("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._
                     `6_ 6  )   `-.  (     ).`-.__.`)
                     (_Y_.)'  ._   )  `._ `. ``-..-'
                    _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,'
                   ((('   (((-(((''  ((((
                 K R I S T E N' S    C O L L E C T I O N
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This work is copyrighted to the author © 2007.  Please
don't remove the author information or make any changes
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One Favor
by S Leigh Farmer (1996) 
 
***

What if you could trade places with the opposite sex? I 
mean when if you could experience every sensation that 
the opposite gender can? Would you do it? Even for a 
little while? (MF, tg, sci-fi, preg)
 
***

Author Notes: All rights reserved. Rights to electronic 
distribution for non- commercial purposes is granted 
provided: 1. The story is published unmodified and, 2. 
the above copyright notice is included. 

The following is a work of erotic fiction and contains 
descriptions of adult situations and behavior. If you 
are under 18 years of age or if this type of literature 
is controlled or regulated in your local jurisdiction, 
stop reading, and delete this story now. 

his piece started when I wrote a screenplay with a 
transgender sci-fi sub-theme: a screenplay that would 
get a PG-13 (or mild-R) rating as written. Many have 
read the script, but no producers have yet bid for the 
rights. In frustration, I decided to write an ultra-
explicit NC-17-rated novelization focusing on the 
transgender aspects of the script to see if it would 
read any more interestingly than the screenplay. Hard-
core enthusiasts might want to jump straight to Part 
Three to avoid the relatively non-erotic plot and 
character development in Parts One and Two.] 

***

CHAPTER 1 
IN THE LAB 

The stale air among the instrumentation racks hung 
heavy with the odor of ozone and warm shellac. The lab 
air conditioning labored at full strength, but a few 
pockets of uncomfortably warm air persisted. Valerie 
Owens shifted her weight from one foot to the other as 
she stood among the tall cabinets of exotic electronic 
instruments trying to calibrate an obstinate phase 
correlator. She could feel rivulets of perspiration 
slithering down her neck as she carefully rotated the 
regeneration adjustment a fraction of a turn to the 
left. 

The young woman brushed the damp bangs out of her eyes 
as she concentrated on the null meter and gently nudged 
the calibration control a bit farther. The mirror-like 
front panel of the correlator reflected eyes that were 
bloodshot and tired, no doubt from the long hours she 
had already spent on the project; and skin pale from 
too many days without exposure to sunlight. Despite 
those temporary flaws, Valerie thought herself 
moderately attractive. She was just under five-six, 
weighed one-fifteen and had an ample figure. 

Her slender waist and narrow hips served to accentuate 
her bust which was actually less generous by 
measurement than it appeared to the eye. Her husband of 
five months, Barry, never failed to compliment her face 
or body. He particularly liked her long blond hair and 
deep blue eyes. Barry's flattery at the end of a tiring 
day could erase the cares and make her feel as lovely 
as his words described her. 

Five months she'd been married. Nearly half a year. 
Even now, she frequently had to remind herself that the 
name imprinted on her security badge was Doctor Valerie 
Bergstrom Owens Ph.D. Doctor Owens. Doctor of 
engineering. Getting this far had not been easy. During 
her undergraduate years there were few other women in 
her classes, and by the time Valerie entered the 
engineering doctoral program she was the only female 
among a few dozen male candidates. She worked hard and 
did well in her studies and had carved out a niche for 
herself in magnetic theory. 

She impressed a number of people at the Institute with 
her brilliant thesis, and received her doctorate in 
only sixteen months. Along with the doctorate had come 
the offer to stay on at the Institute as an engineering 
professor and the youngest-ever head of a research 
project in the Applied Energy Labs. She'd received her 
degree six months ago, at the tender age of twenty-
four, and now she was leading a major project funded by 
grants totaling several million dollars. 

Her wedding day arrived not long after she received her 
degree, but as soon as Valerie unpacked from the 
honeymoon the National Energy Commission awarded their 
annual grants and she was working against a deadline. 
In addition to conducting two daily graduate lecture 
classes, she dedicated as many as sixteen hours of each 
day to her research, sometimes seven days a week. The 
research was ostensibly funded by the Commission, but 
Valerie realized that the grants were more likely from 
the Department of Defense. 

The rumor mill suggested that the DoD funneled research 
through the Commission when there was some concern 
about public disclosure of the weapons aspect of one 
project or another. The goal of this study was to 
determine the effect of intense magnetic fields on 
living tissue, and Valerie was not sure what connection 
the research had to weapons, if any. 

Valerie had done her doctoral thesis on monopolar flux 
dots. These were incredibly tiny regions of magnetism 
so intense that each had only one 'pole' instead of the 
customary pair euphemistically named 'North' and 
'South'. Her idea for the project was to move one of 
these highly charged magnetic regions through living 
tissue and measure the distortion of the field 
surrounding the dot.

A computer would store distortions measured at each 
point in the scan and then the recorded pattern would 
modulate an even more powerful magnetic domain as it 
swept through the same region of tissue a second time. 
The idea was to disturb the local magnetic domains and 
determine the biological effects that might result. Her 
proposal had suitably intrigued someone at the 
Commission, enough so to merit a multimillion dollar 
one-year grant. 

Hyper-intense magnetic fields were difficult to produce 
outside of the laboratory, except for the 
electromagnetic pulse generated by nuclear detonations. 
Even so, Valerie had dismissed the rumors that her 
funding was related to weapons research, because 
although her equipment was able to create the flux 
dots, she needed enormous amounts of energy and very 
expensive equipment to focus the energy into a tiny 
bundle. 

Any weapon based on this technique would be too 
temperamental and prone to failure for battlefield use, 
not to mention that the laboratory system could project 
the tiny domains less than twenty centimeters. Beyond 
that distance from the energy transducers, the flux 
dots simply dissipated without a trace. With such a 
limited range, the intense bursts of magnetic energy 
were little threat as a weapon and relatively harmless 
to anyone including Valerie and her assistant. 

Valerie's graduate assistant was Carol DePaul, a quiet, 
bookish young woman with encyclopedic knowledge of lab 
mouse physiology, and a strange penchant for giving 
names to each of the lab mice. Carol knew so much more 
about rodents than the other interviewees for the 
position that Valerie just assumed the woman was 
pursuing a degree in Medicine, Physiological Studies or 
Biology. In truth, mice were only her hobby. Carol was 
working toward her Masters in Computer Engineering. In 
addition to what she knew about mice, she was amazingly 
competent at rewiring the instrumentation, and could 
jury-rig the power control systems when they failed. 
There was no doubt from the first moment Valerie met 
her, that Carol was the right person for the graduate 
assistant job. 

Carol had commandeered a corner of Valerie's lab for an 
area of her own. She'd built a small wooden maze to 
test the memory and reasoning ability of the mice that 
Valerie used for the magnetic energy experiments. 
Carol's rationale for spending time on the wooden 
labyrinth was that it would allow her to determine any 
neural effect of the magnetic energy even if there was 
no visible change to the mice. 

So far there had been no results in the experiments 
with the mice, visible or otherwise. Valerie's original 
plan was to gradually scale up the magnetic power and 
to scan the flux dots through a razor-thin slice of 
each test subject and observe the effect on organs and 
tissue by autopsy. Carol had argued that the most 
sensitive tissues would be neuromuscular, and that the 
most plausible effect might be disabled muscle action 
or reduced nerve sensation in the area where the flux 
dots impinged. Those effects would be observable as 
changes in strength, sensitivity to stimulus, and 
dexterity. Observing those changes would not require 
vivisection. 

Valerie adopted Carol's suggestion since they could 
expose each mouse to the flux dot scan numerous times, 
and reserve autopsy as a last resort. Less than a month 
after assembling the lab, the experiments had begun to 
concentrate on brain tissue, which both women reasoned 
would be the most easily affected neuromuscular 
element. 

The two researchers had expected their progress to be 
slow, but had not predicted the total lack of results 
that had so far occurred. Valerie planned to expose 
precisely chosen slices of the mouse brains to 
carefully selected levels of magnetic energy. If 
nothing ever happened, the world (or at least the 
Commission) would then know that concentrated magnetic 
energy beams are harmless. 

The Commission had rated this project 'Confidential', 
and that meant that only Valerie and her assistant 
Carol knew the combination to the special locks on the 
doors to the lab. The project seemed hush-hush on the 
surface, but clearance for additional researchers had 
been simple to obtain by telephoning the Commission for 
a cursory search of criminal and national security 
databases. It had taken only ten minutes to get Carol's 
clearance when Valerie chose her as an assistant. Of 
course, visitors could enter the lab under escort, when 
the experiments were not in progress after the women 
had locked away their lab notes. For the most part, 
however, the two women worked in undisturbed isolation. 

The null meter in Valerie's hand indicated that the 
correlator had begun to stabilize. In a laboratory full 
of equipment like hers, one instrument or another was 
certain to be out of tolerance at any moment. The 
correlators were the worst of the lot, requiring a 
surgeon's touch and the patience of Job to nudge them 
into alignment, and there were forty-eight of them in 
total. The network of sixteen Digital Semiconductor 
Alpha computers made the job manageable by periodically 
auto-compensating the instruments including the 
correlators. When the compensation circuits had drifted 
too far for the computers to automatically adjust 
something, it was time for Valerie to demonstrate her 
skill with a screwdriver and null-meter. 

Valerie had milked the Commission for money to buy some 
very leading-edge equipment and a few terabytes of data 
storage for the computers. Compared to what a human 
brain could remember, a terabyte of storage was 
relatively puny. For an electronic computer, that much 
memory was truly vast. In addition, Carol had written 
some interesting data compaction routines that stored 
the flux echo patterns in a tiny fraction of the 
customary space, and so it was possible to save the 
data from a huge scan without overflowing the system 
memory. 

Valerie removed the test probes from the correlator and 
turned off the null meter. The systems were balanced, 
for a while at least. As she stepped out of the 
equipment bays, the cooler air of the surrounding lab 
caused her to shiver. She could see goosebumps forming 
on the part of her forearm that extended past the cuff 
of the lab coat. Valerie grabbed her sweater from the 
coat rack and draped it over her shoulders until the 
chill passed. 

Carol huddled over her maze, intently watching the 
behavior of one of the mice. Like Valerie, Carol wore a 
long white lab coat, but underneath she had the casual 
attire favored by many students: jeans and a T-shirt. A 
stopwatch hung around her neck, and she held a 
clipboard in her hand. 

"That's it, Jeff!" Carol encouraged the mouse. She 
punched a button on the stopwatch and glanced at the 
time readout. "Really good, Jeff! You beat your old 
record!" She lifted the mouse out of the maze and gave 
it a hunk of carrot from her lab-coat pocket. 

"Carol!" Valerie admonished. "Is that mouse named after 
the guy who picked you up here last night?" 

"Yes, Doctor Owens. I named some of the mice after my 
boyfriends. You don't mind, do you?" Carol held the 
mouse up near her face and then scrunched her own 
features into a rodent-like visage. "Besides, this one 
looks a lot like Jeff, don't you think?" 

"They all look alike to me," Valerie admitted, "and 
except for the colored stripes we dyed into the edge of 
their ears, I wouldn't be able to tell them apart." 

"They may look alike to you, but they have different 
personalities. For instance: Jeff does well in the 
maze, but I'm still having trouble with Keith and 
Nigel. They just sit there at the starting line. Nigel 
won't eat the carrots. Robbie and Eddie prefer cookies. 
Billy and Hugh like being petted, but Andy bites me 
when I try to pet him." 

"That's nice, but we really need to get back to work, 
now," Valerie interrupted, becoming serious almost 
immediately. "Could you prep two mice for me?" 

"Right away," Carol sighed at Valerie's single-
mindedness. She put Jeff back into his cage and went to 
the cabinet that held the bottle of tranquilizer in 
addition to a number of veterinary chemicals and 
surgical tools. There were also a few other items like 
cotton balls, swabs, and eyedroppers. Carol chose two 
miniature sterile eyedroppers and withdrew a tiny 
amount of the anesthetic into each one. She selected 
one of the mice, gingerly plucked it from its cage, and 
gently forced the tip of the eyedropper into its mouth 
to administer the droplet of anesthetic. In a few 
moments, the animal had become limp and it's breathing 
shallow. Carol had lobbied for use of this particular 
sedative because it was harmless to the mice, could be 
administered orally and it wore off quickly. The rapid 
recuperation period allowed her to assess the physical 
state of the mice almost immediately after a scan. 

Carol selected a second rodent and sedated that one 
just as quickly. She took the two mice to the 
experiment table and positioned each on a small 
circular experiment pad. She covered each mouse with a 
flux recovery dome. 

The flux recovery domes were transparent plastic 
hemispheres about twenty-five centimeters in diameter. 
Magnetic lenses and inductive pickups littered the 
outer surfaces of the domes and a large bundle of wires 
connected to the instruments in the cabinets around the 
lab. Although circuitry peppered the surface of the 
domes, it was possible to see through the areas between 
the sensors and observe the mice. 

Carol could see that the mice were still inert, their 
gentle breathing evident in the subtle pulsing of their 
nostrils. Tranquilizing the mice was necessary to allow 
the coordinate transformation software to work with 
unmoving test subjects. Carol was well aware of how 
difficult it was to track the position and orientation 
of moving subjects, and she did not relish having to 
write algorithms to perform that complex task. 

She stepped to a terminal in the control area of the 
lab and typed a few staccato keystrokes that recorded 
which mice were under each dome. As she typed the last 
key, the experiment control program brought several 
power circuits on line. The subtle deep hum was 
evidence of the energy being funneled through the 
equipment in the lab. 

The screen of the monitor showed a series of commands 
automatically being issued to the instruments from the 
control program. The monitor screen erased the text and 
two drawings appeared. Each showed the wire-frame 
outline of a mouse: one drawing per test subject. The 
computer briefly flashed a complicated sequence of 
numbers and equations, and then one of the images 
rotated to be viewed from the same angle as the other. 

Valerie looked over Carol's shoulder as she monitored 
the experiment. "I'm really proud of the new program. 
It is almost automatic," Carol told her mentor. "You 
start the program and type in the mouse identity color 
stripe codes. You answer a handful of questions about 
the type of scan and the energy levels to use and the 
program does the rest. It locates the subjects under 
the domes and re- maps the coordinate spaces as you can 
see." 

The graphic images slowly zoomed into the area of the 
mouse heads. 

Soon the image of a brain appeared inside each drawing 
of a mouse skull. After several seconds, the wire-frame 
skulls vanished and the images became more detailed as 
the computers isolated the brain tissues. A rectangular 
plane was drawn intersecting each brain, and the 
computer electronically erased the rest of the drawing. 
Now the screens showed two kidney shaped slices that 
represented the area of each brain to be scanned. 

"Zero-point-four millimeters from the brain-stem normal 
to the central axis," explained Carol, anticipating the 
question. 

"What power are you using?" Valerie asked. 

"Initial scanning at ten teslas. Write-back at two-
point-four kiloteslas," was the answer. 

As the two women watched, the computer monitor showed a 
green dot rapidly tracing a tight zigzag path through 
each drawing as the computer sensed the field 
distortion of the flux dot moving through the brain 
tissue. In less than ten seconds, the scan was 
complete. 

Carol glanced at the screen expectantly. One of the 
mouse brain images became a negative of itself. Carol's 
expression became one of proud satisfaction that the 
program was working as designed. 

"There! See that? The system is configuring itself to 
deliver a positive feedback signal to one mouse and a 
negative feedback signal to the other," Carol 
explained. "That lets us test both control aspects at 
the same time." 

The hum from the power cabinets became slightly louder 
as the output jumped to several hundred times the 
energy of the first scan, and a second pass began re-
tracing the first. This time, a red dot showed the path 
for write-back on each of the drawings on the screen. 

The experiment finished and the computers erased the 
monitor screens as the noise of the power systems 
rapidly attenuated to silence. Carol checked the 
computer to be sure that the program was stopped before 
she approached the experiment table. Although there 
should be no danger, the tests were designed, after 
all, to determine if the energy levels inside the domes 
was harmful. The signal levels now shown by the sensors 
were the same as normal background magnetic readings. 

She lifted the domes off the mice and watched for signs 
that the either subject was regaining consciousness. 
Almost immediately, one of the mice started to twitch a 
foreleg, slowly at first and then with increased vigor. 
In a few moments, the other mouse came around. In less 
than a minute, the mice were alert and moving about. 
Carol could see nothing that indicated paralysis. She 
offered the rodents pieces of a cookie from her pocket. 
Both eagerly grabbed the morsels in their paws and 
began eating. That reaction proved that they had a 
healthy appetite and no apparent residual effects from 
the anesthetic. The mice, Joel and Patrick as Carol 
called them, seemed none the worse for wear. 

Carol took the mice back to their cages. She was 
staying at the lab much later than she had intended, 
and decided to put off a run through the maze for Joel 
and Patrick until morning. She knew that any 
neurological damage from the experiment would be 
permanent, and that a few hours delay wouldn't mean 
much. 

The nearby telephone rang just as she closed the last 
cage. She picked up the receiver and cheerily greeted 
the caller, "Lab Two-four- four! This is Carol!" She 
listened for a moment before shouting, "Doctor Owens! 
It's for you! Somebody named Barry!" 

"Thanks," Valerie said to Carol, hurrying to the lab 
phone. She swept her hair out of the way and pressed 
the phone to her ear. "Hi, honey! What's up?" 

She listened briefly and a deep blush crossed her 
features. "I mean besides that!" she reproved. 

This time she listened for a longer time as the person 
on the other end of the line explained something. 
"Really? That much? That's great news! Yeah!" 

A brief flicker of sadness crossed her face as the 
other person spoke. "Gee, I'm sorry honey, I'm going to 
be running a little late again tonight. Why don't you 
have supper without me? I'll grab a burger for myself 
on the way home." 

Valerie paused as the person on the other end of the 
line stated his case. "Listen," she offered sweetly, 
"if you're not busy when I get home we can celebrate 
then. How about that? Great! I love you too! I'll be 
home in a few hours! Bye!" Valerie hung up the phone. 

"A few hours?" Carol whined, unable to avoid 
overhearing. "It's already after nine PM!" 

"We've already used more than four months of our grant, 
and I want to get preliminary results before the 
Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks get here," Valerie 
explained. 

"All right, all right," Carol groused, and then changed 
the subject to avoid thinking about the late hour. "So 
it sounds like Barry and you have good news of some 
kind." 

Valerie considered whether to open her personal life to 
the graduate student or not, and finally spoke. "Barry 
is my husband. His agent called this afternoon to say 
that Trent Press wants to publish his third book." 

Carol didn't say anything for a moment as her brain 
processed the information. She stared at Valerie with 
curiosity. "You married a writer?" 

"Yes," Valerie answered cautiously. "Why is that so 
odd?" 

Carol giggled. "I don't know! It's just that you have a 
reputation as someone that never leaves the 
laboratory." 

"I have a reputation?" Valerie inquired, somewhat 
bemused. "Who says?" 

Carol blushed. "Just about everybody. Your students, 
mostly." 

"Okay," Valerie admitted. "I know I put in long hours, 
and that during my Masters studies I slept on a cot in 
the lab for a few weeks. But that's no reason..." 

"It's just that you seem kind of focused on the 
institute and sort of practical and down-to-earth. Not 
the kind of person who'd be attracted to a creative 
person. So how'd you meet a writer?" Carol dodged the 
embarrassing topic of Valerie's reputation. 

Valerie sat on the edge of the desk and stared into a 
corner of the ceiling for a moment. Her blue eyes 
returned to settle on Carol and begin her answer. "It 
was about two years ago, when I'd just started my 
doctoral work. I was in the institute library reading 
at one of the tables near the book return desk. It 
happened that Barry chose that moment to return a stack 
of material he'd used to write his thesis. I don't even 
know exactly how it happened, but he ended up spilling 
his books and papers all over me and the table where I 
was sitting." 

Carol was giggling at the mental image. "Do you think 
he did it intentionally?" she asked her mentor. 

"He claims it was an accident," Valerie replied. 
"Anyway, he started to apologize, and when I saw those 
beautiful brown eyes and heard his sweet voice, I knew 
he was someone I wanted to get to know better. He asked 
me out for coffee that morning. To make an already long 
story short, we became engaged a few months after he 
got his doctorate and were married last summer." 

"Wow!" enthused Carol. "So there's two Doctor Owens'?" 

"Yes." 

"Your husband has a degree in English Literature or 
Journalism or something?" Carol guessed, considering 
his vocation as a writer. "Is he teaching at the 
institute, like you?" 

"He has a Ph.D. in Physics, but he'd much rather stand 
out in the backyard at night looking through his 
telescope than stay cooped up in a lab or classroom 
somewhere. He writes astronomy books." 

"Astronomy? That sounds so romantic!" Carol bubbled. 
"I'll bet you two used to watch the stars a lot on 
dates." 

"Sadly, no," Valerie related. "On clear nights he does 
research for his books and on cloudy nights, the only 
stars we see are those we can imagine." 

Carol sighed, envisioning someone like Barry. Her own 
boyfriends were no match for her romantic imagination. 
"When I had your class last year, you still went by the 
name Miss Bergstrom. That means you've been married 
for..." 

"About five months," Valerie clarified, somewhat 
impatiently. 

"June twentieth in a garden ceremony in a little town 
called Mumford. Are there any other facts I can clear 
up?" 

Carol nervously shifted her glance to the floor and 
mumbled, "No," belatedly realizing how personal her 
questions were becoming. 

Valerie looked at her wristwatch and shook her head. 
"We should get back to work. It's almost nine-forty-
five." 

"Nine-forty-five?!" Carol grumbled. 

"It sounds like you have other plans tonight." 

Carol averted her gaze from Valerie for a moment. 
"Y...yes. My boyfriend asked me to meet him at the 
community rink for the late-nite skate." Clearly, she 
was nervous at asking for time off from a boss with a 
reputation for burning the midnight oil. 

Valerie tapped a pen on the desk for several long 
moments. 

Finally she spoke. "Go on, then. I'll do the next run 
myself." 

"Are you kidding?" Carol asked, unsure whether to 
believe her ears. 

Valerie smiled at her. "Go ahead before I change my 
mind. It wasn't more than a year ago that I desperately 
needed to see my boyfriend the same as you." 

"Gee! Thanks, Doctor Owens! I'll be here early in the 
morning to make up for it, I promise!" Carol 
practically tore her lab coat off and wrapped her 
sweater around her shoulders. She snatched her purse 
off the coat rack and was out the door in a flash. 

The lab was quiet after Carol left. Valerie read her 
lab notes over for the tenth time, hoping she had 
missed something important. There had been no reaction 
to the flux dot scans so far. Seven weeks of 
experiments - countless runs with varying tissue slices 
and power levels. There had been no effect. 

Valerie wanted results. She looked to her left at the 
dozens of mice in the cages. Nothing so far seemed to 
affect them. The only thing that had happened in seven 
weeks was that the mice were getting accustomed to 
Carol. 

A few paces to Valerie's right were the racks of 
complex instruments. So much capability and so little 
to show for it! She muttered a curse and read the notes 
again. 

Maybe this methodical approach was the wrong way to 
proceed. Valerie wondered what would result if she 
exposed the entirety of each subject's brain at the 
highest power the systems could produce. If the scan 
caused no damage, then she would need even stronger 
equipment to continue the experiments. On the other 
hand, it might cook some poor mouse's brain, but that 
was why the mice were here. She decided to go for 
broke. 

Valerie filled two of the smallest eyedroppers with the 
anesthetic, guessing the dosage, and tranquilized a 
pair of mice. She knew the dosage that Carol had been 
using was a mere drop of the tranquilizer, but the scan 
Valerie planned would take much longer to complete than 
one exposing a mere slice of tissue, so she needed to 
have the mice inert for that much longer. She placed 
the somnolent mice under the flux recovery domes and 
went to the control terminal nearby. 

Valerie started the program and typed the color stripe 
codes from the ears of the two rodents. The first flux 
scan was permanently set to ten teslas of flux energy, 
so Valerie did not have to enter anything there. When 
the screen with write-back options came up, Valerie 
typed in the maximum flux intensity the equipment could 
generate, seventy-four megateslas. The screen for 
selecting the slice to expose was a bit more complex. 
Valerie entered a range of values that encompassed the 
entirety of the mouse brain volume. The program was now 
set to scan it's most powerful signal throughout every 
cubic micron of each brain. 

Valerie hit the 'go' key and watched the familiar 
screens that portrayed the location of the mice under 
the domes using low-level flux scanning. Once the 
computers identified the brain tissue, they aligned the 
coordinate systems to be sure that the flux dot in one 
brain was in the same place as in the other. When the 
brain images came up, no rectangular slice was 
superimposed this time. The systems began a laborious 
three-dimensional scan of the brains. 

Nearly ten minutes later, the normal sensory scan 
completed. The leftmost brain image became negative and 
the sudden deafening growl of the power circuits 
reconfiguring for the high power mode startled Valerie. 

The magnetic lens systems had never been used or tested 
at this level. Pencils skittered across the desk and 
the file drawers rattled as the floor vibrated from the 
enormous power being channeled through the power 
conversion units. Valerie could feel the strong tremors 
shuddering through the cushioned seat of the chair, and 
she could hear the door to the hall rattling in its 
frame. 

Several of the instruments flashed intermittent warning 
lights. From her terminal, Valerie could see that 
needles on the meters on a few panels were buried into 
the red zone. The air in the lab warmed noticeably, as 
the straining power converters dumped their waste heat 
into the room. The automatic ventilators struggled to 
exhaust the heated air to the outside of the building, 
but were overmatched. 

The red dots on the displays made slow progress through 
the images of the mouse brains displayed on the 
computer monitors. The flux recovery domes were 
bombarding each mouse skull with seventy-four 
megateslas of energy in a playback of the pattern 
recorded on the first scan. Considering the high-tech 
nature of the experiment and the enormous power being 
used, the process was relatively uninteresting to 
witness. Other than the deep powerful hum and the 
vibrations, there were no electronic noises and no 
visible energy discharges around the domes. Not at all 
the way science was depicted in the movies. 

It seemed an eternity, but it was only ten more minutes 
before the second scan completed and the power systems 
ramped down. When the last system shut down, it was 
deathly quiet in comparison to the loud rumble that 
filled the lab moments earlier. 

Valerie checked that the systems had completely stopped 
generating magnetic energy before she went to the table 
to inspect the mice. All of the instruments indicated 
zero output and the amplifiers were in safety standby 
mode. 

Her hands were trembling as she lifted first one flux 
recovery unit and then the other. The domes were 
noticeably warmer than they had been before the scan 
because of the power that had so recently been passed 
through them. This much energy was bound to have an 
effect of one sort or another on the mice. 

The mice were unmoving. Perhaps the high-powered scan 
had killed them. No. On closer inspection one mouse was 
barely breathing. The other was, too. 

Valerie put a piece of carrot in front of each mouse 
and waited. Nothing. She waited almost another forty-
five minutes, but the mice did not regain 
consciousness. Their limbs were limp and they were 
totally unresponsive to stimuli. 

She again checked the mice for activity just after 
eleven thirty. Valerie wanted to know how the mice had 
been affected before proceeding with additional scans. 
Were they still unconscious because of the sedative or 
had they been affected by the energy from the 
experiment? The determination of lingering effects 
would have to wait until the morning when Carol could 
examine the two inert rodents. There was nothing more 
that could be accomplished this night. Valerie took the 
comatose mice back to their cages, updated her lab 
notes and then reluctantly left the labs. 



CHAPTER 2 
YOUNG AND IN LOVE 

Barry looked away from the eyepiece of the telescope 
and triggered the camera. He was photographing the 
variable star in the constellation Perseus for an 
illustration in his next book. The telescope in his 
backyard was the largest one outside of those found in 
an observatory, and quite expensive, but had paid for 
itself in the quality of research Barry had been able 
to do with it. Those tasks that could not be done on 
his personal telescope fell within the capability of 
remotely-controlled observatories maintained by 
universities in Brazil, Australia and Sweden. He'd even 
had an opportunity to use the Hubble Space Telescope to 
collect one image. 

Barry's first book had become the standard astronomy 
textbook at several European academies. It had sold 
enough copies that the publisher suggested a slightly 
different focus for his next work. Barry's second 
outing was more a coffee-table book for the masses than 
a textbook, and it had earned several hundred thousand 
dollars for him. No one was mistaking Barry Owens for 
Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer and writer, but his 
books were gaining critical acclaim. He was already at 
work on his third book. When finished, the new tome 
would concentrate on oddities in the heavens like 
binary stars, gas clouds, nebulae, comets and galactic 
whorls. 

Astronomy was his topic; his field of expertise. Barry 
derived immense personal pleasure from writing about 
celestial objects and the things that filled the vast 
distances between them. Writing was, for him, not a job 
but an obsession. There had not been a day in recent 
memory when he did not write at least two or three 
pages either for a book, a speech, a magazine article, 
or just a random monograph. 

The institute had been stifling to his muse, and he 
could not leave the place fast enough after receiving 
his doctorate in Physics. The research had not been too 
bad, but he never liked teaching assignments while 
pursuing his degree. Maybe it was the sneers and groans 
that greeted him every time he stepped behind the 
podium in front of a class. There were the inevitable 
departmental rivalries and politics that he'd despised. 
Regardless of the reason, he'd been much happier since 
he'd left the institute. 

But, Barry was no fool. He recognized the coincidence 
of receiving his degree at about the same time he'd met 
Val. She was an even greater positive influence than 
his abandonment of the academic cocoon at the 
institute. She was everything to him. A friend and 
soul- mate to accompany him on his journey through 
life. A critical ear, a friendly shoulder, a loving 
heart. She was kind, gentle, insightful, and as 
brilliant as she was beautiful. She was an angel, and 
an inspiration. 

He still remembered the day he first saw her sitting in 
the library. He'd completed his thesis and was 
returning and armload of the reference materials he'd 
used. Valerie's blond hair had attracted his attention, 
and when he turned for a better look, he could not take 
his eyes off her. The next thing he knew, he tripped 
over a chair and spilled the books in his arms all over 
her. 

He recalled mumbling an incoherent apology before she 
turned to face him. Once he beheld her face, he was in 
love. Her eyes were sparkling jewels. Her skin: fair 
alabaster. Her hair was pure spun gold. Her voice was 
heavenly music when she spoke. He offered to buy her 
lunch or something, and when she said yes and smiled 
her glorious smile, his heart leapt from his chest. 

They'd become serious about each other within a month 
and not long afterward he proposed. Val had taken a few 
days to think over Barry's request and finally agreed 
to marry him. At the time, her reluctance to answer 
made him wonder if he would lose her. Barry knew now 
that she was a careful person who thought everything 
out and stuck by her decision once made. This was a 
contrast to Barry's more impulsive nature, but the 
difference in their personalities never became an 
issue. When Valerie was finished with her doctoral 
research, they set a date for the wedding. 

The marriage ceremony had been almost five months ago, 
a few days after the ceremony where Valerie received 
her Ph.D. in Engineering. They'd married in a public 
garden in her hometown on a sunny June morning. 

The marriage was great so far. They were discovering 
each other in so many ways, physically, emotionally, 
socially and spiritually. Val enjoyed the same movies 
he did, and both shared a common interest in books; 
between them they had quite a collection. Valerie 
seemed to enjoy his attention, and at times it was 
difficult to know which of them loved the other more. 

Apparently, she'd described him in glowing detail to 
her friends, since more than one let slip the nickname 
'Prince Charming' when they thought he was out of 
earshot. Barry thought that an overstatement. His looks 
were rather plain: dull dark brown hair, brown eyes, a 
tall, almost lanky but not overly muscular frame. For 
someone whose job involves a lot of standing around or 
sitting, though, he was still trim and fit. 

Barry did the cooking for both of them, since he'd 
developed skills in the kitchen during bachelorhood and 
he was at home nearly all the time anyway. As far as he 
could tell, Valerie seemed to know little about cooking 
except how to microwave a TV dinner and open a bottle 
of soda. Barry did the laundry, vacuuming, banking and 
shopping for the two of them, since those activities 
fit around his daytime sleep and nocturnal work 
schedule, too. 

Valerie pitched in on the chores whenever she was home, 
which wasn't very often. Right after the honeymoon, Val 
had immersed herself in a project at the institute and 
that kept her at the school from early in the morning 
until very late at night. Weekends were, often as not, 
absorbed by the project, too. 

Just before the wedding, they'd bought a house with the 
profits from Barry's second book and were turning it 
into a home. In reality, Barry alone was turning it 
into a home, because of Valerie's schedule. He'd been 
using his carpentry skills to turn the back porch into 
a glassed-in solarium, and had done a bit of furniture 
shopping. Valerie had no complaints about his efforts 
or taste in furniture. 

The nature of astronomy research required Barry to 
pursue his research at night. At least he was awake 
during the wee hours when Val finally came home. Most 
mornings he was still awake when she left for the 
institute. He would complete the shopping and banking 
as soon as the banks and stores opened. He usually 
slept during midday and awoke with the bats and owls at 
sundown. 

The housework and dinner preparation took only a few 
minutes each evening and by the time the glow of sunset 
was gone, Barry was ready to go to work at the 
telescope. The only exceptions to this routine were the 
evenings that clouds obscured the heavens and those 
rare occasions when Val was home to spend the night in 
his arms. 

Barry glanced at his wristwatch. The digits of the 
faintly- glowing panel read just past midnight. The sky 
held few clouds and was unsullied by moonlight. It was 
a good night to photograph the stars as long as the 
clouds got no thicker. Now that a publisher wanted the 
book, he would eventually be bound by contract to 
finish it. 

The lawyers at Trent had offered ten percent royalties 
on the first ten thousand copies and fifteen percent on 
all copies beyond that, and that kind of money was 
nothing to sneeze at. Warren, Barry's literary agent, 
thought they might even go higher before the contract 
was signed. At the rate Barry was writing and 
photographing, the book would be ready to go to the 
editors in April or early May. 

He heard the distant whine of the garage-door opener, 
signaling that Valerie had returned home. 

"Hi, honey!" Valerie called a minute later as she 
approached on the gravel walk between the house and 
telescope. "I figured you would be out here since there 
was no moon and fairly clear skies." 

"Hi, you beautiful creature, you," Barry greeted her 
with a brief welcome-home kiss. "This is the optimum 
week to photograph the stars in Perseus, particularly 
Algol Beta Persei, the eclipsing binary star." 

"I see," Valerie replied, unenlightened by the 
significance of that remark. 

"You're home earlier than I expected," Barry observed. 

"The research is going nowhere," Valerie frowned. "I 
ran the experiment at the maximum power my equipment 
can generate and I cannot tell if anything happened. I 
might have overexposed a few of the test subjects we 
use, or maybe not. It's just so frustrating!" 

Barry saw the worry in her features. "Maybe I can help. 
Can you tell me what the project is about?" 

Valerie shrugged. "I'd love to, but unless you are part 
of the research team, the Commission wants me to keep 
the details under my hat." 

Barry quickly adjusted the camera and checked the image 
in the telescope before opening the shutter again. 
"Those kinds of policies and rules are why you don't 
see me doing research at the Institute. Here, I'm my 
own boss. I set my own schedule, within reason, and 
avoid all of the red tape and stress." 

Valerie was getting depressed talking about how badly 
things were going at the labs. She decided to change 
the subject slightly. "So Trent Press wants your new 
book, hmm?" 

"They liked the sample chapters, and one of the editors 
there has read my other two books. My agent is still 
hammering out the details, but he says it's bound to be 
a real sweetheart deal." 

Valerie hugged his arm and trailed her fingers over the 
chest of his sweater. "I'm in the mood to celebrate the 
book contract," she said, softly and suggestively. 
Standing this close to Barry, the difference in their 
heights was obvious. She was seven inches shorter than 
him, and her head came up to just below his lips when 
they stood against one another. 

Barry raised one eyebrow as he looked down at his wife. 
"What kind of celebrating did you have in mind?" 

Valerie stood on tiptoe, stretched up and placed her 
lips adjacent to his ear. She began to describe a 
scenario that involved a bottle of wine, two consenting 
adults, and no clothing. As she elaborated, her breath 
warmed and tickled Barry's earlobe. 

Barry blushed at the sexually explicit whispers 
flooding his ear. 

Valerie kissed him on the cheek as final punctuation to 
her proposal. Barry put a cap on the end of the 
telescope, shut off the camera, and disengaged the 
motor drive, a clear signal to his wife that he was 
through photographing the heavens for the evening. "So, 
when does this celebration of yours start?" he asked. 

Valerie backed a few slow steps away before looking at 
him coyly. "We can start," she purred, "as soon as 
you...catch me!" She sprinted away giggling and 
shrieking. 

Barry gave her a generous head-start before he began 
pursuit. He watched her shapely bottom retreating into 
the darkness of the backyard, a tantalizing hint of the 
sensuality of the woman he'd married. He chased her 
playfully for several minutes in the chilly night air 
until his long legs and greater relative strength 
closed the gap and he caught her. He grabbed Valerie 
from behind, swept her off her feet and into a kiss. 

He carried her into the house in his arms just as he 
had on their return from the honeymoon and the two 
lovers celebrated several times before falling into an 
exhausted sleep. 


CHAPTER 3 
EARLY INDICATIONS 

The next morning, Barry woke to the sounds of Valerie 
showering in the bathroom adjacent to the master 
bedroom. He closed his eyes and considered how lucky he 
was. His next book was all but sold, and he had a 
lovely bride. The holidays, his favorite time of the 
year, were approaching quickly. Barry eagerly 
anticipated the season of entertaining, gift-giving, 
and being with family, although Val and he had decided 
they would spend Christmas with her folks. 

It would be the first Yuletide Barry would spend away 
from his childhood home. Fortunately, Barry's father 
would be spending the season with a few distant cousins 
on the coast, anyway. Barry's mother had passed away in 
January, and this would be the first Christmas he or 
his father would have without her. Barry knew that 
Valerie had long planned to spend the holidays here at 
home or her parent's house, so the best he would be 
able to do would be a Christmas Day telephone call to 
his father. 

Valerie entered the bedroom with a large towel wrapped 
around her body and a smaller one around her head. 

"Good morning, Val," Barry murmured, to let her know 
that he was awake. 

She smiled at him as she walked to her closet. "Good 
morning, Bar'. Sleep well?" 

Barry smiled back at her. "I had a nice dream. I dreamt 
that you stayed home from work and we 'celebrated' the 
book contract. All day." He raised one eyebrow in a 
come-hither gesture. 

"I see," was all she said as she ignored his attention. 

Valerie selected a blouse and pants suit and set the 
clothes on the bed. She walked over to her bureau and 
looked through the top drawer. When she found what she 
wanted, she removed the large towel and slipped her 
arms into one of her brassieres. She reached behind 
herself and fastened the clasp. 

Barry watched her with fascination. He was still 
enraptured by the sight of a beautiful naked woman 
putting on clothes right in the same room with him; 
sort of a reverse strip-tease. Valerie turned around 
and Barry could see the matted hair between her legs 
that obscured the bulge of her womanhood. Nestled 
somewhere near the bottom of that triangle of golden 
fur was a warm slit that had accepted his throbbing 
shaft several times the night before. 

Valerie stepped into her panties and pulled them up 
around her pelvis. "What are you looking at?" she asked 
Barry, finally noticing his rapt attention to her body. 

"I was just admiring a very beautiful woman...no...a 
goddess," Barry explained, as Valerie blushed. "I was 
hoping that the goddess would hear my prayers and stay 
home from work to grant a mere mortal another few hours 
of her companionship." 

Valerie disregarded him and stuffed her arms into the 
blouse without an answer. 

"Aw, c'mon, Val!" Barry complained. "I love you, and I 
had a lot of fun last night!" 

Valerie paused from her dressing to respond, "I had fun 
too, dear, but I need to dedicate every minute I can to 
my research project. Surely you can understand that!" 
She stepped into the pants of her suit and went to the 
bathroom to dry her hair. 

"I tell you what!" she shouted over the whine of the 
hair drier. "If my project makes some progress, and 
you're a good boy, we could spend the Thanksgiving 
holiday doing whatever you want." 

Barry thought about Valerie's offer. It had real 
potential. The Thanksgiving holiday was a four day 
weekend. With a little planning, he could buy enough 
food and supplies in advance so they wouldn't have to 
leave the house at all. 

"Four days? Promise?" he shouted back. 

The hair drier shut off. "What?" Valerie shouted once 
she could hear. 

"All four days? Is that a promise?" Barry reiterated. 

"We'll see!" she responded noncommittally, and the hair 
drier started up again. 

Valerie stood in the hallway outside her laboratory and 
waited for the security lock to click before she pushed 
the door open. A coat and purse were already hanging on 
the coat rack just inside the door. That meant that 
Carol was here somewhere. 

"Hello! Carol?" Valerie shouted as she entered the lab. 

Carol's voice issued from the back of one of the 
instrumentation racks. "Good morning, Doctor Owens! 
I'll be right out!" 

Carol appeared from the end of the row of cabinets. She 
carried a soldering iron and sheaf of papers. "I was 
just re-routing the control lines to the master 
correlator. When I came in this morning, I saw your 
notes about the mice and the experiment last night." 

"Was there any effect?" Valerie asked, hopefully. She 
draped her jacket and purse on the coat-rack and 
slipped into a lab coat. 

A smile slowly crossed Carol's face. "I think we 
finally got something," she said. 

"You're kidding," Valerie challenged. The glow of 
rekindled enthusiasm glowed in her eyes. 

"I have almost no doubt. I tested Jeff, one of the mice 
you used, and his maze time was abysmal; worse than it 
has ever been." 

"Could that be a result of my tranquilizer dose?" 
Valerie asked. 

"How much did you give them?" Carol asked. 

"Half an eyedropper or so." 

"Half...?" Carol sputtered. "That's too much!" 

"I needed the mice to be unconscious for almost thirty 
minutes, and I had to guess," Valerie admitted. "Do you 
think I did any permanent harm?" 

Carol silently glared at Valerie for several seconds. 
She opened the desk drawer and withdrew a small green 
book and threw it to her mentor. "That is the 
anesthesia guide," she explained, curtly. "You were 
lucky you didn't kill the mice. They're okay, but they 
were probably asleep for a few hours with that much of 
the drug!" 

Valerie thumbed through the book, the Veterinary 
Anesthesia Handbook. It was page after page of charts 
and tables to allow precise calculation of the effect 
of each type of anesthetic. The charts were labeled 
with the drug names, animal species, and weights. The 
dosage, and the effects were shown as lines on the 
charts. 

Carol leaned over her mentor's shoulder and turned 
pages as she spoke. "There are charts for all kinds of 
animals; horses, cattle, various breeds of dog, cats, 
mice, hamsters, even a few charts for humans. See? 
Fourteen milligrams of Phenyltrimethochloride with a 
1.2 ounce lab mouse results in approximately thirty-
five minutes of unconsciousness and a three minute 
recovery. The dose you used was way out here on the 
chart." Carol pointed to the far right of the page that 
she had obviously memorized. "That's almost in the 
lethal range." 

"I'll check the book next time," Valerie pledged. "I'm 
sorry." 

"Apology accepted. At least there was no permanent 
damage. To answer your question about the mouse being 
affected by the anesthetic, he was not acting drugged. 
He acted as though he was lost. Even more curious was 
the way Nigel reacted. He was the other mouse you 
used." 

