Nat and the Vigilante/Part Two

A clearer sky appeared overhead, though a bit cloudier than the sky in the Decatur before last, and they saw moving cars appear in the street and pedestrians on the sidewalk. Nat let go of Stefan's hand.

"I hope they'll be all right," he said.

"They're pretty well stocked," Stefan replied. "Maybe too well; some of the things you packed for them might be too heavy to haul around for very long." He started walking toward the MARTA station entrance.

On the westbound train to Five Points and the northbound train to Buckhead, they talked intermittently about their experiences of the last few weeks, then about their plans for the future.

"I'm not looking forward to getting back into that lawsuit," Nat said sourly. "Captain Rapid sent a letter to the judge and the lawyers saying I was called away on urgent State Patrol business, and the judge declared a recess for a few weeks; I think the next court date will be just a few days from now. Whenever that's over I'll be able to go back to seeing clients regularly. Not that I need the money anymore, but I hate to keep canceling appointments people have been waiting a year or so for. I've got a business trip to Tokyo coming up in a couple of months, to change some people there who decided it would make more sense for them to pool their money for my airfare than for all of them to fly to Atlanta at various times; I sure hope this will all be over by then."

"I'm afraid I have no useful advice for your situation," Stefan said; "I've only been sued once, and I responded simply by leaving that timeline and not returning. The daughter of an author who had, in another timeline, written a bestselling novel that I'd brought over to that timeline and sold to a publisher -- giving due credit, as always -- thought she should get all the royalties from it; she sued both me and the publisher."

"I'm surprised that doesn't happen more often," Nat said.

"Perhaps it would, if I stayed in one world for longer at at time. It also helps that I usually deal in works that would be public domain anyway even if they had been published in the target timeline. I suppose after we part, I'll do some book shopping and then go hunting for a timeline where some or all of the books I'm carrying were never written. And for this winter -- northern hemisphere winter -- I've been considering a trip to Tasmania, to scout around for a timeline where thylacines are still to be found. Let's see," he said, taking an appointment book from his satchel, "I need to meet Mr. Holcomb and Mr. Kensington in Savannah on January 28, and escort them to this world; perhaps you would like to meet us when we arrive? At the fountain in Forsyth Park?"

"I'll do that," Nat said.

"And then in April -- let's say, on the sixteenth, when you'll have already finished your taxes? -- I'll return and escort you to a world where Ms. Ziglar's baby will have started on solid food. Perhaps I should meet you at your home or clinic, and we could drive to the Cartersville of this world before jumping?"

"Sounds like a good plan."

When they got to Buckhead and walked to the GSPA headquarters, though, Nat's car wasn't in the parking lot. That wasn't the first thing he noticed, however. There was a new wing of the building that wasn't there in his home timeline; judging by the recently-planted saplings around it, it had only recently been completed. Where the older part of the building was drab, generic 1960s rectangular, the new wing was bright, with compound-curved walls and windows, almost ethereal; he recognized John Portman's influence, and, he thought, something else too...

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Ah, it seems I did not strike the right timeline at first. We'll try again in a moment. Let's take a closer look first, though, shall we?"

They approached the new wing. Stefan seemed to know exactly what he was looking for: a bronze plaque set into the wall near the main door.

"Natalie Holcomb Memorial Annex

"Based on designs by Natalie Holcomb, 1985-2008; paranormal, architect, friend."

As they stood reading the plaque, someone walked out of the building, glanced at them, and then did a double-take.

"Nat?" the woman asked. It was Polyphonia.

Before Nat could answer, Stefan grasped her hand and they were standing in a larger parking lot next to the familiar, unmodified GSPA headquarters.

"Sorry," he said. "That would have been a painful scene; I should have thought of that possibility before I took you there..."

"Maybe talking with her would have been awkward," Nat said angrily, "but now she's going to think she's gone crazy, seeing a ghost!"

"Oh, I don't think so; she probably recognized me as well as you, and she'll figure out more or less what was going on after a few moments' thought. She will probably be angry with me if I ever go back to that timeline, but at the moment I have no plans to do so."

Nat's car wasn't parked here, either. They jumped twice more before they found a world where it was parked where he had left it.

"I guess I'd better report that I'm back, before I go home," Nat said. He walked toward the main entrance, and Stefan followed.

"Hi, Parvati," he said to the receptionist. "Who all's around? I don't want to stay long -- I've got a long drive to get home -- but I wanted to tell the Captain that I'm back from that trip I took with the Worldwalker."

"The Captain's at a crime scene with several other officers," Parvati said; "Metatech's the highest ranking officer here right now. Shall I call him...?"

"No, I don't guess so. Just tell the Captain I'll email him my report, and if he wants to see me in person, Zach or Fernspringer can teleport me up here sometime in the next few days."

They left the building.

"Well," Nat said, as he stood by his car with his keys in his hand, "I guess I'll see you on January 28, right?"

"Yes," Stefan said. "Or maybe a little sooner... could I get your home phone number and address?"

Nat scribbled them out for him.

After stopping for supper in Dublin, Nat got home about nine; she'd changed at a gas station in Pulaski, as she didn't want her neighbors to ever see her male self entering or leaving her house. She was pretty tired, and went to bed as soon as she'd changed out of her ill-fitting clothes. (After packing his suitcase with food and survival gear for the vigilantes, he'd left almost everything he'd brought with him in the hotel room, except for his wallet and keys and the male clothes he was wearing.) She slept late Tuesday; after breakfast, around noon, she called Melanie, Zach, and Peter Flannery.

"I'm back," she said to Melanie. "It was an interesting trip. I guess you can start calling the people whose appointments got canceled in the last month and giving them new appointments soon, okay? I'll do five a day six days a week for as long as it takes, except on court days. Make sure they know the new dates are still tentative because of the lawsuit..."

"I'll have work for you again soon," she said to Zach. "Starting tomorrow I'm seeing clients again."

"What all happened? Did they find the vigilante while you were working on changing back their victims?"

"We found him," she said. "It's a long story. I'll tell you all about it in between clients tomorrow, OK?"

"So what's going on with the suits?" she asked Peter Flannery.

double-check chronology; how long were Stefan and Nat gone?

"The custody suit is still dragging out," he said; "my guess is that the judge will decide for Ms. Voss, but it's too early to be sure. The five weeks' recess in the tort suit is over next Tuesday; we need to be in court at 10am that day. Mr. Voss's lawyer might finish up his case Tuesday, or possibly Wednesday; then we'll start presenting our own evidence, starting with your testimony and Ms. Voss's. Dr. Vandiver flew out here you were away; he talked with the girls, and testified for Ms. Voss in the custody suit. He gave me a list of dates when he could come back to testify for you in the tort suit; if Mr. Voss's lawyer finishes presenting his evidence Tuesday or Wednesday, as I expect, I'll ask him to fly out on Thursday and testify for us Friday."

"That's good. And Rae Nan, and Dr. Keilty?"

"They'll probably testify Wednesday or Thursday. But there's been another disturbing development..."

"What?"

"Mr. Voss seems to have more than a little political influence. I hear that there will probably be a bill introduced in the next legislative session to repeal or amend the Paranormal Business Act; a couple of candidates for the legislature, one running for an open seat and one seeking reelection, have both said they're going to do something about it."

"Uh-oh. I guess we'll have to deal with that when the time comes... But after a year in this business I guess I've got the money to hire my own lobbyists this time. It can't affect this suit, can it?"

"No, the suit will be tried under the laws in effect at the time you changed the girls, even if it drags out until the next legislative session, which is very unlikely. And the Paranormal Business Act is of little relevance to the tort suit, and only slightly more relevance to the custody suit; they really hinge on whether you and Ms. Voss harmed the children by changing them into girls. How the Paranormal Business Act interacts with the original custody agreement so that you did or didn't have the right to change them without Mr. Voss's permission -- that's just a side issue, though we have to respond to their allegations and arguments about it anyway. It might affect the amount of damages if you lose, but probably not the outcome of the suit. I just wanted to give you some warning about how the proposed changes in the law might affect your business."

It was afternoon of the third day before they met anyone. The first day, after discarding some of their own luggage and dividing up the other Nat's gifts between them, they'd set out going southeast; they were still amid the ruins of Decatur at sunset, and they took shelter for the night in a Wal-Mart on Memorial Drive. Nat guessed they had gone just a couple of miles; hauling their heavy suitcases, they'd had to stop and rest frequently.

Next morning, with sunlight coming in the broken doors and windows and a few holes in the roof, they scrounged around amid the wreckage left by previous looters to see if they could find anything useful. Most of the clothes were long ruined with mildew, but things wrapped in plastic were still good, and they managed to find some bras and panties in Mike's size, as well as camping backpacks, into which they re-packed the contents of their suitcases for easier carrying. After breakfasting on canned beans and peaches, they set out again going roughly southward, following the main roads. The pavement was cracked and dotted with grass and weeds and occasional trees, mostly pines and sweetgums, most small but some twice as tall as Mike; several times they came to an area where waist-high kudzu covered the road for a long distance. Before the sun reached its zenith they took shelter again, in a house whose door had been broken off. There was a skeleton on the bed, and another in the bathroom; the cabinets and closets of the kitchen had been stripped bare of anything edible. After briefly glancing around the house, they ate another can of beans, then spread a parka over the the slightly mildewed sofa and laid down, resting until the hottest part of the day was past. Mike soon fell asleep, but Nat lay awake, alternately wondering what lay ahead and cursing her other self and the Worldwalker for stranding them here.

As Mike woke up, she sleepily snuggled closer to Nat. After a couple of minutes, when Nat was sure she was awake, she asked: "You ready to start walking again?"

"Why hurry?" Mike said. "Maybe we could stay here a few hours longer; you could change one of us..."

"Not now," Nat said. "For one thing, I think we should keep moving. We don't know how sparse the settlements of survivors are or how long it will take us to find them, and we need to find them before our food runs out. For another thing... if one of us gets pregnant here it would really slow us down; I'm not sure we could get to Savannah in time to meet the Worldwalker."

"Good point," Mike said, and got up.

Late in the day, just after they crossed I-20, they met their first pack of wild dogs. There were six of them, mutts of a wide variety of sizes and colorations. As they approached, Nat changed what appeared to be the pack leader; she yelped and chased her tail for a few moments, and the other dogs looked and sniffed at her curiously, but that didn't slow them down for long. Within a couple of minutes the dogs were upon them. Nat and Mike laid into them inexpertly with the hunting knives they'd found in the other Nat's suitcase; after one dog was killed and two others badly wounded, the survivors ran away. But Nat had taken a bad bite on her right wrist. Mike treated the wound with Bactine and bandaged it. Though it was still an hour or so till sunset, they stopped at the next house they found with an intact roof; the front door was locked, but a back window was broken, and the back door was unlocked. This house had no skeletons in it, and the furniture had suffered less from mildew than that in the other; they spent the night on a king-size bed, falling asleep almost as soon as they laid down.

Wednesday they walked south, with frequent rest breaks, from dawn till about noon, then took shelter from the heat in an A.M.E. church, stretching out to rest on the back pews after Mike had changed the bandage on Nat's wound. It was the first time Nat had been in a church of any denomination since she'd run away from home, and it felt strange. They were almost out of water, and had been forcing themselves to take a sip only when their thirst became extreme.

The weather had remained clear. The burning smell they'd noticed when they first arrived in this world had diminished as they went south, but it was still noticeable, especially when the wind blew from the northwest. They spotted a few rabbits, numerous squirrels, two cats, and a fox, but fortunately no more dogs. It was an hour after they left the church that they heard a human voice.

"Who's that?" called a raucous voice from off to their left. They looked, but didn't see anyone; that side of the road was covered with a dense growth of young pines, like most of the yards in this formerly residential area.

"We're friendly," Nat called, "we don't mean any harm."

"Your voice sounds funny," said a young black man, stepping out from among the trees. He was dressed in a leather breechclout, and carried a longbow, with an arrow nocked, ready to aim at them. "I haven't met many white guys but they didn't sound like you. What's your business here? It's an odd time of year for trading, and if you're hunting or scavenging, you shouldn't be in our territory."

"We're not men," Mike said, "we're women."

"Well, go along then," he said; "Uncle Milton doesn't hold with girlie shows here in Panthersville. You might try Kelleytown or Conyers."

Nat stared at him, dumbfounded; that wasn't what the letter from the Worldwalker had led her to expect. Mike was puzzled at first, but then something clicked into place among the memories she'd been soaking up from this young man.

"We're not men pretending to be women, like those singers and dancers who came through here a few years ago," she said; "we're real women, maybe the only ones in the world, certainly the only ones around here. Your uncle won't be happy to have you send us away."

The young man approached a little closer, cautiously. "I guess you do look a little bit like the pictures," he said. "Not exactly, though. Why's your hair so short? And shouldn't your chest stick out more?"

Nat sighed, and wondered what kind of pictures he'd formed his idea of women by.

"Women's breasts are all different sizes," she said. "And there's nothing inherently female about long hair, or male about short hair. How old were you when the last woman around here died?"

"Two," he said. "Well... toss all your weapons over here, and then let me blindfold you, and I'll take you home and let Uncle Milton figure out what to do with you."

They tossed their hunting knives down about halfway between themselves and the young man. He quickly knelt and slipped them into his belt pouch, then laid his bow aside and approached to blindfold them with strips of leather.

