A Wish the Heart Makes : Fornever in Blue Genes

by: Tigger

 

Chapter 7: The Big Cat

At that precise moment, Catherine Brenda Donovan, Security Executive, looked much more like the combat-ready Captain Donovan, United States Marine Corps, than BioCybernetics Chief of Security. Adam had seen the volatile Big Cat in an angry mood before, but never anything quite like this. After all, Cat Donovan’s temper was legendary, both in the Corps and at BioCybernetics. What was unusual in this particular case was that, this time, she was not making any effort to either control or hide her displeasure from the two individuals she currently held responsible for that state of affairs.

Cat Donovan considered permitting her temper to show outwardly to be a weakness and she did not ordinarily tolerate such human responses in herself. Still, she reminded herself, this was a unique situation. A saint would lose her cool given what she had just been told and Cat had never aspired to sainthood.

Still, she wasn’t going to get the answers she needed and wanted unless she got her rage under control and began acting like the competent and extremely dangerous professional she was. Taking a hard grip on her emotions, she sat back down behind her desk to face Adam and Robert once more. It made their damned necks just that much farther away. They might just need that tiny extra edge before this interview was over. Cat gave a short bark of laughter at the ludicrous mental image of her holding each man by the throat. It helped calm her, at least momentarily. "Okay, I want to make sure I really did hear what I think I just heard. Please, do not hesitate to interrupt and correct me if I get any of these details wrong."

It was a measure of the relationship shared by the trio that the two men didn’t pale or squirm under her the steely gaze of Cat’s ice cold gray eyes. For all her current fury, Cat was their friend and their partner, and would have reacted in much the same way had either of them been the one attacked by their still-unknown foes. But, neither would interrupt her just then and all three of them knew it. Cat Donovan was in a highly volatile mood.

"Matthew has not been changed into a younger, slimmer, healthier version of himself. Matthew is not Matthew anymore. Matthew," she spat out the name with increasing emphasis and emotion each time she said it, "is not even *male* anymore. Do I have this all right so far?" She stopped and stared harder at the two men across from her, then gave them a "come on, give" motion with her hands. Robert made the mistake of nodding and trying to frame a verbal response.

Cat exploded out of her chair and slammed her palms on the desk. "And you believed that he wanted you to do that? Are you two crazy or just so smart you are stupid? What on god’s earth ever gave you the idea that Matthew Sorenson wanted to be a woman?" The force of her bellow made the acoustic tile that soundproofed her office seem to vibrate.

Robert looked at Adam, who only scowled impatiently before nodding for the doctor to answer. West gave the lawyer a "thanks loads" look and turned back to face Cat. "Umm . . . Well, his wish file was pretty specific, Cat. It was encoded, and the comments were Matt’s style."

"Oh, bullshit!" Cat snorted in disgust. "You *ARE* that stupid."

"Dammit, Donovan, I’ve had just about enough from you!" Adam snarled, slamming his own fist on her desk hard enough to knock Cat’s communicator askew. "You will treat us and this problem professionally or by god, I will bounce your ass right out of this company."

"You can’t do that!" Cat growled back even as she recalled that while Matt was officially incapacitated - a judgement rendered by the other man she had just been berating - that the lawyer really *did* run the company.

Adam saw that recognition in her dark eyes, and though there wasn’t the least sign of weakness in her posture or bearing, he knew he didn’t need to press that point any further. Instead, he switched gears from threats to logic.

"Remember that we had damned little time to make this decision, okay? We did our best. We even ran a computer analysis on the documents that Matt had supposedly generated in that file and got a 90-plus percent probability that they were his work. We didn’t account for the fact that a longtime personal secretary can usually forge more than just her boss’ signature, but we damn well did our best and what we *THOUGHT* our friend wanted. So lay off, okay?"

The normally mild mannered attorney did not often lose his temper, either, and even more rarely raised his voice, but when he did, people, even Cat Donovan, listened. Adam Jacob was still the number two man in the company for very good reasons like intelligence, integrity and personal courage. Adam quietly looked into Cat’s eyes, and saw her reconsidering her words. Nodding his head, Adam resettled himself back into the seat leaving Cat still leaning against her desk.

Robert quickly took up his explanation again, "As Adam pointed out, Cat, the file had all the supporting documentation we decided to require all those months ago, and it all checked out - or at least, seemed to check out to the best of our ability to check them." Then Robert’s face brightened as he added, "And we asked him - twice!"

"When he was so spaced out on drugs and stress from living in that cyborg-surreal world he was in that he probably didn’t understand the question and couldn’t answer completely anyway," Cat replied in soft, silky and disgusted voice as she too sat back down.

Adam shook his head. "What other choice did we have, Cat?" he asked more reasonably. "We had, or rather, we *thought* we had the agreed-upon documentation, we had circumstantial evidence and we had his answers when we questioned him. Maybe we could have asked the questions more carefully - like, "Good god, Matthew, why in hell would you EVER want to be a girl?" but we didn’t ask it that way and he went into coma so quickly we never got another chance."