"What happened?" 

"He suddenly developed quite an interest in the maze, 
and did about as well as Jeff ever did." 

Valerie was beaming. "This is great news! I suspect 
that one type of flux feedback stimulates the parts of 
the brain responsible for initiative and concentration, 
while the other feedback negatively affects those parts 
of the brain." 

"Interesting hypothesis," Carol allowed. "We'll try a 
few other mice and see if the effect is repeatable or 
not. I'll isolate Jeff and Nigel from the others to see 
if they return to normal or if the result was 
permanent." 

"I'll set up some experiments to zero in on the flux 
energy threshold," Valerie said, already formulating 
her plan. "And later we'll try to narrow the scan to 
the most affected parts of the mouse brains." 

"You know," Carol mused, "my professors would kill to 
have a machine that made students think better and work 
harder." 

"Wouldn't we all?" Valerie replied. 

"By the way, I have a big midterm coming up just before 
the Thanksgiving holidays and I'll be cutting back my 
hours at the lab the weekend before so that I can 
study. On the Wednesday before the holiday, I have a 
flight to Boston to see my folks." 

Valerie's face showed a little disappointment. "You'll 
be back the Monday after the holiday, won't you?" 

"Of course," Carol responded. "My flight comes in at 
ten Sunday night. Are you and your husband going 
anywhere for Thanksgiving?" 

"No," Valerie replied. "Our honeymoon this summer was 
mostly spent in airports trying to get to and from 
Hawaii during the airline strike, so we're spending the 
weekend together here at home. He's going to cook a big 
Thanksgiving dinner." 

"He cooks?" Carol asked incredulously. 

"Better than me," Valerie told her. 

"He sounds more and more attractive all the time," 
Carol enthused. 

"Does he have a brother?" 

"I'm lucky," Valerie allowed. "Barry is very special." 

"I'll say," Carol agreed. "I'd want to spend as much 
time with him as I could, but I know you. You won't 
last the weekend. I bet you come in here at least once 
during the Thanksgiving holiday." 

"Oh yeah?" Valerie sneered, derisively. "How much do 
you want to bet?" 

"I don't know. How about a lunch at the Chinese 
restaurant? My money says you will be back in here 
before Friday evening." 

Valerie enjoyed this challenge. "I think I can stay 
away the whole weekend. Until Sunday morning at least." 

"Let's split the difference. If you come in before 
Saturday afternoon after Thanksgiving, you owe me a 
lunch at the Dragon Palace. You stay away until after 
twelve noon on Saturday, and I owe you lunch there." 

Valerie stuck out her hand to seal the deal. "Done!" 
she stated. 

Carol responded with a firm handshake. "Done." 

"Now let's try a few more passes of this experiment," 
Valerie said. "We have only a little over two weeks 
until Thanksgiving!" 


CHAPTER 4 
TURKEY DAY 

Barry scanned the recipe for pumpkin pie. It was only 
eight AM, and there remained plenty of time to bake the 
pie before dinner. He'd started cooking two hours 
before dawn, and the stuffing was almost ready to go 
into the bird. The potatoes and bean dishes were ready 
to cook, and the wine was already chilling. 

Valerie had not come to the kitchen for breakfast yet, 
because she'd come home around midnight last night. 
Barry hoped that she remembered the promise she'd made 
to spend the holiday weekend with him rather than going 
in to the lab. He had reminded her that he was planning 
to cook a big meal and he expected her to have dinner 
with him later in the afternoon. If she went to the lab 
today, he realized, she'd probably stay until one or 
two AM. 

Barry pushed the crown of the starched white balloon 
hat upward and away from his brow. He'd found the 
chef's cap and smock in the culinary supply store at 
the mall months ago, but waited until today to wear 
them. The outfit was excessive for home use, something 
a master chef at a hotel might wear, but it made him 
feel like an expert as he planned every step of the 
meal. 

"Look like a chef, cook like a chef," he murmured, 
studying the cookbook. 

The portable television on the counter showed the 
street scene in Manhattan as the crowds waited for the 
Thanksgiving Day parade. Barry glanced over to see the 
camera panning the throng of people. He had always 
wanted to see the parade in person. Maybe he could take 
Valerie to New York next year. If the scuttlebutt was 
accurate, one had to book the hotel rooms a year in 
advance anyway. 

Barry opened the oven and checked the peanuts he was 
roasting for the stuffing. Pre-roasted peanuts would 
have been okay, but he wanted to show-off for Valerie. 
After all, how often does one get to make a six course 
meal for two people? 

The smell of warm legumes tumbled out of the oven and 
tickled Barry's nose. The roasting was almost done. 

"Barry?" a soft voice asked. 

He turned around to see Valerie standing inside the 
swinging door that led to the dining room. She was 
wearing a robe, with likely nothing else on underneath. 
A column of sunlight from the window across the room 
illuminated her like a spotlight, adding a warm tone to 
her skin. Valerie's golden hair shone in the bright 
direct rays, but her eyes were not visible, squinted 
against the harsh glare. Her hands were against the 
door behind her and her body language hinted at 
something out of the ordinary. She did not approach 
Barry for a good-morning kiss. 

"Good morning, beautiful! Happy Turkey Day, honey!" 
Barry enthused. "Gobble Gobble!" He kissed Valerie and 
was somewhat disappointed at her lack of response. 

"What did I do now?" he asked, stepping back and 
standing so that his body blocked the sun's direct 
rays. 

Valerie looked beyond him and tonelessly responded, 
"Nothing." 

He had never seen her this distracted before. He 
searched her features for a clue but there was no hint 
of what was bothering her. 

"What's wrong, honey?" he asked. 

Valerie silently extended a trembling hand, holding a 
sturdy white plastic wand about six inches long. One 
end of the wand was rectangular in cross-section and 
tapered to a thin cylinder near the other end. Barry 
could see a colored cross in a slight depression about 
halfway along the handle. He stared at the artifact for 
several seconds before he realized the significance of 
what he was seeing. 

He looked up from the device to Valerie's face. "This 
is one of those pregnancy test things. Y...you...you're 
pregnant?" he asked, unbelieving the evidence before 
him. 

Valerie nodded and bit her lip as the tears swelled in 
her eyes. 

Barry hugged her tightly. "Oh, sweetheart! How?" 

Valerie squirmed out of his arms. Her expression was 
one of hurt and disappointment. "How?! Get a clue, 
Barry! Or didn't you take Biology 101?" 

Barry tried to look more concerned, but found it hard 
to disguise his joy at discovering that he'd be a 
father. "No, I know about the birds and the bees. What 
I meant to ask was 'When did this happen?'" 

Valerie crossed to the sink and stared out the kitchen 
window at the sunlight glistening off the frost on the 
lawn. "From the timing and all, it had to be the night 
we celebrated your book deal." 

Barry chuckled at the memory. "I remember that night 
well. You were a wild woman, Val." He walked up behind 
Valerie and stood behind her, looking out the window 
with her. He kissed her gently on the back of her head. 
"It's my fault, hon'. I guess I should have thought to 
use a condom that night." 

Valerie leaned her head back to rest on his chest. "And 
I should have been more conscientious about my birth 
control pills," she admitted with a sigh. "I guess my 
mind has been so focused on the project that I went a 
few days without taking them." 

"How long did you go without...?" Barry wondered. 

"I don't know. A few weeks. A month." 

Barry gulped audibly. "Maybe the test is wrong," he 
suggested. 

"There's surely a margin for error." 

"I used two different kinds of tests, just to be sure!" 
Valerie explained, glumly. "Both came out positive. Do 
you want to double check?" 

Barry wrapped his arms around Valerie from behind. "No. 
That's fine. But everything will be okay. We'll get 
through this together." 

"It's all wrong, don't you see? I shouldn't be 
pregnant!" she cried. "My project needs me every moment 
these days!" 

Barry reinforced the hug. "You'll have nine months 
until there's a baby to worry about. By then, the 
grants will have run out anyway and you can take a 
well-deserved break between projects." 

"I'd planned to do research for four or five years and 
establish a name for myself before we started a 
family," she whined. "Now, I'll be stuck at home and 
cut off from the big research money!" 

"Val, it won't be that way. I promise. You can go back 
to the labs right after the birth if you want. I'm home 
all the time anyway, and I can care for the baby while 
you're at the institute, establishing a name for 
yourself." 

"Yeah?" Valerie asked, turning to face her husband. She 
searched his expression for hints of insincerity. "What 
about before the baby comes? What about the fatigue? 
You don't know the barracudas I work around. My 
colleagues won't take a woman seriously who wears a 
maternity dress!" 

"That's not true and you know it," Barry soothed. "No 
one will notice whether you are pregnant or not. As for 
the fatigue, I'll cook healthy energy-filled meals for 
you and even pack things you can microwave at the 
institute for lunch and snacks. In fact, I'll do 
anything you ask to help you. I promise. Absolutely 
anything. Besides, you'll do great, you'll see." 

"You men don't understand!" 

"Us men?" Barry asked in reply. "Please don't lump all 
men together. I'm trying to understand your situation 
as best I can." 

The timer on the counter buzzed indicating that the 
peanuts were roasted. Barry disengaged from Valerie to 
remove the tray of warm goobers from the oven. When he 
turned to the window, Valerie was facing him, and the 
sunlight from behind her caused a halo to encircle her 
head. 

"Can we just not talk about it for a while?" she asked, 
before her husband had an opportunity to resume the 
discussion. 

"Anything you say," Barry agreed. "You can go into the 
den and watch the parade, while I make dinner. By the 
time the football games are on, I'll be done here, and 
we can sit and t..." Barry paused before the wrong 
words left his mouth. "We can sit and NOT talk as we 
watch the games," he concluded. 

Valerie thought her husband's suggestion made sense, 
and his words indicated that he really was trying to 
understand her perspective. She went to watch the 
parade on the television in the den while he cooked. 

***

The dinner was even better than she had imagined it 
would be. Barry had roasted a small turkey with peanut 
dressing and had prepared several side dishes of beans 
and potatoes. He even made a fresh pie for dessert. 
After dinner, she helped him wash the dishes and clean 
up the dining room. They talked about the upcoming 
holidays and how they would decorate the house. Valerie 
dropped some hints about Christmas presents she would 
like as they sat by the fire in the living-room hearth 
and rested, watching the sunset. 

She loved Barry, and he loved her. He was being very 
sweet and understanding about this whole pregnancy 
thing. She noticed that he'd carefully avoided saying 
anything all day that would remind her about her 
condition. Regardless, the thoughts were in the 
forefront of her mind. They might recede for a minute 
or two, but were never far away. 

By ten PM, Barry had gone out to the telescope to take 
more photographs for his book. Valerie was aware that 
he had been awake thirty hours by that time, but it 
wouldn't be the first time he'd gone without sleeping 
when something special required his attention during 
daylight. She knew that the sun probably would rise 
once more before he finally came to bed. 

Valerie looked out the bedroom window at her husband's 
indistinct form standing in the darkness of the 
backyard. His telescope was pointed to the northwest, 
to take a picture of a globular cluster or something 
like that, tonight. The final contract for his book had 
been agreed upon and signed only a few days ago. Barry 
had promised to deliver the manuscript by May and the 
illustrations and photos by late June. The galleys 
would be proofed before mid-June, and the book would be 
in stores by the time the baby was born. 

A baby. 

If only the research didn't demand all of her time and 
attention, a baby might not be too bad. Valerie had 
always felt an emotional pull anytime she was near a 
small child. Her friends called it 'the maternal 
leash'; a hormonal, genetic response to an infant that 
tugged on your womb when a baby was nearby. Just 
holding a baby was enough to make some women want to 
have one of their own. Valerie's reaction had never 
been that strong, but made her uncontrollably grin 
whenever she was around an infant. 

She'd just gotten careless about the contraceptives, 
she rationalized. She was so busy that she forgot. 
Without the pills, there was only a two or three day 
window when she could conceive each month, and even 
having sex during that time, a pregnancy wasn't 
guaranteed. Barry forgetting to use a condom compounded 
the error, though. She'd just been the victim of bad 
luck and bad timing. Making love without protection on 
the wrong day was all it took to change the odds 
dramatically. 

Now two weeks after the fateful night of her ovulation, 
the fatigue had been Valerie's first clue that 
something was amiss. She had awaken feeling very tired 
the last few mornings and found herself exhausted long 
before each day was over. She reasoned that it couldn't 
be the flu, since she had no other symptoms like 
headache, runny nose, or sore throat. She had checked 
her temperature and was a quarter of a degree above her 
normal reading. She felt a little out of sorts, but 
that was par for the course when her period was due. 
When her normally punctual monthly flow did not 
materialize she immediately purchased two pregnancy 
test kits. 

Just that morning, she'd risen and taken the test kits 
to the bathroom with her. Valerie sampled her urine 
stream as the directions indicated. The first kit 
produced a strong positive result, but Valerie knew 
well the variability of chemical processes. She crossed 
her fingers and used a different brand of test, getting 
a definite positive response from that one as well. The 
verdict was devastating. She had stood in the lavatory 
and silently cursed her bad luck. Why did it have to 
happen now, when she had the opportunity to make a 
breakthrough in the research? Why to her? 

When she calmed slightly, she had taken the test stick 
from the second pregnancy test and gone to the kitchen 
to tell Barry the news. As she remembered the event, it 
had been only fifteen hours ago that she'd told she was 
pregnant. 

Valerie stood at the bedroom window and pondered the 
future. How could she overcome this exhaustion and 
resume her long daily grind at the institute? Would she 
miscarry from the burden of stress at work? How would a 
pregnancy affect her professional stature or 
reputation? 

What about her life? She wasn't ready to have children! 
Although babies were cute, they were noisy, and messy, 
and inconvenient. They required constant attention and 
affection. She was sure that she loved her husband, but 
wasn't as positive that she would be able to extend 
that love to a child. 

At least Barry was being helpful rather than aloof. 
He'd offered to do everything for her. With him helping 
out, things might not be too bad. If only the research 
hadn't hit the doldrums for several months, she 
wouldn't be working so hard to compensate! It would 
take another week or more of long hours to get the 
project back on track! What about the strange way the 
mice were acting? So far there hadn't been any 
correlation between the type of feedback and the 
ability of the mice to learn. 

As Valerie watched Barry viewing the stars, she 
recalled Carol's frustration with the changes in the 
mice. Every time the women ran a scan, the mice changed 
in one or more ways. A docile mouse might become 
belligerent after the scan or it might not. A lethargic 
mouse might or might not suddenly develop prowess at 
running the maze. It didn't seem to matter whether the 
mouse was under the positive or negative feedback dome 
when it came to the amount or direction of change in 
behavior. The graduate assistant had jokingly accused 
Valerie of re-dying the ear- stripe codes to confuse 
her. 

That was ludicrous, thinking someone would change the 
stripe codes. Why would anyone change the stripes? That 
wouldn't... 

Valerie had a sudden flash of inspiration. She 
literally ran down the stairs to the den for her 
briefcase. She pulled out the lab notes and feverishly 
flipped through them. The results leapt from the page. 

Of course! She immediately saw a correlation between 
the experiments that had escaped both her and Carol. 
Her mind was racing, now. As she cross-checked the 
results of previous scans, the pattern emerged: solid 
and so obvious that she was giddy with delight! She now 
understood exactly what was happening during the 
experiment! 

Immediately another thought occurred to Valerie which 
brought a broad smile to her lips. She located the 
Veterinary Anesthesia Handbook in her briefcase. She'd 
been so chagrined from the overdose she gave the mice 
that she'd purchased a copy of her own. She thumbed 
through the pages until she located the entry she 
wanted. She studied the chart, committing the details 
to memory. She now had a plan to make everything work 
out for the best. 


CHAPTER 5 
THE DAY AFTER TURKEY DAY 

The clouds had returned long before dawn and Barry had 
come to bed, falling asleep next to his gently snoring 
wife. Hours later, he gradually emerged from sleep, 
feeling a tickle below his waist. He'd been lying on 
his back with his legs slightly spread and it took him 
a second or two to realize that the tickle was Valerie 
teasing his morning erection. 

He pretended to be asleep, and let her continue 
stroking him. The news of the pregnancy had depressed 
Valerie so much yesterday that Barry didn't try to get 
her interested in anything sexual at all, but now she 
was initiating foreplay and he considered he might be 
able to coax three days of higher spirits from her 
after all. 

"Mmmmmmm" he moaned. 

"Good morning, Bar'," Valerie greeted, cheerily. Her 
voice was sweet and melodic. 

She removed her fingers from Barry's groin, leaned over 
him and kissed him deeply. Her blond hair fell around 
their faces shrouding the kiss in darkness, tickling 
his ears. 

Barry wrapped his arm around her and could feel the 
bare skin of her back. He trailed one hand down to her 
bottom and rubbed the soft skin of her derriere, 
confirming by touch that she was completely nude. 

He pulled Valerie over him, so that her legs straddled 
his hips and her knees were planted astride his pelvis. 
Her face pulled away from his and her fingers found his 
stiff shaft still pointing skyward. She pushed his sex 
flat against his abdomen, inched backward on her 
haunches until the moist vestibule of her womanhood 
compressed the cylinder of his penis between his body 
and hers. 

The member had not entered her, but the warm velvety 
folds of her labia caressed Barry's manhood as she sat 
on his abdomen. She tilted her pelvis to rub herself 
lazily along the length of the rigid mass beneath her. 
Barry gently stroked her breasts and watched her 
nipples stiffen and elongate. Valerie's eyes closed as 
she faced upward and her mind seemed to go elsewhere. 
She breathed slowly as she rocked against him. 

Barry continued massaging her tits as she sat astride 
his hard-on, with the tip of his cock nuzzling her 
clitoris. Without warning, her head snapped forward and 
she began insistent gasping breaths, indicating that 
she'd reached a climax. Her breaths shuddered as they 
became longer and deeper, eventually turning into 
hisses through clenched teeth. Barry was nowhere near 
ejaculating himself, but he enjoyed the feeling of 
Valerie's pelvic thrusts stimulating his libido. 

When the last of her waves of pleasure subsided, 
Valerie pulled upward and away so that Barry's erection 
became visible, coated in her oily juices. She kissed 
him on the forehead and stood out of bed. Barry watched 
her sexy derriere retreat to the bathroom. He could 
still smell the lingering traces of her womanly scent. 

The shower ran briefly, and Valerie soon returned to 
the bedroom. Her wet hair was pinned behind her head 
with a barrette, but she was still undressed. From his 
position on the bed Barry admired her spectacular 
figure as she chose panties and a bra. She was a 
beautiful woman. But beauty was not her only asset. She 
was a gorgeous blonde with a brilliant mind. She was, 
perhaps, even more brilliant than she was lovely. 

"You don't have to get dressed if you don't want to," 
he told her, hoping she would simply return to bed and 
treat him to a weekend of sex play. 

"I would like to get dressed," she replied. "You should 
too." 

"Why?" he asked. 

"I don't know," she answered offhandedly. "How about if 
I take you to see my labs? You've been asking about 
them for months." 

"Are you sure you can do that?" Barry asked, sliding 
out of bed. His erection had softened and if Valerie 
was going to get dressed, he wouldn't need a hard-on 
for a while anyway. "What about the Commission and 
their rules?" 

"The Commission doesn't care who comes into the lab as 
long as I keep the work secret and don't give out too 
many details. After all, with your degree you'd be able 
to figure out what I'm doing even with a few oblique 
hints." Valerie pulled a pair of pantyhose onto her 
legs. 

"Isn't it just another lab?" Barry asked, stepping into 
the bathroom. He slathered on deodorant as he brushed 
his teeth. 

"I think you'll like the stuff in my lab," Valerie 
explained, raising her voice from the bedroom. "I have 
all kinds of expensive toys and a bunch of computers 
you'd probably kill for." 

Barry spit out the toothpaste and rinsed his mouth. "If 
I go with you to the lab for a while, can we come back 
home and spend the rest of the weekend in bed?" he 
shouted to her. 

Valerie appeared at the door to the bathroom as she 
replied, "I can't see why not." 

Barry broke into a grin and began humming as he shaved. 

***

Valerie punched the security code on the keypad and 
pushed the lab door open. The institute building was 
cooler than normal, since the heat was shut off on the 
long weekend. The temperature inside Valerie's lab was 
only slightly warmer. She turned on the lights and 
ushered Barry into the secret room. 

"Wow!" he said when he saw the expensive equipment 
surrounding him. "You weren't kidding! There's some 
neat stuff here! Martin-Rhys modulators. Shiegelmann 
reducers. I'm impressed! You even have a flock of 
Fujikawa correlators!" 

Some of the racks with critical systems were always on, 
and other racks were in standby. Valerie applied the 
power to the systems so her husband could see them in 
operation. Barry wandered from instrument to 
instrument, wide-eyed. Valerie set her purse and the 
thermos of coffee on the desk in the corner. 

"You've got lab mice?" Barry asked as he saw the row of 
cages and went to investigate. 

"We've got a whole bunch!" Valerie shouted in reply. 
"Go take a look at them! You want coffee?" 

Barry paused from peering at the mice to answer. "Yeah! 
A big cup! It's kind of cold in here," he shouted back. 
He was not directly in Valerie's line of sight, but 
separated from her by several tall cabinets of computer 
equipment and electrical systems. The muted whine of a 
hundred cooling fans forced both people to shout to be 
heard. 

Valerie opened the thermos and poured the coffee into 
the cup-lid. The cream they'd mixed with the brew at 
home had turned the beverage a light tan color. She 
glanced to check if Barry was occupied before she 
opened the supply cabinet and withdrew the bottle of 
tranquilizer. She measured just over five milliliters 
of the fluid and swirled it into the java. Just as she 
put the bottle of sedative back into the cabinet, Barry 
appeared. 

"Here you go, honey," Valerie said, turning away from 
the cabinet and offering him the cup. 

"Don't you want any?" he asked, before accepting the 
cup and taking a deep swallow of the warm liquid. 

"No," she demurred. "I'll be fine." She watched him 
intently as he sipped another gulp of the tainted brew. 
He began to reel slightly. 

"Are you all right, dear?" she asked with concern, and 
offered him a chair. 

"I don't know what's come over me!" Barry exclaimed, 
sitting clumsily. He handed the cup to her. "Is that 
decaf?" 

Valerie set the cup on the desk just before Barry 
completely lost consciousness and slumped backward. She 
tilted the roll-about chair so that Barry was slightly 
reclining, and rolled him to the experiment table. He 
looked almost dead, but Valerie knew he'd consumed 
about half of the cup of coffee which meant he'd 
ingested approximately the right amount of tranquilizer 
and was very heavily sedated. She switched on the 
control computer and typed a few commands. The computer 
began interacting with other systems in the lab. 

Valerie brought the cup of adulterated coffee to the 
lab table, then set one of the flux-recovery domes on 
Barry's head. She looped a length of duct-tape under 
Barry's chin to hold the dome in place. She strapped 
the second dome onto her own head with another strip of 
the gray tape. She sat in a rolling chair similar to 
the one containing Barry and carefully typed a few more 
keystrokes on the computer keyboard. 

The system monitor indicated that everything was ready. 
Valerie took a deep breath and reached for the cup. She 
drank the rest of the warm java as quickly as she 
could, noting that the sedative added nothing to the 
flavor. Had she not known otherwise, she would have 
never guessed that anything except coffee, sugar and 
cream had passed her lips. 

Valerie set the empty cup back on the table at her 
side. She could already feel the drug rapidly dulling 
her senses, but typed the "go" key on the computer just 
before her head lolled backward in unconsciousness. 


CHAPTER 6 
TRANSPOSITION 

Valerie first became aware of sounds: the ever-present 
hum of fluorescent lights, the whir of electronic 
cooling fans, and the intermittent rustle of mice among 
the wood shavings in their enclosures. Her nose could 
detect the faint cedar odor from the mouse cages and 
the warm syrupy smell of electronic equipment nearby. 

The momentary flash of disorientation on wakening was 
just that: momentary. She quickly recognized the sounds 
and smells as those in her lab and immediately 
remembered why she had been unconscious as well as what 
she had done. 

The relative quiet surrounding her was an indication 
that the experiment was already finished its scan. She 
knew that if the systems were still online, the rumble 
of the power conversion units would block out the more 
subtle sounds. Had her plan worked? She was 
simultaneously eager to know and reluctant to face the 
consequences. She decided not to open her eyes just 
yet. 

Fighting the urge to open her eyelids, Valerie lifted 
her hands off the armrests of the chair and clenched 
her fingers into loose fists. When she felt the soft 
contact of her fingertips against her palms, she 
smiled. She tightened her grip and could sense her 
biceps straining with the effort. That evidence of 
power was something new. She lifted her fingertips to 
her jaw line and felt the contours of her mandible. The 
angular ridge was partially obscured by the duct tape, 
but definitely more prominent than before. The most 
telling difference was the slightly rough texture of 
beard stubble. Her theory had been correct. 

There was no need for her eyes to remain closed. She 
slowly opened them and after adjusting to the bright 
lights, she looked at her hands. The fingers were much 
thicker than she'd remembered and were now tipped with 
recently nibbled fingernails. A plain gold band adorned 
the ring finger of her left hand. 

Her attention shifted up her arms to the central part 
of her body. She wore a simple sweater that appeared 
coarser than it felt as she ran her hands over her 
chest. It was so odd not to find the mounds that had 
graced her upper torso for the last twelve or thirteen 
years! Her shoulders and arms were more muscular than 
before and her figure was now considerably less curvy. 
She was trembling slightly with giddy delight. 

Without pause, her hands dove to the juncture of her 
legs, where she could feel a soft lumpiness through the 
fabric of the trousers. She unzipped the fly and guided 
her hand inside to cup the warm organs cushioned there 
in thick cotton underwear. As her fingers gently 
caressed the tender items protruding from her crotch, 
she knew without a doubt that this was no longer her 
old body! 

Confirmation of her new status complete, she quickly 
withdrew her hand and closed the zipper. Valerie felt 
along the tape under her jaw until she found the end 
and began peeling the adhesive strip off her chin. 

The weight of the flux recovery dome on her head was 
uncomfortable. She had not designed the hemispheres for 
placement on a subject's head. Although the interior of 
the dome was smooth, it was hard and heavy, and rested 
awkwardly against her skull. When she had separated the 
tape from her skin, she lifted the flux recovery dome 
away and set it on the experiment table. 

A weak groan caught her ear, and she turned to look for 
its source. What she saw was her original female body 
slumped in a nearby chair; a body just beginning to 
awaken from the effects of the knockout drops. 

Valerie stood unsteadily from the remaining effects of 
the tranquilizer and approached the chair containing 
her old body as quickly as her condition allowed. She 
pulled the tape off the chin on the reclining form, 
being careful to avoid touching the sticky surface of 
the duct tape to the long hair on that person's head. 
She set the second flux recovery dome on the table and 
pushed the chair containing the barely conscious form 
over to the desk. She had only a moment to step back 
into the shadows as the person in the chair rapidly 
came out of anesthesia. 

***

Barry wondered what had hit him. The fading wooziness 
had come on too suddenly to be simple exhaustion. He 
opened his eyes slowly and realized that he was 
reclining in a chair at a desk in a strange room. An 
instant later his brain cleared and he recognized 
Valerie's lab. Gradually he remembered feeling faint 
after arriving with his wife and that she had helped 
him into a chair. Now she was gone, or at least she was 
not visible in his field of view. 

"Val?" he asked, groggily. His voice sounded strangely 
thin to his ears. 

He cleared his throat. "Valerie!" 

Again his voice was high-pitched and seemed odd. Barry 
hoped that Val was all right and that whatever had 
briefly felled him had not claimed her as well. He had 
to find her! As he pushed his chair away from the desk, 
he noticed his hands. What puzzled him was that they no 
longer looked the way they had ever looked before. His 
slender hands now tapered to thin almost bony fingers 
with medium length manicured fingernails. A diamond 
wedding ring that looked identical to Valerie's 
encircled a finger of his left hand. This was strange 
indeed! 

"What the..." he uttered, staring at his lower arms. 

"Do you like the little side-effect of my research?" a 
deep and vaguely familiar voice asked from somewhere 
behind him. 

Barry spun the chair around in the direction of the 
voice, and what he saw made his eyes go wide. He saw 
someone with his face. 

"I can tell by your expression that you are surprised," 
the other man said. "Before you say anything more, why 
not take a close look at yourself." 

Barry wasn't sure if he trusted to take his eyes off 
the eerily familiar man, but quickly glanced down at 
his own lap and determined several things. First, a 
pair of shapely pantyhose-sheathed legs protruded from 
a denim skirt below his waist; and second, he was 
overlooking a pair of breasts. He brought his hands up 
to the front of his sweater and compressed the twin 
mounds that protruded from the area between his neck 
and abdomen. He registered surprise that nerve endings 
there could feel the touch of his hands! These breasts 
were real...and they were part of his body! 

"What's happened to me?" he asked, hearing the 
uncharacteristically more treble tone of his voice more 
clearly. "And where is Valerie?" 

"Let me explain," the man with his face said, walking 
around to sit on the edge of the desk. "You may not 
believe this, but I am Valerie. More to the point, 
Valerie's conscious mind is in this: your former body. 
At this moment, your mind is in the body you associated 
with Valerie. You might say we have changed places, 
having each other's form." 

"So this is like virtual reality?" Barry asked, trying 
to rationalize the things he was hearing, seeing and 
feeling. He glanced around to survey his surroundings. 

"No," the man claiming to be Valerie corrected him. 
"There is nothing virtual about this. This is neither a 
computer simulation nor an elaborate form of hypnotism. 
The equipment here in my lab somehow has the ability to 
actually transfer a conscious mind from one body to 
another." 

"Forever?" Barry asked with an edge of fear in his 
voice. 

"No." 

It was odd, hearing the man calling himself Valerie. "I 
don't believe your story about being us each other 
because, if you're telling the truth," Barry began, 
defiantly plunging his hand up his skirt, "then all 
I'll find..." His words stopped as his face drained of 
color. 

"Missing something?" Valerie asked, cupping herself in 
the groin and raising an eyebrow. 

"I'm...I'm...a girl! I'm...Valerie?" Barry asked, 
incredulously. 

"You're female all right, but you are still Barry; just 
as I am still Valerie, where it counts. Up here." 
Valerie tapped her temple with one forefinger. 

Barry self-consciously removed his hand from between 
his legs and straightened the skirt. The collision of 
his senses and the impossible explanation only served 
to confuse him further. "How did you do this?" he 
asked, still uneasy yet suddenly curious. 

"I really don't understand it completely," Valerie 
admitted. "I discovered the effect a few weeks ago when 
the pairs of mice involved in my experiments began 
behaving oddly. It was only recently that I put two and 
two together and figured out what was happening." 

Even with such sketchy details, Barry appreciated the 
magnitude of the discovery. "Wow," he whispered, as he 
took a moment to examine his situation. He felt no 
different than he had before becoming unconscious. Yes, 
it was odd to hear Valerie's silky voice issuing from 
his throat as he spoke, but if he closed his eyes and 
did not put his hands on his chest or lap, there was no 
perceivable difference in the way he felt with a female 
body than he had as a male. 

"So far, you and I are the first humans to undergo the 
process, as well as the first subjects of different 
sex," Valerie informed him. 

"It's nice to know that my wife thinks nothing of using 
me as a guinea pig!" Barry grumbled, with an amused 
smile. He had little basis to complain. After all, 
there had been no ill-effects as far as he could tell. 

"I wouldn't have taken a chance if I wasn't absolutely 
sure of what would happen," Valerie explained. "If you 
think about it, I was just as much at risk as you." 

"You said it isn't permanent, so how long does this 
last before it wears off?" Barry asked, standing up and 
running his hands over the curves of his body swaddled 
in the sweater and skirt. He wanted to confirm the 
strange miracle for himself before the situation 
returned to normal. 

Valerie looked him in the eye. "It doesn't wear 
off...in so many words. It lasts until we undergo 
another scan from the systems here." She gestured to 
the rows of equipment. "But I assure you it is totally 
reversible." 

"Oh," Barry gulped, nervously. Was Valerie so sure of 
her theory that she would do something like this 
without having a way to undo it? Did she even know how 
to correct the situation and get their consciousnesses 
back into the proper bodies? 

Valerie slid off the desk and grabbed her pocketbook. 
She tossed the purse to Barry, who caught it clumsily. 
She rinsed the thermos cup- lid in the lab sink, re-
sealed the thermos bottle and headed for the door. 
"Let's go home, Barry!" she urged, gesturing for him to 
follow. 

"What!?" Barry positively shrieked, standing his 
ground. "Home?! Aren't you going to switch our minds 
back into the right bodies first?" 

Valerie tapped her foot impatiently. "I thought you 
were the one that wanted to spend all of this weekend 
in bed!" was all she said. 

"I did!" Barry whined disconsolately. And then the 
mental gears began spinning. A smile slowly crept 
across his lips and he giggled with amusement. "Oooh 
Val! You are so kinky!" 

He approached her, stood on his tiptoes and kissed the 
lips that were once his own. As he leaned closer to 
Valerie's body, his breasts compressed against her body 
and tickled ever so slightly. Barry smiled at the 
pleasant sensation. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad to 
try for a few hours! "Okay," he sighed as his lips left 
hers. "Let's go home." 

It took longer than normal for Valerie to secure the 
lab door, since she was slightly clumsy at pushing the 
security codes into the keypad that now seemed very 
small and cramped to her larger fingers. Barry was 
already walking toward the stairs, and as Valerie 
followed him, she realized that his gait was not at all 
feminine. He was still taking huge steps, stomping and 
plodding along like he always did, and didn't sway his 
hips the way women did when they walked. It looked out 
of place to see a female with such a masculine stride. 

In the parking lot, Valerie arrived at the passenger 
side of Barry's Corvette before she realized that his 
key ring was in the pocket of the pants she now wore. 
She tossed the keys over the car to him and he unlocked 
the doors so they could get in. Barry sat into the 
driver's bucket seat and his discomfort was immediately 
evident. Everything is so darn big!" he complained. 

"Nothing is any bigger. That body is just smaller," 
Valerie explained, adjusting the passenger seat back to 
give herself legroom, and pulling a seat belt around 
herself. She watched Barry adjust his seat position 
until it was as far forward as it would go. 

"It's a good thing I'm not any shorter," Barry told 
her, stretching his legs and glancing under the 
steering wheel, "or I'd need blocks on the pedals to 
drive!" 

He fastened his seat belt and grimaced as he tried to 
get the shoulder belt to settle somewhere more 
comfortable than across his breasts. Valerie quietly 
chuckled at his misery. She had complained about the 
same problem every time she rode in his car. 

The short ride home was relatively uneventful, with the 
exception that Barry would audibly grunt every time he 
had to depress the stiff clutch pedal with his less 
muscular leg. A few times, he misjudged the position of 
the shifter and dropped the transmission into the wrong 
gear. After a while, he became acclimated to the new 
arm positions that were involved. 

The automatic door on their garage closed after them, 
and Barry stood stiffly out of the driver's side of the 
car. Valerie could tell that his leg was a little sore 
from the exertion of using the clutch. That was part of 
the reason she never drove his car. It was just too 
much work. She wondered if he would want to share the 
minivan until their minds were restored to the proper 
bodies. 

Barry ushered Valerie into the house, holding the door 
open for her to enter. "You know," he said, "in theory, 
you should be holding this door for me." 

"And in theory, you should have remembered the purse on 
the floor of the car" Valerie responded, handing him 
the article under discussion as she walked past. 

"It's your purse," he told her, following her into the 
kitchen. His features showed obvious annoyance with 
having to carry one of those things. 

"The identification that goes with that body is in 
there," she pointed at him as she spoke. "Driver's 
license, Institute ID, health-spa card, credit cards. 
While we're interchanged, you really should consider it 
YOUR purse." 

"Maybe I won't need it if I don't go anywhere," he 
grumbled. 

Barry set the handbag on the countertop and glanced 
sidelong at Valerie. "Well, then. Are you ready to give 
me a demonstration of how you can handle the plumbing 
between your legs?" 

Valerie chuckled at Barry's blunt question. "I think 
so. How about you?" she responded. 

"I'm ready. This time, I can just lay back and make you 
do all the work," he said, wrinkling his nose in a 
pixieish expression. "You know, I could just fake an 
orgasm." 

"Oh yeah?" Valerie challenged good-humoredly. "Would 
you even know how?" 

Barry replied, "I've seen 'When Harry met Sally', plus 
I've heard you moaning and panting enough times..." 

Valerie started laughing. "I might moan, but I do not 
pant!" 

"Sure you do!" Barry answered. He rolled his eyes back 
into his head and fluttered his eyelids. "Oh! ...It's 
so...Please! ...Barry! ..Nngggh! ...Oh! ..." he gasped 
breathily. 

Valerie stared at her husband who was doing a very 
credible impression of a woman in the throes of 
passion. The simulation was even more realistic because 
he had a woman's body, face and voice. Perhaps he could 
fake a climax after all. When his performance was over, 
she commented, "Give me a chance, and maybe you won't 
have to pretend." 

"One thing for certain," Barry smirked. "As long as you 
have a male body, I'll know if any orgasm you get is 
real." 

Valerie stuck out her tongue at him, even though he was 
correct. She was now the one who had to get and keep a 
hard-on. She was the one whose motion and timing had to 
bring Barry to climax. She would be the one ejaculating 
this time! 

"Is there any trick to getting an erection?" she asked, 
casting a glance downward at her own waistline. 

Barry giggled at the naive question. "A trick? Like 
what, for example?" 

"I don't know," Valerie replied with mild exasperation. 
"You're the one that grew up male. Do boys have to flex 
a special muscle somewhere?" 

"Let me show you," he answered. He slowly unbuttoned 
the front of his sweater, trying to be shyly seductive, 
and did fairly well, in his opinion. He briefly opened 
the sweater to reveal his bra-encased breasts to 
Valerie. 

His pretense as a vamp amused Valerie, making her 
chuckle. "Barry, I hope you realize that flashing your 
tits is not very effective when you do it to someone 
who's been a woman all her life!" 

"I don't know about that!" he sneered. He sidled up to 
her and trailed his fingers across the bulge in her 
trousers. As Barry had expected, her body began to 
react. "Look's like it's having the effect we need." 

Valerie was surprised at the way the genitalia on this 
body responded to Barry's touch, contrary to her will. 
She had always suspected that a cock was more or less 
under the control of the owner's brain, but was 
discovering that nothing could be further from the 
truth. She had planned to tease her husband by not 
responding to his sexual provocation. Barry, of course, 
knew the precise visual cues and how to touch the exact 
places to make a male body, particularly his former 
body, respond. Not to be outdone, Valerie reached 
inside his sweater and gently slid her fingers along 
the underside of his breast. She could feel the soft 
fleshy mound trembling inside the lacy bra cup and knew 
even before checking that Barry's nipples were becoming 
aroused. 

"Whoo!" Barry sighed, "that feels great, Val!" Her 
tender touch along the bra was causing him to tingle 
not only on the breast but somehow in his pelvis as 
well. He was already enjoying the foreplay and was 
still standing up and mostly dressed. He stretched up 
to Valerie's face, kissed her and held his lips to hers 
for a long time. 

He could feel not only his breasts swelling against 
her, but her erection stiffening between their bodies 
as the kiss continued. Barry could also sense an 
increased dampness between his own legs in response to 
the stimulus. He'd seen the feminine response to 
foreplay previously, and he'd read his share of erotic 
fiction, but now he was able to sense the glow and 
tingle of female arousal for himself. He wondered how 
he could explain his male brain reacting this way, but 
he liked what he felt so far. 

Without warning, Valerie swept Barry off his feet and 
carried him up the stairs toward the bedroom. She'd 
never carried anyone anywhere before, but here she was 
lifting another adult easily. So, this was what it was 
like to be stronger! Barry was kicking his legs in mock 
protest, but it was obvious from the continued contact 
of his lips that he was enjoying the ride. Eventually 
they reached the bedroom. 

When they finally broke their long kiss, Valerie 
lowered Barry to his feet and he quickly stepped out of 
his shoes. He removed the sweater and denim skirt while 
she pulled her sweater over her head and dropped her 
trousers on the floor. Barry could now see the 
prominent tenting of her briefs. He knew exactly what 
she was feeling at this moment, as her body prepared 
for intercourse. 

Valerie pulled him into another kiss and a tight hug, 
and when they separated, Barry realized his wife had 
used that opportunity to unfasten the bra clasp behind 
his back. The straps hung loosely from his upper arms, 
so he shrugged slightly and the bra slid forward, down 
his arms and to the floor. Now free of their frilly 
confinement, his boobs itched where the bra cups had 
rested against them. 

He rubbed the breasts slowly in his palms to relieve 
the mild itch; a display that he hoped would maintain 
or strengthen Valerie's hard-on. The weight of the warm 
flesh in his hands was simultaneously familiar and 
strange, but the pleasant sensations of his fingers 
caressing the tits was a wonderful new feeling. 

Valerie kicked off her loafers and flopped onto the bed 
still wearing the underwear. Barry started to join her 
before he realized that he was wearing pantyhose. 
Valerie rolled onto her side to watch Barry as he posed 
and pouted in a caricature of a stripper. He slowly 
rolled the hosiery down his legs and eventually off his 
body. When Barry had removed the sheer stockings, he 
reached up behind his head and located the barrette 
holding his long hair in place. He pulled the clasp 
free and shook his head the way he'd seen the models do 
in the hair-dye ads on TV. His head rotated slowly back 
and forth and he could see long honey-blond hair 
swirling around his face. 

Now that he was completely naked, he crawled onto bed 
with Valerie and planted a trail of kisses starting 
from her navel and heading for her face. As he crawled 
along, he could feel the weight of the breasts hanging 
off his chest, and could detect the barely perceptible 
shift in his center of gravity when the tits swung. 
Fortunately this body was firm and the breasts were not 
disproportionately enormous globes. His mammae dragged 
through the hair on Valerie's chest, tickling his 
sensitive nipples, causing them to stiffen even more. 

By the time his lips reached her face, he was lying 
stretched out next to her. He reclined with his head on 
Valerie's left arm and rubbed his left leg on hers. He 
began sliding his fingers through the hair on her 
chest, and every so often would run his hand along the 
outside of Valerie's hip and return with a detour 
between her legs. 

He'd never noticed the huge difference in their body 
sizes until this moment, but his wife was definitely 
much larger than he was now. Barry's nose detected a 
smell that he'd never sensed before. It was a vaguely 
attractive and somewhat animal smell, although Barry 
could not actually describe the nature of the odor in 
comparison to any scent he knew. Had his male body 
always smelled like that? 

Valerie used her hands to tease his nipples and massage 
her husband's breasts in slow circles. There was a 
subtle difference between strong stimulation and 
unnecessary roughness, and she tried her best to stay 
just to the gentle side of that equation. She could 
sense that Barry was becoming very sexually excited not 
only by his growling moans and blissful expression, but 
by the goose bumps on his tits. That had always been 
the signal that her body was supremely aroused. 

She rolled him over onto his back, knelt over him and 
lightly licked the tip of one of his breasts. The 
nipple was warm, stiff and tasted surprisingly sweet. 
Barry had mentioned the enjoyable taste to her before, 
but she had always believed that he was just being 
complimentary. As she licked and sucked the tip of his 
breast into her mouth, Barry was using his hands to 
tickle the front of her briefs and the swollen member 
inside. She felt the ache as her prick strained to 
become even more stiff, and she understood the phrase 
"hurts so good" at
last. 

