Read 03. Gods at the Well of Souls for Free Online

with only the finest microscopes. They replicate themselves with  astonishing speed, enter every cell in your body, and rewrite the code. Then  they die and are passed out in the normal way or allow themselves to be consumed  by the body's defenses. The process is quite rapid. The cells quite literally  become other cells. Major changes can cause a great deal of temporary discomfort  and disorientation, but relatively minor ones such as we are talking about might  well not be noticed, or no more than catching a minor virus at the worst." "You can really do this?" 
     
    "We do it regularly. Of course, there are limits. I could not, for example, turn  you from being an Erdomese into one of my own race. At some point you would be  neither one nor the other, and the stress would kill you. But if you merely  wanted to look like an Agonite, that I could do. Of course, we are talking far  less than that here." 
     
    She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Look like an Agonite? The process is  that comprehensive?" 
     
    "Oh, yes." He seemed somewhat uncomfortable all of a sudden, though, as if he'd  already said more than he had intended. 
     
    She had a sudden thought. "You could not turn me into a man, could you? An  Erdomese man?" 
     
    "Alas, no," the doctor sighed, and seemed to relax a bit. "The reverse, yes,  because in your race and many others the male contains only half the genetic  makeup; the other half is female, coming from the mother. But you have two sets  of female genes, so there is nothing there to edit. If you were male, I could  remove the male chromosomes, duplicate the female ones, alter them somewhat, and  recombine them so you would turn into a perfect, fully functioning female. But  the other way-well, one must have something to work with, and your race is even  more peculiar than most bisexual races in that you have no male hormones or male  psychochemicals at all. Disappointed?" 
     
    "No, not really," she answered, realizing that what she was saying was true.  "But what could you do to me?" 
     
    "Oh, a lot of things. The possibilities are vast. To address the immediate  problem, it would be a matter of finding the triggers and dampening them down.  The work is complex because it is subtle, exacting, and challenging. It must be  done just right. If we got it wrong, we might not catch the problem; or it could  throw you off and create violent mood swings, intermittent pain, or even  psychotic episodes. If we had an Erdomese clientele, it might be rather simple,  but as we do not, it would be a matter of trial and possibly error. In fact, let  me put the data into the computer and see what the risks might be." He turned in his chair to a console, and although it had full audio input  capabilities in Agonese, he used a complex keyboard instead. 
     
    All the better to keep trade secrets and control the conversation, she realized. In less than a minute a string of Agonese text came up on the screen, much of it  punctuated with graphic images of things that were beyond her comprehension.  Also, the screen was angled sufficiently to keep her from reading more than bits  and pieces without being obvious. 
     
    Finally he turned back to her. "There are two possibilities that seem just about  equal. Now, understand, I do not mean two different things we might attempt.  Rather, there are two equally possible outcomes to the attempt as postulated.  There is absolutely no way to be positive short of, well, experimentation. We  have no case histories to tell which way it will go." 
     
    She couldn't imagine where he was heading. "Yes?" 
     
    "Well, there is about a three percent chance of serious complications. I tell  you that up front, but that is actually a very small percentage in this kind of  process. There is no risk-free solution. Beyond those unknowables, there is a  better than forty-nine percent chance that it will decouple your mind from your