Cat obviously wanted there to have been another choice, and for that reason, she wanted to stay angry at Adam and Robert, but it was also obvious that Cat’s sense of fair play was kicking in and her temper was cooling. *I think I agree with Adam*, Robert thought, glad that Cat’s fury wasn’t really directed at him, *I almost pity the sorry bastards who did this to Matt when Cat gets her claws into them.* Then he thought again. *Like hell I do!* Cat’s still unhappy growl snapped Bob back from his private thoughts. "You haven’t answered my question, Robert. Why did you *ever* think that Matt wanted to become female. I would really, *really* like to know the answer to that question."

*And I really, *really* don’t want to answer that question,* he thought unhappily. A lump formed in his throat, and he swallowed hard several times to clear it so that he could answer. "You," he finally managed to cough out. "You were the reason, in the documents he purportedly left behind in his Wish File."

Cat’s brows curved in shocked surprise as she fell back down into her chair, stunned. "Me? What did I have to do with this idiocy? What could possibly make you think that I was in any way involved in that?"

"We knew you two are friends, ummmm . . . good friends. We also knew that Matthew would have liked to become . . . better friends, but you don’t . . . uhhhhhhhh . . . " Robert stuttered and a blood red flush crept up his face.

"Dammit, Robert," Cat screamed in frustration, "will you just spit it out."

"You don’t take males as lovers. The documents indicated that Matt was hopelessly in love with you and had decided that the only way he could have you was to be a woman, too. That is why we did not tell you about it. We had been directed not to tell you because Matt, or rather, the setup was that Matt did not want you intervening and trying to stop him."

Cat lowered her hands down to her desk very slowly and deliberately. Her mouth worked several times as she sought words to say, and then rejected them unsaid.

Adam tried to help. "It seemed to fit the data we had at the time, Cat. We all knew that Matt was very fond of you."

"Fond, hell," Robert snorted, "he’s been head over heels in lust, and more than a little in love with you since the first day he set eyes on you."

Adam stepped into deflect a brewing Cat-storm at Bob’s ill- chosen words, "Whatever. But the key point is, Cat, that he *liked* you too much to press you about it, and potentially lose your friendship and trust. It was not such a great leap of belief to assume that he might consider taking such a step if he was really in love with you. You know he isn’t a man to quail at doing what he thinks has to be done if he has decided the ultimate goal is important enough."

"And so, you took this huge risk, endangered the life of your best friend with an unproven and risky procedure?"

Robert was feeling braver now. Catherine was merely disgusted now. "Like Adam just said, Cat, we didn’t really have a helluva lot of choice. We had to use the procedure on him in any case. You know him well enough to understand how he’d feel about that living death. Both transitions were equally risky once I had done enough actual tissue culture tests to be able to predict his survivability probabilities for each new genome."

"That, at least, will keep you alive, Robert," Cat said gruffly. "So now *he* is a nearly super human *she*? You made her into some computer’s idea of the nearly perfect female human?"

Robert blushed again. "Well, we did do that, but there is just a bit more to it than that. Since we thought he was doing it to be with you, and since we like both of you so much and wanted you to be happy . . . we . . . ahhhh, well, we sort of stacked the deck a bit."

"I am getting very tired of pulling things out of you by hand, Robert. Do you want me to get some pliers? DAMMIT, talk to me!"

"We_made_her_in_to_your_ideal_woman!" Robert spit the words out so quickly that no variation, inflection or separation could be heard between the individual words.

"I . . . don’t . . . think . . . I . . . understand . . . that," Cat responded, ice dripping off each word. Robert pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. "We used the computer to correlate genetic similarities among the women you have been close to in recent years - at least in the ten years we’ve known you. Then we did an analysis among those correlations to identify the physical and mental characteristics you find most attractive in a partner. We used that data to partially constrain our optimization program. Essentially, if there was a choice to be made among a set of "good traits" that were equally acceptable otherwise, the computer picked the one most likely to appeal to you."

"And all that worked?"

Adam answered her. "She is really beautiful, Cat."

"Great!" Cat sputtered, as she dropped gracelessly back down into her chair. "That is just great. Here I have to be a twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week bodyguard to the woman of my dreams. Do you know how tough unrequited lust is to deal with when you have to be alert?"

Robert muttered, "As if it is likely to remain unrequited."

"I heard that, Bobby," Cat’s head snapped back up to glare indignantly at the old doctor. "No WAY would I take advantage of my best friend that way. She is safe from me."

"You may as well know, that it may well be the other way around, Cat," Robert replied, his voice back in his "professor-mode". "The very characteristics that make her physical self so impressive will likely carry over into her sex drive. And she has no experience dealing with a feminine sexual need and physical reactions that would be merely in the normal range, but that is not what she will have. Matt has a 99.5%-plus probability of having a highly sexed libido."