She wondered if she had a streak of lesbianism in her 
personality, since this seemed almost too easy and 
natural to sensually caress a woman. Valerie had always 
considered herself interested exclusively in men and 
had never looked at a female as a sex object before. 
Sure, she'd admired some of the super models and felt a 
rush of excitement as she studied their pictures in 
magazines, but she had always thought it was her mind 
putting itself in the model's places and imagining 
their interesting lifestyles and the wonderful sex they 
were getting. She'd thought herself a normal woman with 
normal heterosexual desires, but wasn't as sure of her 
motives anymore. 

Up to this point, Barry had considered Valerie's 
foreplay a game. However, a general tingling all over 
his body told him that it was time for the main event. 
Until now, he could simply tell himself that the mind 
exchange was a dream; however, this was not a dream. 
Until now, he had the chance to back out of engaging in 
sex, but the emotions of the moment were conspiring to 
make retreat increasingly difficult. 

He attempted to silently convince himself that having a 
male put a penis inside him, to have a part of someone 
else's body invade his body, was completely normal. It 
was, he reasoned, perfectly natural so long as he was 
shaped like a female, and perhaps more palatable with 
the knowledge that the male was actually his wife in 
his former body. It was difficult nonetheless to 
counter more than fifteen years of heterosexual male 
indoctrination to which he'd been exposed since he'd 
entered puberty. 

He insinuated his hand inside the waistband of 
Valerie's briefs and his fingers caressed the warm 
rigid shaft he found there. "Ooooohhhh," Valerie moaned 
deeply as Barry trailed his fingers lightly along the 
underside of her cock. 

"Feels gooooood doesn't it?" Barry teased Valerie. He 
knew it felt great, because he'd always enjoyed it when 
she had touched him in just that way. He gently cupped 
his hand under her warm and hairy testicles and noted 
that they felt heavier now that they were hanging off 
someone else. He rolled his fingers, causing the tender 
organs to move back and forth, and was certain that 
Valerie was enjoying his every touch. 

There is no way to adequately describe to someone 
exactly how to touch your body for maximum effect. The 
clinical analysis of what you want to feel and forming 
the detailed instructions for your partner takes away 
from the moment, but this unique experience of having 
Valerie's mind inside a body he knew so well allowed 
him to precisely stimulate her for the ultimate in 
sensation. Likewise, Valerie had the same advantage 
with him. 

Valerie kept her lips on his breast, but slid her hand 
toward Barry's pubic mound. His thighs spread to give 
her access, as she cupped his vulva. She could feel the 
incredible heat of his passion warming her palm, while 
her middle finger sought out the moist slit and gently 
parted his nether lips. She slowly rubbed her hand 
forward and back, and lightly touched the slick tissues 
in his genital crevice. Barry's pelvis tilted up and 
down slightly against her finger as she explored the 
outer folds of tissue. It seemed to Valerie to be 
naughty in the extreme, touching a woman like this. 

From the amount of lubrication Barry was producing, he 
must be as horny as could be! Valerie pulled her finger 
free and compressed the labia gingerly between her 
thumb and middle finger, sliding the slick flaps of 
skin juicily against one another, tickling the button 
of his clitoris in the oily trough. Her tongue could 
sense his nipple stiffening between her teeth as the 
simultaneous stimulation of his breasts and genitalia 
overloaded the nerves in his body. 

In no time at all, she felt his body stiffen and heard 
plaintive whimpering gasps escaping Barry's lips. She 
knew he was having an intense climax. She looked up 
from her position at his chest and saw his closed 
eyelids and his quivering lips parted in ecstasy. She 
also knew that his light touch along the length of her 
prick and around her balls was causing a desperate 
tingle inside her new body that would not be denied. 
She lifted his hand away and pulled her briefs off as 
she released his tit from her mouth. 

Even through the fog of his own pleasure, Barry sensed 
that Valerie had removed her underwear. He spread his 
legs further, pulling his knees up slightly. He'd never 
guessed that he would ever in his life be craving the 
feeling of a cock inside himself, but he was! He'd 
enjoyed the incredible sensation of a female orgasm 
just from her manual stimulation, and was feeling the 
pleasantly reverberating aftershocks. 

He knew from the overall tingle and the way Valerie's 
fingers felt slipping around the outside of his well-
lubricated cunt that he was seriously aroused. Barry 
had never been able to continue sex-play immediately 
after am orgasm before. When he'd been male, the show 
pretty much was over when he'd ejaculated, but now he 
was a little sensitive here and there but ready for 
more of whatever Valerie was dishing out. Any 
trepidation he had felt earlier about being penetrated 
had simply evaporated in the heat of his own powerful 
lust. 

He was perplexed that he could not detect the smell he 
knew he must be producing: the odor a female body 
always generated when turned on. He had been able to 
smell it each time he'd made love to Valerie before. 
Perhaps, he surmised, a woman could not sense her own 
pheromones. 

Valerie knelt between Barry's legs and leaned over him 
with her hands on the bed adjacent to Barry's 
shoulders. She looked down between her own legs. Her 
rigid pecker was fully extended to seven or more 
inches, but to her seemed much longer. Just seeing the 
throbbing pink shaft hanging off her own body was a 
thrill to her mind that caused the phallus to stiffen 
more. 

She guided the tip of that swollen cylinder to touch 
Barry's pelvis. His warm slippery cunt slid eagerly up 
and down across the head of her penis as he tilted his 
hips; the hairs surrounding his pussy teased her 
mercilessly. She leaned forward a little further and 
pressed the point of her cock between his labia, 
parting the entranceway to his sex. 

She was amazed at how delicious his warm vagina felt 
molding itself around the end of her pecker. She 
gradually eased herself forward a little at a time 
until she felt the knob of her penis push past the 
entrance to Barry's love tunnel. Emboldened now, she 
pressed further and felt the liquid heat of Barry 
enveloping her shaft. He felt so tight, so warm and so 
slick! It was all she could do to maintain a slow pace. 
One part of her wanted the new and fantastic sensations 
to last forever, but a corner of her brain silently 
insisted that she plunge into him all at once. It took 
a lot of will power to moderate her own progress. 

Barry was ecstatic with passion, as he felt Valerie's 
solid organ gradually fill him. He didn't care if 
someone was penetrating him nor how non-masculine those 
sensations were. It just felt so good! Valerie really 
knew how to show her former body a good time! Barry had 
already experienced a strong orgasm only a moment 
earlier, and wondered how anything could top those 
fantastic sensations. 

Valerie's phallus bottomed out and she began to slide 
its length slowly in and out of him. As she did so, 
Barry discovered even greater ecstasy. This was heaven! 
During each thrust, he could feel her sweaty testicles 
slap against his perineum, the little area of skin 
between the fourchette and his anus. She was pulling 
most of the way out and plunging deeply into him, which 
tugged on his internal and external tissues. 

He could feel the swollen head of her penis as it 
dilated the opening to his snatch on withdrawal and 
each deep drive excited every nerve he had. When she 
was the deepest within him, he could feel her prick 
bumping against the innermost end of his vagina, upon 
something impossibly far inside him. The juicy tissues 
of his labia were gently massaging his clitoris as 
Valerie continued her thrusts. While she pistoned in 
and out, thick slurping noises issued from Barry's 
cunt. It was a symphony of new and wonderful feelings, 
each more pleasant than the last. 

Barry experimentally tensed the muscles in his pelvic 
floor, and was rewarded by an increased friction as his 
pussy constricted around Valerie's reciprocating organ. 
After a few grip and release cycles, he didn't even 
have to concentrate to make those muscles react in 
rhythm with her thrusts. 

"Showoff!" Valerie grunted in admiration of Barry's 
muscle control. The meter of his vaginal massage was 
making it very difficult for her to ignore the 
insistent tingling along her cock-shaft that sent 
sparks of electricity back into her body. She'd hoped 
to hold back her climax to demonstrate her will power 
and the proper way to conduct extended foreplay with a 
woman. Again, her plans were for naught. She could 
already feel the accumulating tension that she 
associated with an orgasm, but it seemed to be building 
at a faster pace than it ever had when she was female. 

Valerie sensed the vague pressure behind the base of 
her cock and recognized the initial sensations of her 
first male orgasm. Within a few short strokes, some 
animal instinct urged her to thrust harder and deeper. 
She complied with renewed power, speed and depth. Her 
balls slapped against Barry with increasing intensity, 
and soon thereafter she felt the urgent unbidden 
pulsing of her prostate. Less than a second later, the 
initial bundle of semen surged through her and into 
Barry. 

When Valerie paused, Barry was disappointed at first. 
He wondered why she had stopped moving, since from her 
actions and words she evidently had been enjoying 
intercourse immensely so far. But when the first 
surprising jet of hot spunk splashed within him, it 
triggered a chain of incredibly strong orgasms. It was 
as if his entire body was convulsing in uncontrolled 
spasms. Colorful lightning exploded in his brain. He 
could feel his pussy muscles involuntarily rippling 
along the length of Valerie's member and waves of 
energy radiating outward from his pelvis. 

His hands clawed at the bed-sheets and his legs 
alternately straightened and bent. Barry found himself 
panting, moaning, shouting incoherently, and pushing 
his hips toward Valerie in concert with the glorious 
feelings. He wanted to feel her deep within himself... 
more... more! Valerie's body moved in and out weakly a 
few times during the half dozen or so spurts she 
emitted and then she collapsed with her rapidly 
deflating prick still buried in Barry. 

"Oh, man, Val! That was unbelievable!" he raved as his 
breath returned. Valerie's body was heavy slumped upon 
him, but not uncomfortably so. 

"I'm glad you...enjoyed it!" she breathed, physically 
drained. 

"So, tell me... was your orgasm for real?" 

Barry kissed her sweaty cheek and playfully flexed the 
muscles in his cunt to squeeze her wilting erection. "I 
had several... and they were all as real as the one you 
had. Let's go again!" he urged, with a sexy purr. 

"Now?" Valerie whined. 

"Sure!" Barry bubbled. "I had so much fun that want to 
do this as much as we can before you switch us back!" 
He folded his legs around Valerie's and rubbed his 
calves on the back of her thighs. 

"Look, Bar'," Valerie reasoned, wearily, "I enjoyed it 
too, but, now that I've tried coitus as the poke-er 
instead of the poke-ee, I need a bit of a breather 
before we do it again. You wore me out, hon'." 

"Sorry," Barry apologized, sheepishly. "I got a little 
carried away, this being my virgin initiation and all. 
I totally forgot how guys like me... er... I mean... 
like you... need a recharge before another go 'round." 

Valerie's cock softened and withered enough finally to 
ooze out of Barry, and she rolled off to lie on her 
back next to him. She closed her eyes and replayed over 
and over in her mind the wonderful things she had just 
felt. The ache of arousal, the taut skin of her swollen 
penis sliding into a slick warm crevice, the breathless 
rush of excitement, the pumping of her prostate, the 
overwhelming euphoria of sexual release. 

Male orgasm was a lot more intense than any of her 
female friends would believe! Sure, it wasn't so 
totally enveloping or long- lasting as a woman's 
climax, but what it lacked in duration it made up for 
in concentrated power and adrenaline. Her entire mind 
seemed to have been focused on her cock during that 
splendiferous moment. No wonder men liked sex so much! 
As soon as she got a little rest, she was more than 
willing to do that again! 

Barry lay next to her trying to recall what he enjoyed 
doing between sessions of intercourse and when he could 
remember nothing, he simply trailed his fingers gently 
over his bed partner's abdomen. He'd never appreciated 
how muscular the male pelvis felt, with several 
horizontal bands of sinew below the ribcage. 

The muscles on his former body were not as well defined 
as those on a bodybuilder, but there were some subtle 
ripples. He put his fingers on the pelvis of his new 
female shell and felt in vain for the corresponding 
muscles. God certainly made men and women differently! 
He was rubbing himself on the smooth expanse of skin 
below his belly button when a pressing thought entered 
his mind. 

"Val! The baby!" he shouted, sitting up beside her. 

"What?" she groaned, emerging from her reverie. 

"The baby, Val! I forgot completely that you... that 
I... that we're pregnant!" Barry was rubbing his pelvis 
as if his attention could somehow soothe the embryo 
deep inside him. 

"So?" Valerie wearily asked. 

"So..." Barry replied, his eyes wide with evident fear. 
"Maybe we should be more careful! We could hurt the 
baby doing what we just did, couldn't we?" 

Valerie peered at Barry and could see the panic in his 
eyes. She reached up and stroked his hair a few times 
before speaking. "Settle down, dear. Nothing we did 
will hurt the baby. Females since the dawn of time have 
had sex... sometimes rowdy sex... during their 
pregnancies. The baby is fine." 

Barry relaxed visibly upon hearing Valerie's calm 
response. 

"You're sure?" 

"I'm sure." She closed her eyes to rest a moment more. 

Reassured, Barry reclined on his back next to Valerie, 
and stroked the area between his navel and pussy. There 
was a tiny human life growing somewhere in there... 
somewhere inside of him. He smiled. 


CHAPTER 7 
A FAVOR 

The first rays of Sunday morning sunlight spilled into 
the bedroom as Barry lay on his side watching Valerie 
sleeping. It had been almost two days since she had 
subjected him to her mind exchange process and in those 
forty or so hours they had made love many times. Not 
once during those couplings had he been obliged to fake 
an orgasm. Valerie was a virtuoso at bringing Barry's 
female body to climax. He was similarly adept at 
coaxing her to fill him with semen. 

Barry was not disoriented anymore to awake in a female 
body, feeling gravity tugging at the mass of his 
breasts. He had acclimated to the fact that everything 
seemed taller, bigger, and much heavier; he had 
immediately noticed his smaller capacity for food. 

He rapidly had become accustomed to sitting to urinate, 
and to wiping himself when done. He still found his new 
higher-pitched voice strange to his ears, but he wasn't 
incessantly clearing his throat any more. He was even 
starting to walk a little differently than before, 
discovering that a little wiggle in the hips seemed 
natural in this body. 

Barry had never considered himself unhappy with his 
male gender, but in the last two days, he'd come to 
savor the unique feelings that accompanied this female 
body. Colors were brighter, and sounds now seemed to 
have different nuances. He noticed a bit more manual 
dexterity than before, too. He had even become somewhat 
calmer or perhaps less anxious than before the swap, 
for some unknown reason. The exchanging of sex with 
Valerie should have been enough to get him very keyed 
up, yet he hadn't even considered biting his 
fingernails since Friday morning. 

He thought ahead to when Valerie would un-swap their 
minds and was sure he'd miss the pleasant tingle when 
her strong hands would rub his very sensitive tits just 
so, and the indescribable joy he felt when Valerie slid 
her warm throbbing pecker into his slick pussy. Once 
back in his proper body, Barry knew, there was no 
equivalent breast sensation or sense of well-being for 
a male. Make no mistake; he would be ecstatic to be 
male again, but he was no longer apprehensive of 
experiencing a woman's sensations. He had discovered 
how pleasant some things were for the fair sex. 

He finally knew how similar female and male genitalia 
were, too. 

The clitoris nerves were wired the same as those on the 
knob of a penis. The inner labia had the nerves 
corresponding to those along the penile shaft, the 
outer labia were analogous to the testicular sac. When 
he was aroused and didn't look at or touch himself, he 
could swear his penis and balls were still there. There 
was even a swelling of his vulva and clitoris during 
arousal; milder to be sure, but not unlike his male 
erection. The same tingles came from the same places, 
or so it seemed. He even relaxed the same muscles to 
piss. 

The differences were that when he urinated now, the 
spray felt as though it spritzed from a place further 
back than his clitoris. Then too, his sexual release 
didn't feel like brief sharp pulses of concentrated 
pressure but more like an overall surge of electricity 
that he experienced from his toes to his hair and which 
lasted for minutes at a time. He didn't sense the 
intense male arousal ache in any part of himself 
anymore, since he no longer had male erectile tissue. 
Of course, during orgasm there were the trembling, 
gripping ripples he felt inside himself, and the sharp 
stinging splash of hot ejaculate from Valerie's cock. 

Female breasts were much more sensitive than the ones 
he'd had as a male, and he enjoyed Valerie's attention 
to them during sex. When he had been male, he had 
little or no interest in someone fondling his little 
nipples, although a woman's hand cruising through his 
chest hair was kind of erotic. Now, a few touches at 
the right places on his tits and Barry could count on 
an increased dampness between his legs. It was almost 
as exciting as direct genital contact. Valerie 
obviously understood that, and treated him to a lot of 
breast stimulation each time they made love. 

One additional thing was certain, Barry knew a lot more 
about how to arouse and please a woman now that he'd 
spent a few days as one. He now knew exactly where the 
G-spot was, and how much and what type of foreplay a 
woman would enjoy. He made an effort to memorize those 
exact feelings and locations so that he could use his 
knowledge to please Valerie after she resumed her 
female role. 

As he lay in bed daydreaming, he felt the swift 
increase in bladder pressure that was 
characteristically female. When male, he often went 
fifteen or more hours between visits to a toilet, and 
the need never came on quickly, but built slowly over 
the long haul. This female body got the urge to pee 
rapidly, urgently, and usually early in the morning. He 
realized that he needed to empty himself before his 
wife woke and she wanted to start sex play... and if 
the last two days were any indication, she would be 
insatiable. 

That was a welcome change in Valerie since the mind-
swap. She seemed more interested in intercourse than 
ever. Barry had always had a strong sex drive, but it 
seemed that from time to time he needed to coax Valerie 
to grant him her favors. Now, she was hornier than 
ever, and they'd coupled more times in two days than 
they had in the three months previous! 

When he'd asked her why, she'd told him that the fear 
of pregnancy had made her a trifle reluctant to have 
sex more often. Now that it was too late to matter, she 
felt a psychological release; not to mention that she 
was trying out a new body, too, with its new 
accessories and new sensations. Barry suspected that 
the aphrodisiac effect of testosterone in her 
bloodstream was partially involved, but hoped Valerie 
would maintain that drive after she put their minds 
back into the original bodies. 

Barry padded into the bathroom, lowered the toilet seat 
and sat down. In less than two days, Valerie had 
acquired the male trait of leaving the seat up, but 
Barry had retained the routine of checking before 
sitting, so he had not yet gotten his butt dunked in 
the bowl. He relaxed and felt the spray issue from 
somewhere in his slit. He mused that males knew exactly 
where their piss came out but females had only a rough 
clue. He originally missed being able to watch the flow 
of urine and to swirl the stream around as he pissed, 
but realized that it was somewhat childish to do that. 
As his bladder drained, he felt more comfortable. 

Before Barry stood, he listened carefully and could 
hear the soft plunking splash as globs of Valerie's 
semen dropped from him. He knew there was quite a bit 
inside him since she had deposited several huge loads 
during their overnight lovemaking. Valerie was 
bountifully virile, just as Barry had been until a few 
days ago. He had never envied the woman's task of 
cleaning up after intercourse, but he figured he could 
put up with the inconvenience for a few more hours. 
Because of her busy schedule, Valerie was sure to 
return to work early tomorrow, and that meant that she 
would un-swap their minds before then. Barry decided to 
make memorable his last few hours as a female. 

He leaned into the tub and started the shower, 
adjusting the temperature carefully. He quickly stood 
off the commode and stepped into the warm flurry of 
water issuing from the pulsating showerhead. He grabbed 
the removable sprayer, squatted and directed the 
fountain up into his pussy. He could see the 
intermittent parade of thick white residue flowing from 
him and swirling down the drain. Barry wondered idly if 
Valerie would use a bidet if he installed one. 

When there was no more semen inside him, he washed and 
conditioned his hair, then soaped up his body. He 
played with the foam, pretending that he was putting 
frosting on a cake. He smeared thick dollops of the 
lather on his tits and pelvis and let the shower 
gradually rinse the mounds of soap away. He then 
stepped under the shower to let it rain full force on 
his face. He was ready to turn off the water when he 
heard Valerie's voice just beyond the shower curtain. 

"Mind if I join you, dear?" she asked in the sexy 
baritone she now had. Barry had never realized how 
sensual a deep male voice sounded until he heard it 
this weekend from a woman's perspective. 

"C'mon in," he invited. 

Valerie stepped into the tub behind him and began 
soaping herself up as Barry stood with the shower 
stream cascading around him. 

"You washed already?" she asked. 

"Just finished," Barry told her sweetly, still savoring 
the feel of the warm shower on his face. 

"Oh," Valerie said with a note of disappointment. 

"Why? What did you have in mind?" Barry asked. 

"This." 

Valerie stood closely behind him and wrapped her soapy 
arms around him, giving him a slippery bear hug. Her 
hands ended up cupped under his breasts, gently rubbing 
the globes and compressing the nipples with her 
fingers. She also placed her swelling erection in the 
crease of his ass so that the tip of her pecker peeked 
out between his legs just below his pussy. Barry 
squeezed his thighs together to massage her hard-on 
against his slit. He rubbed against her a few times 
before pulling her arms away, rinsing the soap off 
himself and stepping out of the shower. "You get 
cleaned up in here, and meet me in the bedroom," he 
suggested, and a moment later he was gone. 

Valerie finished washing a while after the last of the 
hot water ran out. As she dried herself, she looked at 
her image in the fogged- over bathroom mirror. In two 
days, she'd become comfortable seeing the male face in 
her reflection. She'd also adapted to a few other 
things like standing to pee, opening jars of food too 
tightly sealed for Barry to open himself, reaching for 
items on the high shelves that had previously been out 
of reach for her, and taking control during sex. Not 
that she'd ever felt any desire to have her way during 
intercourse, but with the new physique and more 
powerful muscles it just seemed appropriate. 

Barry was playing along, letting her pretend to be as 
masculine and dominating as she wanted, and in return 
she was letting Barry be as feminine as he felt 
comfortable being. They'd spent the whole weekend in 
the house, and most of the time in bed, so there was no 
interaction between their exchanged genders and the 
world at large, and that was okay with both her and 
Barry. Valerie had to 
admit, though, that exchanging sex roles like this was 
considerably less disorienting than she had expected. 

Valerie noticed in the mirror that her face was getting 
a noticeable beard. Barry had been too much of a 
gentleman (or lady?) to mention the stubble, but she 
remembered how she always liked it when his face was 
smooth and smelled of shaving soap and lotion. She 
figured he would like it too. 

Valerie quickly squirted a foamy mound of the aerosol 
shaving cream into her hand and applied it to her face. 
She'd shaved her legs and underarms countless times, so 
she reasoned a face couldn't be too different or 
difficult. She pulled Barry's safety razor across her 
chin and discovered that the facial hair was much more 
dense than the hair had ever been on her legs or 
underarms and that her face was a lot more tender than 
her limbs. Regardless, she quickly had her face 
stubble-free and only nicked herself a few times. 

She opened the bottle of Barry's favorite after-shave, 
and put a little in her hands. She remembered the movie 
"Home Alone" and how alcohol on freshly shaved skin 
would sting, so she tensed herself for the pain. Sure 
enough, it hurt, but not nearly as much as she had 
expected. After a few seconds the pain had diminished 
to become a barely perceptible discomfort. When she 
looked at herself in the mirror, she saw a smooth, 
young, tough, yet handsome male face, so unlike the 
countenance that had filled her mirror for twenty-five 
years. 

She drew the towel across her head to dry her hair a 
bit before adjourning to the bedroom to make love to 
Barry. A few swipes across her head with a towel was 
all it took to remove most of the moisture. The long 
hair on her former body required the use of a hair 
drier or a few hours to air dry. Barry hadn't 
complained about the hassles of a woman's long hair 
though, and had been very cooperative throughout the 
weekend. Valerie thought about her husband's good 
nature and realized that she would have to broach a 
difficult request to him before the day was done. As 
she left the lavatory, a strategy crossed her mind. 

Barry had pulled the quilt off the bed, and was lying 
nude atop the sheets in a provocative pose when Valerie 
walked in from the bathroom. She wondered where he got 
these silly pseudo-erotic notions. Probably from pinup 
magazines. 

"I shaved," she said, rubbing her fingers across her 
cheek. 

"I noticed," Barry said simply. "Thanks. The whiskers 
were starting to scratch when we kissed." 

Barry crooked his finger, encouraging her to come 
closer to the bed. "Val, I'd like you to lie face down 
on the bed and close your eyes," Barry said, batting 
his eyes at her. "I have a little surprise." 

All weekend, Barry had been relatively undemanding, and 
this seemed like a simple request. Valerie crawled onto 
the bed, reclined on her front, and closed her eyes. 
She felt Barry stand off the bed and return a moment 
later, when a weight settled onto her lower spine. She 
heard an unrecognizable sound and soon felt the cool 
outline of hands rubbing her shoulders. Valerie 
suddenly could smell the unmistakable perfume of baby 
powder and knew that Barry was rubbing it into her 
skin. He was sitting on her lower back, with his knees 
on either side of her body, but he seemed to weigh 
almost nothing. 

Barry rubbed the powder into her arms and back, giving 
a fantastic massage in the process. His fingers worked 
their way down her back and over her ribs and finally 
into the small of her back. He worked deliberately and 
gently, carefully avoiding the ticklish spots that he 
knew intimately. Valerie enjoyed his slow and tender 
ministrations as he rubbed her skin. She'd never gotten 
a massage before, but knew if it felt this wonderful to 
a male body, it could feel twice as nice or even better 
to the heightened senses of a woman. 

She felt him rise off her and turn around, before 
settling back onto her. His hands continued their 
massage on her buttocks and down the back of her 
thighs. She spread her legs slightly, hoping he would 
sense her invitation. 

"Not yet, Val," he told her, evidently receiving her 
signals but not playing along. 

Valerie was getting turned on just knowing that his 
juicy cunt was pressed against her spine as he 
performed his massage. Her prick was pushing painfully 
into the mattress as she became more aroused. In just 
two days, Valerie had acquired the ability to get an 
erection without Barry making any physical contact to 
her cock. It was enough just imagining sex with her 
husband. She wasn't sure, but she thought Barry might 
be rocking his pelvis against her back to stimulate 
himself, and she grinned at the pleasant thought. 

He finished powdering her legs, and climbed off her. 
"You can turn over," he advised. 

Valerie dutifully rolled over to present her front to 
him. Barry did not sit on her this time, to her 
disappointment. He knelt next to her on the bed, 
sprinkled more of the powder on her chest and spent a 
long time massaging the muscles there, before briefly 
rubbing powder onto her arms. He worked his way from 
her chest down her tummy, but stopped short of her 
pubic region. He shifted his attention to her feet and 
applied his magic fingers and the powder there too. 

He began working his way slowly up her legs toward the 
target she knew he would eventually reach. As Valerie 
began to anticipate the touch of his hand on her groin, 
her sexual equipment reacted with increased arousal. 
Her pecker further stiffened and lifted off her 
abdomen. Valerie could tell by his wry smile that Barry 
was enjoying her torment. 

"Looks like the yeast is rising," Barry commented, 
glancing at her hard-on. His fingers expertly 
stimulated her leg muscles but stopped short of 
touching anything sexual. By then, Valerie was fully 
aroused, incredibly horny, and more than a little 
frustrated at his restraint. 

Barry removed his hands from her, slowly reclined face-
down next to her on the bed and told Valerie: "Now me." 

Valerie could not believe how much of a tease Barry was 
being. She desperately wanted to wrap his pussy around 
her aching pole and pound the daylights out of his 
cunt. She pushed those thoughts out of her mind for a 
moment, put some of the powder on her hands and began 
rubbing Barry's back. 

"Mmmmmmm," Barry moaned, contentedly. "I wish I could 
tell you how good that feels." 

"Er...honey...have you been enjoying these last two 
days?" Valerie wondered, rubbing his arms and sneaking 
a playful little swipe at the part of his boobs that 
were visible at his sides. 

"Yes I have," he said emphatically. "Three days ago, I 
would have gone ballistic if you'd asked me to exchange 
bodies with you, but you went ahead and did it without 
asking. I'll admit I didn't know what fun being female 
could be until this weekend. I'm not at all upset. How 
do you like being male?" 

Valerie was pleased that Barry was not peeved about the 
situation into which he'd been involuntarily thrust. 
She gathered her thoughts. "I like it a lot," she said, 
her face breaking into a broad smile. 

"Particularly when we make love." 

"Mmmm," Barry sighed as Valerie massaged. "Me too. A 
little lower on the ribs, please. Ahhhh!" 

Valerie rubbed the powder along his ribs, then his 
lower back. She worked her way to his buttocks and she 
intentionally let one of her fingers linger around the 
ring of his anus. Barry spread his legs, knowing that 
Valerie would not have the will power to resist teasing 
him sexually. She did not disappoint him, and she 
playfully stroked his perineum until she saw his vulva 
swelling. When she could tell he was becoming aroused 
she moved her fingers away to work his legs. She wanted 
him to feel the frustration too. Her hands rubbed his 
thighs and ever so slightly grazed his labia. She 
eventually distributed the powder along his calves and 
ankles with long slow strokes and for a while was 
silent. 

After rubbing his legs she asked him to turn over. 
Valerie sprinkled the powder around Barry's tits and 
ventured, "How have you been feeling the last few days, 
energy-wise?" 

"Fine. More tired than I'm used to, I guess," he 
responded. 

"That's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about," 
Valerie continued. 

"What do you mean?" Barry asked. 

"Well, as you know, the fatigue is because of the 
embryo. The preparations for pregnancy take lots of 
energy from the mother." 

"Yes," Barry agreed, not gathering the implications of 
her statements. "I've heard about that. The fatigue is 
one of the first effects a new mother feels. Could you 
rub slower please?" 

Valerie slowed the progress of her fingers as they 
gently fondled Barry's breasts. His nipples were 
becoming stiff and the breasts warm. 

"Well, we did the swap just for the weekend," she 
recapped. 

"Yes," Barry recalled, "and I for one will be a little 
sad to see it end." 

Her face brightened. "You will?" 

"I spent almost twenty seven years lugging around a 
penis and balls and always felt that being a boy was 
the best thing in the world," Barry explained. "At 
least better than being a girl. Or so I thought. Now 
I've discovered that I can feel that same positive self 
image in this body, too. It might be fun to exchange 
consciousnesses with you again sometime." 

Valerie was now rubbing the powder near Barry's navel. 
"Well, Barry, ... er..." she fumbled, "...we could... 
I... er... what I want to... er... since you've seen 
how tiring pregnancy is... and you know the hours I 
keep..." 

Barry fixed her with a serious stare before 
interrupting her incoherent rambling. "What are you 
trying to say?" 

"I might as well just come out with it," Valerie 
blurted. "I need a favor. It would mean a lot if you'd 
agree to our minds staying swapped in each other's body 
another few days until I get over a backlog at work." 

"What!?" complained Barry, sharply. 

"Only for a little while!" Valerie hastily added. "I 
can't give a pregnant body the rest it needs working 
the hours I do... but you can!" 

"Can't you go to work in your own body?" he argued. 

"You've had an opportunity to feel the fatigue 
firsthand, and you're keenly aware that my research job 
is tough and stressful," she countered evenly. "I'm 
afraid I might miscarry if I worked the long hours I 
must." 

"Let me get this straight," Barry said, sitting up in 
bed. "You want to go to work tomorrow in that male body 
while I stay home in this female body with the 'little 
one'." Barry pointed to his pelvis for emphasis. 

"That's the general idea," Valerie replied. 

Barry gave her a quizzical look and thought about her 
plan. He shook his head. "This is silly! Aren't the 
students and other researchers going to get a little 
suspicious when they see that Dr. Valerie Owens has 
grown several inches taller not to mention suddenly 
turned into a man?" 

Valerie paused only a moment before she said: "I would 
be pretending to be you, of course. The doctorate of 
yours qualifies you to lecture my classes and do the 
research. Carol is the only researcher besides me in 
the lab, and I can certainly handle her. Besides, it 
takes less than an hour for me to get security 
credentials for you... or at least for this male body. 
All you have to do is come to the lab tomorrow morning 
to fill out some paperwork, then explain to Carol that 
'Valerie' is taking some time off to rest and that her 
brilliant husband, 'Barry', will be filling in. I'll do 
the rest." 

"I don't know, Val. This seems a little screwy! I 
mean... you want to go to all the trouble to pretend to 
be me just to get a few more hours of work done?" 

"Please! Just do me this one favor!" 

Barry frowned as he heard his arguments fall one by 
one. "Someone is bound to notice if Barry Owens starts 
behaving oddly. You really don't act like me." 

"I don't?" Valerie laughed heartily. "I think I've done 
a credible job these last two days!" 

"Val! Unless you plan to have sex with Carol or your 
students, your experience this weekend has been almost 
useless. And what about me? I have the shopping and 
banking and household errands to do, and now I'll have 
to do them in this body. Who would I fool? I probably 
act more butch than any woman this side of the 
Mississippi!" 

Valerie took Barry's hands in hers, and she looked into 
his eyes. "You can bluff people for a few days can't 
you? And if you think it would help, we can spend an 
hour or so this afternoon giving each other pointers on 
what to say and how to act. So... how about it?" 

Barry reviewed a lot of scenarios in his head. "What if 
my agent calls with an opportunity to give a dinner 
speech in the next day or two?" he posed. 

"Barry," Valerie said, calmly, "this close to the 
holidays no one asks for dinner speakers, especially 
astronomy writers. Before another speaking engagement 
comes up, we'll already be un-swapped, you'll see." 

"Well," he further inquired, "what am I supposed to do 
while you're at work?" 

"Do what you normally do. Go back to your night owl 
schedule, staying awake with your telescope all night 
and then writing and sleeping all day. Heck! It 
probably wouldn't hurt you and the fetus to get a 
little more sleep than normal!" 

"Val!" Barry grumbled, sourly. It was obvious that she 
would not convince him easily. 

"Do it for me!" she pleaded, her voice soft and mellow. 
"If not for me, then for the baby." She rubbed Barry 
gently on his abdomen, and lightly tickled the fringes 
of his pubic hair. She hoped her pouting hangdog 
expression was swaying his decision. 

"All right," Barry agreed, his frown softening 
slightly. "Besides, you're the only one that can run 
that mind-swapping machine of yours. It'll give me an 
excuse to delay rebuilding the 'Vette engine for a 
while, too." 

"Oh! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Valerie 
exclaimed, happily. She kissed him deeply and for a 
long time. 

Barry slid his legs under himself and rose up, 
leveraging Valerie to fall back onto the bed ending 
their kiss. His fingers sought out her groin. "If we're 
not changing back to our proper bodies for a few days, 
I'm gonna want your undivided attention while you're 
home!" he said, gripping her flaccid penis very 
tightly. 

"No problem, darling," Valerie sighed happily, and she 
felt her phallus rapidly swelling to overflow her 
husband's dainty hand. 


CHAPTER 8 
FIRST DECEIT 

Carol Depaul punched in the lab's security code on the 
keypad and pushed the heavy wooden door inward. She was 
greeted by the familiar sounds of the equipment and the 
smells of the mice in their cages. She noticed that the 
room lights were on, and that meant that Doctor Owens 
was already in the lab. She wondered how early her 
mentor had gotten there. 

"Good morning!" she shouted, as she hung up her purse 
and sweater and wrapped a lab coat around herself. 

"Good morning, Carol," a deep voice replied, nearby. 

Carol turned to see an unfamiliar man in a lab coat 
stepping from between the rows of cabinets. A shiny new 
photo security badge hung from his pocket. How had he 
gotten in? No one was supposed to know the lab 
combination except Doctor Owens and herself. 

"Who the hell are you?!" she challenged. 

Carol's boss stepped out from the same row of cabinets 
behind the unfamiliar man. "Carol, I'd like you to 
meet... Barry... Doctor Barry Owens... my... er... 
husband." 

Carol greeted the man with a handshake. So, this was 
Barry. 

Doctor Owens had been right. He was a hunk. 

"Are you giving him the nickel tour of the labs?" Carol 
asked. She noticed that the other woman was not wearing 
her customary business attire, and seemed dressed too 
casually in jeans and a sweater. 

The project leader glanced nervously at the man. 
"Carol, I... er... have an announcement of sorts. I'm 
taking a few days off." 

Carol frowned with concern. This was highly suspect! 
Doctor Owens never took time off, and always worked 
rings around everyone else at the institute. Carol 
could form only one question. "Why?" 

"Over the long weekend, I found out that we..." The two 
Doctor Owens' looked briefly at each other. "er... that 
is... I'm... pregnant." 

Carol did not react immediately, but suddenly squealed 
and gave her boss a quick hug. "Oh! Doctor Owens! I'm 
so happy for you!" 

The other woman replied, "Thank you, and, Carol... No 
more 'Doctor Owens'. You can call me Valerie from now 
on." 

"All right...Valerie," Carol agreed, haltingly. She saw 
the man glare briefly at her boss, and wondered what 
that was about. 

"Now, Carol, I'm only taking time off until I get over 
some fatigue and the workload gets a little less 
intense. Barry... has a full security clearance, and 
knows as much about the project as I ever did, so sh... 
er... he's taking over my research for a while and 
handling my lectures. Give him your complete support, 
okay?" 

Carol felt tears of happiness forming in the corners of 
her eyes. The Owens' were an attractive couple and 
Valerie would have a beautiful child. A person as 
driven as the project leader might rightfully have been 
upset at something that took her away from her work, 
but Carol only saw a woman full of happiness and peace. 
Sure, there was an edge of apprehension to her voice 
and facial expression, but who wouldn't be a little 
scared with a baby on the way? 

"So," Carol began, trying to make small talk with her 
now more human boss, "did you come to the lab over the 
weekend?" 

The woman shrugged. "Yeah, for a while on Friday." 

Carol smiled. Friday! She'd known that Doctor Owens 
couldn't stay away. Regardless of what time Valerie had 
come in on Friday, it still fell under the terms of the 
wager and meant that Carol had won a Chinese dinner. 
The graduate student beamed with the satisfaction of 
winning the bet and the knowledge that she knew her 
boss so well. 

"Didn't you tell me that you and Carol had a bet?" the 
man nudged his wife. 

"A bet?" she replied. It sounded to Carol as though 
Valerie could not recall the wager. 

"You remember," her husband said more urgently. "Carol 
bet a Chinese dinner that you wouldn't stay away from 
this place for more than seventy-two hours?" 

"Oh! THAT bet!" the woman agreed vaguely. 

The man smiled at Carol. "While I'm here, I'll make 
good on her loss." 

"Okay," Carol grinned, enjoying the attention of the 
handsome fellow. 

"Well," Carol's boss said, after a sudden yawn, "as you 
see, I'm already starting to feel a little tired, so 
I'm going to head on home. You two carry on as best you 
can without me, and I'll be back at work soon. I'll see 
you when you get home... Barry." 

It seemed to Carol that these two were involved in 
something they weren't ready to talk about. Just from 
the tone of voice used by the couple and a sly wink she 
saw, something had to be going on. Exactly the nature 
of the big secret wasn't clear. 

The husband and wife exchanged a brief kiss, and soon 
Carol was alone with her new male co-worker. The two of 
them quickly dove into the research as though they'd 
been working together all along. 


CHAPTER 9 
A TANGLED WEB 

The backyard was slightly less chilly than one would 
expect for an early December night. Barry stood on a 
footstool looking into the eyepiece of his telescope, 
occasionally pausing to sketch and scribble in his 
notebook. He wore a tee-shirt, jeans and a woolen 
jacket, and had a pair of Valerie's leather boots on 
his feet. It was a little past midnight and he was 
starting to worry about Valerie when he heard the sound 
of her minivan pulling into the garage. Before long he 
heard her heavy footfalls crunching along the gravel 
walk leading from the house. 

"Hi, honey! I'm home," she called. 

Barry did not immediately look up from the telescope. 
Valerie stepped up next to him and slipped her hand 
between his legs to tickle his pussy through the denim 
fabric of the jeans. 

"Hey!" he shouted, flinching. His irritation was short 
lived. He leaned down and gave her a quick peck of a 
kiss. 

Valerie smiled. "Stretching up to kiss you is almost 
like old times," she said. "Why the footstool?" 

"The telescope is too tall for a five-foot-five person. 
I can't lower this thing without re-calibrating it, and 
since it takes a few nights to do a proper calibration, 
I figure I'd get it setup about the time we get back to 
our proper bodies and I'd have to go through another 
calibration to put it back the way it is now." 

"Oh," Valerie responded, dully. She hadn't expected a 
technically complex answer. 

"How was your day in the public eye?" Barry asked his 
wife. 

"Not bad," she replied. "Carol and my students bought 
the act, hook, line, and sinker. I've got them 
believing I'm you. I even had lunch with the department 
head and his buddies. No one suspected a girl 
infiltrated the old boy network." 

"Pretty impressive," Barry complimented. "...plus...I 
only walked into the ladies restroom one time the whole 
day." 

"You didn't!" Barry giggled uncontrollably. 

Valerie shrugged. "Fortunately I caught myself on the 
way to a stall and ducked out before anyone saw me." 

"Well, be more careful from now on. They'll arrest 
you... or me... or one of us, anyway." 

"Old habits die hard. So how was your day?" Valerie 
asked, blowing her breath into her hands. 

"Uneventful. I couldn't fall asleep, but I catnapped 
off and on until your mother called." 

Valerie slapped her forehead. "My mother? Geez!" 

"Geez, indeed!" Barry agreed. "I never expected to have 
to pretend to be you for relatives! Of course she 
thought I was you as soon as she heard this voice." 

"You didn't tell her who you really are?" 

"No," Barry calmed her. "I didn't let on that she was 
not talking to her daughter. She was surprised, though, 
that she caught 'you' at home." 

Valerie visibly relaxed. "So what did she want?" 

"Not much. The woman can just go on and on about 
absolutely nothing! She kept me on the phone for an 
hour." 

"That's my Mom. Did you tell her that we're expecting?" 

"Yes," Barry replied, "and I'm sure that people in 
every time zone heard her happy squeal." 

"The Bergstrom phone bill is going to be huge this 
month. Mom will call everyone she's ever met to tell 
them about her impending grandchild." 

"She sounded really proud of you, Val," Barry 
complimented. 

"You know, Bar', since the wedding, she's been asking 
when we're giving her grandchildren to spoil." 

Barry shrugged. "Well, I guess she got her wish. That's 
all that happened. Other than the phone call, the day 
was pretty quiet. I did a little grocery shopping, and 
rested the balance of the day. You were right about the 
fatigue. I didn't feel like doing much. It's like the 
little person in my gut is sucking all of the energy 
right out of me." Barry gently rubbed his pelvis as he 
thought briefly about the baby inside him. He put a cap 
over the end of the telescope then slipped the 
tarpaulin over the whole scope and stand. He stepped 
off the footstool and found himself once again much 
shorter than Valerie's six-one. 

"No energy, eh?" Valerie teased. "Then you're probably 
too tired to give me an encore from the weekend." 

Barry smiled slyly. "I'm not that tired!" He flung his 
arms around her broad shoulders and pulled her face to 
his. He kissed her deeply, and felt the incipient 
whiskers under her nose tickling his upper lip. 

"Mmmmmmmmm" he moaned as they continued kissing. His 
nipples strained against the fabric of his tee-shirt 
and moisture began to increase in his vaginal slit; 
moisture that would soon saturate his panties. Valerie 
put her hands under his derriere and lifted him up her 
body. Barry spread his legs and wrapped them around her 
waist, crossing his ankles at the base of her spine and 
allowing his pelvis to drop into contact with hers. 