"My name's Natalie, and this is Michelle," Nat said as he bound her eyes, wishing she had thought to bring the matter of names up earlier; what if Mike wanted to use another name? "What's yours?"

"Lucius of Panthersville," the young man said. He bound Mike's eyes next, then, from the sound of it, picked up his bow again. He put a cord into Nat's hands, and the end of it into Mike's. "Hold onto that, and follow me." Soon there came a tug on the cord, and they started walking.

It was slow going; they followed the road a short distance further south, then left it, apparently following a trail through the woods that had grown up around this 1970s subdivision. Nat and Mike tripped over roots or lost their footing on uneven places in the ground every few minutes. After a while Mike pleaded for a halt to rest, which Lucius granted; but he didn't let them remove their blindfolds. Some minutes later they continued on. "Here we are," said Lucius finally, taking off their blindfolds. It was past sunset, almost dark. They were at the edge of a cul-de-sac, its center kept clear of weeds, though just behind them the pavement had been cleared away and trees grew. All the yards of the houses on the cul-de-sac and the section of street that led to it were lush gardens, growing corn, cabbage, tomatoes, okra, and several things Nat didn't recognize. The houses on the cul-de-sac looked to be in better repair than most of the ones they'd passed on their way here from Decatur; several had all their windows intact, and the others had their broken windows boarded over. Some showed signs of repairs having been made on their roofs.

There were three men working in one of the garden patches; they looked up as Lucius and his guests emerged from the forest at the end of the street. One of them stepped out of the garden onto the cul-de-sac, and scowled at them. When they drew nearer, he said:

"You look a bit more convincing than the last girlies we saw around here," he said, "but you're still not welcome. Lucius, why'd you bring them?"

"They said --" Lucius began, confused; Mike interrupted.

"We look convincing because we're real," she said. "Maybe the only real women in the world. You sure you want to send us away?"

The other men working in the garden approached now, and a couple of men emerged from one of the houses. The older man who'd accosted them looked more closely at them; his eyes widened and his jaw dropped.

"Where did you find those girls?" he asked Lucius.

"They were walking south on Panthersville Road," the young man said. "They said they were women, but I wasn't sure, so I brought them back here for you to see."

Nat was exhausted from the long walk with the heavy backpack, and sore from tripping and falling several times while blindfolded; she didn't think she could use her power until after she got a good night's sleep. Maybe if one of these guys tried to rape her, she could dredge up the energy from somewhere to change him, but it would probably knock her out...

"They do look pretty real," the older man said. "And their voices... I haven't ever heard a eunuch that sounded like that. Maybe we shouldn't send them away just yet..."

"Prove it," said one of the men who'd come out of the house, a white-haired man wearing glasses with the left lens cracked and the right earpiece much repaired with tape.

Nat was at a loss; Mike, not so much. "There's only one kind of proof you'll accept, right?" she said, and took off her shirt, then her bra. "Is that enough, or shall I go further?" Her free hand was on the button of her pants. The older men stared at her; Lucius and the other younger men stared too, but in a different way, Nat thought.

"You look real enough to me," the first man said dreamily; then, "Beg your pardon, ladies, our manners are twenty years rusty. Until you showed up we thought there were no more women anywhere."

"Nat's as female as I am," Mike said to the man with the cracked glasses, as she put her bra back on; "but don't ask her to prove it, or you might regret it."

"As far as I know we're the only women around," Nat said. "We'll explain where we came from later, but we're pretty tired right now. Maybe we can talk more in the morning?"

"Ladies," said the older man who'd first approached them, "you can set your own terms and stay as long as you like, and have the first and best of all our crops and game as long as you stay. If you want to stay permanently, we'd treat you like queens."

"Thank you," Nat said. "Could you please show us to a place we can spend the night? Like I said, we're really tired from walking all day."

Within a few minutes, the older man -- Lucius' Uncle Milton? -- had led them into the house at the head of the cul-de-sac, and shown them two single beds in adjacent bedrooms, with reasonably clean sheets. The windows were open. Nat secured her door with a chair, then closed the window, and laid down; but she soon grew too hot, and opened the window again before she fell asleep. Mike laid down under her open window, which faced the cul-de-sac; she heard voices excitedly discussing the new arrivals, though she could only occasionally make out specific words. The men were still talking animatedly when she fell asleep.

The remainder of the week was uneventful; Nat changed twenty-five people Wednesday through Saturday, then five more Monday. Tuesday she got Zach to come early to teleport her to Atlanta; she dressed in one of the suits she kept at his apartment and rode MARTA to the courthouse.

Ms. Voss was there already, with her girls, waiting in the lobby for their case to be heard.

"Good morning, Ms. Voss. Hi, Jack; hi, Cecil."

"Hi, Ms. Holcomb," the girls answered.

"Mom said you had to go off to another world on superhero business," Jack said. "What was it about?"

"There was someone with a paranormal power like mine who was changing people who didn't want to be changed," Nat explained as she sat down. "I changed back a lot of them, and I helped figure out who was doing it."

"Did you fight them?" Cecil asked.

"No," Nat answered. "I'm not very good at fighting."

"What did they look like?"

"...I can't really tell you very much about this case, at least not yet." She didn't want to prejudice people against her other self or his partner, for when they eventually arrived here in January; she'd have to do some creative lying to get the GSPA to help them with identity papers and so forth.

"Just a little bit," Cecil said. "Were they like the aliens that invaded a couple of years ago, or more like people?"

"Oh," Nat said, realizing Cecil -- and her Mom? -- had misunderstood what kind of other world she'd been to. "No, all the people there were human, like us. It wasn't another planet, it was just a different Earth."

Jack's eyes widened. "Like the one the dodos came from?"

"Yes, like that. Not the same world, though. I went there and came back with the Worldwalker, the same man who gave the dodos to the zoo."

"Ms. Holcomb," Ms. Voss said, "I need to ask -- has anything changed since we talked last? You still feel the same way...?"

"Sure," Nat replied. "I'm not going to change the girls back unless they want me to, or unless the court orders me to. There's no reason for that to change."

"Please don't," Jack said. "I don't want to have haemophilia again."

"I won't, if I can help it," Nat told her. "And even if the judge tells me I have to, I'll appeal it if my lawyer thinks it would do any good. But I don't really understand everything that's going on; if the judge or jury tells me to change you back and I refuse, they might send me to jail. Or they might just tell me to pay your father a heap of money; I can afford to do that. We'll just have to wait and see."

Mr. Voss arrived then; he ignored Nat and his ex-wife as he approached his daughters. Nat discreetly got up and moved to a chair on the other side of the lobby, so as not to overhear their conversation. It looked like the usual, he trying to convince them to change back and they refusing. Ms. Voss put in an angry word now and then, audible if not understandable from where Nat was sitting.

The lawyers arrived over the next few minutes. Peter Flannery sat down next to Nat and they talked briefly about Nat's trip to the other world -- she told him she couldn't say much about it, as the case was still open. Mr. Voss and his lawyer moved over to another corner, while Ms. Voss's lawyer, and the two young court-appointed lawyers representing each of the girls, sat near her. Before long they were all called in to the courtroom, where they sat waiting in their various places for some while longer before the judge arrived.

After the preliminary ceremonies, the judge addressed Flannery. "Are your client's police reservist duties completed for the moment?"

"Yes, your honor."

"And is the case likely to be interrupted again by her sudden absence?"

"Criminals do not commonly consult the convenience of the State Patrol when scheduling their crimes, your honor," Flannery said drily, "but it is only two or three times a year, on average, that my client's special skills are needed for police work."

"Let's hope they are not needed again soon. Well, to sum up where we left off five weeks ago: Alan Voss alleges that the custody decree in his divorce from Margaret Voss requires the consent of both parents for non-essential medical procedures, and that Natalie Holcomb changed their sons Jack and Cecil Voss into girls without the permission of both parents. He alleges that the children are likely to suffer psychological trauma from the change, and seeks to have them changed back into boys, and damages on their behalf for emotional stress, to be paid into a trust fund to be managed on their behalf by Neal Voss, Carl Linnear, and Janice Fulton. Natalie Holcomb alleges that she changed the boys in good faith, having been reliably informed that Ms. Voss had full authority to authorize the change without their father's permission; that, under the Paranormal Business Act, this change in sex is not legally a medical procedure in the sense in which that term was used in the custody decree; and that the children are adjusting well to being girls and are not likely to suffer psychological harm from that state. Margaret Voss alleges that, whether the change was a medical procedure or not, it was medically necessary to cure the boys of haemophilia, and that psychological harm is unlikely. Alan Voss counter-alleges that since their haemophilia was not of life-threatening severity, a cure for it was not medically necessary; he also alleges that the psychological trauma he expects to result from this sex change may be worse than the haemophilia. Jack and Cecil Voss allege that they like being healthy girls better than being haemophiliac boys and do not want to be changed back. Are there any objections?"

All five lawyers indicated their agreement with the judge's summary.

"Very well. Will counsel for the plaintiff please proceed to call his next witness?"

Leo Harcourt, Mr. Voss's lawyer, several years younger and handsomer than Peter Flannery, stood and said: "I call Dr. Mark Petrucci."

A tall, lean, grey-haired man, maybe in his fifties but probably older, emerged from the gallery and went to the witness stand. Nat hadn't met him before, but he had read about him in the summary of witnesses to be called that Peter Flannery had given him.

The lawyer began with the usual questions establishing Dr. Petrucci's name, address, profession, and qualifications. He was a clinical psychologist, and said he had treated several patients suffering from gender dysphoria.

"Have you examined Jack and Cecil Voss?"

"Yes, on two occasions recently."

"In your opinion, is their case similar to that of any other patients you have treated in the past?"

"It is very similar to one particular case."

"Would you describe that case for the court, please?"

At this point Ms. Voss, after briefly conferring in a hushed whisper with her lawyer and her daughters' lawyers, escorted Jack and Cecil out of the courtroom.

"Some years ago," said Dr. Petrucci, "a young man came to me for treatment. He had recently attained his majority and wished to see a different psychologist from the ones his parents had been taking him to. When he was an infant, the doctor circumcising him had made an error, resulting in a severe mutilation of his genitals. Another specialist whom his parents consulted recommended performing sex-reassignment surgery, removing the damaged male genitals and forming the best possible approximation of female genitals, and giving the child hormone therapy to make it develop as a girl."

"And was this procedure successful?"

"Physically, as successful in his case as in any other we know of. Only a careful medical examination would have revealed that he was not naturally or entirely female. However, his psychological development was less healthy; he was never comfortable with the female role his parents attempted, on the advice of the psychologists they consulted, to impose on him. He answered to the feminine name they called him by, as it was the only name he could remember being called, but he made a very atypical girl, to say the least.

"Things got worse when, in his early teens, he found out about his parents' well-meaning deception. He refused to answer to the feminine name he had gone by until then, and chose a masculine name for himself; he refused to wear skirts or dresses -- he had already been disinclined to wear them except on formal occasions -- and he declared his intention of having his true sex restored as far as medically possible, with his parents' help if possible, or without them after he attained his majority. His parents, at that point, were willing to help, but their insurance refused to pay for any further reconstructive surgery; they stopped the hormone treatments, and gradually saved up money for a masectomy, which was performed a year before I first met him, when he was seventeen."

"And how would you describe him then?"

"Angry, bitter, conflicted, depressed. Even after his parents gave up their attempts to make him live as a girl, he never got along well with them; his relationships with classmates at school were poor, and he had almost no friends. I treated him for three years, primarily for depression and gender dysphoria; he intended to save money for further reconstructive surgery, but found it difficult to hold a job for very long, and his poor impulse control made it hard for him to manage money. Finally he took his own life."

The lawyer let that last statement hang in the air for a while before he asked his next question. Nat knew Dr. Petrucci was being vague about some details because of doctor-patient confidentiality, but there wasn't much point; everything he'd said was public knowledge, as less than a year after Paul Tate's suicide his younger brother had written a long, damning article about his case for the _Atlantic Monthly_. When Nat's identity had been made public, he had gotten probably half a dozen copies of that article mailed to him, as well as several articles about transsexuals being murdered or committing suicide, by various people trying to persuade him to use his power or not to use it.

"Do you see any similarities between this case and the case of Jack and Cecil Voss?"

"Indeed. In both cases boys with no previous signs of gender dysphoria had their physical sex changed at the request of one or both parents. In both cases the boys show no sign of any predilection for female gender roles. I find it significant, for instance, that they still go by 'Jack' and 'Cecil' and have not permitted their mother to feminize their names."

"In your expert judgment, are the Voss children likely to suffer psychological trauma similar to that suffered by the unfortunate patient you described earlier?"

"I cannot easily quantify the risk, but I think it is significant. At a minimum I would be surprised if they do not suffer some degree of depression and identity conflict, if not in the short term, then probably when they reach puberty. Severe depression and all its potential consequences are not unlikely."

"If the Voss children were to be changed back into boys today, is it likely that they would suffer long-term harm from this episode?"

"The sooner they are changed back, the better; but yes, it's possible that permanent harm has already been done. This confusing experience of spending a few months as girls, at this crucial period of their lives, could lead to gender identity confusion later on."

"Thank you, Dr. Petrucci. No further questions, your honor."

A few moments later Peter Flannery rose to cross-examine. "Dr. Petrucci, do you think the difference in the sex-reassignment procedures used in the two cases is likely to make a difference?"

