A Wish the Heart Makes: Fornever in Blue Genes

by Tigger

Chapter 10:  Training Camp

A week later, a tired, but pleased Cat settled into the second
bed she had ordered installed in her friend's room.  Things
had gone well once they had both gotten over the initial
embarrassment of seeing each other, with Matt, now Mandy as a
woman.  And what a woman, Cat sighed inwardly.

Fortunately for both of them, the combination of Mandy's lack
of stamina and Cat's lovingly ruthless training program had
left her charge with little energy for exploring her
sexuality.  On the downside, however, was the simple fact
that, at the rate Mandy's new body was getting into shape,
that ploy would not work long.  As good as her own fitness
level was, Cat could not afford to drive herself as hard as
was rapidly becoming necessary if she was going to continue to
exhaust Mandy.  She had to maintain her own alertness, after
all, and Mandy was becoming one very fit female very quickly.

A thought hit her.  Maybe it was time to involve someone else
in the process.  MacPherson was fit and had a good, cool head
on her shoulders.  Good in a fight, too, as Cat had learned
the hard way.  She did not have to know who they were
protecting or why, so Mandy's secret could remain protected. 
Adam and Robert wouldn't like it much, but Cat knew she was
going need help, maybe even backup, and her gut told her she
could trust the carrot-topped MacPherson.

Just as she decided that she had everything under control,
Mandy shifted in her sleep and the coverlet fell.  A shapely,
rose tipped globe peaked at Cat in the dim light of the
sleeping chamber.  Cat Donovan groaned.  Another good reason
to get Morag MacPherson in on this.  She could be the practice
dummy once they started the self defense lessons.  Cat figured
she could handle being in a clinch with Mandy for all of about
30 seconds before she took the girl to the mat and had her
wicked way with the little virgin.  A soft purring sound
issued from Mandy and a sensual smile slowly lit her sleeping
features.  Cat pounded on her pillow.  Sleep did not come
easily that night.  

~--------------~

For herself, Mandy was not sure what to make of the young
woman in the uniform of her company's Security Force.  The
sleek, elasto-polymer jumpsuit had been designed for ease of
movement and for the wearer's protection.  In fact, it was
woven of a special fiber that absorbed the kinetic energy from
impact weapons and then dissipated it as light.  The suit was
also highly resistant to edged weapons cutting through it. 
However, it also fit the wearer like a second skin, showing
every bump and bone.  Mandy's still thoroughly male mentality
could not help but notice and approve because Morag MacPherson
had very nice bumps and bones, indeed.

She was probably being paranoid, she told herself, but finding
someone she did not know in her inner sanctum had shaken her
badly this morning.  The young security officer had taken up a
position just inside her bed chamber so that Cat could answer
nature's call.  The terrified scream Mandy'd cut loose the
moment her befuddled wits had registered that the person was
not Cat had brought that worthy person charging out of her
shower at a hard run with death in her eyes.

In hindsight, the entire scene had been comical - something
out of an early Twentieth Century slapstick movie.  A
stupefied MacPherson trying to get close enough to Mandy to
calm her. A badly frightened, screeching Mandy scooting around
in her night shift, trying to keep the bed between herself and
the unknown intruder.  Poor, confused, then furious Cat,
standing on the bed, naked and dripping, trying to bellow over
the general hysteria and restore some order.  And then, the
ultimate indignity when the duty nurse activated the
restraints because her board readings indicated that Mandy was
on the verge of hysteria.

*Have to do something about that as soon as Bob says those
things can come off,* Cat thought. *That makes it too easy for
the bad guys if we ever do get penetrated.*

After introductions, and Cat's embarrassed admission that she
probably should have waited to bring MacPherson until after
Mandy was awake, things settled.  Except for a bad scare and a
bump on her head from the fall Mandy had taken when the
restraints activated, the only real casualty had been
Catherine's dignity from her nude dash across the apartment.

Actually, Mandy mused, most of the results of that little
comedy were quite positive - at least from her perspective. 
The leg restraints were gone, and the hand restraints replaced
by gentler ones that locked her hands together in front of
her, so she could catch herself if she fell with them
activated.  The apartment was being rapidly reconfigured with
a bathroom directly accessible from the bed chamber.  No more
trekking across the lab/apartment to go potty or to bathe.  