Valerie knew that her cock would begin reacting to 
Barry whether she wanted it to or not, so she just 
surrendered to her passion and enjoyed the pleasant 
sensations as her body became aroused. She gingerly 
tottered to the patio, holding her husband tightly 
against her chest without interrupting their kiss. He 
seemed not to mind the way she transported him. 

By the time she had carried Barry into the house and 
closed the sliding glass door behind her, he was 
sensually tilting his pelvis against hers. When they 
finally got to the bedroom, it was obvious that neither 
would get to sleep early that night. 

***

The next morning was cold and crisp; the kind of 
morning where frost rims the windows. The buzzing of 
the alarm clock roused Valerie from a deep sleep. She 
turned to look for Barry in bed next to her and 
discovered that she was alone. She pawed at her itching 
balls and gently stroked the firm erection protruding 
from her groin. "Just like a typical guy," she remarked 
to herself, "waking up horny." The clock indicated that 
there was no time for satisfying her carnal urge if she 
was going to get to the institute, so she headed for 
the shower. 

The warm spray of water felt good against her skin. It 
was still a fresh experience to wash her muscles and 
the coarse hair on her chest, on her legs, and under 
her arms. After only four days, she was still not 
completely comfortable cleaning the group of sizable 
organs that now graced her groin. She wondered if the 
feelings of novelty would wear off over time. 

She'd noticed the first day that the skin of her penis 
and testicles was a deeper brown tint than her legs or 
abdomen. Now that she had a chance to take a longer 
look, she discovered that there was a ridge of rougher 
and even darker skin bisecting the testicular sac, 
running from just under her cock to the back of the bag 
where it joined her body. It was almost as if there was 
scar tissue there, except that the nerves along the 
ridge seemed to be the most sensitive part of the 
leathery pouch. 

As she trailed her finger along the seam, it reminded 
her of the times she endured a bit of sexual 
frustration and had tickled her female genitalia to 
relieve the tension. This sensation was very similar to 
the feeling along the very edge of her labia, but she 
realized that a male needed attention to the penis 
before other places, and stimulation of her testicles 
was simply not enough to relieve her sexual craving. 
She told herself that it would not be long before she 
could return to her female body, once the lab project 
was back on track. 

Valerie considered her good fortune. The schedule at 
work was just too grueling to handle while battling the 
exhaustion of pregnancy, but the consciousness-swap 
effect had given her a unique way to continue working 
on things without suffering a total collapse or a 
miscarriage. Then too, her husband had gone far beyond 
any reasonable expectations of fair play, and just kept 
giving of himself. He was under no obligation to 
continue the mind-swap beyond the four-day weekend, but 
seemed to be making the best of the situation, and had 
cooperated in every way. Maybe that was why she loved 
him so much: he cared about her welfare almost as much 
as his own. 

The mind-swap wouldn't continue much longer, Valerie 
rationalized. In a few days when the workload was less 
hectic, they could repeat the experiment and get their 
rightful bodies back. Until then, she had a huge pile 
of work to wade through! 

She stepped out of the shower, lifted the toilet seat 
and held her penis as she relaxed her bladder control. 
She felt the slight pressure as the flow issued from 
her and spilled into the bowl. Valerie had absorbed 
little details the last few days from her trips to the 
bathroom. For starters: on a male body, urine seemed to 
take longer than with a female body to start flowing 
once she relaxed, as well as longer for the incessant 
drip-drip-drip to stop. 

She figured that the distance from the bladder to the 
place where the fluid exited was three or four times 
further in a man than a woman, which seemed as 
plausible an explanation as any. In compensation for 
the nuisance of delayed urination, she now could 
somehow hold vast amounts of kidney juice and go all 
day without the need to drain herself. A male could 
simply wait until a convenient moment to visit the 
restroom rather than being a slave to the bladder. 
Furthermore, she'd never realized that the flow issued 
as a flat ribbon of fluid that seemed to twist as 
gravity pulled it toward the toilet. 

Before she occupied this body, she'd always assumed 
that what came out of a man's pecker would be more 
cylindrical; like from a garden hose. In any case, she 
had tried pointing the stream, drawing figure eights 
and other shapes in the toilet water. She grinned as 
she remembered the rumors about boys in her 
neighborhood writing their names in snow with their 
urine. Taking a leak was more like a game for them! 

She dried off and shaved, then quickly dressed in a 
white shirt and tie and dress slacks for her day at the 
institute. She made a mental note to wear a suit 
tomorrow for the meeting with the auditors from the 
Commission. As she dressed, she heard sounds of 
activity coming from the kitchen downstairs. Barry was 
obviously puttering around in there. 

Valerie made a third abortive attempt at tying her 
necktie and had just unknotted it for another try when 
she heard the doorbell. Who could be at the door at 
this time in the morning? She opened the front door to 
see her mother, Ann Bergstrom standing on the front 
porch. 

"Mom!" Valerie greeted, automatically. 

The thin woman with her blond hair cut in a page-boy 
hairdo blinked twice as if she could not believe her 
ears or eyes, and then smiled broadly. "Why, Barry! 
I've been trying to get you to call me 'Mom' for almost 
nine months now! See? It wasn't so hard!" The woman 
carried a large shopping bag as she stepped into the 
foyer. 

"What brings you here this early?" Valerie asked, as 
the woman pushed past her. 

"I came to see my daughter and tell her how proud her 
father and I are of her. Val hasn't left for work yet, 
has she?" 

"Er... no," Valerie told her mother. 

The unmistakable rattle of pots and pans issued from 
the kitchen. 

"Don't tell me she's in the kitchen!" the elder 
Bergstrom exclaimed. "I hope she's not trying to cook!" 
Valerie's mother leaned close and spoke with a 
conspiratorial air. "Just between you and me, I'm glad 
you do all of the scullery duty. My daughter can't boil 
water without burning it." She headed for the back of 
the house with Valerie following close behind. 

They pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen 
and a strange sight met their eyes. 

Barry was standing in the middle of the room holding a 
cookie sheet with a dozen freshly baked cookies. To 
Valerie, the fact that Barry was baking was not 
unusual. What was surprising was the way he was 
dressed: a crisply laundered short-sleeve dress with a 
pleated knee-length skirt, hosiery, huge clip-on 
earrings, a beaded necklace and heels. He even wore 
lipstick and mascara! He looked for all the world like 
a youngish, petite June Cleaver! 

Valerie had to pinch herself to keep from laughing out 
loud. Barry had duplicated the stereotypical early 
television image of a suburban housewife. Valerie 
recognized the dress as one she'd had in the back of 
her closet and had long planned to donate to a clothing 
drive. Her crazy husband had obviously discovered the 
dress, then ironed and starched it to accentuate the 
pleats. 

"Val?" the older woman inquired, her mouth agape. 

"Oh!" Barry exclaimed, startled at the unexpected 
arrival of his mother-in-law. "Hi... er... Mom!" 

Barry had gotten up early and dressed in the outrageous 
outfit to tweak his wife's sensibilities. Before the 
exchange of consciousnesses, Val infrequently wore a 
dress, although there were several in her closet, 
preferring instead to wear pants suits to the lab and 
jeans around the house. Only yesterday, Barry had told 
his wife that he thought the prime reason behind her 
mind swap was so that she could finally wear his pants, 
instead of hers. In a twist of fate, his little dress-
up joke had surprised two people. 

Ann faced Valerie accusingly. "Where is my daughter and 
what have you done with her?" she asked, threateningly. 
"Valerie doesn't cook or wear dresses!" 

Valerie was taken aback at her mother's angry tone 
before she saw the woman's features soften. It was her 
idea of a joke! 

Valerie's mother turned to Barry. "Don't worry dear, I 
understand. You can't help yourself, but you just feel 
like you have to cook something. Just go with whatever 
your body tells you. It's those darn prenatal hormones! 
I'm sure you feel like you're someone else, don't you?" 

"You don't know the half of it," Barry muttered as the 
woman hugged him. 

"When I was expecting you," Valerie's mother admitted, 
"I kept playing Johnny Mathis records over and over... 
it drove your father bonkers! To this day he can't 
stand to hear 'Chances Are'." 

"I like the retro, fifties style, dear," Valerie 
commented to Barry, as her mother and husband ended the 
hug. 

Mrs. Bergstrom backed away and scrutinized Barry from 
head to toe. 

"Pantyhose?" she asked, eyeing his smooth legs. 

Barry nodded affirmatively. 

"You know, sweetie," Valerie's mother confided, "that 
if you really wanted to capture the look of the 
nineteen fifties, you'd have worn individual nylons and 
a garter belt." 

Barry blushed. "Thanks Mom... I'll remember that next 
time." 

The older woman smiled, glad to be of help. 

"What brings you out to Riverton?" Barry asked, pulling 
the oven mitts off his hands. 

"I wanted to see you before you went to work, and to 
give you a little something." 

Mrs. Bergstrom reached into the shopping bag at her 
feet and pulled out a large wad of fabric. It unfolded 
into an extra-extra-large tee-shirt that could easily 
double as a woman's nightshirt. On the front was a 
silk-screened billboard that said 'Future Nobel Prize 
Winner Under Construction On This Site'. Barry 
estimated that the billboard would appear right below 
his tits. On the reverse was a horizontal bar of 
alternating diagonal black and yellow stripes and the 
words 'Wide Load'." 

"I saw this at the department store last night and 
thought it was so cute. I just had to get it for my 
daughter and grandchild." The woman smiled and stared 
briefly at Barry's pelvis as if she could see into his 
womb. 

Barry held the shirt against the front of his dress. 
The hem of the enormous shirt nearly touched the floor. 

"It's a little too big," he observed. 

"Don't worry, Val," Valerie's mother advised, with a 
knowing wink, "you'll be a little too big yourself 
before long." 

"Thanks Mom," Barry said with a warm smile. 

"Yeah, thanks, Mom," Valerie agreed. 

"So you're how far along?" Ann asked Barry. 

Valerie piped up, "About three weeks, now...er...isn't 
that right?" 

Ann studied Barry's features. "What do men know about 
these things? You look a little peaked. Have you seen a 
doctor?" 

"Er...no...not yet," Barry admitted. 

"It's early yet," Mrs. Bergstrom agreed, "but I want 
you to take care of yourself and my first grandchild." 
She turned to face Valerie. "And, Barry, I want you to 
be nice to Val. You men have no idea what being 
female... or pregnant... is like! She's going to need 
your help and moral support from now on." 

Turning back to Barry, she continued. "You make him do 
everything for you... understand? Until the baby comes, 
you are the queen. You get anything you want!" Suddenly 
the older woman looked at her watch. "Oooh! I've got to 
hurry back home. Your father doesn't know I'm here. He 
thinks I just went out to get some sweet rolls for 
breakfast! You and Barry come home to Munford and see 
us for Christmas okay?" 

Barry shrugged, "Of course...Mom." He hugged her. 
"Thanks again for the tee-shirt!" 

"Let me show you out... er... Ann." Valerie was 
uncomfortable using her mother's first name. She'd 
always just called her 'Mom', but she knew her mother 
would suspect something if her apparent son-in-law 
didn't call her Ann once or twice. 

She walked to the front door with her mother, and 
considered explaining how she and Barry had switched 
bodies. At the end, she decided that it made no sense 
to confuse the older woman, and waved from the front 
porch as her mother drove away. 

Barry was putting another batch of cookies in the oven 
when Valerie returned to the kitchen. 

"Geez Louise, Barry! What the hell were you thinking 
dressing up like that?" Valerie demanded from the 
doorway. 

Barry flashed a brilliant smile. "I was thinking how 
funny this getup would look to you. You could use a bit 
of a lift with the long hours you're putting in! How 
was I supposed to know your mother would show up?" 

"We fooled her... I think. You nut, you!" she commented 
as her features thawed. "Look at the way you're 
dressed!" 

He briefly adjusted the pleats on the dress before 
explaining. "You know, I figure, look like Donna Reed, 
cook like Donna Reed!" He pirouetted, causing the skirt 
to flare outward. 

Valerie began laughing out loud at that remark. "I like 
the added touches like the earrings and heels! I'm 
amazed that you can walk around without tripping all 
over yourself." 

Barry took several steps over to her and spun 
gracefully on his toe to show how sure-footed he was. 
"You're amazed? Why so?" he inquired. 

"I don't know," she replied, off-handedly, "I guess 
I've read too much of that transgender fiction on the 
internet where some wimp or hapless macho jerk gets 
transformed into a woman and simply cannot walk in 
heels to save himself." 

"Do you think of me as a wimp or a hapless macho jerk?" 
Barry asked, slightly dismayed. 

"No," Valerie answered, kindly. "You're very sweet. 
Insane... but sweet." 

Barry thought about her observation and how he'd had no 
trouble just stepping into the shoes and walking. "You 
told me," he recalled, "that when the mind swap 
happened, your female reflexes, coordination and 
balance probably stayed with this body. After you 
learned the balance of walking in heels years ago, you 
never again thought about the skills involved to do it, 
did you?" 

Valerie searched her recollection. "Now that you 
mention it... No." 

"Maybe that kind of deeply ingrained ability resisted 
being overwritten by the information from my male 
brain. In a way, it's YOU walking in the heels, not 
me." 

Valerie considered his hypothesis. "You could be right. 
I've noticed, too, that you're starting to walk more 
like a regular female instead of that hulking stomping 
stride you had the first day. You're getting a definite 
swish in your butt." 

"The heels contribute to that a bit, but when I stopped 
trying to fight these instincts, my hips just started 
to wiggle kind of naturally," Barry told her. "How 
about you? Have you been finding yourself unable to 
sleep at night?" 

Valerie leered. "You mean after my horny husband is 
done teasing my cock?" 

"Er... yeah," he confirmed, blushing. 

"Come to think about it, last night I ended up awake 
long after you'd fallen asleep." 

Barry quickly tied Valerie's necktie for her and gently 
kissed her. "I think, then, that you inherited my 
shifted sleep cycle. I've found myself drifting into 
your old early-riser pattern." He rubbed the lipstick 
imprint off her cheek with his thumb. 

"Speaking of early risers, I have to get to work," 
Valerie said, disengaging from him. She pushed open the 
swinging door as she passed into the dining room. 

Barry followed her. "Once I get a few more batches of 
cookies and some brownies done, I think I'll hit the 
sack for a nap." 

"By the way," Valerie asked, with thinly veiled 
suspicion. "Why are you doing all of this baking?" 

"I know what you're thinking. I'm not getting cravings 
or anything," Barry told her, wagging a finger in 
reproach. "I'm just doing some baking for later in the 
holidays. I figured we can have some people over after 
we get our normal bodies back. A real holiday get- 
together." 


CHAPTER 10 
PARTY TIME 

Barry leaned against the swinging door to the kitchen 
and pushed it open with his rump. His arms held a 
canape tray loaded with empty glasses and dishware. The 
pre-Christmas party he and Valerie were hosting was in 
full swing and the guests were devouring the food and 
wine and generally enjoying themselves. Barry was 
pleased that he'd decided to do some of the baking 
ahead of time. He was not pleased that he was still 
female. 

Barry had complained loudly when Valerie told him about 
the party. It seems she'd had issued the invitations 
before Thanksgiving; before the mind exchange... and 
the opportunity to get his proper body back before the 
party never presented itself. It was bad enough that he 
had to pretend to be his wife among people who had 
known her for years, but Valerie had purchased a black 
strapless dinner gown a few months earlier. She 
explained how the gown would be too small after the 
pregnancy progressed much, and would be out of style by 
the time the baby was born, so Barry would have to wear 
the dress for the party or it would simply go unworn 
forever. 

Barry felt particularly self-conscious at this party 
wearing the skin-tight and revealing outfit. A generous 
portion of his tits bulged over the top of the dress, 
and it felt as if they might pop loose any moment. More 
than once, he'd had to tug upward on the fabric as it 
settled lower on his body. He feared that the garment 
might simply slither to the floor leaving him wearing 
only pantyhose and heels. He didn't mind nudity as long 
as Valerie was the only other person around, but he and 
she were far from alone. 

Not only were there a few dozen folks standing about, 
but many of the people at the party were acquaintances 
of his as well as his wife's. He was concerned about 
the way some of his former hiking buddies were staring, 
mentally undressing him. He'd heard their fantasies 
about women described in great detail around a campfire 
or two. It felt strange to suddenly be the object of 
his friends' erotic daydreams and to realize that they 
were likely imagining those same depraved thoughts, or 
worse, about him! 

Barry was developing quite a knack for meaningless 
conversation. He didn't recognize many faces of 
Valerie's associates at the institute, so he flitted 
from one cluster of people to another as topics became 
too personal, or if they drifted outside his fields of 
expertise. Valerie's acquaintances were very pleasant 
and intelligent people, and seemed to enjoy talking 
with him even though he was acting as if he didn't know 
them. 

Being the host... er... hostess... of the party was 
hard work, and he exploited the opportunities to 
freshen drinks and bring out more food as a way to take 
respites from the socially stressful situation. He'd 
noticed that Valerie was casually joking with all the 
guests, seemingly taking everything in stride; a sharp 
contrast to his own discomfort. 

She looked very attractive in the three-piece suit, 
Barry thought. 

He pictured the scene after the guests were gone and 
they were alone: slowly and sexily, she would remove 
her jacket, vest, shirt, and trousers before taking 
Barry to bed. Regardless of her gender, Valerie had a 
way about her that made watching her undress a sexual 
experience. In recent nights Barry sat in bed watching 
her remove her clothes, knowing that his nipples were 
stiffening and his vagina was generating an ocean of 
lubrication. Every night when she came to bed, Valerie 
would make love to him, slowly, powerfully and 
repeatedly. The sex was almost adequate compensation 
for the inconvenience of the continued charade, but 
Barry wanted Valerie to quit putting him on the spot 
like she had this night. 

The fact that Valerie had styled his hair and done his 
makeup for him earlier that afternoon was scant 
retribution. Barry had acquired limited makeup skills 
from his theater arts classes at the institute, however 
the close quarters of a cocktail party was no place for 
exaggerated stage makeup. When Valerie had finished her 
handiwork, he liked the elegant understated look she'd 
given him. She even suggested appropriate jewelry to go 
with the dress. Getting ready for the party seemed to 
take Barry forever, but in comparison, Valerie showered 
and stepped into her suit and was done. Rapid dressing 
was one thing he missed about being male. 

Barry pulled some more wine glasses out of the cupboard 
and filled as many as he could. Soon, all the open 
carafes of wine were empty. There were several more 
bottles of wine on the table but he just didn't have 
the strength to pull corks in this body or while 
wearing this dress. 

"Need help?" Valerie offered, breezing into the kitchen 
at the right moment. 

"Since you have the muscles for now, dear, I could use 
a couple more open wine bottles, please." He tugged 
upward on the sagging bustline of his dress. 

"You seem ticked," Valerie observed, as she 
straightened her tie in the reflection in the window. 

"I am, Val! You should have called off the party until 
you put our consciousnesses back in the right bodies." 

"Barry, I scheduled this party weeks ago, and you know 
there hasn't been an opportunity to get un-swapped. 
Besides, I'm just as uncomfortable as you are." 

Barry was not certain that he believed her last 
statement. She seemed to be taking this all in stride. 
While he was transferring canapes onto the serving 
tray, Valerie gently massaged his bare shoulders from 
behind. 

"If you think a neck rub is going to make me less 
angry," Barry told her, icily, "you're wrong." 

Valerie immediately stopped the massage. 

Barry turned around to face her. His features relaxed a 
little. 

"I didn't say I didn't appreciate the attention or the 
neck rub, but I'm still really upset at the way you 
made me stay female." 

Valerie put her hands back on his shoulders and rubbed 
his scapulas with increased intensity. Barry closed his 
eyes and felt the tension flowing out of him as his 
wife massaged his neck and shoulders. He moaned softly 
to express his contentment and gratitude. 

"I told you before," she said. "I'm sorry. There just 
wasn't a good time to un-swap before the party." She 
kissed him on the forehead. "You've seen how late I've 
been working. The hours should slack off soon. Then 
we'll get our bodies back. Please Barry, let me stay 
male long enough to get my project back on track." 

"You know I've never been able to turn you down," Barry 
replied. 

"And now you have such a sexy deep voice. It just melts 
me." 

Valerie grinned and gave him a wink. "I know. It's one 
of the things that first attracted me to you." Valerie 
finished the massage, found the corkscrew and set to 
work opening the bottles. 

Barry finished transferring the hors d'ouvre to the 
tray and began filling wine glasses once Valerie pulled 
corks on a few bottles of wine. 

"Knock, knock!" chirped Rita Casey, barging into the 
kitchen. "What are you two lovebirds doing? Nothing 
naughty I hope!" The woman was indefatigably chipper. 

Rita was dressed in a slinky sequined red number even 
more revealing than Barry's dress. There were cutouts 
at her waist and a long slit up one leg of the skirt, 
giving a good view to anyone who wished to stare. Her 
auburn hair rested on her shoulders, framing her thin 
face and offsetting her pale green eyes. From her 
demeanor and the smell of her breath it was easy to 
tell that she'd had too many glasses of wine. 

"Hi Rita," Barry said without emotion. He'd known her 
for several years, as she was the office coordinator at 
the institute's Physics department. Rita was thirty, 
perhaps older, but was more at home around people 
younger than herself, particularly younger men. 
Everyone knew her reputation as a flirt. When Valerie 
carried the tray of appetizers past her to the dining 
room, Rita gave her a sly wink, believing Barry didn't 
notice. Barry wondered what Rita would think if she 
knew she was flirting with another woman. 

Rita sidled close to Barry as soon as Valerie left. She 
poured herself another glass of wine from the open 
bottle on the counter. "You know, Val, my dear, there's 
a rumor going around that you're enciente." 

"I'm what?" Barry responded, quizzically. 

Rita gave an exasperated scowl. "Knocked up! In a 
family way! Got a bun in your oven! Preggers! 
Expecting!" 

"Oh," Barry replied matter-of-factly. "It's true." 

"It is!?" Rita shouted, excitedly. "Get outta here! How 
long have you known?" 

"About a week. I guess I conceived a few weeks ago." 

Rita pulled on Barry's arm to turn him so she could see 
his profile. "You don't show at all! And that's no mean 
feat with a slim figure like yours and a dress like 
that! Have you seen a doctor yet?" 

"No," Barry admitted. 

"You're feeling all right though?" Rita inquired. 

"A little tired now and then, but otherwise fine. Why?" 

"Girl! You're lucky!" Rita confided. "When Ted and I 
were expecting Justin, I was the poster child for 
morning sickness!" 


CHAPTER 11
STRIKE ONE

Valerie felt the mattress shudder as Barry leapt up 
from bed. It was just after dawn, and the glowing 
digits on the alarm clock indicated that she was owed 
another half hour of sleep. A few moments later she 
heard a thick sloshing sound mixed with other sounds of 
Barry apparently trying to cough and shout at the same 
time. She climbed out of bed and headed toward the 
bathroom.

In the lavatory she found Barry, nude, kneeling in 
front of the toilet bowl with his face red and 
perspiring and his long hair matted with sweat. His 
eyes were bulging and he was grimacing as he spit into 
the bowl.

"Are you all right?" Valerie asked.

Barry looked up at his masculinized wife standing in 
the open doorway. "I just barfed up last night's 
dinner," he told her, weakly. 

"I don't feel very good."

"Do you think it's a virus?" she wondered, scratching 
an itch in her groin and yawning.

Barry turned back to the bowl with his stomach and 
shoulders heaving. His protracted shout tapered to a 
grunt of exertion, but little or nothing was left in 
his stomach to expel. As the throes of convulsion 
passed, he wiped his mouth with a tissue and 
expectorated into the toilet. "I think... I have... 
morning sickness."

"I'll take you to my doctor if you want," Valerie 
offered.

"No!" Barry said firmly. He turned back to the bowl and 
paused as a weaker wave of nausea passed without 
effect. "I'm not going to a doctor like this!"

"Barry!" his wife reasoned, "Doctors expect you to be 
sick when you see them."

He glared at her. The irritated expression mixed with 
his sweaty face and bedraggled hair only served to 
emphasize the anger. "I mean," he clarified, harshly, 
"that I'm not going to a doctor while I am female."

Valerie knelt next to Barry and helped him to stand. 
She wiped away some of the splattered vomit from his 
cheeks with a washcloth and tested another line of 
argument. "What if you went out to the street right now 
and got hit by a truck? You'd see a doctor then, 
right?"

Barry produced a wan smile and replied. "If I went out 
to the street right now, I'd be arrested for indecent 
exposure! Although old man Webb across the way would 
get an eyeful!" He laughed for a second but the laugh 
quickly turned into a cough.

Valerie had to give him credit. Barry looked like death 
warmed over, and if he felt the way she felt whenever 
she'd gotten ill, he was being very cheerful about it. 
His joke about going out to the street naked was pretty 
cute, too. She wondered if she'd have the fortitude to 
make jokes while suffering nausea. She knew though that 
if she was the one feeling ill that she would be on the 
phone with her doctor right away.

"Please Valerie," Barry begged, pulling a damp strand 
of hair off his cheek. Valerie knew he was out of 
sorts, since he seldom called her by her full first 
name. "Don't make me see your doctor."

She kissed him on his forehead and tasted the salty 
remains of his perspiration. "You may look like a girl, 
but you're being the same old stubborn iron man you 
always were. Okay. Tell you what. You get back to bed. 
Later this morning, I'll call my doctor and see if I 
can get him to prescribe something for you."

Barry raised his eyes and looked into hers. He could 
see that she really did worry about him. "You'd do 
that?" he asked.

"...in sickness and health," she said, smiling kindly.

After Valerie left for work, Barry napped fitfully. He 
did not vomit any more but he was reluctant to eat 
anything for fear that it would not stay down. Between 
the acid taste in his mouth, the burning in his 
sinuses, the roiling empty stomach and the heartburn, 
sleep was difficult. The drapes were drawn in the 
bedroom, shrouding the room in darkness, but even that 
was no help. 

At about ten-thirty, Valerie called.

"Hello?" Barry groaned as he answered the bedside 
phone.

"Hi, Honey. I spoke with the doctor," her voice greeted 
him.

"Yeah?" Barry replied, sitting up in bed. The news 
caused him to brighten.

"I told him about the pregnancy and the morning 
sickness. He phoned a prescription to the pharmacy."

"Oh! Thank you, Val!" Barry was very grateful that she 
had come through. "That's really good news!"

"Er... honey?" she interrupted.

"Yes?"

Valerie paused before continuing. "All he prescribed 
were vitamins."

Barry's happiness evaporated. "Nothing for my stomach?"

"No," Valerie answered, "he said all of the effective 
anti-nausea treatments are inappropriate for pregnant 
women. Anything that's safe enough to prescribe is 
relatively powerless against the morning sickness. The 
vitamins are to replace the nutrients you lost from 
vomiting."

"Great," Barry complained, a bitter tone to his voice.

"And one more thing," Valerie told her husband. "He set 
up an appointment for..."

"Valerie! I said I wouldn't see your doctor!"

"He says pregnant mothers need to start regular doctor 
visits in the first month of pregnancy, and there was 
an opening this afternoon with a Doctor Homann."

"This afternoon? Call him back and cancel! We won't 
have time to get un-swapped before..."

"I'm really sorry, honey," she said apologetically, 
"but I couldn't turn down an appointment after calling 
to say how sick you were."

"If I have to go see a doctor and pretend to be you, I 
want you to be there with me!"

Valerie did not answer at first.

"Val? Did you hear what I said?" Barry demanded.

"Okay," she agreed suddenly. "I'll be home at one-
thirty to get you. The appointment is at two."

"I'll be ready," Barry allowed unhappily.

"Honey? Thank you for reconsidering seeing the doctor. 
I love you."

"I love you too," Barry replied, flatly. "But, you're 
going to owe me so big."

"I know," Valerie replied. "I know."

The hours passed quickly after the call, and Valerie's 
minivan appeared at the end of the driveway right on 
time. Barry wore a loose-fitting long-skirted one-piece 
dress to the doctor. He'd wanted to wear jeans and a 
tee-shirt, but knew that the doctor would probably want 
him to disrobe for an examination, and the dress would 
make that a little easier. On the positive side, he'd 
been able to nibble on a few things since the call, and 
the food made him feel somewhat less queasy.

Barry had lost most of his anger by the time he got to 
the medical center. After all, Valerie's doctor had 
said that it was proper to start regular obstetrician 
visits early in pregnancy. It was certainly the safest 
thing for the baby, and for the mother. If only the 
actual mother, Valerie, was the person in this body!

Valerie and Barry sat in an isolated corner of Dr. 
Homann's waiting room filling out the patient medical 
history form. If anyone had been within earshot, they 
would have wondered why the woman kept asking the man 
accompanying her about childhood diseases. During the 
exercise, Barry discovered that Valerie's tonsils and 
adenoids had been removed, and that she had a mild 
adverse reaction to Novocain. Valerie explained that 
she still had her appendix and had never had a 
mammogram or a 'D-and-C'... whatever that was.

Barry wrote on the form that Valerie's last period had 
started two days before Halloween. Valerie had to tell 
Barry what date to write, since Barry did not remember 
anything special about that day, although the 
universality of women measuring time by their menstrual 
cycle had intrigued him. It seemed inequitable and 
unfair somehow that men had no such overt biological 
clock, although he did not relish the thought of 
monthly bleeding just for the sake of time-keeping.

Doctor Homann's waiting room contained few patients and 
the receptionist soon ushered Barry in to see the 
doctor. Barry let his wife off the hook without making 
her personally accompany him into the examination. Just 
keeping her in the waiting room and making her projects 
at the lab a little further behind schedule was 
punishment enough.

Valerie waited in the reception area with two expectant 
fathers: the only three people there, not counting the 
receptionist behind the raised counter in the corner. 
Barry and the other mothers were in the examination 
rooms somewhere at the rear of the office suite. 

Just sitting around cooling her heels was frustrating 
and boring for Valerie. She was restless and fidgety 
with nothing to do but wait for Barry. She kept 
thinking about the research that was not getting done. 
She'd given Carol some tasks, but this excursion with 
Barry would eat up a few hours or more; in effect 
absorbing the rest of the day. Nothing in the waiting 
room could take her mind off the constantly eroding 
time on the grant. 

The waiting-room magazines were fairly old and the 
background music was predominantly Yuletide tunes since 
Christmas was only three weeks away. The two men 
waiting with her seemed ill at ease, and they avoided 
direct eye contact with her and each other. Not only 
had Barry been ushered into the inner offices almost 
forty-five minutes later than his scheduled 
appointment, but sixty minutes had passed without him 
reappearing. Valerie started to stretch her limbs which 
caught the eyes of the waiting men.

"My Gretchen is seven months along," one of the men 
said, trying clumsily to strike up a conversation. 
"This is our second child."

"Lindsey...that's my wife... is in her eighth month," 
the other fellow said beaming proudly. "Twins."

Valerie saw their expectant stares. "My hu...my wife is 
only in... er... her first month," she said.

"Wait until she gets the cravings," Lindsey's husband 
remarked, knowingly.

"That and the aches," Gretchen's husband chimed in.

Lindsey's husband shielded his mouth so that the 
receptionist could not hear him. "They get really 
cranky, petty, demanding, and to be blunt, bitchy; but 
right after the baby comes they mellow out again. Just 
give in and give 'em whatever they want. That's what I 
say."

"Expectant mothers!" Gretchen's husband exclaimed 
softly, and rolled his eyes. "Who can understand 
them?!"

Valerie chose not to argue the point.

"All right then, Valerie," the receptionist said, 
causing Valerie to look up upon hearing her name. The 
receptionist was talking to Barry, who was standing at 
the reception counter carrying a sheaf of papers. 
"We'll see you back here right after the new year, 
okay? Have a nice holiday! Bye bye, now!"

Valerie stood and helped Barry into a jacket and handed 
him the purse. He looked a little stunned and shaken as 
she held the door and ushered him out of the office. 
They soon stepped out of the medical clinic and into 
the chill of a dreary December afternoon where 
intermittent snowflakes flitted around them. Valerie 
leaned close to Barry. "So, what did he say?"

"She," Barry corrected her. "Doctor Elisabeth Homann. 
She's Austrian. She did some tests and guess what? I'm 
pregnant!"

"We knew that!" Valerie said with mild exasperation. 
She unlocked the passenger door and helped Barry into 
the minivan, then walked around to the driver's side 
and climbed in.

"She said that I'm a perfectly healthy for a twenty-
five year old, other than the morning sickness," Barry 
continued. "Judging from the size of my uterus, she 
said the fetus is about three or four weeks along."

"If she knew that," Valerie replied, glancing over at 
her husband squirming in the seat, "she must have given 
you an internal exam."

"God! Yes!" Barry proclaimed with disgust. "I never 
felt so violated and vulnerable in my life, lying there 
naked with my legs spread-eagled in the stirrups while 
she poked, pushed, stretched and did who knows what to 
me under that sheet!" He fidgeted in the seat some more 
just from the memory. "I'm just happy with the 
knowledge that it won't be me in those stirrups next 
month."

"It could be worse," Valerie said.

"How?" Barry inquired.

"It could have been a male doctor looking up in there."

Barry shuddered. "I don't think it would have mattered. 
Anyway, she calculated the baby's due date to August 
twentieth."

"August, hmm? Did you get prescriptions?" Valerie 
asked, changing the subject a bit.

"These?" Barry asked, rustling the papers in his hand. 
"No. She gave me a whole bunch of pamphlets. I got one 
on contraception."

"That's a big help at this point," Valerie deadpanned.

Barry looked through the other booklets. "Here's one on 
fetal development. It's called 'The Child Inside'. 
There's a pamphlet on the Lamaze method of child birth. 
Another one on natural childbirth. Here's a booklet on 
Cesarean sections. One on good dietary habits for 
pregnancy. This one is from the LaLeche League about 
breast feeding. 

This one has simple aerobic exercises for mothers to 
be. I got a list of places that offer child-birth 
classes. A list of milk banks. This is a list of 
licensed midwives. This is a description of alternative 
birth environments. You know, giving birth 
underwater... or in what they call a birthing chair... 
or in free fall."

"Wait just a minute!" Valerie said loudly. "Free fall?"

"Just checking to see if you're listening," Barry 
responded. "And this sheet is a list of things to do 
and not do."

"Yeah?" Valerie said, showing increased interest. "Like 
what?"

"The 'Do' list," Barry read. "One. Eat a balanced diet 
high in vitamins and calcium. Two. Get plenty of 
exercise. Three. Visit the obstetrician regularly."

"Those seem very simple," Valerie commented. "What are 
the Don'ts?"

"One: no drugs, including aspirin, without approval 
from the obstetrician. Two: no smoking. Three: no 
alcohol. Four: no heavy lifting or strenuous exercise. 
Five: no dangerous high-exertion activities like 
gymnastics, sky-diving, or pole-vaulting. Here's one I 
never imagined: Six: no space flight. Seven: avoid 
prolonged exposure to microwave ovens and cathode ray 
tubes."

"Computers?" Valerie asked.

"Laptop computers are okay since they have LCD screens. 
I asked that question myself."

"How about sex?" inquired Valerie, suggestively raising 
an eyebrow.

Barry looked at her blankly for several seconds before 
he finally responded, "Sure! But shouldn't we wait 
until we get home?"

"No!" Valerie corrected him. "What I meant was, how 
long into pregnancy can a mother-to-be get it on? A few 
days ago, you were pretty worried about intercourse 
hurting the baby." 

"Oh!" Barry reddened at his misunderstanding. "Doctor 
Homann told me that it's perfectly safe and not unusual 
for a couple to have sexual relations from now until 
the last few weeks of the pregnancy. She advised that 
we stop when it becomes uncomfortable, and indicated 
that we would know when that happens."

Valerie pondered the situation. "I guess eight or nine 
months from now, it's a lot like making love with a 
beach ball between us. Any other things on the list?"

Barry scanned the paper on his lap. "Where was I? Oh, 
Eight: avoid overuse of caffeine. Nine: no 'eating for 
two'."

Valerie began chuckling.

Barry gave her a puzzled look. "What's so funny?"

"No eating for two," she replied, still amused. "Why is 
that?"

"Doctor Homann said that a normal diet with vitamin 
supplements is plenty for not only the mother but the 
baby, too. It seems that a pregnant woman's metabolism 
changes so that her body more efficiently handles the 
food she eats. Eating any more than normal just 
generates unwanted fat."

"Oh," Valerie said, becoming serious. "I'll have to 
watch that one. I don't want my body to weigh any more 
after the baby comes than it did a month ago."

"Don't worry, dear," Barry consoled her. "I'll cook 
healthy low-fat meals for you to help keep the weight 
off. There are lots of foods that are especially 
beneficial for pregnant women like milk and green 
vegetables. By the way, the doctor said I weighed 
fifty-one kilograms or one hundred twelve pounds, 
today."

Valerie took her eyes off the road to look at Barry 
briefly in the failing light. "I weighed one-fifteen on 
our wedding day," she said. "One twelve is even less 
than what I used to average."

Barry raised his eyebrows impishly. "It's from all the 
exercise you've been giving me every night."

"Just trying to do my part," Valerie replied with a 
facetious grin. "But, seriously, it's the nausea, isn't 
it?"

Barry ignored her question but continued. "Doctor 
Homann says a mother should gain about twenty to 
twenty-five pounds during pregnancy. Part of that is 
the baby, another part is the placenta and umbilical 
cord, some is what she calls amniotic fluid, and a 
little bit is from the enlarged uterine tissues and 
milk glands in the breasts."

Valerie figured the math in her head. "So up to one-
forty. That's about as much as Carol, my lab assistant, 
weighs."

Barry swiveled his head as the minivan passed through 
an intersection. "Val, you just missed the turn for 
home."

"I know. I was thinking my day is shot anyway. How 
about if we stop at the health club for an hour or so?"

"The health club?"

"Sure!" Valerie said brightly. "You just said that the 
doctor wants her pregnant patients to get exercise, and 
for today that means you. Besides, I haven't been to 
the club since we've been swapped."

"I didn't bring the gym bag with the female exercise 
stuff in it," Barry explained with finality. 

"It's been here in the car since I last went to the 
club," she told him. "I brought the bag with the guy 
stuff, since I'd planned to go to the gym today anyway. 
But that was before you begged me to take you to the 
doctor."

"Valerie! I'm not thrilled with going to the health 
club! I get really self conscious in public as a 
female. I've told you that!"

Valerie pulled the minivan into a parking space in the 
lot at the health club. "I know, but you should do what 
I do. I just tell myself that people see my male 
exterior and not the woman inside my head. In your 
case, they see a pretty girl and can't see the neurotic 
guy wandering around in her brain."

"Neurotic?" Barry shrieked playfully. He punched 
Valerie's arm. 

"Yeah," Valerie said, turning off the engine. "I dare 
you to come inside and exercise wearing my leotard."

"You dare me? So let's make it interesting... what's in 
it for me?"

"You come inside and... wear my leotard, and I'll make 
love to you all night tonight," she offered.

"Big deal. Since you turned male, you've been as horny 
as me anyway," Barry said skeptically. "I want 
something more."

"Okay, then. I'll do the laundry and dishes for two 
weeks."

"Fine," Barry agreed. "...and if I refuse to exercise 
in your leotard?"

Valerie paused to think of something appropriately 
distasteful. "And if you don't... You grade all of the 
exam papers for my courses this term."

"Grade exam papers?" Barry winced, wrinkling his nose. 
"Hand me the gym bag!"

Valerie stood in the hallway where the locker rooms 
emptied into the club itself. She had on a tee-shirt 
and Barry's exercise shorts, wore his rather weathered 
athletic shoes on her feet and had one of the club 
towels slung over her neck. She shifted her weight from 
one foot to the other in a combination of impatience 
and discomfort as the strap on her athletic supporter 
rode up on her. The little elastic and knit item felt 
very snug as it compressed the genitalia into her 
crotch. It was as near an equivalent to a woman's bra 
as men normally wore. 

The purpose of support was the same, and the design 
similar except that women had two cups around their 
chest where men had one pouch in their groin. Valerie 
wondered: if men wore these things, why did the thought 
of wearing a brassiere distress them so? Even Barry had 
expressed his reluctance about using a bra during his 
first days as a female. Valerie could not see what was 
so frightening about a little bit of fabric and 
elastic.

She looked at her watch for the twentieth time. Barry 
had not yet emerged from the locker room. Did he have 
second thoughts? Another thought crossed her mind: 
maybe he was enjoying watching the women dressing and 
undressing around him in the locker room. There hadn't 
been anyone else in the locker room where Valerie had 
undressed, so she hadn't gotten an opportunity to see 
any unclothed men.

Valerie heard a dull thump as the door from the women's 
locker room opened. There stood Barry, ill at ease and 
cheeks bright red from embarrassment, but wearing the 
leotard as well as a pair of leg warmers, a headband 
and wristband, and the exercise shoes and gym socks 
that Valerie used to wear. His hair was pulled back 
into a crude ponytail formed with an elastic band. He'd 
obviously found the sports bra in the gym bag, because 
his breasts were almost completely squashed against his 
body. She sighed, knowing she'd lost the bet and that 
she would spend the next two weeks doing the laundry 
and dishes.

"Here I am," he said, walking up to her. "Leotard and 
all! I guess I win the bet."

"I guess you do! And I think you look great!" Valerie 
complimented, careful not to call her husband by his 
name in the crowded club.

"I feel silly dressed like this," Barry said, looking 
around apprehensively. "What should I do now? I used to 
play racquetball, but you left my racquet at home and I 
guess that type of activity marginally falls under the 
forbidden high exertion category, anyway."

"You could take an aerobics class," Valerie suggested. 
"I've seen ladies in all stages of pregnancy doing 
aerobics. There's the stair machines, treadmills and 
the stationary bikes. Those should be okay."

"Sounds good. I'll use the treadmills. Maybe bike a 
bit. Why don't you join me?"

Valerie glanced eagerly to her right and then back to 
Barry. "I kind of had my heart set on weight training."

"Weight training? You he-man, you!" Barry made fun of 
her.

Valerie blushed at the reference to her maleness. "I've 
got to experience it before we un-swap or not at all," 
she explained.

"All right, then," Barry sighed. "You go lift some 
barbells and use the weight machines, and I'll stay 
here and do some of the girly stuff." With that, he 
stepped onto a nearby treadmill and set the speed for a 
slow two miles an hour.

At the end of forty-five minutes, Barry had gotten the 
treadmill up to six miles an hour and he was feeling 
the strain in his legs. He'd gotten his share of 
lustful looks from the usual guys who hang around 
health clubs trolling for dates. He'd even seen some 
the envious stares from some of the women in the club. 
After all, the body that Valerie had loaned him was a 
knockout.

Valerie walked up to his treadmill machine. Barry could 
see the perspiration glistening on her biceps.

"Lifting weights was fantastic!" Valerie said with a 
toothy smile. 

She began toweling off the sweat.

"How much... did you... lift?" Barry puffed, still 
running briskly on the endless sidewalk.

"One-ninety," Valerie beamed.

"Not... bad!" Barry congratulated her. "You tell me... 
which one of us... is being... macho now?"

Valerie blushed. "I have an idea!" she suddenly 
suggested. "Do you want to swim a few laps before we go 
home?"