"Well... I understand Ms. Holcomb's paranormal power to function very differently from traditional sex-reassignment surgery and hormone therapy, but I doubt that that would affect the essence of the case. It might make a difference if Ms. Holcomb changed an infant, but in this case, the Voss boys were already well socialized in masculine roles by their parents and their peers by the time they were changed. If my former patient had a masculine personality well formed before his male glands were removed, which proved resistant to the effects of female hormone therapy continued for more than a decade, I think Jack and Cecil's even more solidly formed masculine personalities will probably persist in spite of the natural hormones their bodies are now producing."

"Are you aware of the research recently published showing changes in the brain structures of people affected by Ms. Holcomb's power?"

"No..."

"We will put that research in evidence at the proper time, your honor," Flannery said, aside. A year ago the paranormality doctor who had studied Nat when her power first appeared had asked her permission to publish a paper based on his research notes, now that her identity had been made public, and she'd agreed; he'd published a paper in a neuroscience journal four months ago. Of course Harcourt would have seen Dr. Keilty's name in the list of prospective witnesses Flannery had presented some time ago, but apparently, for whatever reason, he hadn't told Dr. Petrucci about him.

"Dr. Petrucci," Flannery continued, "how does the fact that Jack and Cecil were asked for their permission before being changed, and consented, affect your prognosis?"

Dr. Petrucci squirmed slightly. "We must take their age and maturity into account," he said, "and consider the fact that several adults they trusted, particularly their mother, went to considerable lengths to persuade them to accept the change. Neither of them fully understood what the change would involve; Cecil, in particular, had and still has a very childish understanding of female biology. The fact that they consented to the change does not prove that it is good for them."

"You spoke earlier about possible long-term harm. Does that mean that you've seen no evidence of any short-term harm?"

Dr. Petrucci hesitated. "I see no direct evidence that they are unhappy with their state. However, it appears that they are not adjusting well to being female; there is the name issue, which I mentioned earlier, and their disinclination to wear skirts or dresses..."

"Is a preference, by a girl or woman, for pants over skirts and dresses a strong indicator of gender dysphoria?"

"Not in itself, no, but in connection with other factors it may be suggestive."

"My client promised the girls that they could change back at any time, after giving the female state a fair try. If they develop dissatisfaction with their bodies or roles at some future time, though that hasn't happened yet, they can ask my client to change them back and she will do so as quickly as possible. How likely is it that they would suffer serious psychological harm between the time they first experience dissatisfaction and the time they are voluntarily changed back?"

"Still fairly likely, I'm afraid. People sometimes suffer from depression or gender dysphoria silently for years before seeking help. In the case of the Voss children, the conflict between a dissatisfaction with being female, and an understandable aversion to having haemophilia again, might induce them to put off a decision until they've already suffered serious trauma."

"Well, then, how would you compare the probability of psychological trauma in this case with the probability in the alternative case? Boys with haemophilia, frequently in conflict with one or both parents about how much physical activity they can safely be allowed, frequently excluded from their friends' activities because of their health issues... Are psychological problems significantly more likely to result in one case than in the other? If so, in which?"

The psychologist hesitated. "I have less experience with patients with physical disabilities than some psychologists," he said, "but in my experience severe depression is more likely to result from gender identity conflict than from suffering a well-understood, treatable disease like haemophilia."

"Thank you, Dr. Petrucci. No further questions, your honor."

Harcourt next called Dr. Roche, the girls' former haemophilia specialist, and questioned him about the severity of their haemophilia; he established that with current haemophilia treatments, their life expectancy was nearly as good as that of non-haemophiliacs their age. Carolyn Gregory, Ms. Voss's lawyer, cross-examined, and brought out details of the treatments required, the pain and inconvenience of the thrice-weekly infusions of clotting factor, and the bruises and haemarthroses they still suffered regularly in spite of said treatment, sometimes bad enough to require hospitalization.

Finally Harcourt said he was finished, having called all his other witnesses and presented his other evidence weeks before. When he concluded and sat down, Nat realized that Ms. Voss and the girls had returned to the courtroom at some point.

Flannery rose then and called Nat, the first witness for the defense.

"Please describe your first meeting with Margaret Voss."

"She came to my clinic, having made appointments for her sons. I told her at first that it was my policy never to change anyone under eighteen; I had turned down a number of potential underage clients before, mostly teenagers. She pleaded with me to reconsider, and explained that her sons had haemophilia, and told me something about the genetics of haemophilia. One of my adult clients had been a haemophiliac before I changed her, and had mentioned me to Ms. Voss; so she had evidence that my paranormal power would cure haemophilia. I told her I would do some research and think about it, and talk to her again later. I also asked her to get a letter from their haemophilia specialist about whether he thought the change was necessary for their health."

"And what was the result of your research?"

"I talked with my formerly haemophiliac client about her experiences, and I did a good deal of reading about haemophilia, and decided I would change Ms. Voss's sons if they gave informed consent. But I wasn't going to change them on their mother's say-so if they objected; the boys' haemophilia specialist said the change would probably help, but didn't say it was medically necessary."

"And did they give consent?"

"I had long interviews with Ms. Voss and with each of her sons, separately, a week or so after I first met them. At the end of those interviews the boys were still undecided; I told them that if they decided they wanted to change, to let their mother know and have her call me. It was several weeks before she called me and told me they had decided to change. When they came to see me a few days later, it seemed clear that they were willing."

"And did it seem to you that they understood what the change would mean?"

"When I first met Ms. Voss, I advised her to talk to her sons about the differences between boys and girls before she returned for their next appointment. When I talked with them later, it seemed that they understood that as well as anyone their age; however, after I changed them, it turned out that Cecil had not fully understood what his mother had told him. She was distressed at first; I offered to change her back in a week if she still did not like being a girl. However, when I spoke with her again a few days later, she seemed to have adjusted well, and did not want me to change her back."

"When did you become aware that Ms. Voss was divorced from her sons' father?"

"I got that impression when talking to my former haemophiliac client; Ms. Voss confirmed it when I spoke with her the second time. She said she had authority to make this decision without their father's permission, and I asked her to send me some legal documentation to that effect."

"And what documentation did she send you?"

"After her boys decided they wanted to change, her lawyer sent me a copy of the custody agreement, with a cover letter explaining his interpretation of how it applied to me using my power on the boys, and I sent copies of those to my lawyer, who said it should be fine to change them. I didn't fully understand those legal documents myself; I relied on my lawyer's interpretation."

"Have you had further contact with the girls since you changed them?"

"Much more than with most of my clients. I've talked to them on the phone every week except when I was away on State Patrol business, and I've been to see them at home twice, besides of course seeing them here in court."

"And what is your impression about how well they are adjusting to being girls?"

"Pretty well, as far as I can tell. Some people get awkward and off balance at first after they're changed, and a few need a long time to adapt before they attain the same agility and dexterity they had before; but Jack and Cecil seem perfectly at home in their bodies by now, to judge from how well they ride their skateboards and climb trees and throw and catch things. And they haven't complained to me about any inconveniences of being girls, when I asked them how they were liking it and whether they wanted me to change them back; they insisted they want to stay that way."

"Thank you, Ms. Holcomb. No further questions, your honor."

Harcourt rose to cross-examine. "Ms. Holcomb, did you make any attempt to contact Mr. Alan Voss before changing Jack and Cecil's sex?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"As I said, my lawyer read the custody agreement papers and told me that we didn't need his permission."

"Did you seek out information about Jack and Cecil from anyone else who knew them? Other relatives, friends, schoolteachers?"

"...No."

"Did you ask Ms. Voss to have her sons professionally evaluated to determine the likely psychological effects of you using your power on them?"

"No."

"How much did you charge Margaret Voss for changing Jack and Cecil's sex?"

Nat hesitated a moment before answering, wondering where this line of questioning was going. "I charged her the same amount I charge all my clients: ten thousand dollars for each change."

"About how many clients do you change per year, Ms. Holcomb?"

"Objection, your honor; irrelevant," said Flannery.

"Sustained."

"No further questions, your honor."

Next, Ms. Voss's lawyer, Carolyn Gregory, called Ms. Voss to the stand. After some preliminary questions confirming Nat's account, she asked her: "Can you please describe what happened after Ms. Holcomb changed your sons?"

"I took them shopping for clothes later that same day; just a few things at first, I didn't want to overwhelm them or tire them out. Some nice outfits and shoes and underwear at an outlet mall, and then some old clothes for playing outside in, at a thrift store. The next day, when their clotting factor infusion was scheduled, I took them to the haemophilia clinic, and we had the clotting factor tests done over again. They showed that both girls were healthy, with no trace of haemophilia. After that, as I'd promised them, I took them shopping for skateboards and bicycles, plus helmets and knee-pads and so forth of course. I got out my old bicycle that I hadn't ridden in a while and started teaching them to ride. The next morning they started practicing on their skateboards with their friends in the neighborhood."

"Have the neighborhood children been accepting of your daughters since the change?"

"At first some of the boys they used to play with were reluctant to allow Jack and Cecil to join their games; one or two of them were pretty mean -- but Edward, Jack's best friend, stood up for them, and Jack herself was pretty assertive too, and by now all the neighborhood children have accepted them as still being the same people. Jack has gotten pretty good with her skateboard in the last couple of months, and it's helped her popularity. Cecil plays with her sister and her older friends most often, but also, occasionally, with some girls her own age. I've encouraged Jack to make friends with some girls her age, too, but I've tried not to pressure her too much. There aren't many girls Jack's age in our neighborhood, anyway; she'll have a better chance at that when school starts back, and when she tries out for a soccer team."

"In your judgment, are they adjusting well to the change?"

"Yes. They love not having haemophilia. And they haven't fussed about wearing girl clothes, either, after the first few days. Cecil was upset when Ms. Holcomb first changed her and wanted to be changed back right away; we asked her to try it out for at least a week, but a few days later, after she had started bicycling and skateboarding, I asked her if she still wanted to change back and she said no."

"Thank you, Ms. Voss. No further questions, your honor."

Harcourt rose to cross-examine. Nat saw Ms. Voss scowl at him for a moment, then try more or less successfully to compose herself.

"Ms. Voss, did you ever at any point seek input from your ex-husband about the idea of changing your sons into girls?"

"After I first heard about Ms. Holcomb from Rae Nan Quinlan, I asked my lawyer if I would need to get Alan's permission to have Jack and Cecil changed. He studied the custody agreement and told me that I should be able to do it without his permission. So I saw no need to tell him ahead of time. I called him and told him about the change on Thursday after Ms. Holcomb changed them on Tuesday, so he wouldn't be too shocked when he came to pick them up for the weekend."

"Have Jack and Cecil shown any interest in wearing dresses, or makeup, or having their ears pierced since the change?"

"No. We talked things over before Ms. Holcomb changed them, and agreed they wouldn't have to wear those things until and unless they wanted to, except for wearing dresses to church services and weddings and funerals. The second time I took them shopping for clothes, I bought them one dress each; but they've been with their father every weekend, and he hasn't allowed them to wear those dresses to his church on Sundays. We dress more casually on Wednesday nights at my church."

"Hasn't allowed them to, or hasn't made them?"

"Cecil told me she put on the dress I'd packed for her to wear to church, but her father told her to take it off and put on a boy suit. Jack was getting out of the shower just then and she heard the altercation, so she quietly got dressed in her old suit, even though it didn't fit well."

"Did you at any point suggest that they use more feminine names than 'Jack' and 'Cecil'?"

"...Yes; for a couple of days at first I called them 'Jackie' and 'Cece', but they told me they wanted their names to stay the same, and I've respected their wishes. They've got a lot to adjust to at once without learning to answer to different names as well. I've occasionally suggested they think about adopting new names, not necessarily the ones I used, before school starts, but I haven't pressured them about it."

"Are they playing different games now than before the change, or the same games more or less often?"

"Well, I mentioned they've been learning bicycling and skateboarding; they've also been climbing trees, which I wouldn't let them do before -- we have a couple of very climbable magnolias in our yard. And they've played some other games with neighborhood kids that they couldn't before, football and soccer -- though not with the formal rules, because there are too few players. They've been spending a lot more time outdoors, but they still play video games, or pretend scenarios with toy soldiers and dinosaur figures and so forth, when it's really hot out, or raining."

"But they haven't shown any interest in joining the neighborhood girls in traditional feminine games?"

"Well, Jack hasn't, but as I said, there aren't very many girls her age in our neighborhood. Cecil plays with some girls her age sometimes, going over to their house, mostly when the older kids are doing something they want to exclude the little kids from -- that's always happened sometimes, I don't think it's happening more often now."

"Thank you, Ms. Voss. No further questions, your honor."

"Will counsel for the defense call any more witnesses today?" the judge asked.

"No, your honor. We did not expect the plaintiff to finish so early today; our next witnesses should be available tomorrow, and another will be flying in on Thursday."

"Then court is dismissed for today. We'll reconvene tomorrow at the same time."

Nat woke as dawn sunlight came in her open window. She heard distant voices, but couldn't make out what they were saying, and birdsong. The smell of burning from Atlanta was gone for the moment.

She got up and put on her shoes -- she hadn't undressed the night before -- and went out into the hall. No one was in sight. She knocked on Mike's door; "Are you awake?"

"Just a minute," she said. A minute later Mike opened her door. She didn't look terribly well rested.

"I haven't seen anyone else in the house, but I heard voices outside," Nat said.

"Let's go out, then. I need to ask someone where their outhouse is, or whether we should just go off into the woods..."