But, best of all, she'd finally gotten to see Catherine
Donovan in all her feminine glory. *God, but that was a whole
lot of beautiful woman,* Mandy thought.  A curl of desire
twisted in her belly and she fought that thought back into her
hidden mind.  "You have no time for that," she told herself
sternly.  Then her mind whispered back, *Still . . .*

"Miss Mandy?"  The soft, oddly accented voice of the young
woman broke in on her reveries.  Mandy looked up from her bowl
of hot cereal.  "Is something wrong with your breakfast?" 

"No . . . no," Mandy stammered back.  "It's fine.  I was just
thinking.  That's all.  Ummmm, Officer MacPherson?"  Her name
being spoken so softly brought her quickly to full attention. 
"Could you please just call me "Mandy"?"   No, the last thing
she needed was anything else new added to her name to confuse
her more than she already was.

Morag was not so certain.  "I dunno, ma'am," she said
deferentially.  "I dinna think the Chief would cotton ta me
usin' yer proper name, ma'am."  

Delighted with the young woman's softly rolling brogue, Mandy
nonetheless took charge. "Let me worry about Cat, Officer
MacPherson.  She will do as I ask."

"Oh, and will I?" came a sardonic voice from behind.  "And
just what am I going to do, Mandy?"

The young security officer looked like she wanted to hide
under the table, but Mandy just turned and smiled at her old
friend.  Cat recognized that smile, too - it was the one that
Matthew wore when he was about to throw a fox among the
chickens.  "Why, I was just telling Morrie, here, how I wanted
all the people close to me to call me by my given name, Mandy. 
She was worried you would not like it."

"Don't you think that might be just a little too familiar for
a body guard, Mandy?"

Mandy tried a little lip quiver and voice quaver, just to see
if it worked on Cat as well as those ploys used to work on
good old Matthew.  "Aren't you my body guard, too?  You call
me Mandy." 

The answering grin told Mandy that she did not have meek
feminine wiles quite down, yet.  "Oh, I suppose.  Particularly
since it is very hard to be all that respectful when you are
kicking someone's butt and cleaning their clock for them. 
"Morrie," and Cat gave that familiarized version of
MacPherson's name heavy irony, "is going to be your sparing
partner when we start mat work in self defense."  Cat let her
grin become devilish.  "Did I tell you, Mandy, how she took me
down the other day when I tried to penetrate her security
position?"

Mandy swallowed hard and looked between the grinning Chief and
her increasingly uncomfortable subordinate.  Why, the girl was
in absolute awe of Donovan.  Well, Matt Sorenson had been in
too many verbal skirmishes in his, now her life to give in
that easily.  "Good," she answered equitably.  "Then she can
teach me how she did it so I can do it to you, too."

A single dark brow lifted on Cat's face.  She crossed her arms
and looked at the now cold bowl of mush.  "Well, if that is
your goal, I suggest you finish eating.  You are going to need
a *lot* of teaching and time is a-wasting."

~------------~

That evening, Cat and a very tired, very sore Mandy sat in the
small living room after a light dinner.  Morrie, as she was
slowly becoming comfortable being called, was going to have
the graveyard shift and had been sent to bed.  Mandy was
"doodling" on the computer pad and Cat was savoring a very
excellent de-alcoholized brandy.  She would have preferred the
real thing, but she was on duty.

"MacPherson is very good," Cat observed to break the silence. 
"She gave you just the resistance you needed to improve your
form on the techniques without making it too easy on you." 
Mandy made an inarticulate noise that might have been
agreement and continued to stare at the screen in front of
her.  "What are you looking at?" Cat asked.  Matt Sorenson had
often been like this when something caught his attention, so
Mandy's lack of a clear response did not surprise Cat very
much.  She moved over behind her friend to see better.

Rolling 3-D graphs, numbers and equations were seemingly
haphazardly strewn about the screen.  A newly polished bright
red fingernail (a gift from the head nurse, Teri something,
Cat remembered) traced from the numbers to the graph below and
then back again.  Curious now, Cat cleared her throat and
asked her question again, louder this time.

Sea green eyes looked from the screen to her.  "Just looking
at Bob's raw data on the successes and failures during the
cultured cell tests.  There is something there we really don't
understand," she mumbled to herself.

"Why?" Cat asked sharply enough to keep Mandy from drifting
away again.  "What is it that you don't understand?  Maybe if
you can simplify the problem enough for me to understand, it
might help you."