Barry stepped off the treadmill as it coasted to a 
stop.

"Is there a swimsuit in my gym bag?" he asked, dabbing 
his neck on the towel Valerie carried.

"I'm almost positive that one or two suits are in the 
zippered pouch on the side of your bag. I have your old 
swim team suit with me."

"Oooohhh!" Barry purred, trailing his fingers down the 
perspiration stain on Valerie's chest. "You have the 
Speedos!" He winked at her and put on the most orgasmic 
expression he knew how. "I want my men to wear those or 
nothing at all!"

"Geez! Cut it out!" Valerie said, blushing from the 
scene Barry was making.

"Let me catch a quick shower and I'll meet you at the 
pool at five o'clock, you weight lifting studmuffin, 
you!" he bubbled breathlessly. He knew his fawning 
behavior in public was irritating to Valerie, but it 
made him feel a little better to make her squirm after 
all the indignities he'd had to endure recently. Barry 
returned to the locker room, nearly making the mistake 
of absentmindedly entering the door with the outline of 
a man painted on it.

Valerie stood at the pool's edge and glanced at the 
clock high on the wall of the tiled enclosure. Five-
fifteen. There were a few people in the pool, some 
standing around talking in the shallow end, and a few 
swimming laps. The sounds from the waves lapping 
against the pool apron echoed in the enclosure and 
mixed with the reverberations of the murmured 
conversations. 

The tiny black Spandex swim trunks Valerie wore were a 
lot smaller than she remembered them looking when Barry 
had worn them. She was starting to notice that more 
than one woman around the pool was staring at the 
prominent bulge at the front of the tight suit, and the 
attention was making her nervous. She was also a little 
uneasy standing around in public without a shirt on. It 
had been twenty years since she last exposed her 
breasts in mixed public, although technically these 
were not the same breasts. Valerie momentarily thought 
about climbing into the pool to wait, but wanted Barry 
to find her easily when he entered the pool area.

Valerie considered the possible reasons that Barry had 
not emerged from the locker room. Most likely, he had 
forgotten to come to the pool and was waiting in the 
lobby to go home, or he couldn't find the swimsuit in 
the gym bag, or the most probable scenario: he'd found 
the suit but refused to wear it.

A resounding clang resulted as the door from the 
women's locker room banged open. Valerie turned to see 
Barry swaddled from neck to knees in a huge club towel, 
his hair slicked against his skull, barefoot, stomping 
his way to her. His expression said it all: he was not 
pleased.

He walked up to her at the pool's edge and put his face 
inches from hers.

"Is this your idea of a joke?" he hissed.

"What?" she asked, looking down on his irate features.

"This... this... shoestring you call a swimsuit!" he 
whispered stridently.

Valerie knew exactly what he meant but she feigned 
innocence. "I don't understand."

Barry glared daggers at her. If looks could kill, 
Valerie would have been six feet under. "This bikini! 
It's three little black triangles and a few strings!"

"Let's see!" Valerie urged, reaching to open Barry's 
towel for a look.

He wrapped his arms around himself tighter and stepped 
backwards a pace. "No! This thing is indecent!"

"And this suit isn't?" Valerie gestured at her own very 
abbreviated trunks. 

Barry stopped his tirade and looked at Valerie. She 
wore the form-fitting Spandex briefs he'd worn in his 
years on the swim team. Indeed the swimsuit left 
nothing to the imagination. The joke went that Speedos 
were so tight that you could tell which boys wearing 
them had circumcisions. Seeing how tight the suit 
looked on Valerie, he began to laugh, but what came out 
was a high-pitched giggle. Barry looked at the pool and 
noticed that his argument with Valerie had attracted 
some attention among the other swimmers. Valerie was 
starting to blush as she noticed the people in the pool 
staring.

Barry enjoyed his wife's discomfort and felt as though 
he had a moral advantage for the first time since 
Valerie had taken him to her lab. Relenting, he held 
his towel open a bit so that only Valerie could see the 
bikini he wore underneath.

Valerie was mesmerized. She'd known the outfit she'd 
kept in the gym bag was revealing, but it looked even 
smaller than it had on the store mannequin last summer. 
The bikini was much as Barry had described it: three 
small black fabric triangles with a string at each 
vertex. The breast triangles were less than four inches 
on a side. One string from each breast triangle met at 
a knot between Barry's breasts. One string from the top 
corner of each panel went around his neck and tied 
under his hair. The remaining strings went under his 
arms and tied behind his back. The little swatches of 
material barely covered his areolae.

The three strings from the slightly larger pelvic 
triangle met at the base of Barry's spine, with a 
string going diagonally over each hip and one 
descending between his legs to rise up the crack 
between his buttocks. From the back, Barry looked 
virtually naked. From the front, the view was only 
slightly less revealing. Barry's erect nipples were 
clearly visible as bumps on the breast triangles, and 
the crease of his pussy was similarly evident in the 
pelvic panel.

The total effect was stunning. Barry looked even more 
sexy than one of the swimsuit models Valerie had seen 
in a calendar. The sight of his body also began to 
manifest itself in a physical way in Valerie's sex.

"Wow!" was all Valerie could say, and that was more 
exhaled than spoken.

"That bad?" Barry pouted. "You think it shows too much 
skin?"

"No! No, honey!" Valerie encouraged, "You look 
fabulous! You have absolutely no cause for 
embarrassment!" She was not just being kind. The suit 
looked fantastic on him. Valerie could imagine the 
attention the suit would have attracted had she worn it 
in Maui, but she'd never even tried it on, and thus had 
never seen herself in a mirror wearing it.

"It really looks okay?" Barry asked. Gathering his 
fortitude, he dropped the towel exposing his barely 
clothed figure to the strangers in the pool. A few of 
the less refined men whistled appreciatively.

"Hey!" Valerie shouted, swiftly jumping to Barry's 
defense. 

"That's my hus... my wife you're whistling at!"

There were scattered mumbled apologies from the 
chastised men, and Barry reddened at Valerie's 
description of him as her wife.

Barry leaned close and whispered into her ear. "Didn't 
your former boyfriends compliment your figure when you 
wore this bikini?"

"You know," Valerie whispered back to Barry, "I bought 
that suit on our honeymoon but I never had the guts to 
wear it."

Barry's eyes were suddenly cold steel as he heard her 
admission. 

He practically shouted. "And you thought I would? Val!" 

He pushed her off balance, knowing that she would have 
no choice but to topple into the deep end of the pool. 
Barry dove into the water beside her, and before his 
wife had surfaced, he was swimming for the shallow end. 
He looked back and saw that Valerie was ineffectually 
paddling along after him.

Barry had been on the institute swim team in his 
undergraduate days, but hadn't swum competitively in a 
few years. He still remembered the mechanics of the 
strokes, though, and the tricks to get the most out of 
a kick. Even though this female body did not have the 
musculature of a competitive swimmer, he easily pulled 
ahead of Valerie. While he swam, he could feel the drag 
of the water against his breasts. If he'd been planning 
to race in this female body, he would have wanted a 
one-piece suit to reduce the slowing effect, but he had 
neither planned to race nor chosen the swim wear.

He easily reached the shallow end before Valerie; 
obviously a triumph of technique over strength. His 
wife was slightly out of breath as she pulled alongside 
Barry standing in the navel-deep water along the pool 
wall.

"You jerk!" she sputtered. "Why'd you push me in?"

"Because you tricked me into wearing this teeny-weeny 
bikini!" 

Barry explained indignantly. He paused a moment before 
issuing a challenge: "Race you back to the deep end!" 
He jumped toward the far end of the pool and began 
swimming away.

For a moment, Valerie watched his virtually bare 
derriere as he swam away, then took a deep breath and 
began swimming after her husband. She concentrated on 
the power of each stroke and found that each of her 
kicks reduced his lead. In a few strokes her more 
powerful swimming would overcome Barry's advantage in 
technique.

Barry looked behind and saw Valerie gaining on him. 
Apparently she had learned how to leverage her strength 
against his training. As he reached the twelve-foot 
deep area, he dove toward the bottom. He could 
immediately sense the reduced lung capacity of this 
body and the buoyant tug as his breasts tried to float 
upward. He knew that Valerie had spent very little of 
her youth swimming, and he worked her mental 
inexperience in water to his advantage.

Valerie swam into the deepest part of the pool and 
looked to see how much she had gained on Barry. He was 
nowhere to be seen! Valerie stopped swimming and began 
treading water as she looked along the apron of the 
pool to see if Barry had climbed out before swimming 
the entire length. She did not see him. Suddenly, she 
felt a pair of hands yanking downward on her trunks, 
and knew at once that it was Barry.

She writhed and twisted in attempt to thwart the 
removal of her swimsuit. She dove after him and 
encountered a swirl of bubbles that obscured her 
vision. Finally her air ran out and she surfaced, just 
in time to see Barry stepping off the ladder onto the 
pool apron. He turned and displayed a minuscule black 
wad of Spandex draped from one finger.

"Missing something?" he trilled wickedly, in a gross 
parody of the question she'd asked in her lab after 
undergoing the consciousness exchange. Without waiting 
for her answer, he sauntered away taking the trunks 
with him. Valerie noted with irony that his hips were 
swaying perfectly. The others in the pool erupted in 
laughter and applause.

***

Valerie was silent during much of the drive home from 
the health club. "What you did at the pool was very 
embarrassing!" she finally blurted.

Barry turned in the passenger seat and coldly stared at 
her, saying nothing.

"I had to go from the pool to the locker room without a 
stitch of clothing!" Valerie continued. "I'm surprised 
the club didn't revoke my... no, YOUR... membership!"

"Grow up," Barry told her, bluntly. "Everyone there was 
an adult. I bet the men found it hilarious. As far as 
they're concerned, you were more entertaining than 
anything. Guys like to see other guys knocked down a 
peg."

"All right," Valerie allowed. "They were having a 
pretty good laugh at my expense in the locker room. 
What about the women?"

"That's the funny thing," Barry explained. "I thought 
they'd be shocked; particularly the older ladies. I 
talked to a few of them in the showers and none of them 
were offended. In fact, they couldn't stop giggling. 
They thought that body has a cute tush and that you 
deserved payback for making me wear the string bikini."

"Barry!" Valerie wailed, "I bought that swimsuit for 
myself!"

Barry shrugged. "In any case, none of the club members 
are going to complain as long as we don't make a habit 
of walking around the pool without swimsuits. So if you 
promise not to embarrass me again in public, I won't 
embarrass you."

"Deal," Valerie agreed. "Speaking of being embarrassed, 
I had a devil of a time avoiding an erection in the 
locker room and shower with all of the undressed men 
around."

"Are you saying that the sight of men's bodies turns 
you on?" Barry asked.

"I'm still a woman inside, Bar'. I get incredibly 
aroused by hunky guys, particularly when I'm in a 
locker room full of naked ones. But with this damn 
cock, everyone knows the second I start to feel that 
way! The embarrassment alone is one sure cure for penis 
envy!"

Barry giggled at the mental image of his wife getting 
turned on in a room full of men. "That's one thing I 
kind of enjoyed today. I was up to my armpits in bare 
tits and pussy in the women's locker room and no one 
had the slightest idea how horny the surroundings were 
making me. My nipples were so stiff, and I was 
lubricating like crazy, but it wasn't as obvious as the 
hard-on you had."

"How about the other way? Does the sight of men's 
bodies turn you on too?" Valerie asked.

"No," Barry answered after a beat. "Naked men do 
nothing for me. With one notable exception." He reached 
over and rubbed Valerie's cheek. "Does that make me a 
lesbian?"

Valerie took her eyes off the road for a moment to look 
over at Barry. "I told you before, Barry, the brain is 
your most powerful sex organ. Regardless of what your 
body looks like, you are still male in your mind."

"Now I'm confused," Barry told her. "If I'm really male 
but I have enjoyed making love to you the last week and 
a half, that still makes me homosexual somehow, doesn't 
it?"

Valerie was about to explain herself but realized he 
was obviously just baiting her. She drove a while more 
before asking: "What did Doctor Homann say about the 
morning sickness?"

Barry sighed. "Unfortunately, there's nothing to do but 
endure it. She suggested to take antacid tablets to cut 
down the heartburn and burning taste in the mouth, but 
she wouldn't prescribe anything to reduce the nausea."

"Did she say how long the symptoms would last?"

"She was rather evasive," he told her. "She said every 
pregnancy was different: that some women get sick 
early-on; others not until months later. Some women get 
the nausea for a day or two and some have symptoms that 
last a lot longer. There's no way to tell. Obviously, 
you should hope for something in the day or two range."

Valerie softly interjected, "Barry? Would you mind us 
staying exchanged...?"

"Yes I would mind!" he reacted immediately.

"...only until the morning sickness passes. Please?"

"No!" Barry answered stridently. "I'm not going to do 
it!"

"Please?" Valerie pleaded. "If I'm sick every morning, 
I'll have to give up too many hours of research each 
day!"

Barry didn't say anything for nearly a minute, before 
he answered in a tiny voice: "Val, I don't want to. I'm 
scared."

Valerie steered the minivan into their driveway and 
actuated the garage door opener.

"Scared?" Valerie asked, briefly glancing at Barry. 
"Why?"

"I'm scared about us. About me. About who I am. This 
mind-swap situation has changed me. I don't feel much 
like I'm a man any more!"

"Barry!" Valerie exclaimed. "Why do you say that! Of 
course you're a man!" She drove into the garage and the 
door closed behind the minivan.

"Val!" Barry exclaimed. "Look at me! I have breasts and 
a vagina. Heck! I have a baby gestating somewhere in my 
gut! I even had a gynecological exam today. Does that 
sound like a man to you?"

"Is that what has you worried?" Valerie nonchalantly 
asked, stepping out of the car.

Barry climbed out of the passenger side, grabbed the 
purse off the floor of the car and slammed the door. 
"You're darn right it is!"

"Okay then. Answer me this: In our marriage, are you 
the husband or the wife?" she asked.

"Well," Barry began, uneasily. "At the pool, you called 
me your wife."

"Don't give me that! Are you the husband or the wife?" 
she repeated loudly.

"The... the husband!" Barry decided.

Valerie turned and silently stalked into the house. 
Barry followed her. Through the kitchen, out into the 
dining room, down the hall and to the library. Valerie 
pulled a weathered dictionary off the shelf.

She thumbed through the pages.

"Hangar. Hiker. Hostess. Hurtleberry. Ah! Husband!" she 
exclaimed. "Husband: noun, a married man, especially 
considered in relation to his wife."

"So?" Barry asked.

"You say you're the husband. The husband is a man. 
Webster says so!" She closed the book and returned it 
to the shelf.

"That's semantics and you know it!" Barry shouted, 
angrily.

"Works for me!" she shouted right back and smiled 
smugly. When she next spoke, it was very softly. 
"Besides, I'm the wife, and that makes me a woman. And 
I love you." Barry could see that Valerie's eyes were 
moist.

Barry wrapped his arms around her neck and hugged her 
as his tears began to flow. "I love you too, Val."

Valerie buried her face in his long hair and whispered 
into his ear: "We can't have two wives in this 
marriage, can we? What would the neighbors think?"

Even though his body was wracked by shuddering sobs, 
Barry managed to speak. "I don't care what the 
neighbors think. I want to let my wife know that her 
husband loves her. I want to take her to bed. I want to 
make love to her and feel her inside me. And, I want to 
tell her that I'll let her keep the male body until my 
morning sickness is gone."

Valerie pulled her head away from Barry's and looked 
into his red-rimmed eyes. "You mean that?" she asked, 
rubbing a teardrop off Barry's cheek with her thumb.

Barry nodded affirmatively, his features pinched in a 
mixture of sadness and loving pride.

"Oh, thank you!" she said, squeezing him tightly. "How 
about if I show you my gratitude by bringing you to a 
screaming climax, or two or three?"

"Or five or six?" Barry asked, hopefully.

"As many as you want, husband of mine!"

"Then follow me!" he said as he firmly grasped 
Valerie's necktie and pulled it like a leash. Barry led 
Valerie to the bedroom and began swaying his hips to 
some silent rhythm. He motioned for her to stand near 
the dresser. He walked behind her and wrapped his arms 
under her arms and began unbuttoning her shirt. Barry 
undid as many of the buttons as he could without 
pulling her shirttail out of the trousers. His hands 
went to her belt buckle and unfastened the belt, 
pulling it slowly out of the belt loops before dropping 
the leather strap on the floor.

"Barry?!" Valerie asked, wondering what he was doing.

He did not answer her, but moved on to the waist 
fastener and then slowly unzipped the trousers, 
eventually letting them fall to the floor around her 
ankles. Barry pulled off Valerie's necktie and finished 
unbuttoning the front of the shirt. He then reached to 
her wrists to unbutton the shirt cuffs. He reached for 
her collar and pulled the shirt off her back and down 
her arms.

He put his arms under hers again and rubbed her chest 
and ran his fingers through the hairs there. Valerie 
reached behind herself to touch Barry, and when she 
did, he immediately stepped back and away.

"Okay, okay. I won't do that again," she agreed without 
turning around. "C'mon back and finish, now."

Barry's hands appeared at her ankles to roll her socks 
to her heels one by one. The hands then urged each foot 
off the floor for a moment so that the socks could be 
removed and the pants pulled away. Again his arms 
appeared under hers and the gentle fingers rubbed 
Valerie's chest. She could feel the barest touch of 
Barry's gently swaying body behind her, and it was 
driving her crazy!

Barry's soft and smooth hands reached into the 
waistband of her briefs and pulled them slowly to the 
floor. Valerie's penis was partially erect and steadily 
climbing. The hands dropped to her ankles, and helped 
her step out of the briefs making Valerie completely 
undressed.

Barry sashayed around to Valerie's front and led her 
over to the bed. Without saying anything he made her 
understand that he wanted her positioned in the middle 
of the bed on her back. Then he stepped up onto the 
mattress to stand over her, his feet straddling her 
knees.

Barry was still undulating his hips, and now began 
running his hands all over his body. He slowly 
unbuttoned his long dress and pulled it over his head. 
He began making little shimmies that caused his tits to 
wiggle back and forth in his bra. He reached behind his 
back and unsnapped the brassiere clasp. He'd been 
practicing unfastening the bra for two days and made it 
look as though he'd been wearing one most of his life. 
His breasts sprang free as the garment was tossed 
aside. Now, every time he shook his shoulders, his 
mammae shuddered in fluid and unavoidable motion. He 
squeezed and rubbed his tits, in a manner that further 
excited Valerie. She noticed that his nipples were 
beginning to stiffen from his own touch.

Just like Barry, the sight of most people that shared 
her birth gender did not arouse Valerie. Regardless, 
she was aroused, now! She reached down to the juncture 
of her legs and could feel the rigid swollen rod that 
was positive evidence of her passion. Her balls ached, 
and she felt that powerful recurring urge simply to 
skip past the foreplay and ravage her husband 
mercilessly; a sentiment she worked hard to suppress. 
Valerie gripped her phallus and gently stroked up and 
down as she watched Barry writhe above her.

Barry shook his head, and his golden tresses seemed to 
flow about his shoulders. His hips were tracing figure 
eights in the air. If he'd had a grass skirt, he would 
have been performing a slow-motion hula. At this point, 
he wore only a pair of satin briefs. Valerie noticed 
that there was a thin vertical line of moisture evident 
on the crotch panel, proof that Barry was very aroused, 
too. This mute striptease was stimulating to them both!

Barry stood with his eyes closed, smiling, silently 
swaying his hips. His hands glided sensuously over his 
bare breasts, his tummy, his waist, his hips and soon 
his thumbs found the waistband of his panties. He 
pushed downward on the elastic an inch at a time, 
gradually unveiling more and more of his pelvis. 
Valerie watched, fascinated. She'd seen hundreds of 
pussies in her life, twenty or more at a time in the 
locker room showers at high-school and the health club, 
but somehow Barry made the experience brand new, 
incredibly fun and very sexy.

Finally Barry had pulled the panties to his thigh, and 
Valerie gasped. The pubic hair that had covered Barry's 
pudenda as recently as this morning was completely 
gone! When had he done that!? She began to chuckle, and 
her prick stiffened more.

Barry put his feet on one side of her body, pulled the 
panties down and off himself, and then returned to 
straddling her, now that he was completely nude. He was 
still wiggling his hips, and shimmying his shoulders 
sexily. His labia were slightly parted and Valerie 
could see the pinkness within was very wet. His dance 
was keeping her hard-on extremely rigid to the point of 
pain.

Barry slowly bent into a kneeling position and put his 
hands on Valerie's abdomen. He traced his fingers 
toward her crotch, but avoided direct contact with her 
penis. The head of her organ was deeply purple and 
veins stood out along the length of the rigid shaft. 
The teasing had brought a golden drop of pre-ejaculate 
to the tip of Valerie's cock.

Suddenly Barry leaned forward and before Valerie could 
react, he took the tip of her pecker into his mouth! He 
slowly licked up the side of her shaft and wrapped his 
tongue around the tip. The feelings that shot through 
Valerie to her brain were incredible! Barry's tongue 
was so wet and warm and it was touching all the right 
places. Valerie closed her eyes in ecstasy and moaned 
uncontrollably. She put her hands on the sides of 
Barry's head as he slowly began working his mouth up 
and down on Valerie's long stiff member. With each 
thrust, he took more of it down his throat. Valerie 
could feel her will power slipping away.

Barry gingerly fondled what had once been his own 
family jewels, and could feel Valerie's involuntary 
muscle action retracting the testicles toward her body. 
Barry pushed the spermaries gently toward her body and 
felt each pop through an aperture into her abdominal 
cavity. Now that her sac was empty, Barry collapsed the 
useless bag against her pelvic floor. He gently kneaded 
the empty pouch between his fingers, feeling the 
slippery internal surfaces sliding against one another.

Valerie felt something akin to the sensation of having 
her female labia again, and having them moist and 
lubricated and rubbing against each other. It was 
something she hadn't known she could experience in a 
male body. "I don't know what you're doing down there," 
she said, "but don't stop. It feels stupendous!"

Barry ignored her and continued his sword-swallower act 
until his nose was buried in her pubic hair, and most 
of her length was beyond his lips. Valerie felt the 
approach of the release that she so desperately needed 
but at the same time wanted to prevent.

She touched her husband's temples to warn him. "Barry? 
... You shouldn't... I think I... I'm...Nggghh!" She 
stiffened and involuntarily lifted her hips upward 
pushing more of herself into Barry as the semen flowed 
through her and jetted into her husband's throat. 
Barry's eyes got very wide and then he closed them in 
bliss. Valerie's release was mercifully brief: only 
three spurts. She felt so guilty about orgasming while 
Barry was doing what he did, but she had to admit that 
the constriction of his throat muscles as he swallowed 
her emission was incredibly erotic.

Valerie's passion eventually cooled, and Barry let the 
limp saliva-soaked remains of her once-proud erection 
slip between his lips. He removed his fingers from 
around her scrotum and her nuts shot out of her body 
cavity into their accustomed place.

"Did you like that?" he softly asked, crawling up to 
lie beside her. He nestled against her underarm, his 
head resting on her shoulder. Valerie placed her arm 
behind him, pressing his body closer to hers.

"Did I like it?" Valerie gasped, still recovering her 
breath. "I loved it... I just can't believe you did 
that!"

"Why can't you believe it?" Barry asked.

Valerie pushed the sweaty bangs around on his forehead 
and looked into his eyes. "First of all, you were 
worried about whether you were a man only a few minutes 
ago."

Barry smiled at her. "And I came to terms with that. I 
realize that I never stopped being a man. I just don't 
happen to have male sex organs right now."

Valerie continued, "I was surprised because... you 
know... I've always refused to give you..."

"Oral sex?" Barry offered.

"Your term sounds so much more prim, proper, and 
ladylike," Valerie told him. "I was going to say 'a 
blow job'."

"Silly," Barry giggled, purposely taking his voice into 
an upper register to sound like a little girl. "There's 
no blowing involved. Only swallowing!"

"There's another thing! I would have gagged! How did 
you do that?"

"If you noticed," Barry told her, "Your penis went 
waaaay down my throat. None of the nasty semen ended up 
in my mouth. I didn't have to taste anything. I'm sure 
the flavor or the consistency of ejaculate would make 
me choke too. The only trick is to open your throat 
wide enough to allow a penis that far down without 
triggering the gag reflex."

"And you were sure you could do that?"

Barry blushed. "I had a chance to practice this morning 
after you phoned. My stomach was already empty, and I 
couldn't get any more nauseous, so I tried deep-
throating a banana. It isn't that hard. If I can do it, 
you can."

"No way!" Valerie intoned.

"You might like it," he offered. "I had a monster 
orgasm when you got off. Couldn't you tell?"

"Barry, to be honest, I wasn't really looking at you at 
that particular moment."

Barry thought about the great climax he'd had. Even 
now, post-orgasmic tremors were continuing and he could 
feel the tingling effect inside himself. "You're 
forgiven." he sighed as he snuggled against Valerie's 
warm body.

Valerie rested for a while with her husband nestled up 
beside her, his long blond hair draped over her arm. 
She reveled in the feeling of his pillowy breasts 
rising and falling slowly against her side.

"So, when did you shave yourself... down there?" she 
asked.

"At the club, when I tried on the itsy bitsy swimsuit 
surprise," explained Barry, "I realized that there was 
just a bit too much fuzz between my legs for swimwear 
that small."

"But..." Valerie tried to interrupt.

"I bummed a disposable razor off another woman and 
started in shaving, but as I got more and more steamed 
about the way you tricked me into using the bikini, I 
decided you needed a lesson. So I shaved every bit of 
hair off. "

"How does shaving all of your pubic hair off teach me a 
lesson?" 

Valerie asked. "Just looking at it makes my cock hard!"

Barry smiled wickedly. "Just wait until your mind is 
back in this body! The itching as the hair grows out 
will drive you crazy!" He began to giggle, which caused 
his tits to wobble sexily.

"Touche! I have one more question about your little 
oral demonstration a few moments ago. Why did you do 
it? I would think it would have been very 
emasculating!"

Barry kissed Valerie on the cheek. "Val. It can't be 
any more emasculating than having my wife steal my dick 
and balls a week and a half ago."

"Borrow," Valerie clarified.

"Okay. Temporarily borrow them," Barry agreed. "But I'm 
the first guy to ever have the chance to be an actual 
girl; more than a surgical approximation or someone 
with plastic prostheses: A real honest to gosh genetic 
female. While I never wanted or wished for this... and 
make no mistake: I am champing at the bit to be male 
again... I'm more than a little curious about the whole 
range of female sensations."

"I see."

"I'd say you really got into the moment, too," Barry 
told Valerie, "if you pumped as much semen down my 
gullet as it seemed. I guess I tried it for the same 
reason you tried weight training today. I don't know 
how long I'll be like this, and after the mind swap is 
undone I'll always wonder 'what if?'."

"Your honesty has moved me," Valerie said with 
stentorian tones. 

"I confer upon you the title of Honorary Woman."

"Honorary? That's it? I'm not a full-fledged woman?"

Valerie sat up and held her husband at arm's length. 
She seemed to inspect him closely. "No," she said 
simply. "Honorary woman for sure, but..."

"Why?! I have authentic tits. I have an actual life-
size fully functioning pussy," Barry whined, "I'm 
pregnant for goodness sake!"

"We women have very strict rules before we confer 
Official womanhood to anyone."

Barry smirked as he played along with Valerie. "That 
would sound so much more persuasive if it didn't come 
from some big, hairy guy!" He gently stroked her 
already re-stiffening penis.

"Okay," Valerie began, concentrating on her thoughts to 
both make a convincing argument and to wilt her own 
hard-on. "There are three criteria, all unique to 
women. Any one of them takes you from Honorary to 
Official status."

"I'm ready," Barry said. "What are they?"

Valerie reclined on the bed and took a deep breath. 
"First. You have to be raised through childhood as a 
girl."

Barry frowned with mock seriousness, "There's no way 
for me to do that one, is there? What else?"

Valerie continued. "Second, you have to endure at least 
one menstrual flow."

"Ewwww!" Barry grimaced with evident distaste.

"The final thing," Valerie said, choosing her words 
carefully, "is to bear a child."

"Bingo!" Barry shouted, "I'm in!"

"Bzzzzt! I'm sorry!" Valerie responded.

"What? Val! What do you think this is?" Barry pointed 
to his navel. "A bad case of indigestion? I'm 
pregnant!"

"Yes," she agreed. "You are. But to be considered for 
Official Womanhood, you need to BEAR the child. That 
means carry the baby to term and deliver."

"Whew! These are tough rules!" Barry commented, with 
exaggerated disgust.

"Yes, but I fulfill two of them already. Some time next 
August I will have a perfect score."

Barry discontinued his verbal sparring and resumed his 
former position nestled in Valerie's armpit and his 
head resting on her muscular shoulder. He closed his 
eyes and drank in the feel of her warm body surrounding 
his.

"Tell you what," Valerie offered. "After I have the 
baby and my cycles get predictable, we can swap minds 
again for a month. You survive menstruation and we'll 
make you an official woman. What do you say?"

Even with his eyes closed, Barry's face showed his 
obvious disgust. "I say, yuck! No thanks!"

Valerie laughed, knowing beforehand that Barry would 
reject her offer. "How about me?" she asked. "Official 
Man or not?"

Barry opened his eyes and studied her face. "You've got 
Honorary locked," he told her.

"So are there any rules to get to Official status or is 
there some secret handshake to learn?"

"Let's see. Rules," Barry mused. "Okay. First one: you 
have to be raised as a boy."

"I should have expected that one," Valerie groused. "I 
guess my parents letting me be a tomboy doesn't count."

"Ohhh! So close! But no," Barry said, imitating a game 
show host. He paused to consider the other criteria. 
"Second way: your sperm has to make a woman pregnant, 
and remember that our baby doesn't count since it was 
conceived before we swapped bodies."

"Hmmmm." Valerie reflected, pensively. "Who do I know? 
Rita!"

"Don't even think it!" Barry shrilled, knowing that 
Valerie was only kidding. She'd said herself that she 
wasn't attracted to females, present company excepted. 
Valerie having a fling with Rita before un-swapping 
wouldn't even make him jealous, but unsuspecting Rita 
would then expect Barry to continue the affair after he 
and Val were themselves again, and he felt no 
attraction for the woman.

"Two down so far," Valerie frowned. Is there a third 
criterion?"

Barry did not speak for a while. His expression became 
serious and his voice was so soft that Valerie hardly 
heard him. "Third. Er... you could have impotence."

"What?" she asked.

Barry cleared his throat. "Impotence," he repeated only 
slightly louder.

"Yeah, right!" Valerie sneered, "you just got stumped 
because there's no analogy to a woman's period! How 
many guys become impotent?"

"I did." Barry said quietly.

Valerie slowly turned to look at Barry. His eyes were 
starting to become moist again. "Oh! Barry!" she back-
pedaled, "I never knew! I mean, you've always been 
so... so... you know. Virile!"

"I know." he said, as he further misted over.

"How'd it happen? When?"

Barry sniffled briefly and swallowed before launching 
into his story. "It was a few years ago, before you and 
I met. I was in graduate school, and I was dating 
Marta. She was just out of college and teaching 
preschool."

"You've told me about her." Valerie said.

"What I didn't tell you was what led to our breakup. 
I'd been dating her for about three months and one 
night I couldn't... how can I put this?... stay stiff."

"Ohhhh." Valerie said with empathy. "But it got better, 
right?"

"Not before it got worse," Barry told her. "A few days 
later I couldn't even get a hint of an erection much 
less keep one. Limp city. 

Having sex was a bit like picking a lock using string: 
darn frustrating. We tried everything: oysters, 
ginseng, X-rated videos, and at first Marta was very 
supportive, but before long her patience wore thin and 
she decided she wanted a boyfriend who could satisfy 
her urges. One with a little more lead in his pencil, 
if you understand me. She moved on."

"Gee. That must have been tough. But, ever since I've 
known you," Valerie said, "your sexual equipment has 
been in tip-top shape." She gently kissed Barry on the 
forehead.

"Turns out," Barry continued, "that I had a pinched 
nerve. I saw a neurologist who gave me some spinal 
exercises which eventually cured me. By the time you 
and I met, I didn't even do the exercises anymore."

"I'm sorry." Valerie said. "You never told me. It 
sounds like Marta really dumped on you and you didn't 
deserve it."

"That's okay. If Marta hadn't left me, I wouldn't have 
met or married you." He kissed her on the cheek. 
"Anyway," Barry changed the subject, "it looks like 
you're in the same boat as me as far as being an 
official member of the opposite sex: almost, but not 
quite."

"And honorary status is just fine with me," Valerie 
said pressing her arm against Barry and rubbing her 
fingers at the small of his back. Barry slid his warm 
pelvis against her hip.

"Mmmmmm! Fine with me too," her husband purred and 
snuggled against Valerie.

"One thing I'll say," Valerie observed. "This mind swap 
sure seems to have mellowed you out. You seem a lot 
less intense and single-minded than before."

"Yeah," Barry said. "I noticed that too. I haven't 
bitten these fingernails at all. Maybe I'm 
overcompensating about trying to avoid stress with a 
baby in here." He indicated his tummy. "Or maybe it's 
the progesterone or estrogen swirling around in this 
body that took the edge off. I don't know."

"When I was considering using the mind-exchanging 
process on us, I was prepared for you to go berserk 
when you woke up in a female body, but you seem to be 
so at peace with yourself. So together. Almost like 
you're enjoying it."

Barry rubbed Valerie's chest. He whispered, "Can I tell 
you a secret?"

Valerie smiled at him in assent.

"I never dreamt in a million years I would accept a 
situation like this mind swap. What hetero guy would? 
But I am having fun. Its a kick being female; a girl, a 
lady, a chick, a broad, a filly, a squaw, a skirt, a 
dame."

"It looks good on you," Valerie told him. "And that's 
not just because you have my old body. If I didn't 
know, I'd never suspect a man's brain was in there. 
It's like you have this poise and confidence; as if 
you've always been female. But, then, I've heard that 
pregnancy makes one glow."

"That glow is heartburn!" Barry joked. He reached over 
to Valerie's groin and lifted her flaccid pecker in two 
fingers. He dropped it with a plop against her pelvis. 
"It's dead, Jim!" He sat up next to her and moved his 
face into Valerie's lap.

"Geez, Bar'! I can't keep you away from my dick!" 
Valerie joked as Barry vacuumed the limp but quickly 
growing organ into his mouth.

Valerie took a deep breath as she felt the tingle 
between her legs building with incredible speed. She 
reached over and pulled Barry's leg so that he had to 
swing his left knee over her chest. His pussy ended up 
right above her mouth. Valerie positioned her hands on 
his waist, and guided his hips toward her face. She 
tentatively extended her tongue to his labia and her 
lips contorted expecting a vile disgusting flavor of 
fish and urine. 

Instead, Valerie found the taste and smell to be salty 
but indescribably bland. She eagerly lapped a large 
area with her tongue, dipping briefly into the vaginal 
crease and moving in the direction of his navel until 
her tongue touched the button of his clitoris. Barry 
pulled his pelvis away quickly once she touched him on 
the tiny sensitive organ.

Valerie slid her hands down to her abdomen and found 
Barry's breasts hanging there above her; warm, firm and 
smooth. As Valerie gently manipulated Barry's tits, one 
in each of her hands, he sat back on his haunches, 
bringing his slit into range of her tongue again. 
Valerie took more care with her tongue this time, and 
gradually got Barry wetter. The skin in his crotch was 
very smooth, since he'd shaved only an hour earlier, 
and Valerie's saliva soon coated much of the area 
around and between his labia. She gingerly pressed her 
mouth to the end of Barry's slit where his clitoris was 
beginning to expand and stiffen. Barry's hips gently 
rocked, moving the tiny organ across Valerie's lips.

Valerie wet his sexual crevice and then leaned her head 
back to insert her tongue into his vagina. When she 
did, she was rewarded with a powerful vibration of 
Barry's larynx moaning around her cock. Barry's hips 
began to tilt rapidly, as he ground his pussy against 
her nose, lips and tongue. Valerie pursed her lips and 
sucked on Barry's clitoris, all the while imagining the 
intense shock waves that must be emanating from that 
tender part of him, igniting his nervous system and 
fueling his passion. 

Suddenly he froze, and Valerie could tell that an 
orgasm had found him. Just sensing his release was 
enough to accelerate her own progress toward climax. 
She continued licking his hairless pussy and bucking 
her hips toward his face until she shot her load down 
his esophagus. Barry had another orgasm just as 
Valerie's ejaculation began.

After what seemed an eternity, Valerie felt her prick 
softening, eventually to tumble from between her 
husband's exhausted lips. Barry collapsed against her, 
spent; his warm sweaty breasts squashed into her 
abdomen.

"That was dynamite, honey," she said into his drenched 
cunt.

"No kidding," he echoed, his head resting on her thigh. 
"Pure dynamite."


CHAPTER 12
MICHAEL

Barry stood at the bay window waving good-bye to 
Valerie as her minivan roared away from the driveway. 
She'd left a little later than normal this morning, 
after taking out the garbage and cleaning the bathroom. 
Normally she was at work before eight AM, but today she 
would be lucky to be there before nine-thirty.

Barry sipped from the cup of cool clear liquid in his 
hand. The small swallows of apple juice were welcome 
relief from the acid taste in his mouth. The nausea 
this morning had been even worse than the first episode 
only two days ago.

Barry had felt no illness when he went to sleep at four 
AM after the clouds had obscured his telescope's view 
of the stars. He had even intended to give Valerie a 
pre-breakfast lingerie fashion show, featuring some of 
the sexy items he'd found in the back of her dresser 
drawers the day before. It was not to be. No sooner had 
Barry opened his eyes than he felt his stomach churning 
and his gorge rising. He jumped out of bed and ran for 
all he was worth to the bathroom and barely reached the 
toilet before all hell broke loose.

Barry thanked his lucky stars that so far he hadn't 
awakened in a pool of vomit or barfed on himself while 
running to the commode. It was disgusting enough to 
have the runny nose and burning throat and horrible 
taste that came from the regurgitated acid, without 
having to wash the mess off his body too.

He ran his fingers absent-mindedly over the satin teddy 
that he'd put on after the nausea waned. He realized 
that he must look very tired and unattractive.

Barry remembered how gorgeous he'd thought Valerie 
looked the first time he'd seen her in the library at 
the institute. He'd thought her an angel. She was no 
less beautiful at their wedding and even on 
Thanksgiving morning when she'd told him about the 
pregnancy test. It just seemed he was somehow 
desecrating her image by feeling so bad and looking so 
bedraggled while inhabiting her body.

He looked at his reflection in the window. He saw a 
young woman wearing a filmy negligee; a woman with 
sunken eyes and stringy hair; a woman whose figure 
still showed no bulge from four weeks of pregnancy. 
Barry resolved to seize the day and not wallow in 
depression; he drained his glass of juice.

Before long, the negligee lay in a formless satin mound 
on the floor of the bathroom. Barry stood in the 
shower, washing his hair and, for the first time since 
Valerie had swapped minds with him, singing. He'd sung 
baritone in a few choirs in school, even performing 
solos, and he'd performed in the shower at home 
countless times, but he'd never been able to sing like 
this! Barry discovered that Valerie had a beautiful 
singing voice; something she'd never told him or 
perhaps not even known herself. 

Barry could tell by the tonal range that these vocal 
cords were out of practice, a high alto or low soprano 
as best he could determine, but the sound he could 
achieve was glorious! The reverberation from the tiled 
walls made the voice even more pleasing.

He recalled the alto part of a few songs and tried them 
as he conditioned his hair. He even sang the women's 
solos from a few choir numbers he knew and he was 
pleased with what he heard. There was no doubt that 
this voice had the power and range for musical theater. 
Maybe he could persuade Valerie to try out for a part 
in one of the musicals the Riverton theatrical group 
put on... after the baby came, of course.

Barry stood at the mirror toweling his hair and 
playfully singing a number from 'Bye Bye Birdie', a 
musical his high school had performed in which he'd 
played the title character Conrad Birdie. However, the 
song Barry chose this morning was one sung by the 
female lead, Kim MacAfee, a teenage girl who is 
emerging from puberty and is discovering womanhood. 

The tune 'How Lovely To Be A Woman', captures Kim's 
wonder at the changes she has undergone. As Barry 
listened to the lyrics echoing back to his ears, he was 
struck by how many of those words applied to someone 
borrowing a woman's body. To smile a woman's smile. To 
feel what a woman feels. Barry wasn't convinced that it 
was so lovely to be a woman, particularly a pregnant 
one with nausea and fatigue, but he appreciated the 
irony.

He blow-dried his hair and brushed it until it shone. 
There! That looked a lot better! He dusted his skin 
with bath powder, and the fuzzy powder puff tickled him 
so much that his nipples stood erect on breasts covered 
with goose flesh. Barry could remember seeing Valerie 
dusting her body and examining her breasts. She'd been 
quite vocal about her desire for larger tits, but Barry 
had always thought they looked just right, and the mind 
swap had not altered that perception. Even though he 
was only temporarily in this body, he was proud of what 
was, for the time being, his figure.

He wandered into the bedroom to find something stylish 
to wear. 

He was going to get himself out of the house for a 
change!

He looked in Valerie's lingerie drawer at the neat row 
of brassieres, stacked cup on cup. He selected a very 
lacy one that was designed to rest more under than 
around the tits. There were a number of styles of 
panties in the next drawer. He chose a pair pushed off 
to the side that looked almost unused. The satin crotch 
panel felt cool against his shaved pubes.

He'd removed the stubble from his legs and underarms 
before going to the doctor yesterday, and he determined 
that there was not sufficient growth to warrant re-
shaving yet. Barry found a plastic egg and removed a 
pair of charcoal-tint pantyhose. He pulled those up his 
legs and snugged the panty part around his hips. The 
hosiery made his legs look very smooth, slim, dark and 
mysterious.

Barry flung open Valerie's closet. The clothes closest 
to the front were the style she'd worn most recently 
and were all pants and pants suits. Barry wanted 
something a little out of the ordinary. He dug near the 
back and found a hanger with a royal blue silk balloon-
sleeve blouse, a simple black skirt and a silvery half-
slip. Barry had never seen Valerie wearing this, but he 
thought it might be just the thing.

He examined the half-slip and guessed that it went on 
over his head and would, because of its narrow waist, 
rest on his hips. When the garment seemed to fit that 
way, he silently congratulated himself. He put his arms 
into the silk blouse and felt the delicious whisper of 
fabric resting lightly around him. He buttoned the 
front of the blouse, but not the top few buttons, 
preferring to reveal a little flash of his cleavage. 
There were a trio of buttons on each of the silk cuffs, 
but even with all of the cuff buttons fastened, the 
blouse was quite loose around his wrists.

Barry stepped into the skirt and pulled it up over the 
slip and zipped the zipper on the side, tucking the 
blouse inside. He found a belt on the same hanger and 
threaded it through the loops on his waist. The result 
in the full-length mirror was right out of a catalog.

Barry sat at the vanity and pawed through the jars, 
bottles and compacts of makeup there. He found the eye 
shadow that Valerie had used on him the night of the 
party. She'd explained how the color was really a 
daytime color but would be okay since they weren't 
going to be seen by outdoor light at night. He applied 
a bit of the eye shadow using the little foam 
applicator in the case.