They emerged from the hall into the living room, and saw, out the back windows, several men in the back yard, which was largely occupied by rows of corn and okra, but also featured two picnic tables, one aluminum and one of treated cypress, and a fire-pit. There was a fire burning, and two of the men were turning a large hunk of meat -- venison, probably -- on a spit over the fire. Nat and Mike walked out the back door.

"Good morning, ladies," said the oldest man present. "My nephew Lucius told us your names, after you'd gone to bed, but I was unmannerly and forgot to tell you mine. I'm Milton Hayes; this" (pointing to the younger of the two men at the fire) "is Roy Pace, and this" (pointing at the older man) "is Patrick Fine."

"Natalie Holcomb," Nat introduced herself, and "Michelle Kensington," Mike said after only a moment's hesitation. "We've got some food in our backpacks we could contribute for breakfast," Nat added. "Is there anything we can do to help?"

"No, no, just sit tight and relax, you're our guests. Ah, have either of you young ladies ever had coffee? I've still got two packets that seem to be still sealed tight, that I've been saving for a special occasion, and I think this is it."

"That would be wonderful," Mike said. "Um, could you direct us to your outhouse? Or...?"

"Certainly," Milton said. "Roy, could you show our guests to the outhouse?" He moved to take the young man's place at the fire.

The young man shyly approached them and beckoned. "Over this way," he said. He led them off to the left, past the garden patch and downhill a short distance into the woods, where there stood what looked like a metal toolshed. Mike stepped quickly inside and closed the door.

"Where did you come from?" Roy asked Nat, looking at her carefully. "Are there other people like you there? Other women?"

"It's a long story," Nat said; "maybe I'd save time by telling all of y'all at once, at breakfast. But the short answer is, yes, but it's so far away you can't get there and we can't get back."

"Is it all women there, like it's all men here?"

"No, about half men and half women. Same as it used to be here, I expect, before. How old were you when the plagues killed all the women?"

"I was about four, I guess. I don't know for sure. Milton found me wandering around, skinny as a rail, and took me in, along with the other boys he found. I just barely remember my parents and brother and sisters dying. I ate all the food in the house, and then went out; I got into some other houses, where all the people were dead, and found food in their kitchens, but by the time Milton found me I hadn't been getting enough to eat for a while and I would have starved if he hadn't found me when he did."

Nat wondered how many other little boys like him had survived the plague only to starve to death a short while later. Probably most of them.

"I'm sorry," she said. Mike emerged from the outhouse then, and Nat entered.

There was a shower curtain hung up in the middle, with two bottomless wooden chairs on either side of it, a porcelain toilet seat fixed onto each, situated over holes in the bare earth. Several mounds of soft earth behind and beside the chairs showed where previous holes had been filled in. Nat sat down on one of the toilets and did her business. There was a stack of dried corncobs on a low table by the chair, but no paper. She found a five-gallon plastic bucket of water by the door, and a bucket of sand, with which she scrubbed and rinsed her hands, but there seemed to be no soap.

She'd faintly heard Mike talking with Roy while she was inside; as she emerged, Roy was saying "-- How did you know that?"

"I'm observant," Mike said, "and a lucky guesser. Let's head back."

They went back up the hill to the back yards of the houses. When they arrived, there were now six men there; Milton and Patrick were still cooking the meat, Lucius was cooking corn pone on a griddle extended over the fire, and another man they had seen last night but hadn't been introduced to yet was emerging from the house with a stack of plates. Two others were sitting at one of the picnic tables; there were an assortment of cups, mugs and silverware at one end of the aluminum table.

Milton looked up from the fire as they approached. "Have a seat, ladies, breakfast will be served in a few minutes here."

"Thank you," Nat said. "I'm going to go get something first, though." She went inside the house and got her backpack, then returned and sat down at the aluminum picnic table, with her back to the house and facing the fire-pit. Mike sat next to her; Roy, after a moment's hesitation, sat across from them. Nat got the bandages and Bactine out of her backpack, and Mike changed the bandage on her wrist again.

"Is this everyone who lives here?" Mike asked as the corn pone was served a few minutes later.

"All that's left," Milton said. He sat across from Nat, next to Roy; Patrick had squeezed in next to Mike, and the other men were all at the wooden table, two of them working on carving the venison. "There were fifteen of us, at the most, back in 1997 when a group from Decatur joined us here after the smoke from Atlanta drove them further south." He introduced the men they hadn't been introduced to yet: Tony, about Roy and Lucius' age; Jesse, in his mid or late thirties; and Charles, the one with the broken glasses, who looked almost as old as Milton.

"Well," Nat said, "I guess if this is everyone, I could go ahead and tell y'all where we're from and what we're doing in these parts, if you're ready."

"Eat first," Milton said; and they did. He brought a kettle of hot water over from the fire and took a couple of foil packets of instant coffee, with which he made four cups of weak coffee for Nat, Mike, Charles, and himself; the younger men refused it. It was the worst coffee Nat had tasted in months, but she pretended to savor it; it might have been the nectar of the gods to look at the expression on Milton and Charles' faces.

When Nat and Mike had eaten as much as they wanted, and most everyone else was about finished as well, Milton stood up.

"Gentlemen," he said, "Our guest is about to speak. Everyone pay attention!"

Nat stood up, glancing nervously at Mike. "Good morning, all. I'm Natalie Holcomb. I reckon you're probably wondering where we came from, and whether there are more women who survived the plagues where we came from. Well -- yes and no. Where we came from, there wasn't any plague. But we aren't from this world."

A stir, then, several of the men gasping, uttering exclamations, muttering in disbelief... Nat continued quickly. "Our world was like yours until, I don't know exactly, at least twenty years ago, probably thirty or forty. There wasn't any plague in our world, at least nothing nearly this bad; the population now is around six billion, and we've got technology better than you had when things fell apart here. Michelle and I just arrived in your world a few days ago; we learned a little bit about it from someone else from our world" (not exactly, but close) "who came here several years ago."

Patrick spoke up. "If you're telling the truth, how did you get here?"

"Not under our own power," Nat said. "We were brought here by someone who knows how to travel between worlds; he told us where and when to meet him to be picked up later on. I've got some evidence that I'm telling the truth, here," she said, opening her backpack and digging around for a couple of the books she'd brought from her home world. She opened one to the copyright page and handed it to Milton, at the head of the table. He looked at it slowly and carefully, then handed it across the table to Patrick.

"No, we can't prove it if you're determined to be skeptical about it," Mike put in. "But it doesn't matter much. You can believe us or not, suit yourself."

"So why would you come here?" Milton asked.

Time to start lying. "To help," Nat said; but before she could say anything more, Charles interrupted.

"Of course you're going to help," he said. "The question is, why should we let you go on to wherever you're supposed to meet this person and go back to your own world? We need you here! Until yesterday, we thought we were living in an epilogue to civilization, the last generation in history. Now there's going to be another generation, at least a few babies; maybe not a big enough gene pool to be viable, but we have to try..."

"Charles," Milton said sternly, "we are not going to force these women. I won't have it."

"The continuation of the human race is too important to let your scruples get in the way, Milton!"

Nat was sorely tempted to use her power on both of them right then, but she restrained herself. "Excuse me," she said. When they quieted and turned toward her, she said: "Michelle, are you ready?"

"Sure," Mike said, standing up. Nat changed her.

The men stared at Mike in silence for a moment. Then Charles:

"It's a trick... you weren't women at all...? How did you, last night...?"

"No, a minute ago Michelle was as female as I am. And it works both ways; I'll change him back directly. The question is: who volunteers? Or do you want to draw lots?"

Silence again, for a moment, and then loud arguments. The youngest men still looked more confused than anything else. After a moment Milton called out, "Quiet. Let her explain."

"Just like I changed Michelle into a man, I can change any of you into women. I would have done it already, but I respect you for your hospitality and don't want to change anyone against their will. I expect, after you talk it over, you'll want me to change three or four of you. Which ones will it be?"

Charles was still looking bewildered. "It's a trick," he said to Miike. "You looked convincing enough since we hadn't seen any women in twenty years, even with your shirt off; but we didn't see you up close enough to tell where the fake breasts were attached... it's a cruel hoax, raising false hopes..."

Mike took off his shirt and bra and walked over to within three feet of Charles. "Prove it, Nat," he said; "change me again now. Isn't this close enough?" he said to Charles, looking him in the eye. "Or do you want me to take off my pants first too?"

"I have a better idea," Nat said. "Since you don't believe I really changed her," she said to Charles, "and you won't even believe I'm really female unless I do a striptease for you -- do you give me permission to do to you what I just did to Michelle?"

He looked at her. "If you can." She gasped, looked at herself, then covered her face with her arms.

"Let her alone for a minute," Nat said to the men sitting around her. "It's a shock; she'll take a while to get used to it. Does anyone else want to volunteer now? Or do you want to talk about it for a while?"

Milton spoke. "I think we'd better wait," he said, "and digest what you've told us... and shown us."

"Suit yourself. Um, does anyone want some dessert while you talk it over?" She pulled a can of pineapple chunks and a can-opener from her backpack.

Milton looked at the can in shock. "Don't! There might be some cans that are still safe, but you can't trust them... we lost three men to botulism a few years ago, after they scavenged some cans from a grocery store that we missed the first time around."

"These aren't twenty years old," Nat said; "they were bought fresh not long before we left our home world."

A few moments later, Nat walked around to where Charles was still sitting slumped over, the men around her looking on apprehensively. She put a hand on her shoulder. "Charles?" she said. "Do you want me to change you back?"

Charles said something inaudible.

"All right. Let me know later on if you change your mind."

The next day in court, Flannery called Rae Nan Quinlan to the stand. She was wearing a light green blouse and a matching skirt that came to just below her knees; her hair was a couple of inches longer than when Nat had met her at the Thai restaurant back in May.

"Ms. Quinlan, have you ever used my client's services?"

"I have; last September I paid him to change me into a woman."

"What was your reason for seeking this change?"

"I had haemophilia."

"And you expected that a change in sex would cure your haemophilia?"

"Knowing what I knew about the genetics of the disease, I thought it was pretty likely. I was willing to risk a big chunk of my savings to find out."

"And did it?"

"Yes; the tests my doctor did right after the change showed normal clotting, and I haven't had any of the problems I used to have since then."

"Have you been satisfied with the results of the change?"

"Yes. There are some disadvantages to being female, but they are far outweighed by not having haemophilia."

"Can you make some more specific comparisons?"

"For instance, menstrual cramps are not as bad as haemarthrosis. Being able to do physical activities that I would have considered too dangerous before, and not having to get infusions of clotting factor several times a week, greatly outweighs the inconvenience of longer lines at public restrooms."

"Do you consider yourself to have adjusted well to being a woman, at this point?"

"In all essential respects. It's been eight months since I last walked into the wrong restroom, for instance." (Laughter from the gallery.) "There are some feminine customs I haven't adopted, like wearing makeup; but wearing feminine clothes, using tampons, sitting down to pee... none of that feels strange and uncomfortable anymore."

"Thank you, Ms. Quinlan. No further questions, your honor."

Mr. Harcourt began his cross-examination with, "Have you had previous interaction with the Voss family?"

"I've been a counselor at the haeomphilia camp for several years, and Jack and Cecil were in my cabin. I've met their Dad once, several years ago when he came with their Mom to pick Jack up at the end of camp; I've met their Mom more often, when she dropped them off and picked them up at camp, and several times at National Hemophilia Foundation fundraisers."

"And did you recommend to Ms. Voss that she hire the defendant to change her sons into girls?"

"Not exactly. I met her at a fundraising dinner last October, a month or so after my change; she asked me a lot of questions about the change, and about Mr. Holcomb, and I answered them, but I didn't really recommend that she have her sons changed. Then, in May of this year, she emailed me and asked if we could meet, and we did; I went over to their house for supper, and I told them about how I'd changed, and what it was like, and answered their questions. At that point Jack and Cecil still hadn't made up their minds whether to change or not."

"Have you dated anyone since the defendant changed you into a woman?"

Almost simultaneously Rae Nan looked toward the judge and asked, "Do I have to answer that?", and Peter Flannery called out: "Objection, your honor; irrelevant."

"The question pertains to the witness's psychological adjustment, your honor," Harcourt explained.

The judge thought for a few moments, and said: "Overruled. Please answer the question, Ms. Quinlan."

"No," Rae Nan said. "I had just broken up with a long-time girlfriend, not long before I decided to make an appointment with Mr. Holcomb. I wouldn't have wanted to date anyone too soon after that breakup, and then it would have been wrong to start dating someone when I had the change scheduled and coming up soon. And since then, well... I had no idea whether my sexual orientation would change, or if it would be all at once or gradual if it did, and anyway I wanted to be sure I was thoroughly adjusted to being female before I even thought about dating someone. I told myself I would wait at least a year, or longer if I still felt unsure about things after that long."

"And what are your plans now? It will be a year in September, right?"

"September 19. I don't have a definite plan to ask some specific person out on that day, if that's what you mean. I'm open to considering dating again, along about then, maybe a little sooner -- more probably later."

"And has your sexual orientation changed as a result of the defendant using her paranormal power on you?"

Rae Nan looked to the judge again. "Do I have to answer that?"

"Please do, Ms. Quinlan."

"I think I'm probably bisexual now," she said quietly. Nat, glancing at the girls, saw Jack looking puzzled; Cecil was absorbed in her video game, not paying attention.

"And you were heterosexual before?"

