IMPERSONATION

"You want to what??? Change into a *woman*? Complete with breasts and
. . . ? Biting off a bit more than you can chew, aren't you, my dear?"

"Belle, will you lay off me with your doubts and second-guessing and
above all, your damnable nagging and leave me in peace for a change!"

Dressing up as a woman was nothing out of the ordinary for Frank. He
had done it often enough. Transvestism was the current fashion in the
academic set, and even drastic cross-gender behavior was nothing much
out of the ordinary.

Frank had a slim build and was only a couple of inches above average
height. With a bit of padding at the chest and hips and application
of appropriate emoluments, he could convincingly mimic the appearance
of a woman. The difficulty lay in mastering the gestures: walking and
talking like a woman, performing common, everyday actions in the style
of a woman, acting like a woman, *being* a woman in all the essential
ways but one. And even *that one* was a surmountable barrier . . . if
he availed himself of certain resources.


The Alumni Association Masquerade Ball was the grand social event
of the season at the Highsmith Institute of Applied Thaumaturgy. A
successful Ball helped raise sufficient funds to build much-needed lab
facilities, pay salary increases for the faculty, and avert a strike by
the maintenance staff by paying *their* salary increases as well.

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, 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 shocked 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.