Barry opened the bottle of liquid eyeliner and shakily 
pulled the tiny brush to his eye. It had looked so easy 
when Valerie used it on him, but then she could see 
exactly what she was doing, and Barry could not. He 
braced his palm on his cheek, closed the eye and 
carefully drew a line from about the middle of the 
upper lid to the outer edge. He examined his work in 
the mirror and thought it looked okay. He did the same 
on the other eye, and then drew shorter lines on the 
lower lids of each eye.

He used water-proof mascara to lengthen his eyelashes a 
little. 

He wondered why Valerie bought the water-soluble 
mascara at all!

Next, his attention fell on his lips. He dug around 
until he found a tube of lipstick that looked as if it 
had been used more than the others and applied some to 
his lips. He used the technique that Valerie had taught 
him the night of the party; pressing his lips together 
to spread the lipstick evenly. Barry even used a tiny 
tube of lip-liner he found. He had to guess on how to 
apply it since Valerie hadn't used any on him the other 
night, nor had he ever seen her applying it to her own 
lips. When he was done, the person in the mirror was 
someone out of a magazine layout. That lovely creature 
wasn't Barry anymore, nor did the person particularly 
resemble the everyday image of Valerie that Barry 
remembered. 

Barry put a little perfume between his breasts and a 
dab behind his ear. He realized as he held his hair 
away from his ear that he could wear earrings. Why 
not?! He looked through the dozens of earrings in 
Valerie's jewelry box and chose a set of tiny 
rhinestone studs that he eventually threaded into the 
tiny holes pierced in his earlobes. While he was in the 
jewelry box, Barry found a wristwatch and came upon a 
necklace with a little gold heart-shaped locket. Inside 
the locket he found a tiny picture of his old male face 
that Valerie cut out of a honeymoon snapshot. He pulled 
the chain around his neck and worked the fastener. The 
tiny gold heart settled into the deep valley of his 
cleavage. Was wearing the photo locket narcissistic? In 
theory, yes. But recently, Barry was starting to 
associate the male face with Valerie instead of 
himself.

He returned to the closet to look through the shoes, 
and found a pair of black leather pumps that seemed to 
match what he was wearing. Barry felt mild concern that 
he did not find it awkward to wear heels. He'd 
explained it to Valerie: that the intrinsic processes 
such as reflexes and balance must be those native to 
this body and not the ones imported by Barry's thought 
processes. Valerie had believed it. Now if he could 
only convince himself.

Barry searched his conscience. Would he want to be male 
again? In a heartbeat! What, then was so darn 
attractive about occupying his wife's body? Certainly 
not the morning sickness. The lack of strength for 
simple tasks like moving the refrigerator for dusting 
and carrying the garbage to the curb was frustrating 
too. A lot of things in the supermarket were above his 
reach of his reduced stature, and his legs barely 
reached the pedals on the Corvette. The sleep cycle 
he'd assumed from Valerie made it tough to work at the 
telescope all night, even without the prenatal fatigue. 
What was so appealing about being this way at all?

Barry idly brushed a bit of dust from the front of his 
skirt and remembered the baby. He smiled. That was one 
very positive thing about being a woman, and being 
pregnant. Although Barry's figure showed no signs of 
the pregnancy, just knowing that there was a child, the 
product of his and Valerie's love, growing somewhere 
inside him made Barry feel proud, peaceful, and somehow 
complete. He wondered if Valerie was having similar 
feelings about the baby. If not, she was missing a 
fantastic natural 'high'. The miracle of life was 
something to consider; two people so very in love that 
their affection and admiration could manifest itself in 
a child who would only multiply the love in the family! 
Yeah! That was the reason he liked temporarily being 
female. Did he need any other reason?

He grabbed the purse off the dresser and checked 
inside. He was going to need the credit cards today. 
Since the day of the mind swap over two weeks ago, he'd 
avoided opening the purse, obligingly toting it from 
place to place. He'd been able to carry enough folding 
money in his pocket with the driver's license that had 
the female face and Valerie's name on it. Today, he 
would need the credit cards, the checkbook, and more 
identification.

Barry marveled at all the stuff he found in this 
handbag. There were two combs, a few ball-point pens, a 
dull pencil without an eraser, a credit-card billfold, 
a wallet with some folding money and a few pieces of 
ID, a fancy bracelet which Barry promptly snapped 
around his wrist, a roll of breath mints, a tube of 
lipstick, a bottle of mascara, a ticket stub from a 
movie, three or four receipts, two packets of 
artificial sweetener, a grocery list, a dog-eared foil-
wrapped condom, two tampons, several dimes, nickels and 
pennies, and the spare set of keys for Valerie's 
minivan.

His Corvette keys were on the dresser with a few 
dollars in change and the driver's license with a 
female face on it. He threw the money and license into 
the purse and took the keys for the sports car.

The turnpike to the mall was crowded, but the 'Vette 
handled well as Barry wove through the congestion. His 
left leg was getting used to the effort needed to 
compress the stiff clutch pedal, and his upper arms 
felt less sore after several trips fighting the 
unassisted steering. Valerie had never liked the 
Corvette or any car with manual transmission, and even 
now that she had the musculature to handle the sports 
car with ease, she continued to use her minivan for the 
trips to the institute. That suited Barry perfectly. He 
liked the ride and the power of the 'Vette even though 
driving it was more of a challenge now. Barry merged 
into the middle lane and matched his speed to the car 
ahead of him.

The worst elements of the traffic this morning were the 
huge tractor-trailer rigs. The drivers seemed to pull 
up on his right and simply pace him. They sped up when 
he did and slowed when he did, too. He wondered what 
was the problem, and leaned forward so he could look up 
through his windshield at the rig that was currently 
shadowing him. As he looked upward, he saw the truck 
driver staring down at him. The man blushed and looked 
back at the road as he backed off. Barry pulled his 
head back against the headrest and with a glance 
downward realized what had caused the trucker to act 
that way. His skirt had ridden up as he worked the 
clutch, exposing a fairly generous portion of his 
hosiery-clad thigh to the view of passing truck 
drivers!

"Sheesh!" he exclaimed, tugging the skirt to his knees. 
The truck drivers that passed from then on only slowed 
briefly to check him out before accelerating away.

The mall parking lot was busy, as Barry had expected, 
with so few shopping days left before Christmas. He 
drove through the parking lot at the mall a few times 
until he found a spot right near the door. It paid to 
stay near the entrance with a theft-prone vehicle like 
the 'Vette. 

He reviewed in his mind the things that Valerie had 
told him: Keep your legs together. Cross your legs at 
the knee when sitting. Smile at everyone. Look at 
everyone in the eyes. Talk softly. Watch your posture. 
Take small steps. Take small bites. Take small sips. He 
opened the car door and swiveled both legs out to the 
pavement rather than stepping out with his left foot 
and pushing out of the car with his arms. He put his 
feet and knees together, leaned forward, and stood up, 
bracing himself on the door. It felt a little awkward, 
but it seemed to approximate the way women normally 
exited from cars.

Barry hurried from his car through the chilly air to 
the relative warmth of the mall. Inside, his ears were 
assaulted by a cacophony of ringing bells, piped-in 
Christmas music, the rustle of shopping bags against 
one another, the rumble of countless overlapping 
footfalls on the tile floor and the buzz of several 
hundred voices speaking at once.

This was Barry's first time at the mall as a woman, and 
he realized that finally he was perfectly equipped to 
buy gifts of clothing for Valerie. He could simply go 
into the stores and try things on, and see exactly how 
the various items looked and fit! By the time Christmas 
arrived, Valerie would be back in her female body and 
the presents under the tree would fit her perfectly.

Barry studied the enormous lighted Plexiglas pedestal 
that held the store directory. A chart near the map of 
the building listed the stores by product category. It 
was surprising how many of the stores were located 
under the Women's Apparel heading. He hadn't been into 
many of those stores, since most had no items of 
interest to men. He decided that it would be impossible 
to remember all the appropriate stores and figured that 
until the fatigue set in he could spend the day 
exploring the mall, visiting each store and see what 
caught his eye.

On a mannequin in Grebler's he saw a good-looking 
blouse unlike any he'd seen in Valerie's closet. That 
would make a nice present for her. He asked the sales 
woman to help him find a blouse like the one on display 
that would fit him. The woman correctly guessed his 
size and led him to the rack of blouses. She handed him 
not only the blouse he wanted but another that "would 
look darling" on him, in the clerk's words.

Barry walked into the suite of dressing rooms just off 
the store floor. He stepped into one of the cubicles 
and removed his current top. As he was putting his arms 
into one of the other blouses, he looked across into a 
cubicle where a young woman, college age or maybe a 
little older, was stepping out of her skirt. She was 
dark-haired and a little taller than Barry's current 
five-five. The woman had not bothered to pull the 
curtain around herself, and evidently had not worn 
anything under her skirt. As the woman bent over, she 
was facing away from Barry. 

Even from his vantage point across the little hallway, 
he could see that the woman's vulva was wet and her 
swollen clitoris was visibly poking out of her slit. He 
couldn't take his eyes off the woman as she bent and 
stretched. Barry watched from the split in his curtain 
as this woman, this exhibitionist, slowly pulled 
another skirt up her legs and modeled it in the mirror. 
She removed that garment and tried another, giving 
Barry another peek of her pussy shrouded in a mist of 
dark fur. Barry could feel his nipples expanding and 
his own vaginal lubrication flowing as he stared. 
"Well," he murmured to himself, "I'm still into chicks. 
At least my mind hasn't shifted gears entirely." He 
forced himself to look away.

Barry ended up buying both blouses. There was a tense 
minute at the register as he realized he had not 
practiced forging Valerie's signature, and the clerk 
was waiting for him to endorse the credit-card receipt. 
Barry just scribbled something that looked only vaguely 
feminine and crossed his fingers. Fortunately the store 
was very busy and the clerk didn't even glance at the 
signature. On the way out of Grebler's he saw the woman 
from the dressing room scanning a rack of skirts. He 
almost thought he saw her slyly wink at him.

In another store Barry found a very stylish pants suit 
and bought it before he realized that Valerie might not 
fit into it very long after Christmas if her pregnancy 
started to show. He didn't know if pants suits went out 
of style like dinner gowns, but maybe Valerie could 
wear the outfit next fall after the baby arrived.

There were diamond stud earrings in one jewelry store 
that just caught his eye. The saleswoman urged him to 
try them on and he bought them on the spot.

He wandered into the Frederick's of Hollywood store on 
a whim and looked at the naughty things for sale in 
there. This store specialized in blatantly erotic items 
like bras with holes for the nipples to poke through, 
crotchless panties, edible underwear and G-strings for 
both men and women. There was nothing in this store 
that excited Barry as it had before the mind swap. He 
kept picturing himself in the crotchless panties and 
that image made him feel more cheap and tawdry than 
sexy. He figured that Valerie would share the sentiment 
if he gave her any of those items.

The Victoria's Secret shop down the mall was another 
story entirely. This store sold comfortable and 
attractive underwear that had an undertone of 
sensuality to it. The mannequins were dressed in such a 
way that they were provocative without being 
outrageous. The store itself was lit with soft indirect 
light in contrast to the harsh lighting in the other 
store. Victoria's was inviting and just seemed more 
friendly as he entered.

Barry found a few lacy brassieres and panties that he 
thought might make Valerie feel a little more feminine 
after un-swapping minds; sort of a 'welcome-back-to-
your-body' gift. He would put these away for a few 
days, just until he and Valerie were un-swapped, and 
then he'd surprise her.

The young saleswoman was very knowledgeable about the 
merchandise and showed Barry some items that were even 
more suitable than those he'd planned on getting. She 
commented on how this negligee would accentuate his 
eyes, and how that teddy would contrast with his hair. 
he knew which things were comfortable for women with 
Barry's figure and which things were not, and induced 
Barry to make several additional purchases. On the way 
to the register, a clearance table was piled with bra-
and-string-bikini-panty sets that were nearly identical 
to the tiny swimsuit that Valerie had planted in the 
gym bag, except these were lacier and even more flimsy 
and sheer. He quickly selected several sets of the 
skimpy underthings and took them to the register.

"Your boyfriend will go ape when you wear these!" the 
clerk bubbled, seeing the clearance items Barry 
carried.

"You think so?" Barry asked, innocently.

The younger woman leaned close to Barry and spoke in a 
low voice. "I wore a set last weekend at my boyfriend's 
cabin and he couldn't wait to take me to bed! It was 
all he could talk about!" She was blushing at her 
admission.

"That's exactly what I want then," Barry said, 
imagining his own reaction the first time Valerie would 
wear these. He could feel the hard-on already... 
figuratively of course.

"Here you go, Doctor Owens. Just sign here," the clerk 
said as she pushed the credit-card receipt to Barry. He 
scribbled Valerie's name, trying a little harder to 
make it frilly and less angular than his customary male 
signature.

The woman looked at the card and compared it to the 
slip, but obviously thought the signatures were close 
enough. "Are you a medical doctor... er... Valerie?" 
she asked, glancing at the name on the card before 
returning it.

"No," Barry told her, returning the card to the purse. 
"Ph.D."

"Really?" the woman said. "I always picture Ph.D.'s as 
old grey-haired men. That's certainly not you. Well, I 
hope your boyfriend likes the things you bought!"

"I wouldn't worry about that," Barry said, winking. "I 
wouldn't worry at all."

Barry stepped into the large department store that 
anchored one end of the mall and went directly to the 
tool department to get his father's Christmas gift.

"Is there anything I can help you with, miss?" a 
salesman asked, walking up behind Barry studying the 
electronic tape measures. Barry turned to see a 
fiftyish, slightly potbellied and balding fellow 
towering over him. It wasn't that the man was 
particularly tall, but almost every adult male was 
taller than Barry nowadays. "Er... yes, you could," 
Barry replied, wondering if the salesman would presume 
that a woman knew nothing about tools.

"We're having a sale on sanders this week," the man 
offered, gesturing toward the most expensive orbital 
sander on display. "Nothing says Christmas like a 
sander."

"I was looking for a gift for my father."

The man's eyes brightened, sensing a high-commission 
sale. "Does your father have many power tools, miss?" 

"A few," Barry answered, evasively.

"He might enjoy a radial-arm saw... or a drill press," 
the clerk suggested, steering Barry over to the more 
upscale machines.

"I don't think so," Barry gestured toward the nearest 
tool. "These drill presses have too much lateral run 
out for really small bits or delicate work." 

The salesman's jaw dropped. Barry studied the motor 
plate on the radial arm saw before commenting: "This 
motor hasn't enough torque for dado cuts or mahogany 
work. Now what I was really looking for was a router. I 
was hoping to find one with a long-throw chuck and 
removable dust guard. Something about one-and-a-half 
horsepower perhaps. Do all the routers you sell have 
electronic braking? What about capacitive power factor 
compensation?"

The salesman opened and closed his mouth several times 
before the words came out. "Golly, miss, I really don't 
know." 

By the time Barry had finished peppering the salesman 
in the tool section of the store with esoteric 
questions on router bearings, bits, motor speeds, power 
profiles, accessories, and general woodworking 
questions, quite a crowd had gathered: mainly male 
clerks from nearby departments and a few shoppers 
curious about the petite young blonde customer who was 
stumping the so-called tool experts in the store.

Barry eventually purchased a router and walked away, 
leaving the clerks totally bewildered and the crowd of 
shoppers impressed. 

On his way back to the mall, Barry passed a display of 
men's underwear. Had it really been a week and a half 
since he'd undergone the transformation? In some ways 
it seemed as if a day or two had passed, and in other 
aspects it seemed years. Barry couldn't remember 
wearing boxer shorts or the white cotton Fruit of the 
Loom briefs. It just seemed natural to wear sheer nylon 
or cotton panties that hugged a female's hips and 
delineated the smoother crotch.

He stood for a while studying the display racks of tee-
shirts, briefs and boxers and thinking about all that 
had happened since Thanksgiving. Barry thought about 
things he'd recently experienced that he'd never dreamt 
he would, and that he never would again once Valerie 
undid the mind swap. He thought about how unique his 
situation was, and how he'd been able to do things none 
of his buddies could ever imagine doing.

A few men paused briefly at the display, grabbed a 
package of briefs and quickly left. Barry remembered 
shopping for underwear that way too. It had always 
seemed so embarrassing, but compared to what he'd done 
or had done to him the last eleven days, underwear just 
didn't seem so scary anymore. He took his time and 
looked at the various styles available for men, 
wondering not only how they'd feel but how they'd look. 
The look and feel was something he'd never considered 
when buying underwear before! Barry noticed that there 
was a lot more variety than he remembered. He ended up 
buying a few pairs of sexy male thong underwear that 
would remind him of his female tour of duty every time 
he wore them.

The mall became even more busy as the noon hour 
approached. People from nearby factories and businesses 
trickled in to do some shopping on their lunch break. 
Barry spent a few minutes window shopping outside some 
of the more crowded stores.

He was admiring a rather pleasant watercolor in the art 
store when he heard a man shouting. "Valerie? Valerie 
Bergstrom?" Barry spun to see who was calling his 
wife's name and saw a tall thin dark-haired man 
approaching.

"Valerie?" the man repeated, looking at Barry for signs 
of recognition. "You are Valerie Bergstrom aren't you?"

Barry had no idea who the man was, but figured it was 
an old friend of his wife's; a friend who obviously did 
not know Valerie was married.

"Er... yes," Barry answered, vaguely, "...but it's 
Owens, now." He displayed the diamond on his left hand. 
"...and you are?"

The man stood still for a moment, flashing a casual 
smile, waiting for the spark of acknowledgment. "I 
thought sure you'd recognize me, Valerie! It's me! 
Michael! Michael Wharton!" He grabbed Barry's hand and 
lightly kissed the back of the fingers.

Barry smiled at Michael. "Michael?" he asked, with a 
hint of uncertainty. Perhaps if he pretended amnesia, 
the fellow would fill in the blanks.

Michael's eyes pleaded. "Don't tell me that you don't 
remember me!"

"I'm sorry..." Barry apologized.

"Let me refresh your memory," Michael said. "Spring 
semester six years ago? You and me in my loft? A bottle 
of wine?"

Barry felt his face flush in empathy for the fellow. 
Michael was trying so hard to help Barry recall but 
there was no possibility that Barry could remember a 
time and place where only Valerie had been.

Michael stared at Barry for moment, and a smile spread 
slowly across his face. "You can't fool me! Your blush 
is giving you away like it always did! You remember me 
just fine. And apparently you remember some of the 
things we did together after we finished the wine."

Barry gulped. Valerie and Michael may have been lovers 
back when she was... nineteen? This was something Barry 
hadn't expected. Dealing with Valerie's co-workers was 
one thing, encountering someone who'd shared 
intercourse with her was something else entirely. This 
was extremely awkward. Whatever romantic interest 
Valerie had ever shown to this guy, Barry was not going 
to rekindle. Barry certainly was not the person Michael 
had taken to bed. He shuddered, contemplating the lusty 
memories and thoughts that must be playing in Michael's 
mind. Barry knew exactly the things he himself would be 
thinking if he stumbled upon one his old girlfriends.

"It's a coincidence really," Michael continued. "I was 
looking through some of my old sketches just the other 
day and I came across some charcoal studies I did of 
you. You haven't changed a bit."

"I've changed more than you can imagine," Barry said, 
obliquely.

"Has marriage tamed you that much?" Michael asked.

Without a ready explanation, Barry didn't answer, but 
merely shrugged his shoulders.

Michael became more cordial. "Are you waiting for your 
husband? I could buy you both lunch!"

Barry's response was nearly drowned out by the ambient 
hubbub in the mall: "Er... no... I'm here alone, 
today."

"Great then!" exclaimed Michael, "I saw a little 
restaurant upstairs, if you'd care to join me?"

Barry sighed and nodded his assent. Without a ready 
excuse, he'd just been invited to lunch by one of 
Valerie's old boyfriends.

Michael led the way to the 'up' escalator and waited 
while Barry stepped on to it first.

"How long have you been married, Valerie?" he asked 
while they rode to the upper level of the mall.

"Five and a half months," Barry replied.

"Let me guess. You went on to graduate school and 
married one of your lab partners."

Barry smiled at Michael and shook his head 'no.' A 
moment later he wondered: why not promote the heck out 
of himself? "I married a really brainy guy," Barry 
gushed. "He has a doctorate in Physics. He's handsome 
as all get out and writes astronomy books for a 
living."

Michael nodded his approval. "Sounds like a real catch. 
I can't imagine you happy as a housewife, though. You 
couldn't even cook when I knew you. Have you become 
domestic?"

"Well," Barry gathered his thoughts. He knew only the 
sketchiest details of what Valerie did at the 
institute. The escalator reached the top and Barry 
stepped off in the direction in which Michael gestured. 
"I have my doctorate in Engineering, now, and besides 
teaching a few graduate courses, I run a research 
project in the institute labs."

Michael emitted a low whistle. "So. Now you're Doctor 
Bergstrom?"

"Owens." Barry reminded him.

"Excuse me. Doctor Owens."

"Tell me Michael: what have you been doing since I last 
saw you?" 

Barry hoped that he could keep Michael talking and take 
some of the performance pressure off himself.

Michael held open the door of the restaurant and 
motioned for Barry to enter. A young hostess approached 
and took them to a small secluded table. The woman was 
probably the age Valerie had been when she'd last seen 
Michael. Barry caught himself looking at the hemline of 
the woman's short skirt, hoping to catch a glimpse of 
the areas of a woman's anatomy that intrigue men. He 
hoped Michael didn't notice his undue interest in the 
woman.

Barry was surprised that Michael held the chair for 
him. That was something that Barry hadn't thought to do 
for Valerie since they'd begun dating. This guy was a 
certified smoothie.

"Let's see," Michael said, recovering the thread of 
conversation. "I left the institute at the end of the 
Spring Semester when we met, and started biking around 
Europe. I never returned to college."

"Oh." Barry said. He wondered how Michael made a living 
without a college education.

Michael resumed his story. "I eventually found a 
Belgian artist and sculptor who took me on as a 
student. I worked on his farm in return for art 
lessons, food and a place to stay. He was already very 
old and having some difficulty getting around when I 
first began studying, and eventually I was running his 
farm. He taught me a lot about art, about farming, and 
about life. I learned more at his side than I could 
have in twenty years at the institute. He passed on 
last year and left his farm and a legacy of artistic 
impressions to me. 

"In the last eighteen months, I painted as I never did 
before. I was a man possessed. It was as if someone 
else were moving my brush! A few gallery owners who 
knew the old man saw my work and even sold a few of my 
pieces. I'm here in Riverton for a few days on a thirty 
city tour of my work."

The waitress brought menus and asked for their drink 
orders.

"How about if I get us a bottle of wine, for old times' 
sake?" Michael offered.

"Oh!" Barry said, startled to have someone offer him 
wine. "No! I can't have alcohol."

"C'mon now Valerie! I've had wine with you more than 
once. Is it against your religion now?"

"No," Barry said, dragging out the long vowel. He was 
still uncomfortable applying the next phrase to the 
personal pronoun. "I... I'm having a baby."

"I see," said Michael skeptically. "A glass of white 
wine for me, and..."

"Er... do you have tea?" Barry asked the waitress.

"Yes," the waitress nodded. "We have domestic, imported 
and herbal teas."

"I'll have a cup of herb tea," Barry responded. The 
waitress disappeared.

Michael smiled at Barry. "I guess you have changed! 
Married, Ph. D., a baby on the way. You're nothing like 
the shy little girl who was nervous about being in my 
loft alone with me."

"If only you knew," Barry muttered. 

After lunch with Michael, they went their separate 
ways. Michael invited Barry to the gallery to see the 
display of his work. Barry made a non-committal answer 
before walking away.

Barry shopped for a few things for himself and a few 
more gifts for Valerie. He got home from his shopping 
trip late in the afternoon, and had barely gotten the 
presents stashed in a hiding place in the attic, when 
Valerie arrived home.

Barry quickly stepped down from the attic and went to 
the kitchen to greet his wife. 

"Hi Barry! Oooh! Don't we look nice!" Valerie commented 
when he entered the room.

"I went to do some shopping at the mall today," Barry 
explained, "and wanted to look more upscale than a 
jeans and sweater look."

"Let me see it all," Valerie requested, motioning for 
him to spin around. "You did really good on the makeup. 
Just enough to emphasize and not enough to be obvious. 
The choice of blouse and skirt looks very good 
together. The pumps are nice, and the pantyhose go well 
with the ensemble. Very fashionable. If you get much 
better at dressing like this, you'll be giving me 
fashion pointers!" 

She kissed Barry and gave him a brief hug. She pulled 
back from him then gently pulled the collar of his 
blouse open a bit and looked inside. "So who are you 
showing off for?"

"What?" Barry asked, not understanding her meaning.

Valerie chuckled. "I figured you wore the Wonderbra to 
emphasize the tits."

Barry pulled open his collar and looked down inside the 
blouse at himself. "So, this is a Wonderbra?"

"You didn't know?" Valerie asked with amused disbelief.

Barry's face reddened as he looked baffled. "I never 
had to worry about these kinds of things before, Val. 
How was I supposed to know what kind of brassiere it 
is?"

"It's nothing like my other bras. Didn't this feel 
different on you?"

Barry shook his head. "Of course! Any bra feels 
different on me, Val."

"As long as you didn't run into anyone I know," Valerie 
chuckled. 

"They'd think I was on the prowl."


CHAPTER 13
UNEXPECTED BENEFIT


The doorbell rang just before ten AM.

"Who can that be?" Barry muttered, wrapping a robe 
around himself. He hadn't been able to sleep, and had 
only been resting in the bedroom since Valerie went to 
work.

Barry opened the door and found a deliveryman on the 
front porch.

"Owens?" the man said, economically.

"Yes," Barry responded, with equal brevity.

A clipboard was shoved in Barry's direction. "Sign 
here," the burly fellow indicated, pointing at a line 
on the bottom of a grimy sheet of paper with his even 
grimier pen. Barry used the pen to endorse using his 
male name, knowing that no one looked at the signatures 
on these forms anyway.

The guy went to his truck idling in the driveway, and 
returned with a huge flat rectangular package bound in 
sturdy brown paper. Barry guided the man to a spot in 
the living room, and had the item set alongside the 
couch. The deliveryman received a five dollar tip for 
the effort of carrying the obviously heavy parcel, and 
left for the next delivery.

When the truck had been driven away, Barry looked at 
the copy of the paper he'd signed. It noted that it was 
a delivery for Valerie, and the paper did not reveal 
much else. There was no indication of who sent the 
package, which was several inches thick, three or more 
feet tall and maybe six feet in length. The weight 
value on the receipt was smudged and might be thirty or 
eighty pounds. Barry experimentally tried lifting the 
package and discovered that it was very heavy. The 
parcel delivery fellow had earned his tip!

When Valerie arrived home that night, Barry directed 
her to the living room where the package still rested 
against the edge of the couch.

"Who sent it?" she asked.

"I was hoping you knew," Barry answered. "I've been 
itching all day to open it."

"uh, oh! I think you caught one of those female 
diseases," Valerie kidded him.

"Caught what?" Barry asked, thinking she was serious.

"Feminine curiosity," she chuckled with a wink. "Let's 
find out what it is." She carefully peeled open one 
edge of the package and pulled the paper away. 
Underneath was another layer of paper, and beneath that 
a third layer. Finally they could see that it was 
something in a huge frame.

"Michael," Barry whispered to himself.

Valerie gingerly removed the tape holding another layer 
of paper over the front of the frame and when the paper 
fell away, she revealed a life-size reclining portrait. 
A nude portrait of her female self.

"Oh my," she said, her mouth dropping open.

Barry gulped when he saw the picture.

Valerie found the artist's signature on the painting 
and recognized Michael's mark immediately. She had told 
Barry about Michael, but had left out details like the 
fact that he was the first man with whom she had slept 
and that she had posed for several nude sketches. She 
noticed that Barry's eyes were wide which meant he was 
surprised by the painting and possibly having thoughts 
about his wife's propriety. Thoughts cascaded through 
her head as she attempted to formulate a reasonable 
explanation of the portrait.

Barry cleared his throat. "Val?" he opened, weakly.

Valerie could think of nothing to say in her own 
defense and simply began chuckling nervously.

Barry stepped between the painting and his wife and his 
eyes studied her face for signs that she was mad. He 
could see that she was not particularly thrilled at 
receiving the gift. "Er... I'm sorry about this," Barry 
finally said.

Valerie appeared confused. "You're sorry? About what?"

"The painting," Barry elaborated. "I met Michael at the 
mall a few days ago. I didn't tell you. We had lunch. I 
told him that I... er...you... were married."

"I was wondering how he figured out where I lived," 
Valerie sighed with relief.

Barry took a deep breath and continued. "He told me he 
had sketches of me... I mean... you... from back when 
you two dated. He must have painted this from the 
sketches."

"Thank God!" Valerie boomed. "When you first started 
apologizing, I had mental images of you posing nude for 
him or something!"

Barry blushed. "No... we just had an innocent half-hour 
lunch at the mall. We talked over old times. Well, 
actually Michael did all of the talking, and I did a 
lot of nodding since he was talking about old times you 
had with him."

Valerie was blushing now. "This is a little 
embarrassing, having my husband meet one of my old 
boyfriends and to bring a lot of skeletons out of the 
closet."

"He seemed a nice enough guy, Val," Barry told her, 
with an easy grin. "He talked about how you were his 
live-in model and girlfriend. He apparently liked you a 
lot."

"If he liked me so much, why did he just vanish without 
so much as a good-bye note?"

"It's a long story," Barry replied. "He's a successful 
artist now. He's on a coast-to-coast tour of galleries. 
I think he's still in town if you want to try to see 
him."

"That's about all I could do," Valerie agreed. "See 
him, that is. He thinks you're me. I couldn't just walk 
up to him looking like I do now and say, 'Hey 
Michael... it's me... Valerie... Yes, really. I've been 
a guy for a few weeks... I hear you went to lunch with 
my husband, but thought he was me. Want to see my 
penis?'"

"All you have to do is un-swap us," Barry began.

"It's not worth un-swapping just to see him," Valerie 
explained. 

"I got over him years ago and I love you more than I 
ever loved him. I just wondered how he'd been." She 
stepped back from the large framed painting. "So, 
Barry, where are we going to put this?"

Barry studied the picture, then glanced around the 
room. "I think it would look good over the mantel."

Valerie started laughing uproariously at the 
suggestion. "Oh no you don't! We're not putting a nude 
picture of me over the fireplace!"

Barry was giggling as her replied. "Except that we know 
you posed for it, the picture looks like one of those 
paintings that hung behind the bar in Western saloons. 
Maybe we could build a bar in the den and hang this in 
there."

"I'd sooner die," Valerie told him. "I might agree to 
putting it up in the bedroom, but nowhere any more 
public than that. If my parents ever saw it...." her 
voice trailed off, imagining the scene.

"We'll decide this later," Barry agreed, looking at the 
clock on the mantel "I'd go out to the telescope, but 
it's too cloudy tonight, so I'm getting ready for bed."

"I'll join you," Valerie yawned.


CHAPTER 14
THE FOLKS

Barry sat quietly in the passenger seat of the minivan 
as Valerie drove to Munford. Three weeks had passed 
since the first symptoms of morning sickness and, if 
anything, the daily attacks of nausea were becoming 
worse. The effects took longer each day to subside. 
Barry guessed that he might end up being a female for a 
month, particularly since that milestone would pass 
just before the New Year. At least being pregnant meant 
that he wouldn't have to endure having a period. He 
didn't think he was ready to deal with the mess from 
the blood and inconvenience of feminine sanitary 
products. A shiver ran down his spine just thinking 
about it.

Carol and Valerie had worked until mid afternoon on 
Christmas Eve, and planned returning to the labs on the 
day after Christmas since Carol was staying in Riverton 
over the holidays. Valerie had decided to see her own 
folks and spend Christmas Eve and most of Christmas Day 
with them, but since Barry was the one that her parents 
would assume was their daughter, she couldn't travel to 
Munford without him. Barry had long since given up 
trying to argue with Valerie, since she seemed to win 
every time, so he found himself on the way to his in-
laws house disguised as his wife.

The snow was falling at it had since just before 
sunset, and was just starting to coat the roads. 
Valerie was a good driver, Barry knew, and they would 
be at their destination in another minute anyway. 

Valerie had filled the car with presents for her 
parents and sister. She and Barry had enough foresight 
to bring a few 'gifts' for each other that would not 
arouse suspicion about their interchanged personas. 
They planned to exchange the actual gifts for each 
other when they arrived home in Riverton Christmas 
night.

The minivan tires produced a squeaking crunch sound as 
they compressed the snow in the Bergstrom's driveway. 
Valerie's childhood home was lit with electric candles 
in each window and strings of multicolored lights 
rimming the roofline and porch railings. Valerie's 
parents, Carl and Ann stepped out of the front door 
before the car had rolled to a stop. They stood in the 
illumination of the porch light, waving.

"Remember," Valerie said, turning off the engine, "I 
call her Mom. Not Mommie or Ann. I call him Daddy."

"Mom and Daddy. got it."

Barry left Valerie to carry the suitcases and bags of 
presents into the house. He went to the porch and 
hugged Ann and Carl as if they were his parents instead 
of Valerie's.

"So, my little girl is going to have a baby," Carl 
stated, examining Barry from head to toe.

"Oh, Daddy, I'm not so little!" Barry replied, 
bashfully, hoping it was in character for the man's 
daughter.

"Come inside the house, dear," Ann offered, opening the 
front door. "The men can unload the car."

Barry used the doormat to scrape the snow off his boots 
and stepped into the house. His senses were immediately 
assaulted by the sights and smells of the holidays. A 
huge fir Christmas tree graced the corner of the living 
room, draped with dozens of lights, strings of popcorn, 
and hundreds of glass ball ornaments. There were 
candles and greenery everywhere, and the house was 
filled with the blended aromas of bayberry, spruce, 
freshly cut firewood, warm bread, and cinnamon. Ann 
took his coat and hung it in the hall closet.

Valerie entered the house with Carl. "We're staying in 
your old room, upstairs," Valerie told Barry. "and I 
believe you said it was the second bedroom from the 
stairs, right?"

Barry tried not to look too confused. Apparently 
Valerie was trying to feed him information he would 
know if he really were her. He had no idea which room 
was Valerie's.

"Follow me, Barry," Carl offered, starting up the 
stairs. "I'll show you the place."

"Hey!" a voice shouted at the front door, "Is that 
Val's minivan?"

Barry turned around to see a younger version of the 
woman he'd married, Valerie's sister Karen, standing 
just inside the front door. She was dressed in a woolen 
skirt and a bulky knit sweater. She wore a knit cap on 
her head, mittens on her hands, and earmuffs over her 
ears. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold, and countless 
flakes of snow clung to her shoulder-length blond hair.

Karen squealed when she saw Barry and ran to hug him. 
"Hi, sis!" 

As she wrapped her arms around him, her icy hair 
dampened his face. Karen pulled back from the hug and 
saw that Barry's face was wet. "Oh! I'm sorry, sis, but 
my boyfriend and I were out skating at the pond and the 
snow sorta made my hair all wet."

"Hi, Karen," Barry greeted her, cheerily. "Merry 
Christmas!"

She hugged him again; her tight embrace squashing 
Barry's tits against hers. Even through the clothing he 
and she wore, he could feel the warmth of her body.

"Is Barry here?" Karen asked, releasing him from the 
hug. "Are you staying overnight?"

"Yes to both questions," Barry answered. 

"Great!" she yelped. "I'm going to change out of these 
wet clothes and then make some hot cocoa. Anyone else 
want some?"

Later that evening, Barry stood looking out the window 
at the carolers singing and carrying lanterns as they 
walked down the snow-rutted street in front of the 
house. The scene in the living room was like a postcard 
of an old time Christmas. A family standing around in 
sweaters drinking warm cocoa. Snow falling. Carolers 
outside. This type of thing didn't happen at Christmas-
time in Texas where Barry grew up. He left Valerie and 
her parents standing at the window and he went to the 
piano at the other side of the room. He hadn't played a 
keyboard instrument in more than a year, but he could 
recall a few carols he'd learned. He put his fingers 
over the keys and launched into the one he knew best: 
"Joy To The World."

Valerie immediately turned to face her husband at the 
piano. The expression of shock and dismay on her face 
was something Barry hadn't expected.

Valerie's parents had looks of amazement on their faces 
as they realized someone was playing the piano. To 
Barry, it seemed that they were pleased with his 
serenade. Carl stared at Barry for a moment before 
saying to Valerie's mother. "Our little girl is just 
full of surprises, isn't she, Ann?"

"I saw her baking the other day, and now this!" 
Valerie's mother exclaimed. She beamed with pride as 
she watched Barry tickling the ivories. "When did you 
learn to play the piano, dear?"

Barry self-consciously lifted his hands from the 
keyboard. He'd just assumed that since there was a 
piano in the living room, that both daughters had taken 
lessons. He looked at his wife for help, and her facial 
expression told him he was on his own for this one.

"I... er... wanted to surprise you," he told his in-
laws.

Ann Bergstrom turned to Karen and nudged her. "See, 
dear? With all of the lessons you've had, you could 
play like your sister if you put your mind to it!"

Barry drank another gulp of hot chocolate, causing his 
bladder to respond immediately to the infusion of 
cocoa. A bathroom break seemed to him like a good idea 
to get out of this situation, so he excused himself and 
went up the stairs. He tried each door until he found 
the bathroom.

Barry locked himself in, turned his back to the toilet, 
unbuttoned his jeans and pulled them to the floor, then 
pulled his panties to his knees and sat. The fluid 
almost immediately squirted from him with a continuous 
hiss and Barry felt the pleasant glow of relief as his 
bladder drained and shrank. Barry looked around 
himself, as he sat there. This was a relatively large 
room with a washbasin, toilet, shower, and linen 
closet. A second door on the opposite wall from the 
toilet probably led into the master bedroom.

Karen suddenly pushed through the door from the hallway 
and closed it behind herself.

"I thought I locked that!" Barry complained, pulling 
his sweater down over his lap in modesty.

"Nailfile," Karen said simply, holding up the 
implement. "You taught me that trick, remember? I just 
wanted to talk."

"Oh," Barry said. He was too ill-at-ease now to 
continue what he'd come to the bathroom to do. After 
weeks of trips to the health club, he was no longer 
embarrassed to be undressed in front of women, but 
using the toilet in front of someone else was another 
thing entirely. He stood and was reaching for his 
undies around his ankles when Karen shouted, "Stop!"

Barry froze bent double at the waist. "What's wrong?" 
he asked.

Karen was giving him the strangest look. "Your cooze!"

"My what?" Barry inquired.

"There's no hair on your cunny!" Karen giggled.

Barry quickly pulled his underwear up. He had hoped 
that he could be more discreet around Valerie's younger 
sister. His red face contradicted the nonchalance in 
his voice, as he responded, "Yeah... So what?"

"I think it looks neat!" Karen bubbled in appreciation.

"I like it," Barry told her. Although he really did 
like the look, the reason he'd kept his vulva totally 
bare the last three weeks was primarily to avoid the 
itch of the hair re-growing. The shaving he'd 
originally planned as revenge on his wife had backfired 
when the un-swapping of their consciousnesses was 
delayed.

"How about Barry?" Karen asked, eagerly, "does your 
lack of fur down there make him horny?"

"Oh, yeah!" Barry giggled eagerly, telling the absolute 
truth. The skin on his pelvis was more sensitive since 
he shaved and that made him horny. "He gets more turned 
on than you can imagine." He pulled up his jeans and 
took a deep breath so he could fasten the buttons.

Karen's eyes sparkled with mischief. She began 
searching through the drawers in the vanity. When she 
turned around she held up scissors and a disposable 
razor. "Would you shave mine like yours?" she asked.

"Gee, I don't know," Barry replied in attempt to 
discourage her. Several contrary thoughts bounced 
around in his mind. He'd always had a bit of curiosity 
about what his young sister-in-law looked like in the 
buff. If Valerie caught him shaving her sister's 
crotch, though, there would be hell to pay. What would 
Valerie's mother say about her eldest daughter... or, 
worse yet, her son in law... corrupting Karen's morals?

"My boyfriend would be absolutely speechless the next 
time we get it on. Please!" Karen pleaded.

"Karen! You... and your... b... boyfriend... have sex?" 
Barry protested. He wasn't really as concerned as he 
pretended. Karen was an adult although more than a year 
shy of her twenty-first birthday, but he thought his 
impersonation of Valerie was more believable if he 
seemed a little surprised at her libertinism.

Karen leaned close to Barry. "Of course we've done it! 
Doesn't everyone? Don't tell Mom or Daddy, though. 
They're so old-fashioned. Daddy would kill him and me 
for sure!"

Barry tried to come up with an excuse to get out of 
shaving her, but Karen had already pulled off her skirt 
and was sliding her panties to the floor. 

"I have to warn you," Barry cautioned, "that after I 
cut it, when this grows out, you'll be so itchy that 
you'll go insane." He hoped that would be enough to 
discourage the headstrong young girl.

Karen reclined on the bathmat at his feet and spread 
her legs. 

"Couldn't I just keep shaving? I mean, I shave my legs 
and underarms. Why not just shave myself down there 
every day or two?" The woman nonchalantly ruffled the 
downy fur surrounding her labia, and looked up at him 
with pleading eyes.

Barry looked down at the comely nineteen-year old lying 
on the bathmat exposing her most private parts to him. 
If he was still single, and had a male body, The 
situation would have been a dream come true. Here was a 
beautiful young woman practically begging him to touch 
her genitalia. "The doors are locked?" he asked. "I 
wouldn't want Mom or Daddy..."

"Or Barry..." Karen added.

Barry cleared his throat nervously, imagining Valerie's 
reaction if she caught him. "Yeah... or Barry... to 
barge in on us while I have my hands between your 
legs."

"Both doors are locked." Karen gestured with her hands 
for him to hurry, "Well, then, what are you waiting 
for?"

Barry knelt between Karen's legs and quickly trimmed 
her pubic hair with the scissors. Most of the region 
was covered with sparse blond hair, but a small area 
directly above the top of her slit was thick with fur. 
He cut until all that remained was a rough thatch of 
very short bristles. As he trimmed, he could feel his 
breasts tingling and his nipples stiffening. His bra 
seemed to be getting tighter with each breath he took, 
and the room was getting warmer by the minute. He 
noticed that Karen's labia were swelling and that a 
thin trickle of moisture had dribbled out the back of 
her slit.

"Jeepers, Sis!" she hissed, "I'm getting all squishy 
already, and you haven't done very much yet!"

Barry blushed. "I'm getting a little squishy myself."

"It's kind of lezzy, but kind of sexy too." Karen 
admitted with a giggle and devious grin.

"Yeah," was all Barry could say. He found a can of 
shaving cream in the medicine chest and applied a 
generous amount to Karen's pelvic region. He unwrapped 
the fresh razor and wet it in the sink, then gingerly 
began shaving Karen's lower pelvis. He was careful to 
avoid nicking her with the new blade. Barry knew from 
his own shaving exactly the sensations she was feeling, 
and how an abrasion or cut would sting if he slipped. 

Karen cooperated by spreading her legs further to give 
him better access. Most of the shaving was easy and the 
short bristles disappeared quickly, but patches 
alongside Karen's pussy lips were more difficult to 
remove. Barry put his forefinger along Karen's crevice 
and pulled the skin of one labial flap taut over the 
digit and held it with his thumb. He shaved the 
stretched skin easily.