"Yes."

"Can you please tell us why you don't wear makeup?"

Flannery fidgeted for a moment, as though he were going to object, but said nothing. Later he told Nat, "The way the judge had been letting him question her, there was no point in objecting to that when she'd already been made to answer more invasive questions."

Rae Nan looked disgusted. "Can you please tell me why you don't wear a codpiece?" Laughter again from the gallery -- and from some of the jury.

"Answer the question, Ms. Quinlan," the judge said sternly.

"One: as I said before, I'm not ready to start dating yet. Two: I had a whole lot of stuff I had to learn in a hurry, right after I changed, and I prioritized by focusing on the essentials. My sister told me that makeup is easy to overdo or get wrong; I didn't want to start using it until I had time to learn to do it right, when all the more important things were out of the way. Three: lots of women don't wear makeup. Why should I?"

"Thank you, Ms. Quinlan. No further questions, your honor."

Peter Flannery called Dr. Andrew Keilty then, the paranormal neurologist who had studied Nat and a number of the people she'd changed back when she was living at the GSPA camp when her power first appeared. After the preliminary identifying questions, he said:

"Please describe your research on the functioning of my client's paranormal power."

"Well, at first I was interested in her as part of my ongoing research into which parts of a paranormal person's brain are activated when they exercise their power. It's not the same for every person, but I've found some consistencies between people with similar powers... Ms. Holcomb's primary motor cortex tends to show strong activity when she exercises her power, similar to some other paranormals with healing powers, or grosser matter-restructuring powers."

"Ah, could you describe your follow-up research?"

"Oh, yes. Given the particular way Ms. Holcomb's power seemed to work -- my colleague had already confirmed with genetic and anatomical tests that it produced a total and real change of sex, not merely an apparent change in external anatomy -- I decided to do some research on how and to what degree the brain was affected by her power. There have been various studies over the years claiming to show differences, usually small but significant, in the relative sizes and activity levels of different parts of the brain in male and female humans, and I wanted to see if I could reproduce some of those results in before and after examinations of people upon whom Ms. Holcomb used her power. I used standard tools such as MRI scans, as well as the bioinformatic powers of another paranormal." The "other paranormal" was Keilty himself; like most paranormals, and indeed Nat himself before his identity was made public against his will, he didn't advertise his status.

"And what were the results of your study?"

"In men changed into women, the proportion of white matter relative to grey matter consistently decreased, and there were slighter but still significant increases in the size and activity of the corpus callosum. In women changed into men, I saw the reverse effects at about the same levels, and when Ms. Holcomb changed them back to their original sex, the original brain structures were restored. I also observed typically female activity patterns in the amygdala under various stimuli -- seeing photographs of faces displaying strong emotion, for instance, and other emotionally intense images -- in men changed into women, and slightly less marked shifts toward male brain activity patterns in women changed into men given the same stimuli. I was less able to confirm previous studies showing stronger lateralization of activity between brain hemispheres in men than in women; there were changes before and after in some subjects, but barely statistically significant. At some point I want to do longer-term studies of people who remain changed for some considerable time; all the subjects in this first study were volunteers who wanted to be changed back as soon as possible. I had only one subject who was willing to remain changed for more than a week;" (that was Keilty herself, Nat remembered) "toward the end of that time she showed more delateralization than any of the other male-to-female subjects, though still not quite what some previous studies had made out to be the typical female patterns."

"Have you examined Jack and Cecil Voss in the same way as the subjects in your first study?"

"Yes, I ran MRI scans on them while showing them various images -- not exactly the same as those from my study, but others more appropriate to their age. I did not have scans from before their change to compare to, but in general the activity levels of various parts of their brains, and the apparent degree of lateralization, are fairly typical of healthy girls their age."

"In your judgment, what are the implications of your research for the long-term psychological adjustment of people like Jack and Cecil Voss?"

"Well, in contrast to another well-publicized case that seems superficially similar," (a barely veiled reference to Paul Tate), "the Voss children are not boys who have been given female or superficially feminine bodies at odds with what their brain tells them their bodies should feel like; my research strongly suggests that they have essentially female brains, in sync with their bodies. I'm a neurologist, not a psychologist, but I would suggest that people in their situation would suffer fewer problems than someone whose brain remained unaltered while their skeletal structure, reproductive system, and so forth were changed.

"Thank you. No further questions, your honor."

When Harcourt rose to cross-examine, he held a copy of the journal in which Dr. Keilty's article had appeared, along with a number of other papers, to which he frequently referred. Nat was soon over her head as she listened to him ask Dr. Keilty technical questions about his study and how its results compared to other sex-difference studies; she lost track of what was going on shortly after Harcourt challenged the validity of the study due to its small sample size (Nat herself, Dr. Keilty and his grad student assistant, and nine members of the GSPA). However, Dr. Keilty maintained his composure in the face of Harcourt's questioning, and Nat couldn't see the lawyer score any obvious points with the jury.

After Dr. Keilty was dismissed, Carolyn Gregory called several neighbors of Ms. Voss and her girls, parents of their most frequent playmates, and asked various questions establishing their psychological health from a lay point of view. Harcourt tried to draw out some evidence of imperfect adjustment on cross-examination, but found nothing more damaging than what had already been admitted: the girls' insistence on keeping the same names, and their preference for playing masculine games with the boys they had played with before their change.

The men sat and talked for a couple of hours. Nat and Mike walked around, escorted by Lucius, whom Milton had deputed to make sure they didn't get lost, or deliberately leave. Their backpacks were in the house, anyway. They walked down to the creek and saw the little pool fed by a two-foot waterfall from which the community drew its water, then back up to the yards behind the cul-de-sac, where they saw the rest of the gardens, a house in whose kitchen and utility room salted meat was hung, one that served as storage for miscellaneous things that the men had looted from distant stores and offices and libraries, and a small cemetery with forty-four wooden crosses.

"Most of em's people that lived in this neighborhood before the plague," Lucius explained. "Bodies Milton and Charles and Patrick cleaned out of the houses here when I was too little to remember. Then fourteen of them are guys that lived here since we settled here." Only a few of the crosses had names and dates carved into them; about a third of those had question marks on the birth year.

"Jamie Altman," Mike read from one of them; "he was your friend, wasn't he?"

"How'd you know?"

"A guess... I see he was about your age."

"Wild dogs got him, three years ago. I killed a bunch of them, and he'd already killed several, but he was torn up too bad to live long. It took me all day to bring his body back here to the graveyard."

No news to Mike, but Nat was affected.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Things are still going to be hard, after this, but there's hope now. You aren't the last."

"What does it all mean?" he asked, confused. "I heard them talking, and I saw what you did, how Michelle and then Charles look all different suddenly, but what does it mean?"

"Well," Nat said, unsure how much knowledge she could safely assume on his part, "they're going to talk things over, and I expect they'll include you in when we get back. Then you'll figure out who I'm going to change, whether some of you volunteer for it, or you just decide to draw straws or flip coins or something. And then I'll change some of you into women, like I did with Charles, probably three or four of you, and then Michelle and I will go on to some other community and do the same thing there -- change about half of the men into women. And keep going. It's what we came here for."

"And that makes things different because... women can have babies?"

"Yes... not all women; some try to have babies and can't; but most can. Probably in a year, not more than two years, there will be some babies here, the first born in this world in about twenty years. Maybe you'll be the mother of one of them, if you want, or if you draw the short straw."

"How does that work? They grow inside your belly and then they pop out when they're big enough?"

"Pretty much." Not only had Lucius been too young to remember the last women dying off, he'd grown up with no expectation of ever meeting any. If his elders had ever bothered to explain how sex used to work when there were women around (and there was no particular reason they should), he must have shrugged it off as of no relevance to him. "If you turn out to be one of the women, I'll explain about it in more detail."

"Babies," the young man mused. "I've seen pictures, like I've seen pictures of women, but didn't ever think I'd see any. Now you say I might have one popping out of my belly in a year or two. I just can't make sense of it yet."

"It will get less confusing by and by," Mike said. "Do you want to head back, and not miss any more of their talk?"

When they returned to the picnic tables, Charles was gone. The other five men were sitting close, talking intensely, frequently interrupting one another. They looked up as the three returned.

"Change me now," Mike whispered to Nat. His shirt and bra were still tied around his waist. "I don't mind."

Nat shook her head in playful mock-disgust. "Zap," she said. Mike waved to the men at the table and paused to put on her bra and shirt. Lucius looked at her curiously, but not, Nat thought, lasciviously. Suddenly a thought occurred to her: she was almost sure all of the younger men here, who had been small children at the time of the plagues, were homosexual. She looked at the men at the table as she approached; Tony and Roy had just glanced toward Mike, while Milton, Patrick and Jesse were still staring at her.

"Well?" Nat asked as they returned and sat down. "Have you come to any decision? -- How is Charles doing, by the way?"

"He, ah, she went inside to lie down," Milton said. "We're still talking, but I think we're close to a consensus. We'll wait a day or two to let everyone think things over, and if we don't have at least three volunteers by then, we'll select more by lot. Two more, if nobody else volunteers -- Roy here has already volunteered. And -- if Charles doesn't volunteer to stay that way, or if he, she, isn't selected by lot, could you change -- her back?"

"Of course," Nat said. "That sounds reasonable. Roy, are you ready?"

"I guess so," he said nervously, and stood up.

"Do you want to change here in front of everyone, or in one of the houses, in private?"

"Go on inside with her, Roy," Jesse advised him. Nat led Roy into the house where she and Mike had stayed last night, and into the bedroom she'd stayed in.

"Ready?"

Roy nodded, and Nat changed him.

"I can stay with you," she said, as Roy looked at herself and then tentatively touched herself, "or leave you alone for a few minutes and come back when you call me... which do you prefer?"

"Please stay," Roy said; she startled at the sound of her own voice, and said in a whisper: "Um, show me how it all works?"

Nat sighed. "Okay. I'm not going to touch you. I'm going to point out my own parts and explain them that way, okay?" Roy nodded; as Nat slipped off her shirt and bra, Roy took off her shirt as well.

"These are breasts," she explained. "You'll use them for feeding your babies..."

Thursday, Nat saw six clients, the four originally scheduled for that date and two people whose appointments had been canceled weeks ago because of Nat having to be in court. She ate a light supper between seeing her fifth and sixth clients of the day, and went to bed early as soon as Zach had escorted the last client back to Atlanta; next day in court she was tired, but she wasn't going to be called on to testify again, she just had to be there.

Dr. Vandiver flew in to Atlanta on Thursday afternoon; Friday morning when court reconvened, Peter Flannery called him to the stand. Before he started his questioning, the judge said to Dr. Vandiver:

"I must warn you that information gained by telepathic probing is not admissible as evidence under Georgia law."

"Your honor, everything I've learned by telepathy that's material to the case I've also confirmed by conversation and observation."

"Very well. You may proceed, Mr. Flannery."

The lawyer asked his preliminary questions establishing the telepsych's qualifications, then asked:

"Have you examined Jack and Cecil Voss?"

"Yes, I came to Atlanta a few weeks ago and talked with them separately and together, a couple of times."

"In your judgment, are they adjusting well to being girls?"

"We need to distinguish between psychological and social adjustment. I found no signs of gender dysphoria per se; they are surprisingly comfortable with their bodies, and prefer clothes that fit them to clothes that used to fit their previous forms. They are less eager to adopt stereotypical feminine social roles, however. I don't see that as a serious problem; many women by birth also refuse to adopt, or choose to adopt very selectively, the female social roles that society imposes on them."

"What do you think is the significance of their retaining the same names?"

"Our names are an important element of our identity. It seems that Jack and Cecil want to continue to be called by the same names to assert their essential continuity of identity, to tell their friends 'We're still the same people inside,' in spite of their abrupt biological and sartorial changes. I might further remark that having distinctive sets of names for boys and for girls is not a universal phenomenon; some cultures use a common pool of names indifferently for both sexes, and there is considerable overlap in the sets of names used for both sexes even in English-speaking countries, especially if you look at the phonetics rather than the spelling of names."

"Do you anticipate future psychological problems as a result of their change?"

"Few people get through puberty without developing some kind of psychological problems, though in most cases they are fairly minor and temporary. With good parenting, occasional counseling as needed, and mentoring from older ex-haemophiliacs like Ms. Quinlan, I don't think Jack and Cecil are at worse risk for serious or long-term problems than other girls their age."

"If they had not been changed, or if they were to be changed back into boys now, how likely is it that they would suffer depression or other psychological disorders as a result of unhappiness with their haemophilia, conflict with their parents about how much physical activity they can be allowed, exclusion from their friends' activities, and so forth?"

"There have been a number of studies showing higher incidence of depression in people with particular chronic illnesses; specifically, [http://priory.com/fam/hemophil.htm one study showed that sixty percent of haemophilia patients were depressed,] about three times more than in the control group. We need to exercise caution; statistics from studies like that can't be taken too literally as predictive of probability in an individual case -- but on the other hand, if the girls were to be changed back now, especially if against their will, I would suspect that their chance of developing depression as a result of their disability would be greater, after this brief taste of non-haemophiliac freedom, than it would have been had they never known this kind of cure was possible."

"Thank you, Dr. Vandiver. No further questions, your honor."

Harcourt began his cross-examination with,

"Dr. Vandiver, did you treat the defendant for telepathic domination and gender dysphoria in 2004?"

Nat, shocked, half-rose from her seat; Flannery called out, "Objection, your honor; irrelevant and tendentious."

