If there were a scale of smiles, the one in front of Bron would have dropped a minor second. “Ms Helstrom, we are counselors here—not judges. We assume you have your reasons, that you have worked them out logically to your own satisfaction. I only have information, most of it biologicaclass="underline" if this fits with your reasons, fine. If it makes you uncertain about them, by all means take as much time to reconsider as you need; five minutes, five days, five years—if you think it’s necessary.” The man suddenly leaned forward. “Ms Helstrom, it would be completely fatuous of me to pretend I was unaware that, even in this day and age, such a decision as you have made may cause some consternation among one’s co-operative, if not communal, colleagues. It’s hard not to find such consternation upsetting—not to mention those nameless social attitudes that one internalized during a less enlightened youth on a world with a different culture, that are, very often, the same attitudes the dissatisfaction with which prompted one to the decision confronting us now. And while we have our own emotional commitment to bolster us, these external prejudices assail us nevertheless, invariably presenting themselves in the guise of logic. Let me try and offer you some support, Ms Helstrom. Are you by any chance familiar with a current area of computer mathematics called metalogic?”
Bron raised his real eyebrow. “As a matter of fact I am.”
“Thought you might be.” The man’s smile rose a perfect fifth. “Logic can only tell us about the possible relations of elements that are already known. It gives us no tools to analyze any of those elements into more basic knowns or unknowns. It gives us no way to extrapolate about elements outside what we know. Analysis and extrapolation are both accomplished by reasoning—of which logic is only a very incomplete part. The point is, with life enclosed between two vast parentheses of nonbeing and straited on either side by inevitable suffering, there is no logical reason ever to try to improve any situation. There are, however, many reasons of other types for making as many inprovements as you reasonably can. Any reasoning process, as it deviates from strict, deductive logic, is a metalogical one. There is no logical way that you can even know that I am sitting here on the other side of the desk from you, or even that ... well, that there is your own hand. Both could be illusions: we have the technology—downstairs, in the west wing—to produce illusions, involving both belief and knowledge of those beliefs as true, far more complicated than either, by working directly on the brain. What are your social responsibilities when you have a technology like that available? The answer that the satellites seem to have come up with is to try and make the subjective reality of each of its citizens as politically inviolable as possible, to the point of destructive distress—and the destruction must be complained about by another citizen; and you must complain about the distress. Indeed, there are those who believe, down to the bottom of their subjective hearts, that the war we just ...” He coughed: “—won this afternoon was fought to preserve that inviolability. Soldiers or not, I don’t. But basically our culture allows, supports, and encourages behavior that, simply in the streets of both unlicensed and licensed sectors, would have produced some encounter with some restraining institution if they were indulged in on Earth a hundred years ago.” He cocked an eyebrow, let it uncock. “The situation of your life in the world is such that you think it would be better if you were a woman.”
“Yes,” Bron said.
“Very well.” The man sat back, pulling his hands to the edge of the desk. “We can get started anytime you like.”
“And the psychological part?”
The smile dropped an octave, which left it hovering at the threshold of a frown. “I beg your pardon?”
“What about the psychological part?”
The man sat forward again, the smile recovering. “I don’t quite under ... ? You want to be converted physically into a woman. And you ...” And fell again. “You don’t mean in terms of ... well—” He coughed again. “Actually, Ms Helstrom, you have just presented a situation that really is unusual. Most of our ... out male clients want the physical operation because, in one way or another, they feel they already are, in some sense, psychologically more suited to a female body and the female situation, however they per—
ceive it. But I gather ...” The eyebrows gathered—“you don’t?”
“No.” And after the man said nothing for practically half a minute, Bron said: “You do do sexual re-fixations and things like that, here, in this clinic, don’t you?”
“Yes, we—” The man coughed again and Bron realized it was an honest cold, not a purposefully snide punctuation (another religious fanatic, more than likely. Bron sighed)—“Well, downstairs, in the west wing. Yes, we do. But ...” Now he laughed. “Well, so seldom do the two departments have to work on the same case that—well, there isn’t even a door from our office to theirs. I mean, they deal with an entirely different type of case: friends, of whatever sex, who want to introduce a sexual element into their relationships because one, or both of them, are having difficulty doing it naturally; various functional problems; people who just want to try something new; or people who just want the sexual element completely suppressed, often for religious reasons.” The laughter broke again. “I’m afraid to avail yourself of their services, you literally have to go outside and come in all over again. Here—it’s been a slow day. Let me come with you.” The man pushed back his chair, stood.
The room was mottled green, octagonaclass="underline" pastel lumias glowed in guilt frames around the walls. It was apparently a much larger and busier department: war or no, a dozen men and women were waiting to be seen.
But though it was a different department, there was enough connection so that, coming in with his “counselor,” Bron was taken right away into an ivory cubicle with two technicians and several banks of equipment.
“Could you do a quick fixation grid of this gentleman’s” (Bron noted the restoration of his gender) “sexual deployment template? Just for my own curiosity—dispense with the interview part. I just want to see the figures.”
“For you, sweetheart,” the younger woman techni—
cian said, “anything,” and sat Bron in a chair, put a helmet over his head that covered his eyes with dark pads and (at a switch he heard click somewhere) grew, inside it, gentle but firm restraining clamps. “Try to relax and don’t think of anything—if you’ve ever done any alpha-wave meditation, try to come as close to that state as you can ... yes, there you go. Beautiful ... beautiful ... hold that mental state ... yes, hold it. Don’t think. There! Fine!” and when the helmet hummed up on its twin arms, he saw the two technicians and the counselor who had brought him looking at several large sheets of—Bron stood up, stepped up behind them—numbers, printed over large paper grids: the numbers were different hues, making clouds of color, here interpenetrating, there intermixing, like a numerically analyzed sensory shield. The console rolled out a final sheet from its plastic lips.
“Well, what do you think?”
“What do they mean?” Bron asked.
The younger woman, with pursed lips, flipped through the other four sheets. “Ignore the yellow numbers and the ones around the edge of the configurations; they map the connections of your sexuality with other areas of your person ... which, indeed, looks rather stunningly ordinary. The basic blue, red, and violet configurations—now this is just from an eye-check of the color overlap of one-place numbers over three-place numbers and a quick glance at the odd-versus-even deployment of three-place figures—but it looks as if you have performed quite adequately with partners of both genders, with an overwhelming preference for female partners—”
“—there’s a node line,” the other technician said, “running through from small, dark women with large hips to tall fair ones, rather chesty. And from this cross section—that’s about four levels down in the cortex—” She turned up another page and placed a thumb on a muzzy patch of red and orange numbers with trails of decimals behind them—“I would suspect that you must, at one time, have had some quite statistically impressive experience with older women, that was on its way to developing into a preference but, I gather, fell off sharply about ... ten, twelve years ago?” She looked up. “Were you a professional when you were younger?”