 7
Nurse Bildirjin began to sweep the floor and tidy up the room. She seemed in a happy frame of mind but apparently it was too quiet for her. She went over to the radio on the hook, pulled out the earphone jack and turned on the hot pop station.
"Hey!" I said, being pretty tired by this time of "You Are My Monster," "He said I could leave! Unstrap this bed and let me out of here. Where are my clothes?"
"Clothes?" she said. She rushed out and came back with a type of bag they use to hold discarded body parts: Non-Odor Transmitting was on it very plain in Voltarian. She shoved it at me.
I couldn't take it. My arms were still strapped down. It looked awfully thin to have any clothes in it. "That isn't what I wore in here!"
"Oh, we had to throw your suit and overcoat away. They were all full of sauce of some kind. We threw out your shoes, socks and hat, too. This is just your wallets and papers."
I looked at her. Her black eyes might be pretty but she sure was stupid! I decided to be patient. I was immobilized. "Look, Nurse Bildirjin. I need clothes to leave the hospital. Through that window, I can see that it is very cold outside. There is a wind blowing. I cannot walk out there with no clothes on."
She understood that.
"So," I continued, "like the good, sweet, innocent girl that you are, please go out to the office and phone my friend, the taxi driver, and tell him to bring me some clothes."
She got that. She left. In about ten minutes she came back. "I phoned him." She was carrying a disposable bathrobe-and-slipper set. Ah, she did have some sense after all.
She put the bathrobe and slippers down all the way across the room. Then she stood there just looking at me.
It was an uncomfortable silence. I didn't like the look in those black eyes. Even the best of women are the most treacherous beasts ever invented. Whatever she was plotting right now had better be distracted.
"You instigated that operation," I said.
I expected a hearty denial. But she said, "Well, of course! Anyone who would TWICE interrupt a girl halfway through is undersexed. Such a person couldn't possibly appreciate the finer things of life. And at my first hint, Doktor Muhammed got straight to work. But I am not at all sure that we have put an end to it."
Those black eyes were too bright! "I think," she said, "I should be reassured."
A stir of alarm speeded up my heart. She looked just like women look when they are about to do something sly and cunning.
"Well," she said, "there's only one way to tell."
She raced over to the door and barred it. She came back and turned the radio up louder. She went to the windows and made sure nobody could see in.
My alarm grew.
She tested the straps and buckles on the bed. When
I saw she was not releasing them, my temperature started to go up.
She took off her right slipper. She kicked off her left slipper. She turned her back on me. She was doing something at her waist level.
What was she up to?
There was a shimmer. She bent over and rose again. She was holding her panty hose.
She threw them away!
She set her nurse's cap on the back of her head.
I was glaring at her in alarm.
"That won't do," she said. "Mustn't peek!"
She promptly arranged the sheet so that I could see only through a slit. I could see a corner of the window and the light fixture in the middle of the ceiling. I couldn't see Nurse Bildirjin!
I felt the bed tip: the light fixture slanted.
Oh, my Gods! What did she have in mind?
The bed tipped again.
Frantically, I tried to rise up and see what was happening. The straps prevented it.
A cold draft told me the lower part of the sheet was being lifted.
My eyes almost popped out of my head.
I suddenly divined what she was up to!
Good Gods! This girl was a minor!
Her father was the leading physician of the province. He would kill me if I touched her!
I tried to reconcile myself with the thought that SHE was doing all the touching.
Then I had a vision of her father's shotgun! He was the best quail hunter in all of Turkey. A dead shot!
The idea of me flying hectically into the sky, the boom of a shotgun and me flapping earthward, blurred my vision.
It was too late.
I caught a glimpse of the top of her nurse's cap for a moment. The red crescent was like a blade pointing at me.
"Ooooh!" she crooned. "Lovely, lovely!"
The nurse's cap eased down.
Then the bed began to rock.
The top of the nurse's cap was in my view, then the light fixture, alternately.
I felt my eyes begin to spin in spirals.
The Hoochi-Hoochi Boys and Their Electric Cura Irizvas started a song on the radio. She took their rhythm.
Little bo peep went, do-da, do-da.
Little bo peep went do-da all the day.
Little bo peep, oh do-da, do-da, do-da.
To hell with the sheep,
Let's do-da all the day.
Let's do-da all the day.
Let's do-da all the day.
Let's do-da all the day.
Her nurse's cap and the light fixture were shifting in rhythm to the music.
I was engulfed in a GLORIOUS SENSATION!
Only now and then were strains of the music coming through.
Let's do-da all the day.
It went on and on and on! Both Nurse Bildirjin and the music!
Let's do-da all the day.
Minutes and minutes.
Then bbbbbbbbblowOWIEH!
Earthquakes and hurricanes mixed up with all the celestial chaos of the Gods didn't compare to what occurred!
WOW!
Finally the room quieted down to just a blurred spin.
I lay back panting.
A sort of wonder came over me. Where had this been all my life?
Somebody else was panting. Then the bed shook.
I saw the top of Nurse Bildirjin's cap. She must be standing now beside the bed.
She was muttering to herself. "Prahd says it's awfully good for the complexion. Judging from the amount, I'm going to have the finest complexion in Turkey!"
Suddenly I saw her feet upside down through the slit. She must be sitting on the floor!
"Mustn't waste it even so," she said. "Conservation is my motto."
I couldn't see what she was doing. I heard her crossing the room to the washbasin.
I heard water splashing. Then a silence.
Suddenly the sheet was yanked off my face. She was standing fully dressed beside me.
"Anyway," she said to me with a professional smile, "you will be glad to know that the equipment passes the clinical test. Of course, you lack expertise in the use of your tools. Prahd, I must say, is a much better craftsman."