"Sustained."

"How did they find out?" Nat whispered to her lawyer.

"It doesn't matter now," he said.

"Dr. Vandiver, you distinguished between psychological and social adjustment; but aren't they strongly connected? Unhappiness with the role society expects from one is liable to lead to unhappiness of other kinds, is it not?"

"It can happen, depending on personality, the rigidity of the social roles involved, the severity of the conflict, and so forth. In our society gender roles are less rigid than in the past, or in some other cultures; failure to conform to them does not have the same serious consequences it once had. And conflict with society, refusal or failure to conform to social roles, is found in saints and heroes, artists and eccentrics, psychopaths and criminals. One can't generalize too much about it; not all such conflict is to be avoided as inherently bad."

"Is the fact that they choose to associate primarily with boys and not with girls of their age evidence of such conflict?"

"Not necessarily. Let's keep things in perspective; they have friends they've known for as long as they've lived in this neighborhood, as long as Cecil can remember in fact. It's perfectly natural that they would continue to associate primarily with these friends they've known for so long. In the long run we can expect them to make new friends, as much among girls as among boys, but it's unrealistic to expect them to suddenly start socializing with the girls in the neighborhood immediately after their change to the exclusion of their long-time male friends."

"Is the change likely to affect their sexual orientation?"

"I don't think you can find any reputable psychologist who will attempt to predict the future sexual orientation of a prepubescent child," Dr. Vandiver said sternly. "There are some studies that purport to show correlations with various developmental and environmental factors, but none of these correlations, even if real, are strong enough to be individually predictive. And if it did affect it in one way or another, you could hardly find a reputable psychologist who would describe that effect, whatever it might be, as harmful."

"Thank you, Dr. Vandiver. No further questions, your honor."

After Dr. Vandiver left, the judge declared a recess until the following Tuesday; the custody trial would resume that afternoon after lunch. Nat took MARTA back to Zach's apartment, but didn't find him home; she called him on his cell phone, and met him for lunch nearby a few minutes later. After lunch she called Melanie, and had her call a few clients whose appointments had been canceled recently; by three o'clock she managed to arrange make-up appointments for several of them, three of whom Nat changed that evening, five on Saturday, and one extra on Monday.

When Nat and Roy left the house after a long lesson on female anatomy and hygiene, sex and reproduction, they found only Mike and Jesse still at the picnic table.

"Milton went to check on Charles," Jesse said, "and the other guys are off hunting or working in the garden." He had just glanced at Nat, but kept staring at Roy.

"Did you come to any further decisions?" Nat asked.

"Pretty much what Milton said earlier," Mike said. "Jesse argued that Milton, and probably Charles, were too old to have babies if they were women, and they shouldn't be in the drawing, but Milton insisted it would be fairer if everyone had an equal chance of changing or staying a man."

"Actually, I argued at first that all the ones under thirty should change and all the ones over thirty should stay male. That way we'd have the best chance of having the most babies before our women got too old to have children. Then Tony pointed out that that conveniently put me on the right side of the age divide, so I said, what about everybody under forty, including me? But I still got voted down."

"It'll work out, I reckon," Nat said. "In a few weeks or months there will be some women in, um, Conyers and Kelleytown, and whatever other communities Mike and I visit. It's not critical for y'all here to have as many babies as possible, I mean. You should probably take it easy, actually; under these conditions I'm afraid you'll probably have more danger from childbirth than in the old days, with the medicine and medical equipment they had..."

"Probably so," he said. "Well, I'll take my share of the danger. If Lucius and Tony don't both volunteer by this time tomorrow, I'll volunteer at the last minute before we draw lots. -- Don't any of you tell them I said that," he warned.

"I won't," whispered Roy. She still wasn't used to her voice.

"Roy," Jesse said, "You look really good."

"Thanks," she said, confused.

"What are we going to call you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Roy is a boy's name. A girl might be named... hm... Reine. Or Rose, Rosamund, Rosalie..."

"You're building a new civilization here," Nat pointed out, annoyed. "Why assume you still have to have different sets of names for boys and girls? Roy's got enough new things to get used to without making her change her name, too."

"Let's go see if Patrick could use our help," Mike said, and pulled Nat away. She led them around the house toward one of the garden patches where Patrick and Tony were at work, pulling up weeds, then paused once they were out of sight of Jesse and Roy.

"Roy was Jesse's catamite," she whispered to Nat. "All the youngest men here are gay, and all the older ones except Milton have had sex with the younger ones at least once in a while..."

"I kind of figured that out when you flashed your breasts at them," Nat said. "How does that affect what we're doing?"

"Makes things easier, maybe. If the young guys all change, their orientation is already right. Roy's not going to have much problem letting Jesse beget babies on her, and I reckon Tony and Lucius would be happy to have female sex with Patrick and Charles... if you change her back. At least, they'd adjust to it easier than the older guys. If Milton insists on choosing the others by lot, though, and some of the older guys -- even Jesse -- get picked, they'll have a harder time adjusting."

"I'm not sure that makes sense. Gay and transsexual aren't the same thing at all, are they?"

"Of course, but... I mean, sure, any of these guys would suffer body dysphoria, in some degree; I'm just saying the younger ones would probably suffer less from it than Charles did, at least in one particular way. One very important way."

"So maybe we should try to persuade Tony and Lucius to volunteer?"

"I think so."

They walked on toward the garden where Patrick and Tony were at work.

"If you tell us what to do, we'll help," Nat said, "though we don't have much experience with gardening."

Patrick showed them how to identify the potato plants they shouldn't pull up, and the weeds that they should, and turned them loose on another couple of rows of potatoes. As Nat worked her way along one of them, she met Tony coming along the next row.

"Have you thought about it any more?" she asked him. "Whether you want to volunteer, or take your chances on the drawing?"

"I don't know," he said. "I'm still kind of hazy on the whole idea. What's it about, being a woman?"

"You understand that women can have babies, right? The reason there haven't been any new people in the world in twenty years is because all the women died, and men can't make babies by themselves?"

"Kind of. I mean, they told us that, the old guys, but I never understood how it worked."

Nat explained briefly, emphasizing the advantages of female sex, glossing over the inconveniences of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth, and waxing so eloquent about the joys of breastfeeding she almost forgot she had never had any children herself.

"Wow," he said, finally, as they reached the ends of their rows. "If people can change back and forth like that where you come from, wouldn't everybody want to be a woman most of the time?"

Nat decided not to explain the uniqueness of her power. "No, most people just stick to what they're used to, the kind of body they grew up with," she said. "But there are more men who want to become women than women who want to become men."

As they stood up and moved on to another couple of rows, Milton and Charles emerged from a house across the cul-de-sac from the potato patch. They looked around, then walked over toward Nat.

"How are you feeling?" Nat asked Charles.

"Still in shock," she said. "Can you please change me back? I ask because... I think I'm too old to be a mother. Your magic or whatever it was didn't make me any younger. But I might not be too old to be a father..."

Nat glanced at Milton.

"I told her what we'd decided," he said. "But it's up to you, really."

Nat changed Charles. "Thank you," he said.

Tuesday, Jack and Cecil were to testify. When Nat arrived at the courthouse, she talked for a few minutes with Ms. Voss in the lobby.

"How did things go with the custody trial hearings Friday and Monday?" she asked.

"Well enough, I hope," Ms. Voss said, nervously fiddling with a button on the left sleeve of her blouse. "I can't tell what the judge is thinking... Carolyn called several more of our witnesses, some of my neighbors and friends, to testify that I've been a good mother to the girls. We already had Dr. Vandiver testify about their psychological health, a while ago -- thanks again for paying his airfare and consulting fees..."

"No problem," Nat said. "I reckon the cases are connected enough that helping you with the custody suit will help us both with this one."

"Carolyn isn't so sure," Ms. Voss said, in a lower voice; "she thinks I might win the custody suit but we might still lose the other suit. She thinks the jury is more impressed by Alan's arguments than the judge is."

That was worrying. Flannery had refused to estimate their odds of winning, last time Nat had asked him about it; it was too early to tell, he'd said.

A few minutes later, in court, Jack's lawyer called her to the stand. Tamara Hollis was the youngest and least experienced of the five lawyers involved in the case, only a year out of law school; but Nat thought she had a fairly good rapport with Jack.

"Can you tell us what you thought when your Mom first told you about the idea of changing you into a girl?"

"I didn't like it," she said frankly. "She said it would cure the haemophilia, but I didn't think I would like being a girl. I didn't really know what it was like, then. After I talked to Mr. Holcomb and Rae Nan, I thought it might not be as bad as I used to think, but I didn't make up my mind to change until later."

"When was that?"

"I started bleeding into my knee so bad I couldn't hardly walk. I had to go to the hospital for several days. While I was in there I told Mom I would change into a girl if it would fix the haemophilia. Cecil said the same thing --"

"We'll let Cecil tell us about that herself, okay? Did your father come to see you in the hospital?"

"No --" Jack began; she was interrupted by Harcourt: "Objection, your honor; irrelevant to this case."

"Overruled."

"You can go ahead and answer, Jack," said her lawyer.

"Um, no, he didn't come. Mom said he was out of town on a business trip, I think. He called me on the phone twice."

"Did you talk to him about the possibility of changing into a girl?"

"Um, no. When he called me I hadn't made up my mind yet."

"After Ms. Holcomb changed you, how did you feel?"

"It felt pretty weird at first. But after a few days I got kind of used to it. And when we went to the doctor and he did the tests and said we didn't have haemophilia, I was really happy. It was so much fun to start skateboarding and climbing trees and stuff; Mom wouldn't let us do any of that before because of the haemophilia."

"Who have you been playing with since you changed?"

"Pretty much the same guys I was friends with before. Edward, Tim, Bobby; even Paul, though I don't like him as much."

"Those are all boys who live in your neighborhood?"

"Yeah, they all live on our street or the next street over. I've known most of them as long as we've lived there, except Paul, his family just moved in about a year ago. I used to play with Greg on weekends, he's the only boy my age in Dad's neighborhood, but he was weird about me changing, like Paul."

"Are there other children in your neighborhood you don't play with?"

Jack shrugged. "Some little kids, and some that are a lot older than me. The ones I mentioned are all the boys anywhere near my age. There's a couple of girls on the next street; I've met them a few times but I don't know them very well."

"Have you tried to make friends with them?"

"Sort of. I went and talked to them once, about a week after I changed, but when I told them about who I was and how I changed and stuff, they were silly. Not mean like Paul and Greg, but I didn't like the way they talked about it either."

"How do you feel about making friends with other girls? Maybe when you go back to school, for instance?"

"I guess I'll see what they're like. I hope they won't all be stupid like those girls were."

"Have you ever wished you were still a boy?"

Jack hesitated. "Maybe just for a little bit," she said; "when Paul and Bobby were making fun of me, the first time I saw them after I changed... But me and Edward beat them up and they didn't dare say anything mean after that. It was mostly Edward, really, but I helped. But being a boy again would mean having haemophilia; I don't want that."

"So, do you want to stay a girl?"

"Yeah."

"What do you think it means to be a girl?"

"Well... you have to sit down whenever you go to the bathroom, and you can't take your shirt off in front of other people even if it gets really hot. I guess it takes a little longer to go to the bathroom than it does for a boy, but not as much time as it takes to get clotting factor. And girl swimsuits are nicer to swim in than boy swimsuits, they don't drag as much in the water or get big air bubbles in them when you jump in."

"Is that all?"

"...I guess there are other things different when you're older. Like, women can have babies, and men can't. And, um, other stuff. Mom explained it to me before I decided whether to change. Do I have to talk about that too?" She was blushing.

"No, not if you don't want to. Is there anything else? You're still the same person, but is there anything different about you besides the obvious change in your body? Do you think or feel differently?"

Jack hesitated. "I'm not sure. Maybe. Dr. Keilty said, after he put us in his machine -- it was really cool, like the dreamscanner in _Night Patrol_; Cecil was scared of it at first, but after I went in it she didn't mind -- and he showed us a bunch of pictures and had us say what we thought about when we saw them. He said we were better at recognizing some kinds of pictures than most boys, like people's faces, but he wasn't sure if we were better at it than we were before Ms. Holcomb changed us. And after that I started studying people's faces, trying to see if I was better at figuring out what they're feeling or thinking than I used to be, but it's hard to tell. Maybe I'm better at it because I'm a girl, or maybe just because I've been trying harder, or maybe I'm not as good at it as I think."

"What do you think I'm feeling now?" her lawyer asked.

"That's pretty easy," she said; "you're worried they might make us change back, just like I am."

"Good guess... Ms. Holcomb has said you can change back into a boy any time you want to. Do you think you might take her up on that offer later on?"

"Probably not. But I guess if I ever change my mind I can just call her whenever."

"Thank you, Jack. No further questions, your honor."

Lucius returned a few hours later with three rabbits slung over his back. During supper, Mike and Nat worked on him, playing up the advantages of being female and the wonders of motherhood. The next morning at breakfast, both he and Tony told Milton they wanted to volunteer. Nat could see Patrick and Charles sigh in relief.

Nat took Tony and Lucius into the house, along with Roy; she changed the men, and then spent some time teaching all three new women about their bodies. She showed them the tampons from her backpack, gave them a few to use when their periods came on, and suggested that they could probably find more if they scavenged around in drugstores and supermarkets.

"You didn't tell us about this before," Tony said. "You mean, we're going to be bleeding down there, every month?"