"Well, that ought to give poor Matt fits. But hell, most girls like boys. I should be safe from her."

"Matt’s body may be that of a fully fertile female, but her thinking is still all-male. That might change over time, at least somewhat, but just today, her own body aroused her. I think it is far more likely that she will end up completely indifferent to the gender of her potential partners. And besides, she already likes you, and lusts for you, Cat. More than that, she wants you to help her train physically and to teach her self defense and fighting techniques."

Cat’s mind flew to the image of her hands and body in close, intimate contact with another woman’s sweaty body while locked in the throes of primitive, physical competition. Her dream lover’s wet, sweaty and sexy body. She groaned. "Oh, shit. Can’t we get anyone else to do this?"

"Do you want anyone else to do it? She’s your friend, too. Is there anyone else that would be better for her?"

"Damn you, Robert," she sighed, admitting defeat. "Okay, what is the plan?"

"I wanted her to get some more rest, so I snuck a bit of a sedative into her meal. She will be out for at least another eight hours. I think it best if you are there when she awakens."

"And if she makes a move on me?"

Robert considered that and shook his head. "As I said earlier, I don’t think there is any "if" about that. It is definitely going to happen. So, do you care about her? Are you going to hurt her?"

"Of course I care about him . . . errr . . . her. And I don’t hurt people I care about."

"Then follow your instincts. We have to protect her. Whoever did this will have to try again once they find out they failed to kill her. They have to know that Matt Sorenson won’t rest until he gets to the bottom of this. They must know him pretty well given the intelligence his ‘loyal’ executive assistant would have on him. They have to know that their only chance is to take him, now her, out permanently."

"They will have to come after him again," Cat growled.

Adam would have sworn he could see hackles rising on the Amazon warrior. "That’s how we see it, Cat," he replied steadily.

Cat nodded. "And we have to assume that they still have people on the inside. It would be stupid to assume that all of their people left with that bitch of a secretary."

Adam nodded. "Someone with very good cyber skills has been tracking project progress through our computers. We’ve found bits and pieces of lost webs of data in the data banks indicating that someone has been in them without permission. The change in security status for the computers only happened after they made their takeover play. I don’t think Martha, if that was her real name, was that skilled."

"Okay. I will get on it. I am only going to bring selected people into this. People I *know* I can trust. What about your people, Adam? Robert?"

"Only my longtime law school friend is privy to any of this in the legal offices, Cat," Adam replied. "All the records are already sealed and copies are being held for us by three different institutions of impeccable reputation. Corporately, we are safe."

"The processes and records associated with the transition are now under DNA coded computer lockdown. As to the people, all are Code 1 Security cleared."

"Wasn’t Martha Code 1 cleared? Of course she was, so that restriction isn’t enough. The three of us need to approve anyone who gets access to that data personally. Lock out everyone but the three of us, and set up the new protocols, Adam. Now, what about the people who are treating her?"

Robert answered this time. "All have been with us for at least three years." Cat frowned. "Yeah, I know. Same as Martha. Well, the treatment is controlled by what I authorize in the computer. No one else can access those controls. They can’t do anything to her, medically anyway, that I don’t approve before hand."

"Okay. First priority is to upgrade her security. Second priority is to recheck the background of everyone with direct access to her. We will dig deep this time." Both men nodded their assent. "All right, gentlemen, I need to get the ball rolling and get some rest. See to some accommodation for me near her, Robert, and get some exercise gear installed in there, too. Until we have her on her feet, I want her inside that facility. It is built to resist anything short of a direct plasma burst."

Interlude:

The holograph of Freuda blurred into existence. "What is it, Florence? Did you forget something in your report?" The tone of voice was haughty and arrogant. Sternly, Teri reminded herself just how much she owed this woman. Still, the woman’s peremptory manner set Teri’s back up.

"No, Freuda. My relief just called to tell me that Security Chief Donovan will be on board twenty four hours a day starting with my shift tomorrow. I will have to be careful with my advances."

"Donovan is a female lover. I don’t see where she should pose a problem. Seduce her, too."

Teri wanted to shake her head in disgust, but did not. This woman was too powerful, too dangerous. "I will try, Freuda, but you have to insure that contingencies account for her presence. She is a very smart and dangerous woman. You have seen the dossier on her. We have no one in her organization and she is going to be trying to find us."

"She will try. However, the fact that we were unable to infiltrate her group is moot. She will naturally assume that her security is, in fact, compromised. That will force her to move much more deliberately than she might otherwise. Very well. We will consider this in our plans. Proceed with your orders." Without another word, the holograph shimmered and evaporated.

Stunned at the woman’s arrogance, Florence/Teri just shook her head. She wanted to say, "Bitch," but feared that she was still under monitor. She satisfied herself by thinking it.

Twice.

 

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© 1996 by Tigger. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.