Mandy sighed and pushed herself back from the desk.  She
reached up and took Cat's snifter and took a taste.  It was
much too strong for her newly virgin palette and she broke
into a paroxysm of coughing.  "Smooth," she choked out as Cat
chuckled at her friend.  

Regaining her composure, Mandy pointed again to the screen,
this time to the complex equations at the top of the screen. 
"These are the basic models Bob developed to predict the male
to female transition genetic interactions, and these," her
fingers moved to a similar set of equally incomprehensible
equations, "are the same thing, only for the female to male
transition.  Using these equations and a human subject's
starting genome signature, we can develop a simulation of what
should happen to that person if we were to attempt the change. 
If we run that simulation using a Monte Carlo routine, using
the GPD as the base input, while constraining it only by what
we know are fatal, non-viable gene sets, we can predict how
often the transitions should be successful.  We can also
figure out what made the unsuccessful ones fail.  Okay so
far?" she asked Cat.

Cat nodded slowly, and Mandy continued.  "Well, without
intervention, that is, without first changing certain specific
genes to avoid known non-viable gene sets, Bob's model
predicts about a 70% viability rate and no male/female gender
based variation in the success rate.  When he intervenes to
change non-viable combinations before transition, or when he
uses gene sets that do not have some critically lethal genetic
codings, his predicted success rate is effectively one hundred
percent and still no gender related variation."

Then she sighed and pointed to the tabulated numbers.  "Only
when he ran the tests on cultures containing live human cells,
the numbers were far short of that and also showed a sharp
variation in survivability based on gender.  25% of the guys
made it to being living girl cells, and about 60% of girl
cells made it safely going back the other way.   But that
wasn't the only nasty surprise.  It seems that a transformed
person who was orginally male is some how intrinsically
different, at least from a "retransformation" point of view,
than someone who was born female.  That was totally unexpected
and the reason I am going to be Mandy for the rest of my life. 
Simply stated, we found out you can't go home again. 
Surviving male to female transitions always failed reversing
the transition."

"What about female to male transitions?"

"Oddly enough, they seem to survive at about the same rate, if
a little lower, than the born males undergoing initial
transition to female."

"And you have no idea why?" Cat asked.  "Sure sounds sex
linked to me, at least the way I understand sex linked
characteristics from my school days.  Something missing on a
guy's puny little Y chromosome?"

"Yes, to us, too, but the numbers are wrong for it to be a
gene site on the X chromosome.  If it was a guy, with one X
chromosome, a gene would be either good or bad - so it should
be 50% success rate.  Women with two X chromosomes would have
a better chance, 50/50 on each X, so the net success rate
should be about 75%.  In both cases, the predicted numbers are
too high to allow for the possibility of experimental error
being at fault.  Besides, we have already accounted for
effects like that in the equations."

Cat puzzled over that.  "Even for something as outside the
ordinary as a sex change?  Do you really know the genetic code
that well?"

A gamine grin lit her friend's face.  "Got me there, Big Cat. 
No one tested for sex changing during the development of the
GPD because no one thought it would be possible to control so
many variables.  Even if they could have thought of a way to
test them for that."

"Okay.  So assume you don't know how the genes would react to
that.  What else could it be?"

A frown clouded Mandy's face.  "I don't know, Cat.  My
understanding is that, for the most part, genes work singly. 
Or at least in some understandable combination.  Eye and hair
color for example aren't quite that simple, but most
genetically defined characteristics are.  In fact, that is how
we define them - a genetic effect is tied to a gene site on
some chromosome.  But then again, my specialty is computers,
not biology."

"We define things that we understand, Mandy.  I don't think
anyone really understands what happened to you.  Not fully,
anyway."  Mandy started to speak and then reeled drunkenly. 
"Oops," Cat said.  "Enough for one day.  You need to get some
rest so you can get beat up some more tomorrow." 

And she reached over and flicked off the computer.  When Mandy
started to protest, Cat held up one hand.  "Give me a hard
time on this, little girl, and I will get Bob to lock you out
of the computers *and then* I will give you a spanking."

"Oh, all right," she pouted before standing.  She started off
for the bedroom and then stopped abruptly.  "Ummmmm, Cat?"

"Yes, Mandy?"

"Can I have a rain check on the spanking?" and she turned
merry, sexy eyes on Cat.  "It sounds quite . . . interesting,"
and then she turned and sauntered into the bedroom before a
goggle-eyed Cat could muster the wit to reply.