"Oooooh!" Karen moaned through pursed lips, and closed 
her eyes. Barry could feel the young woman's clitoris 
swelling against his knuckle. She began subtly rocking 
her hips. His finger was becoming oily in her slit, and 
he had difficulty maintaining his grip on her skin.

"You're getting a little slick down here," he advised.

"Mmmmm," Karen agreed, dreamily. "I'm getting a lot 
slick. Just keep up what you're doing."

Barry switched to the flap of skin on the other side of 
her sexual aperture, and gripped it as effectively as 
possible considering the excessive lubrication. He had 
nearly finished shaving when Karen brought her hand 
over his and pushed his finger more forcefully into 
her. 

Karen's pelvis tilted with more urgency, now. Her mouth 
was open and her breath was becoming deep and rasping. 
Barry felt his fingernail sliding into Karen's vagina 
and a moment later heard her grateful sigh as his 
finger sunk in up to the second knuckle. Part of 
Barry's mind warned him to stop doing this before he 
was caught, and yet another sympathized with the 
unfulfilled lust Karen was feeling. He dropped the 
razor on the floor and used the now-free hand to 
compress Karen's breast.

Barry slid a second finger to join the first inside his 
sister-in-law's sex and slowly moved them in and out. 
"Ooooh, yessss!" Karen breathed. She did not need to 
give Barry any hints about how to please a woman. He 
already knew firsthand. He slid his fingers to and fro 
in Karen's lubricious snatch and timed his motion as 
counterpoint to her hip action. Karen's left hand was 
inside her sweater compressing her other breast and the 
right was teasing her clitoris while Barry's fingers 
provided the sensations from a faux penis. 

Karen stiffened for an instant, noisily inhaled and 
then began a series of sharp pelvic motions when her 
climax arrived. The young woman held her sleeve over 
her mouth to muffle her own ecstatic screams. As Barry 
stimulated her to an even stronger orgasm, he could 
feel the spontaneous reaction in the muscles lining her 
pussy. Karen's vagina compressed and released his 
fingers dozens of times as the young woman's passion 
reached crescendo. Meanwhile a copious amount of 
lubrication poured from her. 

She spit the sleeve of the sweater from her mouth and 
panted, "Jeepers! Kevin's cock never brought me off as 
powerfully as that!"

Barry slowly pulled his aching and wet fingers from 
Karen's vagina and smiled. "No kidding. I guess you 
need to know exactly what a woman wants," he said. He 
was aware that he knew a lot more about making love to 
a woman now than any male could. He relished the 
ecstasy that he would be able to give Valerie after 
they un-swapped, and anticipated the new skills his 
wife would have from her stint as a man.

Barry made a few final swipes with the razor on the 
trembling skin of Karen's pussy and examined his 
handiwork. She was now clean-shaven and the skin was 
slightly pink. The color could have been from the razor 
burn or from the flush of her recent exertion; it was 
impossible to tell. Barry noticed that Karen was 
perspiring, and that her labia were smeared with oily 
juices. It was obvious evidence that she'd fulfilled 
her immediate sexual needs.

Barry stood and offered his hand to help Karen stand. 
"Won't Kevin be surprised on Christmas when he unwraps 
that?" He indicated her crotch.

Karen giggled. "It feels so sensitive and tingly 
compared to before! I'll probably enjoy it even more 
than he does! Thanks, Sis!" She leaned into the shower 
stall and started the shower. She stripped off her 
sweater and quickly unsnapped her bra, then stood 
completely naked, stretching. What Barry wouldn't have 
given a month ago to see his sister in law in the 
altogether! He felt his own clitoris becoming stiff as 
he watched her, and knew that would have translated 
into a really obvious erection on his old body. He was 
grateful that Karen could not tell how much her nude 
body excited him. 

Karen's hand lightly rubbed the now smooth expanse of 
skin above the juncture of her legs. As she touched 
herself, a smile flickered across her features. She 
stepped into the shower.

Barry could see Karen's indistinct outline through the 
frosted glass of the shower stall door while she 
cleaned her body then shampooed her hair and began 
rinsing.

"The reason I originally came in was to ask: how does 
it feel to be pregnant?" Karen shouted over the splash 
of the shower.

Barry searched his recollection before answering. 
"There's not much to feel yet. Just a little less 
energy than normal and the morning sickness. I can't 
feel the baby yet if that's what you mean. Why do you 
ask?"

Karen turned off the water, opened the door to the 
shower and looked at him. "Don't tell Mom and Daddy, 
but as soon as Kevin gets out of college, we're getting 
married. We're not engaged or anything, but I'm 
counting on a wedding for sometime during my last year 
at State and then I was thinking about kids."

"Kids?" Barry asked. "Right away?"

"I'm not like you," Karen said, stepping out of the 
shower and drying herself. She put one leg up on the 
toilet and dried the back of that leg. She didn't 
notice Barry gawking. "I have no ambition to be 
anything but the best damn wife and mother I can be. If 
I find a job after I'm married and it doesn't interfere 
with home life too much, fine."

"You seem awfully sure of yourself," Barry commented.

"I'm sure of one thing," Karen said, wrapping the towel 
around her head. "I love Kevin."

Barry thought Valerie's sister looked very appealing 
wearing a towel on her head and naked from her eyebrows 
down. Karen looked very similar to Barry's female body 
except that the younger woman's frame was slightly 
smaller, and her figure a little slimmer. Valerie 
probably looked like her at that age, Barry thought to 
himself.

"You're too young to have kids," he told Karen, with 
finality.

"I'm nineteen. Nana Bergstrom had Daddy when she was 
seventeen," 

she said defiantly. The young woman pulled a huge towel 
out of the vanity and wrapped it around herself as an 
impromptu robe. "and she had six more kids before she 
was done."

"Do you want seven children?" Barry asked soberly. He 
briefly tried to picture his own grandmother, a prim 
woman he associated with lavender, lace, wrinkles and 
grey hair, as a teenage girl having lusty unbridled 
sex. He couldn't imagine it at all.

"No," Karen giggled. "I figured two or three children, 
though. When my kids graduate college and move out of 
the house, Kevin and I'll still be young enough to 
enjoy some time together." She gathered her clothes off 
the floor, unlocked the doors and walked out to the 
hallway with Barry following.

Valerie was coming up the stairs from the living room 
as Karen and Barry emerged from the bathroom chatting 
away. Valerie raised an eyebrow at Barry and towel-clad 
Karen. "Going to the bathroom in pairs?" she asked. "It 
must be a woman thing." She emphasized the word 'woman' 
for Barry's benefit.

"Good night Val. G'night, Barry," Karen said, and 
shuffled into her bedroom before closing the door.

"Sleep tight, Squirt," Valerie said.

"Yeah," Barry agreed. "Sleep tight."

Valerie pointed to one of the other bedrooms. "They're 
cleaning up downstairs and coming to bed, too. I guess 
we're staying in your old room tonight," she said, 
giving Barry a surreptitious hint. "right here next to 
the bathroom."

Barry was glad to hear that. He was certain that the 
morning would bring an urgent need to vomit. He entered 
the bedroom and heard Valerie follow him and shut the 
door behind herself. He turned around and saw that she 
was already undressing.

"When I was in high school" she said, "I had these 
fantasies of sneaking a boy up to my room and making 
love in my bed. Of course, Mom and Daddy knew me too 
well, and never gave me the chance. Now look at me. I 
finally have their blessing for an intersex sleepover, 
and I bring a girl!"

"I'm confused," Barry stated with a worried expression. 
"One day you tell me I'm still a man, then the next I'm 
a girl. What am I?"

"I was just kidding, Bar'," Valerie said with 
exasperation as she pulled her trousers off. She 
scratched at the front of her boxer shorts. "You're all 
the man I need. It's just that smelling your scent is 
enough to make me horny!"

Barry blanched. Valerie probably detected the musky 
aroma his body produced while playing with Karen. He 
hoped she didn't equate the odor with his arousal or 
she might start asking embarrassing questions.

"You were in there when Karen showered. So I guess you 
finally got to see her naked," she stated, dashing his 
hope of going undetected.

"I...I...er..." Barry stuttered.

"I'm not upset," Valerie said calmly, as she dropped 
her briefs to the floor. Barry could see that Valerie 
was indeed getting an erection as she had indicated. 
"She and I were undressed around each other constantly. 
Karen used to walk in to the bathroom on me all the 
time. Serves me right for teaching her how to unlock 
the door with a nailfile. With you looking like you do, 
it was bound to happen. So what did you think of your 
sister in law's bod?"

"Er... she's okay... I guess," Barry said clumsily, 
recalling the episode in the bathroom only a few 
minutes earlier. "Sort of pretty." He dropped his jeans 
and pulled off his sweater.

Valerie wrapped her fist around her semi-erect penis. 
"I've got your pecker where I can keep an eye... or at 
least my grip... on it. Otherwise I'd be more than a 
little suspicious of you and her. You can look at my 
sister all you want, but at least this way you can't do 
anything about it."

Barry had no intention to correct his wife's 
misconception. "Besides, she's got a steady boyfriend," 
he told her. "She's pretty serious about him. Your 
parents don't suspect a thing."

Valerie pulled back the comforter on the four-poster 
bed and crawled between the sheets. "Karen told you 
that?"

Barry removed his bra. "She tells her big sister 
everything," he explained with a wink.

Valerie ogled Barry as he stood clad only in panties 
and looked through the valise for a nightie. There was 
no obvious distention of his abdomen from the 
pregnancy, yet. His figure was still stunning. "I bet 
you never thought you'd ever be anyone's big sister, 
huh?"

"I never thought I be anyone's sister at all," Barry 
stated flatly. He slipped a long flannel nightgown over 
his head, then climbed into bed and kissed Valerie. He 
rolled to face away from her and she draped an arm over 
him, lightly teasing his breast.

"Not tonight," Barry said, pulling her hand off his 
chest. "I'm not in the mood."

"Barry!" Valerie complained. "Every night so far, 
you've always been in the mood!"

"I'm awfully worn out, Val. I've had a long day. I just 
want to sleep. If I wake up horny, I'll let you know."

"How well I know," she said. "How well I know."


CHAPTER 15
ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS

Over a foot of snow fell that night, but Christmas 
dawned clear, bright and cold. Barry awoke with the 
already familiar urge to void his stomach. He stood out 
of bed and a strong headache and dull indistinct pain 
assaulted him. The hurt was enough to double him over, 
and he barely reached the bathroom down the hall in 
time to avoid a mess. As he knelt at the toilet noisily 
disgorging the previous night's intake, he heard the 
door from the master bedroom squeak open.

Barry looked up from his position near the floor to see 
Valerie's mother in a nightgown and robe smiling down 
at him.

"You do have a nasty case of morning sickness don't 
you?" she said with quiet compassion.

Barry nodded. His head was pounding and he felt as 
though he'd been run over by a truck. The nausea only 
made things worse. 

The woman wet a washcloth and knelt by him, lovingly 
wiping the corners of his mouth and pulling strands of 
hair out of his flushed and sweaty face.

"I...I feel particularly awful this morning," Barry 
told her, smiling weakly. "The nausea is feeling better 
than a minute ago, but I've got a wicked headache and I 
hurt all over."

"Let me guess," the older woman murmured as she tended 
to him, "You're about a month and a half into the 
pregnancy, right?"

Barry mentally computed the time. It had been four 
weeks since the day Valerie swapped consciousnesses 
with him. She'd conceived about two weeks before that. 
"Yes," he answered.

"Your fingers feel a little swollen?"

Barry flexed his fingers. She was right again!

"Why, yes," Barry said. He noticed Ann's increasing 
smile. He'd never realized how much Valerie resembled 
her mother until this moment.

"Headache. Cramps. Bloating. Achiness. It's just your 
time of the month, dear," the woman said.

Barry gave her a perplexed look. "My time? But, I'm 
pregnant! I haven't... you know!" He glanced at his 
crotch, unable to think of a polite way to say that he 
wasn't bleeding out of his pussy.

Ann Bergstrom continued stroking Barry's hair. "You may 
not get the blood discharge while you're pregnant, but 
for the next cycle or two, you'll probably still have 
the headaches and cramps, perhaps the bloating and 
water-weight gain and, more likely than not, the 
moodiness, just like normal. The symptoms might even be 
worse than a normal cycle. If yours is anything like my 
two pregnancies, your hormones are totally out of 
whack. Don't worry, though. By the second trimester, 
this will all be a bad memory."

Barry swallowed hard and felt the tears come. He leaned 
onto Ann's shoulder and began to sob.

Ann comforted the person she believed was her eldest 
daughter. 

"There, there, dear. See how easily you're crying? 
That's another sign," Ann helped Barry stand, and stood 
holding his head against her shoulder for a while.

Barry was more than a little ashamed of how he'd simply 
broken down in front of his mother in law. Since being 
swapped with Valerie, he'd discovered that his brain's 
emotional center was connected directly to his tear 
ducts. Any little stress and his eyes started to mist 
over. A little more pressure or strain and the salty 
tears really started to flow. Things that would have 
simply irritated him as a male now caused a wall of 
sadness and despair to come crashing down on top of 
him, and he started to cry just like a woman. He wiped 
the corner of his eyes with a finger and Ann stepped in 
with a tissue to finish the job.

"You're such a pretty girl," she cooed, "I really don't 
like to see either of my daughters crying. Particularly 
on a day that should be happy. It's Christmas morning, 
you know!" Indeed, although Ann was smiling, the 
corners of her eyes were damp with sympathy tears, 
Barry saw.

He forced a smile, which she returned. She picked up a 
hairbrush and began to pull it through Barry's long 
blond hair. "I remember when you were a little girl, 
and you felt bad, we'd sit and talk while I brushed 
your hair. By the time you were a teenager, you'd grown 
out of that and we hardly talked anymore."

"Oh," Barry said simply, learning a little about how 
his wife and mother in law had interacted.

Barry looked at his reflection in the medicine chest 
mirror and could see Ann standing behind him using the 
brush. With this juxtaposition, he could see the 
similarity in his and her features. He also saw the 
love in Ann's eyes. Here was a woman who adored her 
children. As she brushed his hair, it became shinier 
and fuller. After several minutes of quiet conversation 
his tears had dried.

"How about if we go downstairs and make some breakfast 
for our husbands?" Barry suggested as Ann finished his 
hair and began to brush her much shorter locks.

Ann turned Barry around and hugged him, tightly. "Oh, 
Val!" she sighed, happily, "I'd really enjoy that! Do 
you think your nausea will be okay with the smell of 
food?"

"I'll be okay. Until tomorrow morning, that is," Barry 
explained.

"Do you want an aspirin or a Midol or something for the 
headache and cramps?"

Barry shook his head. "I'd better not. The obstetrician 
warned me not to take any medicines she didn't 
prescribe."

"I guess the doctor knows best," Ann sighed. She broke 
the hug and led the way from the bathroom to the 
staircase.

"Should we wake Karen?" Barry asked as they passed her 
door.

"No," Ann responded. "I'd like to spend some time alone 
with my firstborn." She glided down the stairs with 
Barry close behind. Even without seeing it, Barry knew 
there was a smile on Ann's face.

Barry lit the gas stove and put on a pot of water for 
oatmeal. Ann dug in the refrigerator for a carton of 
eggs and a package of sausage.

Barry quickly surveyed the kitchen. "I'll make coffee. 
Do you have a coffeemaker... Mom?"

The woman stood very close to Barry before answering in 
a low voice. "There's one under the tree for your 
father to open later today. You know how he is about 
his coffee!"

Barry, of course, did not know how his father in law 
was about his coffee, but he smiled and giggled as if 
he did. Ann made the coffee using a percolator that 
must have been forty years old. No wonder she had 
gotten him a new coffeemaker for a gift!

Barry found blueberries in the freezer and suggested he 
could make pancakes from scratch. His offer further 
amazed Ann, whose daughter had never made pancakes even 
from a mix. Barry quickly located the items for the 
recipe in the cupboards. Barry hadn't gotten to know 
Valerie's parents very well until now, but cooking 
breakfast with his mother in law was turning out to be 
rather pleasant, and helped him take his mind off the 
headache and cramps. 

"It makes me feel a little old to realize that I'm 
going to be a grandmother sometime next summer," Ann 
admitted.

"You're only as old as you want to be," Barry told her.

Ann smiled at Barry and continued, "I remember the day 
you were born. You were so tiny. Now you're all grown 
up and soon to be a mother yourself."

"Not that soon," Barry replied.

"It'll be soon enough," Ann replied with a quiet sigh.

Valerie's mother fried the sausage as Barry mixed the 
ingredients for the flapjacks. Every so often Ann would 
steal a look at the person she thought was her 
daughter. The person cooking breakfast with her was 
self-assured and serene, yet outgoing and full of 
surprises now, in contrast to the way Valerie had been 
only a year earlier. Ann thought about the positive 
changes she saw and smiled.

"You know," Ann said to Barry, "it's like you're 
suddenly not my little girl anymore."

Barry blushed. How right she was!

"I know you're all grown up and married," Ann 
continued, "but having a baby. Becoming a parent. That 
makes me see you in a whole new light.

"It's not a bad thing," she continued. "In fact, you've 
become the daughter I dreamed about. Maybe getting 
pregnant was all it took."

"Yeah," Barry responded vaguely. That and a mind 
exchange between your real daughter and son in law.

While she cooked, Ann talked about things that happened 
years before Barry met Valerie, and through her 
recollection Barry gathered a few more facts about 
Valerie's childhood. According to Ann, Valerie was a 
pretty youngster, although the girl's tomboy lifestyle 
had been a source of disappointment to Ann. Not content 
to play dressup, tea party, or with a dollhouse, 
Valerie preferred to climb trees, fix the stereo, play 
basketball and football with boys, and work on the car 
with her father. She was the son Carl never had. 

Puberty changed all that when certain parts of her 
anatomy became too tender for her to roughhouse with 
boys or climb trees. She never forgot her fascination 
with mechanical and electrical doodads, though, and she 
channeled that interest into school science fairs. 
Barry heard how Valerie won a scholarship to the 
institute, and he already knew how she had been one of 
a half dozen women in the undergraduate Engineering 
program, and the only female doctoral candidate in 
Engineering. Ann had always held out the whisper of a 
hope that her daughter would share some domestic 
interests: cooking, music, family, but settled for the 
way Valerie led her life on her own terms.

The smells of coffee and food eventually wafted 
upstairs. Ann had just about cooked all of the sausage 
when she heard a gravelly voice behind her.

"How are two of my favorite girls this lovely Christmas 
morning?"

"Merry Christmas, Carl!" Ann greeted him. She briefly 
turned her attention from the frying pan and kissed her 
husband for several seconds.

"Merry Christmas, Ann," he returned. The Bergstrom 
patriarch was wearing flannel pajamas, terry-cloth 
slippers and a well-worn robe. "And Merry Christmas, 
sweetheart!" he kissed Barry on the cheek.

"Merry Christmas, Daddy," Barry said with what he hoped 
was the right amount of childish sincerity. He pressed 
his lips into the stubbly morning beard on his father 
in law's cheek.

Carl glanced curiously at Barry. "So, Ann wasn't 
kidding. You really do cook!" he said.

Ann stage whispered to Carl, "She made hotcakes from 
scratch, Carl! Blueberry ones at that!"

"I can't wait to try them!" he replied, showing a broad 
grin.

"Neither can I!" Valerie mumbled from the doorway, 
stifling a yawn. She was wearing a tee-shirt and a 
robe. Barry hoped that she wore something else under 
the robe, remembering that Val had come to bed nude.

"Merry Christmas, dear!" Barry said.

"The same to you," Valerie returned. She crossed to 
Barry and kissed him full on the lips, the stubble on 
her chin scratching Barry's face. She put her cheek 
next to his and spoke softly into his ear. "You seem a 
little down this morning."

"It's my time of the month," Barry whispered back to 
her softly.

Valerie pulled her face back from his and there was a 
look of concern on her face. Barry flashed a smile and 
added, "I'll fill you in later."

Ann and Barry made a good team, sharing the breakfast 
duties. Together they served the food to Valerie and 
Carl, then took some for themselves. The four people 
had pancakes, sausage, eggs, oatmeal and coffee, and 
were looking through the windows at the undisturbed 
snowfall when Karen joined them.

"Good morning sleepyhead," Valerie joked.

Karen scowled at her for a moment and briefly stuck out 
her tongue. "Merry Christmas to you too, Barry," she 
said with a minor note of annoyance. Karen sat down 
next to her father and helped herself to the last of 
the pancakes on the platter in the center of the table.

"Merry Christmas, darlin'," Carl said to her, and 
kissed her gently on her cheek.

"Merry Christmas to you, Daddy," she replied and pecked 
him on the cheek. She wished her mother and the person 
she perceived to be her sister the same glad tidings.

Carl downed the rest of his coffee in one gulp and 
stood up. "I'm going up to get dressed." He gestured to 
Valerie. "C'mon Barry! You get dressed too. I could use 
your help cutting some firewood out by the shed."

Valerie reluctantly followed her father out of the 
kitchen and upstairs. She wasn't thrilled about going 
outside on a cold morning to cut firewood, but she'd 
heard her father use that tone of voice before, and his 
suggestion was nothing less than a thinly veiled 
demand.

She dug through the valise for a jockstrap. She was 
obviously due for a strenuous morning, and Barry had 
warned her about the need for support. She chuckled, 
remembering that support once meant a bra to her, and 
now it meant something entirely different. She dropped 
her briefs and stepped into the supporter, pulling it 
up around her legs. 

In the last four weeks, she'd grown partial to wearing 
briefs, since they felt the most similar to the panties 
she'd worn before swapping minds with her husband. She 
wore boxers when she was hoping for a session of 
lovemaking with Barry. Valerie used the uncomfortable 
athletic supporter grudgingly when she planned a lot of 
lifting and straining or when all of her other 
underwear were in the laundry.

She dressed quickly in fresh jeans and the sweater she 
wore last night. The boots by the bed were cool around 
her stocking feet, but warmed quickly after she slipped 
them on. Valerie pulled her fingers through her hair to 
straighten it as she peered into the reflection over 
the bureau. The guy in the dresser mirror had a bit of 
beard stubble and looked like he hadn't had much sleep, 
but he looked manly and vaguely outdoorsy. She knew 
that it took more than pushing a few hairs around to 
make her old female body look moderately presentable 
each morning, yet men had only to slice off a few 
whiskers and they looked just fine. This rapid grooming 
was one part of being male that would be missed when 
she got her normal body back.

Valerie joined her father on the back porch. Carl wore 
a flannel jacket and held an ax in his hand "This way," 
the older man said, stepping off the porch into a knee-
deep drift. Valerie trudged after him and waded through 
a deeper drift to the woodpile behind the shed. The sun 
reflected blindingly off the white expanses and 
sparkled in the icicles that hung from the trees and 
the eaves of the house.

Carl brushed the snow off the chopping block and pulled 
a log into place, standing it on end. "We'll let the 
womenfolk start Christmas dinner," he said, "while you 
and I have a man to man talk." He swung the ax in a 
smooth arc and neatly split the thick wooden cylinder. 
Valerie quickly positioned the resulting pieces so that 
they could be split again. She'd done this job when 
she'd been a lot younger, back when Daddy let her help.

"You think you make enough money writing books to 
support a family?" Carl asked, skeptically. He buried 
the ax in one of the half logs. He levered the tool a 
few times to pull it free and brought the axe over his 
head in another mighty stroke.

"It's a good living," Valerie replied, "I've been 
handling Valerie's research at the institute since the 
pregnancy began."

Carl split the other half-log. "You can do that?"

"We both have technical doctorates," Valerie explained, 
carefully phrasing her answers to avoid a lie. Her 
father had always a way of knowing when she was lying, 
and she was apprehensive that he would have the same 
ability regardless of the fact that she was not in her 
normal body.

Carl studied Valerie intently. "Now, you may think 
you're a big adult now that you've made my daughter 
pregnant, but conceiving a baby does not make you an 
adult. Taking the responsibility for the baby and a 
family shows just what kind of adult you can be. All it 
takes to conceive a baby is a hard-on and a fertile 
womb, and neither of those make you an adult."

The words sounded to Valerie's ears like an indictment 
against Barry and her. She avoided her father's 
searching gaze and gathered a few of the cut logs. 
Daddy had never spoken bluntly to her about sex before, 
leaving that task to Mom. It seemed strange to hear him 
speaking about such matters.

Carl hefted another log onto the block while Valerie 
stacked the cut wood on the woodpile against the shed. 
"My daughter is a very special person," Carl explained. 
"She needs someone strong to stand by her during her 
ordeal."

"Ordeal?" Valerie gulped and grinned nervously. She 
squinted into the snow glare to look at her father.

"Having a baby is pure hell, or so my wife tells me," 
Carl scowled. "Mothers-to-be get morning sickness, 
cravings, and mood swings. They swell up like a blimp. 
None of it is very glamorous. Then there's the delivery 
itself. Darned painful, before, during and after. Throw 
in a little post-partum depression, what we used to 
call the baby-blues, and that's a recipe for a whole 
lot of misery."

Valerie winced. All of that was in her future. "We're 
following the doctor's advice," she offered as an 
ineffective riposte.

"All I'm saying is that no matter what, Ann and I want 
our daughter to be happy. Do you understand me?" To 
emphasize his remark, Valerie's father brought the ax 
to bear on the log, The strike of the blade made a 
sharp cracking sound as a deep fissure opened in the 
wood.

"Understood." Valerie said, meekly.

"Look what I found!" Karen shouted, as she rejoined her 
mother and Barry in the kitchen. She'd only been gone a 
few moments after finishing eating. Barry had just 
finished washing the breakfast dishes and was helping 
Ann put the ham in the oven. He looked up to see Karen 
holding something white and made of fabric.

Karen walked over to her mother and drew from her hand 
a small white cotton cap with a lace brim. She fitted 
the cap onto the back of the woman's head, making sure 
it was snug. She approached Barry. "This one's yours," 
she said, and placed a similar item carefully on his 
head, clipping it with bobby pins. 

Karen pushed the last of three snoods (mobcaps?) into 
his hands, looked into Barry's eyes and said, "Do mine, 
please," then turned around to give him access to the 
back of her head. Barry quickly figured out from 
looking at Ann how the cap should be situated on 
Karen's skull. He was not very adept at using the bobby 
pins, but he got one or two to hold the headpiece in 
place.

"Remember when you made these for us, Mom?" Karen asked 
her mother.

"I do!" Ann smiled. "I thought it made us look like 
colonial ladies. You were fourteen, Val, and that meant 
you were..." She looked at Karen and mentally counted 
the years.

"Eight," the younger one replied, impatiently.

Barry saw that the memory was making Ann damp around 
the eyes. Before he knew it, the older woman had pulled 
Karen and him into a group hug. 

"Ohhh, Mom!" Karen whined at the sappy sentimentality.

"I remember the adorable little girls who wore these 
all Christmas day." Ann shook her finger at Karen. "You 
wore yours to bed the next night, too! We still have 
pictures in the family album of you two wearing these 
while you opened your Christmas gifts."

Karen looked out the window to the shed, but could not 
see the activity going on behind the structure. "That 
reminds me. When are Daddy and Barry going to come back 
in so we can open some presents?"

"Your father's just staying out of our way so we can 
start dinner, like always," Ann chastised. "This time, 
though, he's probably giving Barry a lecture on the 
care and feeding of a pregnant wife."

"What?!" Barry exclaimed with surprise.

"Your father has been planning what he wanted to say 
for weeks now. He just wants to be sure that Barry is 
considerate of your feelings and that he appreciates 
your emotional state."

"But..." Barry began.

Ann's voice became softer. "He may not always show it, 
Val, but Daddy loves you very much. He's just making 
sure that Barry does too."

Barry felt as though he should say something, but 
couldn't admit to anyone the real reason that he and 
Valerie were acting so oddly. He decided that silence 
was better than starting a thread of conversation that 
would only lead to more questions.

Ann, Barry and Karen began preparing the filling for 
pies that they would bake while dinner was on the 
table. Karen was impressed with the skills that Barry 
demonstrated in the kitchen. Valerie had never had the 
slightest interest in cooking. The person who seemed to 
be Valerie now worked without a cookbook most of the 
time, and hardly measured anything, somehow guessing 
the right amount by eye. Karen was secretly hoping to 
develop those skills overnight the way 'her sister' 
did. She couldn't put her finger on it, but there was 
something strange about the way Barry and Valerie were 
acting.

Valerie was chilled to the bone by the time her father 
finished his monologue. Carl had split a dozen logs and 
was actually perspiring, but she was shivering and her 
teeth were chattering by the time they gathered wood 
for a fire and trudged back to the house. They noisily 
stomped on the porch to dislodge the snow from their 
boots before stepping inside, then carried the armloads 
of split logs to the fireplace and Carl began the task 
of placing the wood for a proper fire. 

Valerie took off for her bedroom to get out of the 
uncomfortable jockstrap. Once there, she kicked off her 
boots, and removed the soaking wet jeans. The pants 
legs were saturated with icy water below the knees from 
the snow that had melted there, so she would have to 
dry these or wear another pair of trousers. She slid 
the supporter off herself and had to laugh when her 
groin was revealed. The prolonged exposure to sub-zero 
cold had caused her testicles and her cock to recede 
into her body, and at a quick glance, it looked as 
though she had reverted to female genitalia. Her pecker 
was almost perfectly flush with her body, the tip 
barely peeking out among the wiry pubic hair. Her balls 
had gone so far up inside her that the empty sac had 
collapsed into a simulacrum of labia with tight little 
wrinkles. She started laughing out loud. 

She heard a sharp knock on the door and spun around to 
see Barry entering. "What's so funny?" he asked, 
closing the door behind himself.

"This!" Valerie chuckled, pointing at her groin. "I 
never knew cold did this to guys!"

Barry saw Valerie's shrunken organs and remembered when 
the frigid weather had once affected him that way. 
"When it's really cold out, a supporter doesn't support 
very much, does it?"

"No! It doesn't!" Valerie agreed. She finally looked up 
to her spouse's head. "Hey!" she said, "You're wearing 
one of the caps Mom made for Karen and me years ago!"

"Karen found them somewhere while you were out chopping 
wood with your Dad."

"Yeah," she grumbled, "chopping wood and getting a 
sermon about taking care of a pregnant woman."

"Taking care of me?" Barry asked.

"Not you, really...it was about being considerate of a 
mother to be," she explained.

"That's me, I think," Barry chirped, and planted a kiss 
on Valerie's cold cheek. He helped her find fresh 
underwear and a dry pair of trousers. "I came up to 
tell you that we're ready to open Christmas gifts 
around the tree, as soon as you're dressed again," he 
told her. Barry slipped out of the room as Valerie tied 
her shoes.

Valerie came downstairs to a scene she'd witnessed 
every Christmas. This time, however, she felt strangely 
disconnected from the merriment. A roaring fire burned 
in the fireplace. The lights on the tree burned 
brightly. A row of stockings hung from the mantel and 
dozens of brightly wrapped presents littered the floor. 
Valerie's father sat in the easy chair near the fire, 
his boots warming on the hearth, his trousers rapidly 
drying as he wore them. Her mother, in a nightgown and 
robe sat near the tree in her rocking chair moving 
gently forward and back. 

Karen. smiling with anticipation. was dressed in 
pajamas and sitting in her accustomed place, on the 
floor among the presents. The fourth person, Barry, 
still wore a flannel nightie and sat at one end of the 
couch. This year, he would have to pretend to be a 
blood relative, while Valerie remained slightly more 
aloof and out of place.

Karen looked up as Valerie approached. "Finally! 
Barry's here! Let's get started!" She handed a present 
to her father and one to her mother. Valerie sat on the 
couch next to Barry, pulled his hair back from one ear 
and kissed his neck. Barry shivered slightly but turned 
to smile at her. He could imagine how strange Valerie 
felt in this situation.

Karen's duty was to distribute the gifts from under the 
tree. She'd held that honor sixteen years, since she 
was three and her parents used the occasion to teach 
her to recognize written names on the gift tags. No 
younger siblings had come along to usurp the duties 
from her and so she had continued in the role. "This 
one is for you, Val," she said handing a gift up to the 
couch. Barry uncomfortably held the gift and cast a 
quick glance at Valerie for her approval.

"Go ahead, dear, open it," Valerie said to him with a 
barely perceptible shrug.

Barry opened the packages intended for his wife, and 
she opened those addressed to him. When they got home, 
they'd straighten out what was for whom.

***

Later in the day, after a big Christmas dinner, Valerie 
convinced Barry to go for a walk to exercise off some 
of the calories from the feast.

"That's where my sixth grade teacher lives," Valerie 
said, pointing at the house she and Barry were walking 
past. Barry was glad to be out of his in-law's house 
for a while and able to relax from his performance, 
even if it meant walking about in the chill of a 
Christmas afternoon. As he and Valerie walked along, 
their breath was clearly visible. The clouds had come 
back in after lunch and the flurries were just 
beginning to fly, promising a more substantial snow 
that night.

Barry was dressed warmly, and had decided to wear jeans 
instead of a dress with the cold temperature and stiff 
wind. He wore a bulky sweater under a parka and had a 
pair of thick mittens on his hands. Boots graced his 
feet. Valerie wore a light jacket, gloves and a cap 
over her flannel shirt and jeans, apparently able to 
withstand the cold as well as Barry had when he was 
male.

"You weren't kidding when you used to tell me that the 
cold didn't bother you," Valerie told him with some 
surprise. "I'm comfortable in just a jacket, without a 
big heavy coat, and stuff."

"And I'm getting a taste of your aversion to winter 
weather," Barry responded, rubbing his mittens together 
for warmth. He was feeling colder than he had expected, 
even though he was wearing several layers of clothing. 
He was not uncomfortable, but feeling the chill more 
than ever before.

They were passing the vacant lot a few doors from 
Valerie's parent's house when a snowball impacted 
Valerie's jacket and exploded in a cloud of loose 
fluffy powder. They looked in the direction from which 
the projectile had come and saw two figures ducking 
behind a low wall of snow.

Valerie tugged Barry behind a snowman at the corner of 
the unused lot. "It's my sister and her boyfriend," she 
whispered to Barry as they crouched in the relative 
safety provided by the snowman's bulk.

Barry peeked around the sizable bulk and sized up the 
situation. Karen and Kevin had built a low wall of snow 
about twenty-five yards away and had gathered several 
dozen snowballs there. "I think we can take them," 
Barry assessed. A short fusillade of white ammunition 
kept Valerie and him pinned in place behind the 
snowman.

Valerie began scooping some of the loose snow from the 
ground into a few firm spheres. Barry also set to the 
task and soon had produced a dozen or so snowballs 
himself. He peeked out once more, just in time to be 
hit in the forehead by a well-aimed toss. He retreated 
behind the snowman and wiped the cold melting slush out 
of his bangs. He picked up one of the snowballs and 
leaned around the protective barrier of the snowman. He 
saw Kevin's head peeking above the wall and Barry 
immediately let the ball fly. He was disappointed when 
it fell short of the target.

He slumped back behind the snowman. "This is going to 
be tougher than I thought!" he told Valerie. "I forgot 
that I don't have my old strength!"

"Let me handle that for you dear," Valerie replied. She 
hefted one of the snowballs and peeked around to watch 
the adversaries. When she had a clean shot, she put 
everything she had behind the throw. The snowball arced 
toward the distant snow fort but was going to miss 
Kevin. Karen made the mistake of standing up just as 
the snowball arrived, and was hit on the shoulder by 
the powerfully thrown mass of snow. The snowy shot-put 
exploded in a flurry of white, showering Karen and 
Kevin with the frosty shrapnel.

"Good throw, Val!" Barry complimented, after observing 
the lucky hit.

"I don't know if I can do that again," she admitted. 
"I've got plenty of power now, but I never had to pitch 
for accuracy at this distance."

"I have a plan," Barry suggested. "We'll concentrate 
our fire on your sister."

"What good will that do?" Valerie asked. "Kevin is the 
one we have to worry about. He has the distance and 
aim."

"I figure we can hit Karen enough so she'll be cold and 
wet and she'll make him call the battle off."

Valerie's face had an amused expression as she 
contemplated the strategy. "You're starting to scare 
me, Barry."

"How so?" he wanted to know.

"That idea sounds like something a woman would dream 
up," she said.

"All I know is that we're at a weapons disadvantage 
compared to Kevin. Your strong throw is not very 
dangerous without accuracy, and likewise my accurate 
throw that falls short isn't intimidating," he 
explained. "I think I can still lob a few bloop tosses 
on top of Karen once I figure out my range. You just 
keep flinging these things at Kevin. Maybe you're 
better than you think. Even if you aren't, it'll keep 
him guessing." 

Valerie took the advice to heart and began tossing 
periodic snow grenades at the enemy encampment. Barry 
made more snowballs to arm Valerie, and every so often 
chucked one soft and high, to land atop his sister-in 
law. Valerie was unable to get more than one or two of 
her throws to hit the other combatants, but when they 
did, the effect was a spectacular starburst of 
sparkling powder. After a while, Barry and Valerie had 
exhausted the supply of snowballs and were unable to 
scoop enough snow off the frozen ground to make more.

"We give up !" Barry shouted when he realized that they 
had no more offensive weaponry. He turned to Valerie, 
whose cap, hair, eyebrows, and jacket were coated in 
snow from the incoming artillery and the stuff still 
lightly drifting from the dull grey overcast. 
"Besides," he whispered to her, "I want to go inside. 
I'm freezing my balls off out here!"

Valerie slid her gloved hand against the denim between 
his legs and gave him a mock-serious look. "You're 
right! Froze right off, I'd say!"

Barry shook his head and smiled when he realized why 
she'd said that. "What am I supposed to say?" he asked.

"I don't know," Valerie responded. "Maybe that you are 
freezing your tits off?"

Barry frowned at the less picturesque hyperbole. "I 
don't care if this body has balls or not. It still 
feels like I'm freezing them off."

Valerie nodded in agreement. "Speaking as someone who 
does have balls, I'm getting cold now, too. It'll be 
dark soon," she said, helping Barry stand. "We can pack 
up the car and head back to Riverton in a while."

Kevin and Karen joined Barry and Valerie for the short 
walk to the house. Karen was visibly shivering from the 
chill, and from the large amount of snow that had caked 
in her hair and had gone inside the hood of her parka. 
"Are you going to be okay?" Barry asked, surprised at 
how much snow had actually struck Karen.

"She'll be fine," Valerie scoffed.

"Once I get out of these damp clothes and get some soup 
or hot cocoa in me," Karen responded, "I think I'll be 
okay, thanks." She smiled wryly at Barry.

Barry wondered caused her odd expression, but decided 
not to press her for the answer. At the house, he 
helped Karen slough off some of the snow that had 
accumulated around her face, while Valerie and Kevin 
went indoors. Karen seemed pleased that Barry stopped 
to help her. Barry thought it was something a sister 
would do, and wanted to avoid acting strangely.

Barry fastened the seatbelt as Valerie backed the 
minivan out of her parent's driveway a while later.

"So," Valerie began, "just what was that comment you 
made this morning about having your period? You're not 
bleeding are you?" her face showed honest concern that 
Barry might be miscarrying.

Barry pulled his hair back from his face as he looked 
at her. "No bleeding, but I'm getting all of the other 
symptoms from a monthly cycle. Your Mom said she had 
the same thing happen to her when her period was due 
during pregnancy."

"You'd better be careful," Valerie joked in a sing-song 
voice. 

"This little episode brings you mighty close to 
official womanhood."

Barry sighed. "I'm a lot closer than I ever wanted to 
be, thank you. I feel all tired and achy. My fingers 
are swollen. I have a headache and my tits and gut feel 
all sore. I even got all weepy in front of your mother 
this morning. I'm starting to think that the bleeding 
is the least of the hassles of having a period."

Valerie smiled at Barry's assessment. "You're learning. 
The blood is the messiest part, but now you've 
experienced most of the other stuff that goes with the 
territory."

"Your mother said that her menstrual symptoms went away 
during the second trimester, so you'll probably have a 
month or two of this after we get ourselves un-
swapped," Barry explained.

"Is the nausea gone, finally?" Valerie asked, 
expectantly.

Barry averted his eyes. "No," he quietly said as he 
watched the snow-covered cars passing in the opposite 
direction. "But I'd like to un-swap anyway. I'm not so 
keen on this mind-exchange idea any more."

"I'm not surprised," Valerie shrugged, "It's just like 
a man to give up."

"I'm not giving up!" Barry replied, curtly.

Valerie continued, ignoring his protest, "He gets a 
cramp here, a headache there, his fingers swell up a 
little and he's ready to surrender. Men! Geez! Teenage 
girls go through this every month, and they don't get 
all suicidal!"

"Suicidal?!" Barry shrieked.

"But let some guy start feeling all out of sorts and he 
wants a woman to step in and rescue him! You are like 
that turtle in the old Saturday morning cartoons. Tudor 
Turtle. Tudor knew a wizard that would magically let 
him try out different occupations each week, and each 
week Tudor would get into one little scrape or another 
and would beg the wizard to change him back to being 
just a turtle."

"It's not just the cramps, Val. It's the morning 
sickness and the fact that I really miss my male body!"

Valerie could hear the catch in Barry's voice. Although 
he was trying hard to hide his emotions, it was obvious 
that he was feeling a lot of stress. "I'm just teasing 
you about the complaints, Barry. As a woman, I had a 
few months where I felt horrible, too. You've been 
doing great so far," she offered. "Everyone thinks 
you're me, and you've been giving me a golden 
opportunity to get a lot of work done...work that the 
nausea and fatigue would prevent. Just stick with this 
swap a little longer, until I get the higher powered 
equipment debugged in the lab, and then when the nausea 
subsides, we'll swap back."

Barry rubbed the corner of his eye and sniffled 
slightly. "You make it sound so sensible, and you're 
making me out to be some kind of ogre for wanting to 
reclaim my rightful body."

"No," Valerie's soothing voice intoned. "It's not like 
that at all. I might not tell you this often enough, 
but you're being a real dear taking the morning 
sickness and overall tiredness for me these last few 
weeks. I don't know anyone else's husband who'd do that 
for their wife. In fact, every man I know would be 
really stressed to loan out his precious little 
phallus. That by itself makes you very special. 
Besides, I was thinking: if word of our mind-swap ever 
gets out, your first-person account of these last few 
weeks would make a fairly interesting book."

Barry smirked. "If I wrote it, no one would believe 
it."

"You could call it 'The Man Inside the Woman' or 
something like that," Valerie suggested.

"I don't write narratives," Barry blushed.

"I bet a lot of people would like to read a diary of 
your exploits."

"If I kept a diary, you mean."

Valerie agreed. "If you kept one. If I wrote a book 
about my experiences, I'd probably sell a lot of copies 
in the transsexual community, mainly because a lot of 
transsexuals feel exactly like me: a woman in a male 
body. I'll bet more than a few therapists would want 
the book too. I've never tried writing anything like 
this. Maybe I'll give it a shot."

Valerie brought Barry a cup of tea as he sat next to 
the fire. The flickering flames cast dancing shadows on 
the walls around them as they sat together. Barry 
reached under the chair and pulled forth a large gift-
wrapped box.