"Not while you're pregnant, and probably not while you're nursing a baby," Nat said. "That's a good reason to keep on nursing as long as your breasts will produce milk, even after the baby is old enough to eat some solid food." Also reducing the chance of infant mortality a bit, and by spreading out their babies over longer intervals, reducing their chances of dying in childbirth...

"Explain to me again, I want to make sure I understand," Lucius said, fingering her pubic hair; "he's going to come here, in front?"

"When your baby is ready to be born, it will open up a lot wider, so there's room for it to come out."

"Oh. Okay. But I meant, earlier; Charles would push in here, instead of in back?"

Nat rubbed her eyes, and was about to start over in explaining heterosexual sex, when Roy spoke up authoritatively, "Yes, right there. It hurts a little the first time, but after that it feels a lot nicer."

"I'll let you explain some things to them, Roy," Nat said, and left them alone.

Milton had an old state highway map of Georgia pinned to the wall of the living room; on it, he showed Nat and Mike all the communities of survivors he knew about. The two nearest, which Lucius had mentioned when they first met him, were a mostly white community at Kelleytown, about fifteen miles south, and a more diverse group at Conyers, twenty miles west; Milton had also met traders from Monticello and Barnesville, and he had heard of some communities to the north and northeast of Atlanta as well, a tiny group of mostly Asian men on the south shore of Lake Lanier and a larger community, white and black and Hispanic, on the Oconee near Athens.

"There used to be more," he said, "but some died out, or they moved in with other groups when their numbers got too low. A couple of years ago Patrick and Jesse went to see the men in Jonesboro; when they got there they found they'd all hanged themselves, a few weeks before to judge by the state of decay. We've had more than a few suicides here and in Decatur, too -- though mostly in the early years, none since 2002. I don't think that will happen again, now that you've given us hope."

"I hope so," Nat said. "If you can give us good directions to that community at Kelleytown, we'll be on our way. And I reckon we'll head over toward Conyers after that, and then to Monticello..." Milledgeville would be pretty much on their way toward Savannah, too; would they find survivors there or only ruins? If survivors, would there be anyone she knew?

"I'll do better than that," Milton said. "I'll send Lucius and Jesse with you as guides. They're our best hunters, and they know that area better than the rest of us. I hope you'll stay a little longer, though. I think we'll be celebrating weddings soon."

Cecil's lawyer, Lena Jameson, was not much older than Ms. Hollis. She followed a pretty similar line in questioning Cecil, and got fairly similar responses at first.

"...When did you change your mind and decide you wanted to try being a girl?"

"It was when Jack's knee got hurt. He got up one morning and couldn't walk. We went to the doctor's office, and then to the hospital, and they fixed it, sort of, but it still hurt him to walk. Mom said that kind of thing happens sometimes to people with haemophilia, she said Uncle Leland used to get those bruises inside him all the time. I was scared, I didn't want that to happen to me too."

"So you decided you would rather be a girl than have haemophilia?"

"Yeah."

"How did you feel when Ms. Holcomb changed you?"

"It was so weird, it didn't feel right. I was scared and I wanted to change back. But they said please try it for a week and you can change back then if you still don't like it. So I said okay. Then we got skateboards and started riding them, and Mom showed us how to ride a bicycle, and I decided it wasn't that bad. I like climbing trees best. I can get all the way to the top of the magnolia in our back yard. Jack and Edward can't get to the top branch."

"Good for you," Ms. Jameson said. "Who have you been playing with?"

"Mostly with Jack and her friends, the guys she told you about," Cecil replied; "and sometimes with Carlos, he's not even in kindergarten yet but he's nice. All the older boys except Edward were kind of weird with me and Jack at first, and Paul said really mean things, but Carlos was nice to me. And sometimes I play with Anna and her sister Tina. Tina's real little but she can talk pretty good. They have a tall swing their daddy made, and a white kitten named Edgar. Edgar will sit in your lap while you swing but if you go too high he'll sink his claws into your legs and then jump off."

"So when Ms. Holcomb asked you after a week if you wanted to change back, you said no?"

"Yeah. I was having fun doing stuff I couldn't before. Daddy was mad at Mom for getting Ms. Holcomb to change us into girls, and he wanted me to change back, but I said I didn't want to have haemophilia again. I asked him what was bad about being a girl, but I didn't understand what he said. Mom gave me a dress to wear to church Sunday, she helped me put it on once so I would know how to do it at Daddy's house, but Daddy wouldn't let me wear it."

"How did you feel about that?"

"I don't know. I mean, wearing a dress felt more girly than just being a girl, you know? It was kind of weird. But when I put on the church clothes I used to wear when I was a boy, that felt weird too, cause they didn't fit."

"What do you think it means to be a girl?"

"Pretty much what Jack said. Except she forgot to say girls are better at climbing trees, too. I saw when Jack and Edward and me were climbing the big magnolia, how Edward had to be real careful when he was swinging his legs over a branch so he wouldn't squish his boy parts. That would hurt."

"I imagine so. Do you feel any different inside? Like Jack was saying she thinks she might be better at figuring out people's facial expressions?"

"I'm not sure. I don't know if I'm better at that like Jack is. But I think I'm better at drawing. A few days ago I was at Anna and Tina's house and it started raining, and we went inside and drew pictures. And I drew a picture of Edgar, and Anna's Mom said it was a nice picture of him. And I didn't have to tell her what the picture was supposed to be, she knew just by looking at it."

"So, do you want to stay a girl?"

"Yeah. I don't want to have haemophilia again."

"Do you think you might accept Ms. Holcomb's offer to change you back into a boy later on?"

"No. Why would I want to do that?"

"Thank you, Cecil. No further questions, your honor."

The morning after the weddings, Nat and Mike followed Jesse and Lucius through the woods to the nearest relatively clear road, then to Highway 155, and south from there. They had lightened their backpacks by leaving behind all their books and CDs as wedding presents, along with three tampons and three doses of Midol for each of the brides. Mike had ornamented the brides' wedding shirts with CDs turned shiny-side out, affixed with duct tape.

"It's pathetically inadequate," Mike argued, as they fell a few paces behind Lucius and Jesse, "they'll only suffer worse when they run out of Midol and tampons than they would if they'd never had any."

"Maybe," Nat said, sadly. "I thought it might help them adjust to things gradually if their first period was easier than the later ones... well, it's done now."

The highway was grown up with weeds at best, frequently covered over with kudzu, and sometimes even with small pines where the pavement had cracked more than usual. Most of the bridges were gone. In the early afternoon they came to the South River, and detoured upstream a ways until they came to a place where a simple wooden bridge had been built to replace the collapsed concrete bridge.

Not far south of the river they were attacked by another pack of wild dogs, larger than the pack that had attacked Nat and Mike on their second day in this timeline; but between the four of them they fought them off without injury to themselves. It started raining a while after that; they kept going at first, but when it started pouring hard, they took shelter for the rest of the day, and the night, in a dilapidated house. Part of the roof had collapsed at some point, and the living room carpet and furniture were disgusting with mildew, but the bedrooms were, if not pleasant, at least relatively dry, and mercifully free of skeletons. As they ate supper, salted rabbit meat plus some black beans from Nat and Mike's dwindling stock of canned goods, they talked about how to present themselves in Kelleytown, explain themselves and demonstrate Nat's power.

Next day they continued south, still following the highway as much as possible, and after taking shelter from the heat for a few hours in a Primitive Baptist church, they reached the community Milton had told them about in the early evening: a large farm, surrounding several houses, on the north bank of Little Cotton Indian Creek.

As they came in sight of the farm, they saw several men working in the north cornfield; the men conferred briefly, and one of them ran off into the tall corn. Before they reached the edge of the cornfield where the men were waiting for them, they heard a loud bell ringing repeatedly. The men standing at the edge of the cornfield where it met the still somewhat intact pavement of the highway held hoes.

"Jesse?" one of the men called out, when they approached. "What are you doing traveling with these girlies? I thought Milton didn't approve of them...?"

"They're not girlies, Rob; they're real women."

The man who'd addressed Jesse stared at Nat, Mike and Lucius harder than before, as did the other man standing a little behind him to his left. Behind them, the bell suddenly stopped ringing.

"Well," he said finally. "Good evening, ladies, and welcome to Kelleytown. I'm Rob Gage."

"Natalie Holcomb," Nat said. "We'll be glad to explain things, but it would save time if we could talk to everyone at once, I expect."

"Come right this way, then," Rob said, and led the way through the cornfield. Jesse fell in right behind him; the other man who hadn't been introduced followed further back, behind Lucius and Mike.

Nat heard Jesse and Rob talking in low voices just ahead of her.

"Jesse, are you sure about these people? I've seen some pretty convincing girlies once in a while, and you were pretty young when the women died..."

"I was *thirteen*," Jesse said. "Plenty old enough to know and remember what women look like, even if I never had sex with one until a few days ago."

"You mean...?"

"Not with one of these women. I'll explain more after they've had their say."

They emerged from the cornfield into a clear area around a house, maybe a hundred feet uphill from the creekbank. There was a large bell hanging from the porch roof, and a number of men had gathered on and near the porch; they turned to look at the new arrivals. There were about twice as many men here, and a greater spread of ages than in Panthersville, Nat thought; two or three of the men looked a good deal older than Milton or Charles, and more than half of them looked to be in their forties. One bald middle-aged man, evidently the leader, stepped off the porch and approached them.

"Good evening, ladies," he said; "you're welcome to stay as long as you like. I reckon you'll want to rest before you put on your show..."

"Jesse says they're real women, Walt, not girlies," Rob said.

"True," Mike said. "And we'll put on a show, but not the kind you're expecting."

"We should rest a while first, sure enough," Nat said, "but we can tell you about ourselves now. Is this everybody?"

Walt stared. "Where were you living that the plagues didn't get you?" he asked. "We haven't heard of any surviving women anywhere in the area we trade with directly or indirectly, and back before the last radio broadcasts stopped, they were saying there was a hundred percent mortality for women everywhere...!"

"We'll explain directly," Nat said. "Maybe y'all want to sit down while I talk? And I wouldn't mind sitting down, too, after walking all day."

"Pardon me," Walt said. "This way. You can have the porch swing." He led them onto the porch, and shooed a couple of young men off the swing; Nat and Mike and Lucius squeezed into it, and Jesse leaned against the wall of the house next to it. The local men stood and sat around, staring, some peering over their neighbor's shoulder to see better.

"I'm Natalie Holcomb, and this is Michelle Kensington. Some of you already know Jesse, from Panthersville; I'll introduce our other friend in a minute. Michelle and I aren't from around here, as you already know; in fact, we're from another world. Another timeline."

A hubbub of voices, disbelief from the older men and sheer confusion from the younger. Nat continued with much the same spiel she'd used in Panthersville, until she was ready to demonstrate her power.

"Ready, Jesse?" she asked. He nodded, a little nervously, and took off his shirt; Nat changed him.

When the hubbub of voices had died down, a minute later, and Jesse had put her shirt back on, Nat said: "Now I can introduce our other friend here, Lucius of Panthersville." More shocked exclamations as the men suddenly recognized her changed features. "Lucius and two of the other men in Panthersville volunteered to let me change them into women, so they could have babies and the human race in this world can continue. I'm going to change Jesse back into a man in a few minutes; it works perfectly well both ways. Now I'll let y'all talk about this, whether some of you want to volunteer to change, or whether you want to pick half of yourselves by lot, or vote on who gets changed, or what."

"Jesse?" said Rob, disbelievingly. "Did she really do what it looks like she did?"

"It sure feels like it," she replied. Then, in a lower voice, "If you want to see more, I don't mind, but not here in front of everybody."

Another couple of young men had approached Lucius and were asking her intense questions; she answered with naive simplicity. Walt, after a long moment's silent thought, made a gesture, at which a young man at the other end of the porch rang the bell once. Silence fell, and Walt spoke:

"I think we'd like to hear more from Jesse and Lucius, if you don't mind," he said. "This all seems pretty farfetched, and I hope you'll excuse me if whatever you just did with Jesse reminds me more of an old-time stage magician's antics than anything else."

Jesse spoke up first. "Everything she says is true," she said. "At least all the part about changing three of us in Panthersville. I can't say for sure that she's from another world, but she showed us some new books with recent copyright dates that sure weren't printed anywhere around here; might as well suppose she's telling the truth about that, too. Lucius, Roy and Tony volunteered to be changed, too, and a couple of days ago I married Roy; I can testify that she's as much a woman as my mama and older sisters were. I haven't had a good look at myself yet, but it feels like I'm the same; I told Natalie I'd let her change me for a little while once we got here, cause I sort of knew what to expect and it wouldn't be as much of a shock for me as it would be if she picked one of you to demonstrate on."

Lucius continued: "I didn't really know what this was about at first, since I was so little when the last women died, but Natalie and Michelle explained it to me, and I thought it sounded good, having babies and stuff. And it is...!" Nat blushed crimson as she enthused about face-to-face sex. Walt discreetly interrupted her after half a minute or so.

"Thank you," he said to Lucius. "Well, I guess we can trust them," he said, turning to the assembled men. "What say we think and talk about it informally for a day, then have a meeting the day after tomorrow and vote on what to do? Ladies, you don't mind staying that long?"

"We're not in a particular hurry," Mike said.

Jesse said, "If y'all will promise to give our friends an escort to Conyers or Monticello or wherever they want to go next, when they're done here, Lucius and I will head back to Panthersville tomorrow."

