For service renderedBone, Jesse F. (Jesse Franklin)
Science
For service rendered
Bone, Jesse F. (Jesse Franklin)
Fantasy fiction; Short stories
Lyf eyed her solicitously from a chair next to her bed. There was a
faint proprietory glint in his eyes but his voice was as soft as ever.
"It's all done Enid," he said. "How do you like it?"
Miss Twilley didn't like the use of her first name. It sounded entirely
too familiar, but she supposed that there was little she could do
about it. After all he did have certain rights, even though their full
exercise was some years hence. She stirred sleepily. She was in her own
bedroom and the bed that she had slept in these past eighteen years
was familiar and comforting. Except for the Devi sitting beside her
everything was normal down to the last fold of the flannel nightgown
that covered her.
She felt oddly alive, and somehow different. There was a fullness to
her body and a heaviness to her chest. She looked down and gasped with
surprise and pleasure at the jutting rise of the nightgown. She _had_
changed!
"That was the biggest part of the specifications," Lyf said with the
faintest hint of amusement in his voice. "Your mental patterns were
extraordinarily precise about some things. About others I had to use my
own judgment. I hope the overall effect meets with your approval."
Miss Twilley felt as excited as an adolescent on her first date.
She slipped out of bed and padded on bare feet over to the vanity
in the corner. Eagerly she eyed herself in the big mirror. Even in
the nightgown she looked good. Her face was still her own but it had
been subtly changed, the features smoothed and rearranged. Her pale
blue eyes were now a smoky gray, and her plain mouse-brown hair had
reddish glints in it and was much thicker than before. It was a very
satisfactory face, smooth and beautiful, and years younger. Why--she
looked barely twenty five!
With a quick movement she bent, grasped the hem of her gown, and pulled
it over her head.
And gasped!
She had never dreamed of looking like this, even in her wildest flights
of fancy!
"Like it?" Lyf asked from his seat in the corner.
"_Like_ it!" she chortled. "I _adore_ it! How on Earth did you do it?
You've not only made me beautiful, you've made me young!"
"I didn't do it on Earth," Lyf admitted. "I took you to Hel where
there's some decent equipment. It wasn't much," he added vaguely,
"merely the application of some rather simple cellular biology--mostly
a rearrangement of DNA molecules and a bit of sarcoplasty. Actually it
wasn't too difficult. The removal of your tumor was much harder. You'll
find that two weeks have gone from your life, but they've been well
spent."
"I should say they have!" Miss Twilley said as she pirouetted slowly
before the glass. Her brows knit in a tiny frown as she saw her only
blemish, a bright red spot at the base of her spine.
"The mark can't be helped," Lyf said, "but it doesn't detract at all.
And it won't show even in a bikini."
"Forty, twenty-four, thirty-six." Miss Twilley breathed. "Lyf--I could
kiss you!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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