"That we can do," Walt said.

The custody trial continued with a hearing Tuesday afternoon; then the tort trial concluded Wednesday morning as the lawyers presented their closing arguments.

Harcourt began. "Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, our case rests on three points. First, that the defendants have already inflicted some degree of psychological harm on Jack and Cecil Voss by changing them into girls. Second, that more and greater harm will almost certainly result in the long run, especially if they are not changed back into boys soon, but perhaps even if they are. The psychological risks from this unwarranted and untested procedure are far greater than the physical risks from their well-controlled haemophilia; in a myopic concern for the children's physical health, the defendants have put them in grave danger of worse psychological harm. Third, that the defendants acted illegally in changing the children without the knowledge and consent of their father.

"We know from the children's own testimony, as well as that of the defendants, of the suffering they, and particuarly Cecil, experienced in the first days after they were changed; how especially Cecil, and to some extent Jack, suffered dysphoria from the strangeness of their changed bodies, and how they were ill-treated by some of the neighborhood children they had previously considered friends. You undoubtedly remember your own elementary school days well enough to make a good estimate of how likely it is that they will suffer far more and worse mistreatment of that kind when they start school again in the fall, if they are not changed back into boys by then. Expert psychological testimony, and testimony from one of the defendants' own witnesses, also demonstrates that it is unlikely that the Voss children would be able to adapt thoroughly to being girls in the long term. Even if the gender dysphoria they experienced at first does not recur, for instance at puberty, the disconnect between their masculine personalities and the behavior expected from girls will be a permanent cause of conflict, probably leading to depression and other problems."

After a little more in this vein, and some speculation about the probability of their suffering some delayed gender-identity confusion even if Nat changed them back now after they'd spent only a couple of months as girls, he started arguing for the illegality of the change; Nat spaced out for a while as he went on in incomprehensible detail about the wording of the custody agreement, the Paranormal Business Act, and several precedent cases involving parents disagreeing over whether to have their children receive some experimental or controversial medical treatment. She hoped the jury was as confused as she was, and that Flannery would be a lot more comprehensible when he summed up for the defense. Later, after the jury retired to their deliberations, Flannery told her that part of the closing arguments were aimed at the judge, trying to influence the instructions he gave the jury, and not just at the jury themselves.

Flannery and Gregory had decided that Flannery would present their closing arguments. He began by attacking the plaintiff's weakest point:

"...The plaintiff asks you to order my client to change Jack and Cecil Voss into boys. What he does not say explicitly, but implies, is that he wants my client to inflict haemophilia on his children. My colleague describes their haemophilia as 'well-controlled'; so it was, in comparison with some other chronic illnesses, or more severe cases of haemophilia. But this 'well-controlled' haemophilia nonetheless pervasively influenced every aspect of their lives for the worse: the time wasted in getting clotting factor infusions, not to mention the pain involved; the strong restrictions on their physical activity, excluding them from many of their friends' games; the frequent bruises and occasional disabling haemarthroses; and the constant knowledge that, in spite of the greatly improved treatments, they were still in some danger of dying from this disease like their uncle and great-uncle.

"Jack and Cecil themselves have told you that, in spite of the strange feelings they experienced temporarily after the change, and the teasing from some of their peers, which my colleage makes so much of, they prefer their present state to their previous sufferings from haemophilia. The plaintiff casts doubt on their maturity and ability to make such a decision wisely; well, consider Rae Nan Quinlan. Her haemophilia was of similar severity to Jack and Cecil's, and with her mature judgment she thought this form of cure would be worth trying; and after nearly a year, she still thinks it was worth it. It seems likely that, if Jack and Cecil were older, their decision would still be the same. Furthermore, I have recently learned that four other adult haemophiliacs are on my client's waiting list, one as much as forty-eight years old; can his maturity of judgment be questioned?

"The plaintiff and some of his witnesses allege psychological harm to result from the change. But the psychological harm they forecast is speculative, in contrast to the far more certain harm that has already resulted and could be expected to result from haemophilia. Furthermore, these speculations are ill-founded on a bad analogy with a famous case of gender dysphoria. In almost every respect Margaret Voss's treatment of her children, and Ms. Holcomb's use of her paranormal power, differs from the case we are asked to consider nearly identical. First, the reason for the change; a cure for haemophilia, which is still life-threatening though not as much as in previous decades, is a much stronger justification for this change than the perceived need to correct for a baby boy's damaged genitals by removing them entirely. Secondly, the treatment of the children; Ms. Voss and my client sought to ensure that the boys' understood what was going to happen, and did nothing until they consented. The parents and psychologists in the case adduced by the plaintiff not only imposed their decision on an infant, but continued to deceive the child about his own history and nature until his teens. Ms. Voss pledged, before the change, not to force her daughters to adopt stereotypical feminine roles or behaviors, and has kept her word; the Voss girls have and will continue to adapt to their new situation at their own pace and in their own way. The parents in the other case, following the theory-based advice of the psychologists, did try to raise their child as a stereotypical girl in spite of masculine tendencies revealed early on. Thirdly, the nature of the procedure used; Dr. Keilty's evidence shows how my client's power affects people. It results in a real, interior change, not the superfciial change in appearance effected by the crude surgical and hormone therapy techniques of thirty years ago, or even the somewhat better surgical and hormonal therapies available today. The violent disagreement between brain and body which caused so much suffering for Dr. Petrucci's unfortunate patient does not exist for Jack and Cecil Voss, Rae Nan Quinlan, or Ms. Holcomb's other clients."

And then Flannery attacked Harcourt's interpretation of the custody agreement and the Paranormal Business Act, and adduced a totally different set of precedent cases. Nat's eyes glazed over, and she noticed that some of the jury were in the same state.

Finally the defense rested. Lena Jameson made a brief statement on behalf of the girls.

"Jack and Cecil Voss have experienced being haemophiliac boys, and they have experienced being healthy girls. No one else in this court, and only one person who has previously appeared in this court, has a similar range of experience from which to make a decision as to which of those states is preferable. Even before the plaintiff filed his suit, purportedly on their behalf, they had been offered a chance to change back and had declined. I hope no one will second-guess their preference for remaining healthy girls."

The judge instructed the jury, then, and the jury retired.

Nat spoke for a few minutes with Flannery, Carolyn Gregory and Ms. Voss; the lawyers were not very encouraging about their chances. They soon fell silent. Nat took out a recent issue of Architect she had brought with her and tried to read, but couldn't focus for very long. Looking up from the page, she saw that although Cecil was absorbed in her video game, Jack, who had brought a book, was not having any better luck focusing on its pages than Nat was. She kept looking up at her mother, then at her father. He looked as nervous and fidgety as the defendants or the children, Nat thought.

The jury was gone for four and a half hours.

Jesse and Lucius left for Panthersville the next day, right after Nat changed Jesse back. Nat and Mike stayed in Kelleytown for six days more. On their third day there, a general meeting was held. One of the oldest men, a doctor, gave a long talk, mostly for the benefit of the youngest men, about female biology; he passed around an ancient medical textbook with several pictorial pages bookmarked, which the young men pored over in fascination, frequently glancing up from its pages at Nat and Mike. Then after a couple of hours of debate, the men decided to have a drawing of the names of half the men under forty who had not already volunteered. In spite of Lucius' peroration on female sex, and some recruiting attempts by Nat and Mike, there were only two volunteers before the drawing, both of whom had been toddlers at the time of the plagues.

Nat changed the two volunteers and seven draftees over the course of three days, gave them lessons (along with Dr. Thorpe) in feminine hygiene and biology, and how to recognize intact packages of tampons or maxi pads in the ruins of drugstores and supermarkets. This time she didn't give out doses of Midol, or reveal that she had any; she and Mike would need most of the remaining amount in the next six months, if they remained female during the whole time of their travels. And if they missed their rendezvous with the Worldwalker somehow...? Then they would really miss it when they ran out. Any they found in a not completely looted drugstore somewhere along the way would have expired decades ago.

The day after Nat changed the last of the draftees, they left for Conyers, guided by two men about Jesse's age who hadn't been changed. The community of survivors in Conyers had grown up around the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, where a surprisingly large proportion of the monks had survived the plague; the survivors for many miles around had gravitated there once the supply of food available by scavenging from grocery stores and houses ran low, as the monks had long experience in low-tech farming. The abbot of the monastery was also the Archbishop of Conyers, a huge diocese that included the old dioceses of Atlanta, Savannah, Charleston, Charlotte, Raleigh, Mobile, and Birmingham; he was away on a long tour of his mega-diocese accompanied by several priests and Catholic laymen as bodyguards. With them away, the community was comprised of thirty-five men, much the largest and most diverse they had seen yet; black, white, and Hispanic. There were nineteen Catholics, all but four of them monks, and sixteen Protestants and non-Christians.

Nat thought hard about asking one of the priests in the monastery to hear her confession; it had been years, and her near escape from the wild dogs recently had her worried that she might not live to meet the Worldwalker in Savannah six months hence. She finally lost her nerve, though she did go to Mass once during her stay in Conyers; she was years out of practice at when to sit, stand and kneel, and it didn't help that this timeline had apparently diverged from hers in the 1960s or earlier; the Mass was still in Latin here, as it hadn't been since long before she was born, in her world.

The debate in Conyers lasted longer and resulted in less consensus than that in Panthersville and Kelleytown. None of the monks, and only one of the lay Catholics, volunteered to change; and they refused to consider drawing lots or voting to select draftees. The non-Catholics debated separately for four days, finally deciding not to draft anyone either, as six of them had volunteered. When Nat and Mike left for Monticello, escorted by a young couple who had just been married by the Protestant community's minister, there was already talk of the group splitting, most of the non-Catholics moving to a new site closer to old downtown Conyers or joining another community in Athens or Monticello.

The group in Monticello was about the same size as that in Kelleytown, but with fewer old men. One eloquent young speaker convinced the town meeting to draft two-thirds of the men by lot, rather than merely half, to maximize the number of babies they could have; Nat spent five days changing three men per day before they moved on... and on, and on.

As Nat left the courthouse and headed toward the Five Points MARTA station, she passed the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, as she'd done a dozen or more times on the way to or from the courthouse. After a long moment's hesitation, she stepped inside the oldest Catholic church in Atlanta, one of only a handful she had been inside of since she left home at sixteen; the last time was when she visited her parents for several days last Christmas.

She genuflected and knelt in a pew near the back, but it was a long time before she could collect her thoughts into something that might reasonably be called prayer; mainly thanks for the outcome of the suit, then vague petitions for Jack and Cecil to come out as well in the custody trial still pending, and for the safety of her other self and Mike Kensington as they traveled through that plague-decimated world... When she realized after some time that her thoughts had drifted to the article she had half-finished reading while waiting for the jury to return, she was about to get up and leave when she heard someone weeping.

She turned around; Mr. Voss was kneeling in another pew opposite her and a little further back, his head down. He wasn't looking at her.

Her immediate impulse was to leave right away, before he noticed her, but she suppressed that, and tried to focus on praying again: this time for Jack and Cecil's father. A couple of people who had been there praying before she entered left; three more came in and knelt in various places. At least one of them was probably homeless, she thought. In spite of great difficulty focusing on prayer -- she was very out of practice, and her mind wandered a lot -- she stayed until she heard Mr. Voss leaving. She left right behind him.

He was walking away to the northeast, maybe to the MARTA station or more likely to one of the parking lots in that direction. Nat followed, and caught up with him at the walk signal. He glanced at her, recognized her, and froze up.

"Mr. Voss," she said, after a long, awkward moment. "I just wanted to say -- well, I'm not sure. I -- I believe you really want what's best for Jack and Cecil. But so do I; so does their mother."

"You have a strange way of showing it," he said. The signal changed, but he didn't notice. "I hope for their sakes your hired telepsych is right about how they'll adapt to being girls just fine. But I don't really expect it. If I'm still allowed to have anything to do with them when the custody trial is over, I'll help them however I can; but how much help can I really be...? Paul Tate's parents wanted the best for their son; but once they made that crucial mistake of listening to the quack psychologists, all they could do for him wasn't enough." He was on the verge of tears again.

"What do you mean, if you're still allowed to...? I thought the issue of the custody trial was whether they'd stay with their mother during the week and with you on weekends, or vice versa?"

"It could go any way," he said, "especially now. Their mother is saying I'm making it harder for them to adapt to being girls by the way I'm treating them on their weekends with me; I wouldn't be surprised if the judge stops allowing them to come see me on weekends, or even restricts me from seeing them entirely..."

"I'm sorry," Nat said. "I hope you can still see them frequently even if you don't get primary custody... and I hope you and Margaret can work out a consistent way to raise them. They deserve that."

"Not much chance of that at this point," he said sadly; "that was one of the main reasons we divorced, and the main thing that's kept us from getting back together. And after this... maybe I should have tried harder to persuade Maragaret before I filed these suits. But I was so worried about how much Jack and Cecil would suffer from staying like that..."

"I believe you. I just don't agree with you."

"That's clear." The signal, which had been Don't Walk for the last couple of minutes, changed again; this time Mr. Voss noticed it, and turned and crossed the street. Nat crossed as well; once on the other side Mr. Voss turned toward the parking lot. Before Nat headed the opposite way toward the MARTA station, she called "Goodbye." He turned and said, "Goodbye."

Epilogue

Nat and the Vigilante/Part Two

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