"It's not very appropriate, but this is my Christmas 
present for you," Barry apologized. Valerie opened the 
box. She lifted the woman's business suit out and 
appraised it.

"It's nice," she said, appreciatively.

"When I got it, I thought you'd be female at 
Christmas."

Valerie kissed him. "It's the thought that counts. It 
looks so nice. I hope it fits." 

"It does," Barry replied.

Valerie started chuckling as she realized how Barry 
could be so sure. "You bought this after Thanksgiving, 
and tried it on yourself in the store, didn't you?" she 
guessed.

"Guilty as charged," Barry responded, with a sly grin. 
"It's the only way to shop for clothes for your wife. 
Take her body to the store while she's at the office."

Valerie hugged him in recognition of his ingenuity. 
"Stay here," she commanded. Valerie went upstairs for a 
few minutes but returned soon with a gift-wrapped box 
for Barry. Barry tore into the wrapping and opened the 
box to reveal a man's sweater. The size tag looked like 
one that would fit his male body, and the style might 
look good on him.

"It's nice, Val, but..."

"I guess you'll have to wait to wear your presents 
too," she told him. "I bought these, way back in 
October, and had no way to know we'd have our minds 
swapped with each other at Christmas."

"Presents?" Barry inquired, detecting the plural in 
Valerie's comment.

"Dig deeper," Valerie explained with an amused grin. 
"There's more under the sweater."

Barry looked beneath the sweater and broke out in 
giggles. Valerie had enclosed a few gag gifts in the 
box. There was a colorful jockey-strap that had all 
sorts of suggestive phrases silk-screened onto the 
fabric of the pouch. Scattered around the supporter 
were a few dozen novelty condoms. There were ones that 
had unique shapes, sizes or colors. One of the condoms 
was designed to glow in the dark.

"Oh, Val!" he said merrily, "I cannot tell you how much 
I'd love to try on these other gifts but..." he leaned 
over and kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear. "I 
think you might look better in them than me, right 
now."

Valerie swept his hair back and nuzzled his neck. "You 
might be right," she whispered back to him. "If you 
want, I can model the jock-strap, but we don't need the 
condoms until after the baby comes."

Barry pulled back and pouted at her. "Awww, c'mon, Val! 
I always wondered if those little ribs and things on 
the fancy rubbers really made any difference to a girl 
or not. Are you going to deny me my chance to find out 
firsthand?"

"Are you saying you want a roll in the hay?" Valerie 
deadpanned.

Barry gently rubbed Valerie's neck. "With my cramps and 
bloating and whatnot, I may not be as frisky as normal, 
but I'm willing to try if you are. Why don't you give 
it your best shot?"

Valerie scooped a handful of the condoms out of the box 
and lifted Barry into her arms. She carried him into 
the bedroom where they played until dawn.


CHAPTER 16
HAPPY NEW YEAR

The cramps subsided a few days after Christmas, and 
Barry felt like a new man, or, more precisely, a new 
woman. Mood swings, general discomfort of bloating and 
abdominal aches went directly to the top of the list of 
things he didn't particularly like, and made him loath 
to accept Valerie's offer to let him experience a full-
blown period after she had the baby. He marveled at how 
women endured those monthly assaults on their health, 
yet most hold a job, raise a family and carry on with 
life. Girls... Females... Women earned his respect for 
the way they accepted their burden, and he was just 
glad that he'd never have to deal with the eventuality 
of menstruating.

The sun had set an hour ago, the house was quiet and 
Barry was alone. Although the institute was deserted 
during the holiday, his wife was spending full days at 
the labs installing new high-power equipment for her 
experiments, since the older equipment had proved 
inadequate. Her dedication to her career left Barry 
home all day to nurse his nausea. Fortunately his 
stomach distress was no worse than a week ago, but it 
was no better. Barry was waiting for the day he would 
greet the dawn without being sick: the day he would 
finally get his proper body back.

He was dressed in one of Valerie's sloppy loose-fitting 
sweat suits and sneakers, and had pulled his shoulder-
length hair back into a loose ponytail. He was 
comfortable. He had started the day without a bra, but 
the friction of his nipples swaying against the fleece 
lining of the sweatshirt as he moved had become mildly 
irritating. He was still unaccustomed to lingerie 
covering his chest, but at least with a bra between the 
fabric of the shirt and his skin, he could concentrate 
on his writing.

The weather had been lousy for the last week; overcast 
night and day, on and off snow, and generally awful for 
stargazing. Barry had been able to dedicate most nights 
to writing at the computer and had gotten a few 
chapters of his book fleshed out. Tonight was looking 
to be another such night. The forecast called for 
continued cloudiness extending perhaps into New Year's 
Day.

"Hey! Bar'! I'm home!" Valerie's voice boomed from the 
kitchen. Barry glanced at the clock, and was surprised 
to realize that she was home a few minutes after six 
PM: early for her. He met her in the hall just outside 
the den and pressed his lips against hers.

"What brings you home so early?" Barry asked after 
breaking the kiss.

She gave him a quick hug and said, "Several things. 
Carol and I reached a good point to break early, I 
wanted to spend some time with my husband... and... 
well... I was noticing how you were tugging to close 
the clasp on your jeans yesterday."

"So?"

Valerie gave him a peck on the forehead. "So, it looks 
like we need to buy some more clothes."

Barry frowned. "You mean that YOU need to buy some more 
clothes," he explained snidely.

"I'm not the one wrestling with the waistband on the 
jeans," Valerie told him.

Barry was unhappy with the prospect. "Look, Val. I 
detest shopping. You know that, and yet you want me to 
go shopping for women's clothes?"

"Well, I can't very well try on the things, can I?" 
Valerie challenged. She gestured at her considerably 
larger male frame to further make her point.

Barry stepped back from her and eyed her seriously. 
"You could, if we had our proper bodies," he reminded 
her.

"Bar'! You agreed to let me stay male until the morning 
sickness was gone."

"Yes," Barry admitted reluctantly, "but that was when I 
thought the nausea would last only a few days. It's 
been four weeks and doesn't look like I'll be feeling 
better, or getting my body back, anytime soon."

"My thoughts exactly," Valerie agreed brightly. "That's 
why we're going out shopping tonight. Although you'll 
have to try on the clothes, I'll be there to pick them 
out."

"What does that make me?" Barry groused, "some sort of 
life-size dress-up doll?"

Valerie flashed a smile at him. "Awww, it's not like 
that, dear! It'll be fun!"

Barry shook his head in resignation. "Only a woman 
would think that shopping for clothes is fun," he 
muttered, as he began changing out of his sweat suit. 
He didn't want to admit it but she was right about the 
clothes. Although he didn't think his figure was any 
different now than a month ago when he first acquired 
this body, the waist on the form-fitting jeans had been 
getting awfully tight. He had expected Valerie to be 
back in her own body before maternity clothes were 
needed, but so many things had conspired against him. 

The mall was not very busy, but the stores were far 
from empty. The throngs of gift-returning customers had 
subsided and the post Christmas lull was just 
beginning. Valerie steered her husband into the 
maternity section of Grebler's. She quickly selected a 
few blouse and pants sets from the racks and held them 
against Barry.

"Try these on," she urged, pushing Barry and the 
hangers of outfits toward the dressing rooms.

Barry had Valerie hold his coat and purse while he 
trudged into the changing room. He tried on the outfits 
one at a time and reluctantly exited to the display 
floor to model them for her. His wife not only looked 
him over critically, but bunched and pulled each 
ensemble to see how they'd look various ways. Barry 
remembered his mother shopping for his clothes when he 
was in elementary school and how she would lift, 
stretch, and tug at the shirts and pants he tried on. 
Valerie was doing the same thing to him now, but in 
this case she wanted to know how the clothes would look 
when she returned to her female body. Only a person 
with an identical twin had the opportunity to see a 
body like their own from any angle, and Valerie did not 
waste this chance. She pulled Barry's hair around his 
face and then back to see how each neckline looked with 
the hair up and down. As a concession, she was obliged 
to ask him if there was enough room in some of the 
blouses and pants, since it would be unseemly to grope 
him right there in the midst of the store. Barry 
answered each of her questions as truthfully as he knew 
how.

They bought several outfits at Grebler's and even 
picked up a few roomy caftans at the trendy Hot Mama 
Maternity Boutique in the mall. Barry was surprised 
that Valerie considered buying dresses since she wore 
mostly jeans or pants suits. Her answer was that the 
dresses actually looked good on Barry, contrary to her 
perceived self-image. That was no insurance that 
Valerie would actually wear the outfits herself when 
the time came, however.

Citing his pregnant condition, Barry shamed Valerie 
into toting all of the shopping bags as he had before 
the swap while they walked from store to store along 
the mall. They looked into the windows of the 
Frederick's store and Valerie tried to convince Barry 
that he would look sexy in some of the more bizarre 
female underthings that were on display in the window. 
He blushed at her insistent suggestive remarks, as well 
as his own imagination about wearing them.

Barry responded that he'd be willing to buy some of the 
items after she restored their minds to the right 
bodies, and that she could wear the wild underwear if 
she wanted. Valerie seemed to cool to the idea if she 
would be the one in the blatantly trampish getups. She 
followed her husband into the Victoria's Secret store 
further down the mall and together they looked through 
the items there.

The saleswoman in Victoria's was intrigued by the young 
couple shopping for women's lingerie together. Usually 
the boyfriends and husbands avoided the store and 
surreptitiously scanned the mail-order catalogs, but 
the fellow accompanying this woman apparently was 
unembarrassed to be shopping for frilly intimate 
apparel. It almost seemed to the saleswoman as if the 
man knew way too much about the styles and sizes of 
feminine underwear. Regardless, the couple were in the 
store for quite a while and bought a few things before 
they left.

On the second level of the mall, Valerie stopped in 
front of a store window to admire mannequins wearing 
cocktail dresses. She encouraged Barry to go into the 
store and try on a few of the fancy frocks.

"Why?" was his immediately wary response.

"We're invited to the New Year's Eve Party at the 
institute tomorrow night, and I'd like to see you in 
one of those." She gestured to the outfits on display.

"Another party?" Barry whined. "Tomorrow? I hate going 
to parties as you. It's not the party that I mind so 
much as the fact that nobody knows about our little 
secret. Your co-workers keep dragging me into 
conversations about magnetic theory and department 
politics that I know absolutely nothing about. If I 
must talk to your friends, I'd be more comfortable 
discussing something I know about, such as astronomy or 
cars or wilderness camping."

"Don't worry," Valerie replied in a low voice, trying 
to quiet Barry. "I've been to these New Years parties a 
few times. There's not much heated conversation. Mostly 
everybody gets sloshed early and dances a bit, and 
there's a lot of yelling at midnight."

"Great," Barry frowned. "I'm supposed to avoid alcohol. 
I'll be the only sober person in a room full of loud 
dancing drunks. This party is just sounds better and 
better!"

"If it helps, we can arrive late and leave right after 
midnight," Valerie suggested. "I'd go alone, but I want 
you there just to remind people that Valerie has not 
dropped off the face of the Earth."

Barry could see her point, and he relented. On the 
cocktail dress issue, he insisted on getting an outfit 
less revealing than the one he had to wear for the 
holiday party a few weeks earlier, preferably something 
with shoulder straps, this time. Together, Valerie and 
he found a cocktail dress that was loose enough to be 
comfortable and yet stylish; a relatively modest black 
velvet number with straps but a low-slung back. Before 
they left the mall, Valerie bought a matching handbag 
and a pair of low heels to go with the dress.

***

The next evening, Barry drove Valerie to the party in 
the Corvette. He figured she would have a drink or two 
and probably be too tipsy to drive home, particularly 
since the roads had gotten a light dusting of snow 
before dusk. No accumulation of snow was expected, but 
a thin coating of dry flakes would make the roads 
tricky for someone with alcohol-dulled reflexes. 
Besides, even a perfectly sober person could be 
involved in an accident with another driver that had 
been drinking.

The party was at the institute convocation center, a 
spacious building used for celebratory dinners, 
graduation ceremonies, and an occasional academic 
convention. The largest room at the center had been 
reserved for the institute's New Years Party. As 
Valerie and Barry entered, they realized that there 
must be eight hundred people or more at the party. A 
band was playing at one end of the massive room, and a 
huge buffet was situated at the other.

Valerie was attired in one of Barry's dark pinstripe 
suits. This suit was styled so that it made the wearer 
look broad in the shoulders and trim in the waist. 
Barry, of course, was wearing the new dress, hosiery, 
and the heels. Earlier that evening, Valerie had helped 
Barry brush his hair into an upswept style that pulled 
his tresses into a swirl at the top of his head; a 
style reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn. He thought the way 
his hair looked was very sophisticated and accentuated 
his height, but the hairstyle made his neck little 
cool. .His legs, too, had gotten chilly after being 
exposed to the elements on the walk from the car, and 
after he doffed his jacket at the cloak room his 
exposed back was cold in the slightly drafty ballroom. 
Barry was pleased to notice that the more crowded 
portions of the banquet room were quite warm.

Several of the partygoers had gotten a good start on 
the evening and were 'feeling no pain' by the time 
Valerie and Barry arrived. It was easy to tell which 
people had been drinking most heavily. They were the 
ones that were speaking too loudly or stumbling around 
or just gently but unsteadily swaying where they stood 
or sat. Valerie muscled her way to the bar and got a 
cola drink for Barry and a vodka Collins for herself.

They found a table in the corner that looked 
unoccupied, and on their way there, picked up a few 
appetizers from the buffet to nibble upon. Barry 
recognized several of the people from his days in the 
doctoral study program, and there were several people 
who'd been at the house for the party after 
Thanksgiving. Valerie left Barry at the table briefly 
to speak with some of her co-workers. Barry watched his 
wife making the rounds and could tell that she still 
had a feminine edge to her mannerisms. The incongruous 
nuances were subtle; so slight that Barry wondered if 
he was the only one who saw them. The limp-wristed wave 
of a hand. The tilted-hip stance. The intent eye-
searching stare. Individually, quite innocent; 
together, just too much to overlook.

He'd also noticed that Val spoke more softly than most 
men. If their consciousnesses were going to remain 
interchanged much longer, he'd have to remind her to 
practice projecting a bit more assertiveness. He tried 
to remember to polish his role as well, and to try to 
be a little more graceful and demure. This was only his 
second outing in a social setting since the mind-swap, 
so he kept repeating Valerie's entreaties in his mind. 
Smile. Take small bites. Cross your legs while sitting. 
Look at people when they talk. Remembering all of the 
little things to do and not do was almost like being in 
the spotlight at all times.

Val returned to the table and wolfed down the small 
helping of 

vegetable sticks and crackers she'd gotten from the 
buffet. "How about a dance or two?" she suddenly asked 
Barry, once her plate was bare.

Barry looked toward the dance floor at the other end of 
the ballroom. There were a few dozen couples in front 
of the bandstand slow-dancing. "I don't really 
think..." he began.

"Awww, c'mon, dear!" Valerie urged.

"I don't know how to dance backward!" he murmured with 
slight annoyance.

"That's okay," Valerie replied. "I don't know how to 
lead. Not very well, anyway. All we have to do is hold 
each other and sway to the music. We'll stand in one 
place. What do you say?"

Barry set down the carrot stick he'd been nibbling upon 
and considered her offer. He'd always enjoyed dancing 
with Valerie. "All right," he agreed. "As long as we 
both look clumsy, maybe no one will notice."

Valerie stood and offered her hand to help Barry stand, 
then led him to the other end of the room and onto the 
dance floor. She wrapped her arms around Barry's 
shoulders and pulled his body against hers.

The band segued into another slow tune. Barry noticed 
that the women in the other couples had their eyes 
closed and their heads resting on their partner's chest 
or shoulders. He tentatively leaned his cheek onto 
Valerie's chest and rested his face against her neck.

"You're really staying in character, aren't you?" 
Valerie softly said into his ear, when she realized 
what he was doing. Barry stretched up and gently 
nibbled her earlobe before replying, "all the better to 
keep our secret, dear." He closed his eyes, rested 
against her and began humming along with the music as 
he and Valerie gently swung their hips to the beat. It 
was nice to be so close to her; to feel her body moving 
against his. As long as she and he were together, the 
mind exchange situation wasn't so vexing.

Valerie liked dancing with her husband, even though the 
last opportunity they had was at their wedding 
reception more than half a year ago. For the first time 
in her life, she was having to be a little more alert, 
watching for other dancers as her partner relaxed in 
her arms. Every time before, she had been the one 
resting against her husband's chest without a care. She 
could hear the faint sounds of Barry singing or humming 
the songs as he snuggled against her. It was still hard 
to believe after five weeks that she was now the big 
powerful male and her husband was the relatively 
fragile female dancing with her.

His body felt so relaxed against her, and his skin so 
delicate and warm. Valerie recognized the faint scent 
of bath powder and one of her favorite perfumes as she 
held him, and realized his odor was every bit what she 
expected of a woman. He was playing the role perfectly 
although Valerie would forgive him had he balked. None 
of this could be easy for him. He hadn't had the mental 
preparation before the mind swap that she had. She'd 
had the opportunity to reinforce her own identity and 
convince herself of the need to make the exchange 
several hours before the deed was done. 

She had entered into the situation knowing the results 
beforehand and understanding the options. Barry had 
simply had the mind-swap thrust upon him and was 
unaware of what was occurring until he awoke with his 
wife's body. Regardless, he had been a good sport even 
when her workload had become more than anticipated and 
had lengthened the time they would spend in each 
other's body. He hardly complained when the morning 
sickness arrived. Valerie appreciated his good nature, 
and wondered how she could ever thank him for making 
the sacrifices he had.

She was happy that he'd agreed to come to the party 
tonight. People would see him and realize that Valerie 
was still around, and due back at the labs any day now. 
It would make her return after un-swapping that much 
easier.

They danced for several more numbers, even through a 
few up-tempo tunes. Before long, Barry could feel the 
nagging fingers of the ever-present fatigue affecting 
his stamina. He could remember nights when he and 
Valerie had danced for hours on end, but that was 
before the pregnancy. The tight heels eventually began 
to hurt his feet, so Barry decided it was time for a 
break. Valerie accepted his limits and they left the 
dance floor.

Barry sat at the secluded table while Valerie sought 
another dish of buffet food and a fresh soft drink for 
her husband. When she returned she carried another 
vodka Collins.

"They must be watering these things down this year," 
she told Barry, indicating her glass. "I'm not getting 
any alcohol buzz at all." "Think about it." Barry 
pointed at her. "That body weighs almost fifty-percent 
more than this one, not to mention that males have a 
different metabolism as far as alcohol goes. I'd guess 
you'll need twice as many cocktails to feel the same 
intoxication you did before."

"I'll drink to that!" Valerie exclaimed, brightly. She 
smiled and took a healthy swig of her drink. "It's too 
bad the doctor won't let you have alcohol, hon'. I know 
how quick a teensy little drink could make you feel 
good."

Barry frowned at the suggestion. "You know what the 
doctor said. Even without fetal alcohol syndrome, I 
wouldn't dare to drink. I'm certain I'd forget my 
limits and drink like I did when male. I don't need a 
hangover on top of morning sickness." Valerie nodded in 
mute agreement.

After they'd rested and eaten a bit and Valerie had 
finished a third cocktail, they went back to the dance 
floor. Barry even tried following Valerie's lead. As 
long as she tightly held him, he could sense the 
direction in which she would go. He didn't follow too 
badly, simply by trying to step out of her way an 
instant before she moved. 

Before long, Valerie was losing her inhibition and was 
swirling her husband around the dance floor. A positive 
thing about the liquor was that it was making her a 
little more outgoing and improving her characterization 
of a male. She wasn't very drunk, but she was getting a 
little 'glow.' It was making her speak louder and to be 
a bit more expressive. Barry silently wondered if he 
had ever acted that way when he was drinking.

When the band took a break and the couples left the 
dance floor, Valerie went to schmooze with a small 
cluster of the other researchers from her department. 
Barry seized the opportunity to visit the restroom.

He was surprised when he got to the ladies room and 
found a short queue waiting for a free stall. He'd 
never encountered a line in the men's room; guys were 
in and out and there was always a stall or urinal free. 
As he stood there inside the door of the lavatory, he 
studied the situation. Each of the women seemed to take 
a lot longer doing their business. Of course, they had 
to do a lot more than thread a part of their anatomy 
out of a zipper before they could start. 

Barry knew how much of a production it was to lift and 
hold a dress and lower pantyhose and underwear, having 
been female for a month. He imagined that a few of the 
women were also taking the opportunity to change their 
sanitary pads or tampons, and that of course took time. 
There was no equivalent to a urinal in this place, 
either, and that sharply reduced the number of 
locations for women to relieve themselves. Everything 
here conspired against efficiency. Barry could feel his 
bladder pressure rising as he waited, so he more 
tightly clamped his thighs together and increasingly 
longed for his normal male body.

Besides the women in the stalls and those in line 
waiting for an available toilet, there were several 
women seated at the long mirror and table against one 
wall fixing their makeup. Barry glanced at his 
reflection in the huge mirror right before he entered a 
stall and realized that he might need to touch up his 
own lipstick, later.

He quickly pulled his dress up then his hosiery and 
underwear down. He drained himself, and noticed that 
there was a sharp sting as the urine fell from him. It 
hadn't been that way ever before, but there was no way 
to investigate the cause. The affected part of himself 
was out of view, and Barry did not have a mirror in his 
clutch purse. He made a note to himself to tell Valerie 
about the slight pain and she could mention it to Dr. 
Homann when she went to the next prenatal checkup. 
Maybe it was nothing, but it couldn't hurt to ask the 
doctor.

Barry vacated the stall and briefly sat at the long 
table to apply a bit of lipstick. As he carefully slid 
the ruby wax cylinder across his lips, he eavesdropped 
on a few of the conversations going on around him. In 
the men's room, there was little or no talk; guys came 
in and did their business and left. Here, there was a 
constant drone of murmured chatter, punctuated every so 
often with a giggle or feminine guffaw. Some of the 
topics were enough to bring a blush to Barry's face. 
Evidently the women next to him were discussing the 
physiques of several of the men at the party, in no 
uncertain terms.

One woman about Barry's age made a fairly outlandish 
estimate about the length and girth of the sexual 
appendage of one man. "I've never seen it, but his 
wanger has got to be a good ten inches long and two in 
diameter." Her naive comment brought shrieks of 
laughter from the women nearby.

"I say look at his shoes," an older woman confided. 
"Big feet mean big meat."

A twentyish woman, probably still a student, chimed in, 
"I always heard it was fingers that mattered. Add three 
inches in length and one in diameter to his middle 
finger."

"No, no," yet another person corrected, as she fixed 
her mascara, "It's all proportional to height. Why do 
you think basketball player's wives smile all the 
time?"

Another one sneered, "If my husband was working less 
than ten hours a week and bringing home a cool five 
million every year, I'd be smiling, too! Even if he was 
hung like a fruit fly."

"Don't you know it, girl! Besides, it's not how long or 
thick the salami is, but what he does with it that 
matters!" The women nearby laughed and giggled in 
response.

At that point, everyone seemed to have something to 
contribute and the conversation became a little hard to 
follow. Barry checked his hair and face in the mirror, 
then left the restroom to return to the party. On the 
long walk back to the ballroom, he noticed an open 
doorway into a darkened room. He could see a large 
window on the far wall and decided to check to see if 
the sky was clearing as the forecast had hinted. If the 
clouds dissipated, he could use the telescope tonight 
when he and Valerie got home. If the sky was overcast 
he would just sit at the computer in the den and write.

He walked slowly into the room, letting his eyes adjust 
to the darkness. After a moment he could see that the 
room was about the size of a classroom, and was bare 
save a small table near the window. He approached the 
window and looked out to the sky. There were breaks in 
the overcast, but still quite a few clouds. He watched 
the cottony masses drift in the moonlight, and he 
attempted to gauge whether there was a clearing trend 
or simply brief openings in the cloud cover.

Barry thought about his book as he studied the clouds. 
It seemed that the days suddenly were racing by, now 
that he had a deadline from the publisher. Barry wanted 
to get the book done on time. The fact that he was 
sleeping ten hours or more each day with the pregnancy, 
in contrast to his normal seven or eight hours sleep, 
was cutting precious time from his schedule. There was 
still plenty of time to finish writing, but Barry did 
not want to be rushed. He wished that the morning 
sickness would simply disappear as suddenly as it 
arrived, so Valerie would consent to returning things 
to normal.

Barry did not know how long he had been standing there 
staring out the window when he heard the unmistakable 
sound of deep slow breathing right behind him. He 
turned around to investigate and was confronted by a 
large hulk of a man. Barry's eyes had adjusted to the 
darkness, and could see the person clearly illuminated 
by the dim light from the window. 

The man was forty or older, well over six feet tall 
perhaps three feet away, with his pants and underwear 
around his ankles and his large erection pointing right 
at Barry. Barry gasped and tried to speak, but no words 
came out.

"Doctor Owens. Valerie," the stranger softly crooned, 
approaching and firmly pinning Barry's arms to his 
sides. "I know you feel the same way about me that I 
feel about you."

Barry tried to wrestle out of the man's grip, but was 
not strong enough. "N...no...I don't..." Barry croaked, 
finally finding his voice, but not having the energy to 
speak above a whisper. The strange man was pressing 
Barry back against the table into a reclining position. 
Barry could smell the heavy odor of alcohol on the 
man's breath. It was clear that the guy was letting the 
drinks talk for him.

Thoughts stampeded through Barry's brain. This man 
outweighed Barry by a factor of two or more and had him 
trapped in a dangerous position! Here they were in a 
dark isolated room on a lonely hallway with a loud 
party going on across the hall. There was little chance 
that anyone would hear Barry even if he screamed. Barry 
wasn't even sure he knew how to scream. No one would be 
likely to look into the darkened room, unless he made a 
commotion.

Barry tried to understand why this was happening to 
him. The man had probably seen Barry silhouetted 
against the window, had confused him with Valerie, of 
course, and had decided to make his move. It was 
obvious that the semi-nude man was intent on rape.

The man's erect member strained against Barry's tummy. 
The tip of the penis was purple and swollen, and even 
in the dim light from the window the veins along its 
length were visible. Barry could not help thinking 
about the conversation in the ladies room. If what one 
woman said about things being proportional was true, 
this huge fellow had probably a size advantage on 
Valerie in all aspects. Would the attacker succeed in 
raping Barry? Would the fellow get violent? Would there 
be pain? What about the fetus? And what would Valerie 
think about him getting himself into this predicament? 

"I saw the way you looked at me tonight," the man 
continued, pressing his face closer.

Barry could not remember even glancing at this fellow. 
"I... no... it's..." Barry babbled, in a hoarse 
whisper.

"Oh, yes. I saw. You want me, don't you?" the fellow 
pressed forward more insistently, and began pawing at 
the hem of Barry's skirt. Barry fought to escape, but 
could not. His legs were pinned against the table by 
the large man's greater mass, so he couldn't even kick 
in defense. The attacker roughly pressed his lips 
against Barry's. Barry knew that it would take only 
seconds for the more powerful man to force his way 
between Barry's legs. It might be only a moment before 
the drunken fellow would pull the pantyhose and 
underwear away, then forcefully plunge...

"Harold!" an woman's authoritative voice indignantly 
shouted from the doorway. The man's features stiffened. 
"Rachel!" he cursed under his breath. "She always finds 
me."

"Harold Demsby! Release that woman right now!"

The man stood away and loosed Barry's arms. Barry 
scuttled away to a safe distance as Harold stooped to 
pull up his pants. A well-dressed woman in her late 
thirties stepped closer to where Barry stood. "I'm 
terribly sorry, dear," the woman soothed. "My husband 
gets like this when he's been drinking. I usually keep 
a better eye on him, but he just got away from me 
tonight. He didn't hurt you did he?"

"No..." Barry admitted, straightening his skirt and 
pulling a strand of hair out of his eyes. "I... I'm all 
right...I think. A little frightened, that's all." 
Barry was surprised at the trembling in his voice and 
his own admission of fear, but he really had been 
scared that Harold was about to rape him. As Barry 
thought about the situation, he was disappointed in his 
own helplessness.

Rachel smiled at Barry. "Harold is mostly harmless. 
After a few drinks, he gets to thinking that he's every 
woman's dream." She turned to Harold and spoke sharply. 
"Apologize to this young woman, now, Harold!"

Harold looked up from fastening his belt, a task made 
more difficult by the alcoholic fog. "I... I'm sorry, 
Valerie... I... er... hope I didn't hurt you..."

"Is your name Valerie?" Rachel asked Barry almost 
conversationally. "Would you be Valerie Owens?"

"Yes," Barry responded, maintaining the persona of his 
spouse.

The woman smiled at him. "I'm Rachel Demsby. We've 
never met, but I've heard good things about you from 
the review board. The research you're doing is 
generating very positive press for our institute at 
other universities." 

The sudden turn of the conversation caught him off-
guard. Barry was pleased with the compliment, even 
though it was his wife that had done everything.

"Thank you." he responded in Valerie's behalf.

Rachel fixed her husband with a stern gaze. "We're 
going home now, Harold. Get our coats and meet me at 
the door." Harold slunk out of the darkened room. As 
Rachel ushered Barry to the hallway, she resumed her 
conversation. "I've also heard that your husband has 
graciously volunteered to fill in for you at the 
institute for a few weeks."

"Yes," Barry answered. "I've been a little run down 
lately. We're having a baby, you see..."

Rachel looked at Barry for a moment and smiled at him. 
"A baby. Congratulations! How nice that your husband is 
qualified to carry on your work."

Barry wondered if he'd said the wrong thing. He didn't 
want to give Val's co-workers any reason to lose 
confidence in her ability to fulfill the terms of the 
grant. "I'll be back in the lab real soon, though," he 
offered, brightly. "I feel like it's been far too long 
already."

The woman nodded in agreement. "I know the feeling. A 
few years back, I was heading a research project when 
my first child was conceived. It was impossible for me 
to put in the requisite eighteen hour days in the later 
stages of my pregnancy. I had to yield my grant to 
someone else and apply again after Phillip was born. I 
was itching to get back to the lab every day." She 
sighed. "But what can you do? You want the baby, but 
you can't get someone else carry it to term while you 
build your career."

Barry averted his eyes, knowing that his expression 
would only invite Rachel to ask questions. If she 
discovered the secret shared by Valerie and him, she 
would be amazed. He forced a laugh. "I know what you 
mean," he said, not actually knowing what she meant.

Rachel took Barry's hand in hers and looked him in the 
eyes. "Now, I would appreciate it if you don't mention 
the little incident back there with Harold to anyone. 
You know how something like this could get blown out of 
proportion. He's a good man as long as he doesn't 
imbibe, and tomorrow morning he won't remember any of 
this. We'll just make this our little secret, eh?"

Barry nodded dumbly then watched as Rachel joined 
Harold at the front door and both stepped out into the 
night. Why had he agreed to Rachel's terms? Now he had 
another secret to keep. Lovely.

The band had re-assembled to play the set leading up to 
midnight when Barry re-entered the ballroom. Valerie 
came to him almost immediately. "What's the matter?" 
she asked.

"Huh?" Barry responded dully.

"Something is wrong," Valerie said simply. "The pupils 
in your eyes are absolutely huge, like you're in shock 
or something. And you're quaking like a leaf. Now, 
what's happened?"

Barry pulled her into the corner away from most of the 
other people. "Val, I was just nearly raped," he 
whispered, and slumped into a chair.

"You were what!?" she shouted, although her protest was 
effectively muffled by the noise of the party.

"Calm down," Barry urged in a low voice. He looked up 
at Valerie standing near his chair. "I'm okay, I think. 
Some guy got too many drinks in him and started coming 
on to me, and had a little bit of a weight and strength 
advantage."

Valerie began looking around the room. "Who was it? 
What did he do? As long as we're swapped, and I'm the 
one with the muscles, I think I know how to defend your 
honor. I'll knock whoever it was into next week. Just 
point him out."

"He's gone, Val. His wife caught him, literally with 
his pants down, before he did anything more than scare 
me. She took him home to dry out. Rachel said he's 
harmless."

Valerie stopped ranting and faced Barry. Her expression 
had changed from one of outrage to one of worry. 
"Rachel? Late thirties? High Class? Bleached hair?"

"Yeah, I guess that's her."

"Rachel Demsby?" Valerie asked.

"I think that's her name. The guy was Harvey or 
something."

"Harold Demsby?"

"Yeah," Barry responded. "That's it. Harold. Heavyset 
but tall. Kinda distinguished looking in a smarmy sort 
of way."

Valerie thought for a moment. "Did Rachel recognize 
you? Did she connect you with the name Valerie?"

Barry paused to recollect. "She mentioned something 
about your research. She's heard about you, but 
apparently hadn't, until tonight that is, put this face 
with your name. She also mentioned she's familiar with 
our arrangement."

"The mind swap?" Valerie asked, her eyes going wide. 
"My God! How could she know?"

"No," Barry explained, "she knows about the way that 
'Barry' is substituting for 'Valerie' at the labs and 
delivering your lectures. Our little mind-exchange 
secret is still secure."

Valerie sat down suddenly and propped her forehead in 
her hand "Oh this is absolutely swell. You got 
assaulted by the labs research director, essentially my 
boss, Doctor H. Gillingford Demsby. His wife Rachel is 
chair of the grant oversight committee. Between them, 
they decide who does research and who gets grant money 
at the institute."

"So?" 

Valerie frowned. "So, now I can't propose a risky 
project or ask for a dime in additional grants without 
it looking like some sort of blackmail." Valerie stared 
off into the distance for several seconds.

"It's all my fault, you know," she said suddenly. "I'd 
heard the rumors about horny old Harold, and I didn't 
warn you. Every girl on campus knows to steer clear of 
him particularly when he's been drinking. I just never 
thought about telling you. I'm sorry. Can you forgive 
me?"

Barry looked into Valerie's eyes and could see that she 
was feeling a lot of the responsibility for what 
happened to him. As he considered her feelings toward 
him he could sense his own fright moderating. He leaned 
in to speak tenderly into her ear. "It's not your 
fault, and even if I knew about the guy, I couldn't 
have stopped him. He sneaked up behind me, and before I 
knew what was happening he was naked and trying to get 
under my skirt."

"Didn't you scream or anything?" Valerie asked.

"My voice wouldn't cooperate," Barry admitted. "I don't 
think I know how to scream. No one would have heard me 
anyway."

Valerie just stared at Barry, wondering if she could 
believe his excuse about not screaming.

Barry swallowed hard. "It was pretty scary, Val. I was 
imagining all sorts of disgusting things. There was 
this big guy pinning me against a table, just itching 
to get his prick into me." "You saw it? I mean, you 
said he was naked?"

Barry wondered a moment about the question. "Yes," he 
replied, finally, and tried to force the ugly 
recollection out of his mind.

Valerie lowered her voice in volume and pitch. "So, was 
he... big?"

"You've seen him. He's almost six and a half feet tall, 
Val!"

"I mean," Valerie reiterated with a smirk, "big... You 
know..." She pointed to the zipper on her trousers.

"Oh! You mean..."

"You're the first person I've met who's seen it," 
Valerie confided.

Barry looked away to collect his thoughts and when his 
eyes once again met hers he replied, "I don't really 
remember. It seemed bigger than mine... er... yours. 
It's hard to make rational evaluations of cock size 
when you're scared out of your wits."

Valerie pulled her husband into a hug and consoled him 
as they embraced, "well, it's over now, Bar'. And I'm 
just glad that you're okay."

Barry started laughing now that the last of the fear 
had left him. Here he was being comforted by his wife 
about a near rape. Without the mind-swap, it should 
have been him showing the impassive strength and 
Valerie being the one needing reassurance and support, 
but it wasn't. The utter strangeness of the situation 
made it comical in many respects. 

"Besides," Barry clarified as they hugged, "the only 
hard-on I've ever seen is my own. I've never really 
been much of a connoisseur, if you get my drift. And I 
heard in the ladies room that size doesn't count, 
anyway. It's what you do with it that matters." A brief 
giggle punctuated the statement.

Valerie pulled her head back from their embrace to 
briefly study her husband's features, to kiss him, hug 
him once more and to laugh at his gallows humor. His 
facial expression no longer showed the stress it had a 
few minutes ago. At least he was smiling and seemed to 
be getting over his shock.

The party continued around them. Barry and Valerie 
eventually joined the crush of couples on the dance 
floor as midnight approached. The music was almost 
therapeutic as it helped Barry clear his mind of the 
recent incident. Part of the way through one of the 
tunes, the band stopped and the leader began a short 
countdown to the new year.

The crowd joined into the count. "Four!... 
Three!...Two!... One!... Happy New Year!" Valerie 
planted a forceful kiss on her husband's lips amid 
squawking noisemakers and as colorful streamers and 
balloons fell all around them. The band struck up "Auld 
Lang Syne", and the new year officially began.


CHAPTER 17
FIVE WEEKS

Barry was still female two days later when the next 
prenatal checkup was scheduled. On this visit he was 
mentally prepared for the internal exam, and didn't 
feel particularly embarrassed by it. Perhaps it was the 
fact that he'd already been through a gynecological 
exam once before and now knew what to expect. Maybe he 
was starting to feel more comfortable with this body 
after five weeks, in comparison to the single week of 
womanhood the last time he came to the clinic. Back 
then, the doctor had been only the third person after 
Valerie and himself to see his naked female form. 

Now that he'd been to the health club more than a dozen 
times, and been seen undressed by hundreds of women, he 
was a lot less self-conscious. Although he was far from 
nonchalant about the internal examination, he was much 
less tense than last time. Now that he had time to 
consider, he was inwardly pleased that the obstetrician 
was a woman. It would have been very unsettling to let 
a guy touch him 'down there'. 

He reclined on the examination table with his legs in 
the stirrups and his derriere hanging in midair off the 
end of the paper strip. A blue paper surgical drape was 
hung over his knees and down to his navel so Barry 
could see nothing below his waist. Doctor Homann was 
sitting on a roll-around chair somewhere near his feet.

Although he could see nothing, Barry could feel the 
gynecologist adjusting the speculum as she looked up 
inside him. He could hear her making a few notes on the 
chart before looking at him again.

"Goot! You are doing zo goot!" the doctor said 
cheerfully in her thick Austrian accent. She turned off 
the gooseneck examination lamp, slowly removed the 
speculum from his vagina. "Ze baby is seven or eight 
weeks along, now. Are you feeling any bloating?"

Barry fidgeted slightly. "I don't fit into some tight 
clothes anymore," he answered.

"Zat is normal," Doctor Homann confirmed. "Wear some 
loose dresses, ja? Your weight is very goot...low but 
goot, und you zeem okay. Tell me, Valerie: how is ze 
nausea?"

"I'm still barfing my guts out every morning," Barry 
related. 

"Will I be doing that much longer?"

Doctor Homann shrugged. "Only time will tell. Every 
pregnancy is different. I could prescribe a sedative 
that might reduce the effect, but it will make you very 
drowsy and you could only use it for a week even if ze 
nausea lasted longer. Believe me, it is best just to 
wait for ze morning sickness to go away on its own. Is 
there any other questions?"

Barry paused for a moment before replying. He had 
always been a little uneasy talking about his body, 
particularly about intimate subjects. Discussing parts 
of a body that actually belonged to his wife was even 
more disconcerting. "Er... doctor... I can't... er... 
recently I have been getting a burning sensation when I 
take... er... go... er... urinate."

"I zee," Doctor Homann commented solemnly, before 
turning the examination lamp on and ducking her head 
behind the surgical drape again. He felt her latex-
gloved fingers parting his labia.

A while later she lifted the table up under Barry's 
bottom, and helped him remove his legs from the 
stirrups. She rolled her chair over to the desk and 
pulled off her gloves. "You may get dressed now, 
Valerie," she announced.

Barry rolled off the table and stepped behind the 
partition to dress as the doctor scribbled notations in 
the chart. When he had donned his clothes and emerged 
from behind the curtain, she handed him a two 
prescriptions.

"You haff a slight yeast infection. Vun prescription is 
for an ointment to reduce ze itching, und ze other is 
for a anti-yeast treatment."

"Yeast?" Barry asked, attempting to make sense of the 
term. "Did I catch it from someone?"

"Possibly," the doctor answered. "Ze vaginal opening is 
ze perfect place for bacteria und yeast to grow: varm, 
dark, und moist. Get vun little spore und zoon you haff 
a few hundred sousand of them. A change in diet can 
bring zis on. Zometimes the infection begins 
zpontaneously. Zometimes a woman using antibiotics 
triggers an outbreak in her own body. It is even 
possible to be infected from your partner during sexual 
relations. I vant you to use zis treatment three times 
a day for a week und use natural fiber undervear. 
Cotton. Silk. Ja?. Ze synthetics promote bacterial 
growth and slow the cure. Use the anti-itch cream as 
needed, ja?"

"Okay," Barry agreed, imagining his genital crevice 
slathered with the ointment. He was still oozing the 
jelly lubricant that the doctor had used on the 
speculum, and reasoned the feeling would be much like 
he felt right now.

"Und no intercourse for a week, ja? You could giff your 
partner ze infection und he'll giff it right back to 
you before you're cured," the doctor warned with a 
stern expression.

"No sex for a week," Barry reiterated, glumly. "I 
understand."

"Not tonight?!" Valerie whined, as she lay facing him 
in bed. "What's the matter, Barry?" she teased, "Are 
you going to use the traditional headache canard?"

Barry snuggled his bare chest against Valerie's, and 
pressed his warm tits into the hair of her chest, 
feeling the tickle of the thousands of rough strands 
against his nipples. "I saw Doctor Homann again today," 
he told her. "She says I have a yeast infest... 
infection, and that we shouldn't...er... be intimate... 
until it goes away in about a week."

Valerie hugged him. "I know what you mean about yeast 
infections, hon'. Been there. Done that. It's no fun; 
what with the goopy creams and the itching, stinging 
feeling in that tender place. You do what the doctor 
says. I guess I'll just have to throttle back my 
libido, and wait a week or so until you're open for 
business again."

"Thanks for understanding," Barry replied and kissed 
her.

"Besides the yeast, how did the checkup go?" Valerie 
asked with obvious interest.

"She says this body is healthy, as is the baby, and she 
still has no idea how long I'll be nauseous. I'm just 
hoping that next month you'll be the one seeing Doctor 
Homann instead of me. You'll like her."

"I probably will," Valerie agreed.


CHAPTER 18
VALENTINES DAY

Valentine's Day was cold and crisp. It was just after 
dawn when Barry awoke and dutifully emptied his stomach 
contents into the toilet. The process of vomiting after 
awakening was becoming boring and perfunctory and 
almost more drudgery than uncomfortable or disgusting. 
It wasn't enjoyable by any measure, but at least it was 
something that Barry knew would last only a few 
minutes. Most times, he felt perfectly fine a half hour 
after waking.

Barry rubbed his bare and slightly bulging pelvis and 
thought about the child inside him. He wasn't sure why, 
but every time he reflected on the miracle of the baby, 
it brought him such peace. He had enjoyed the idea of 
having a child from the moment Valerie gave him the 
news, and the mind swap had not diminished that 
enthusiasm. The exchange of consciousnesses had, if 
anything, intensified Barry's desire to be a parent. He 
wondered if he would have wanted a pregnancy at all if 
he had been born a female instead of male. 

He realized that in the nearly three months since 
Thanksgiving he'd not had one negative thought about 
the pregnancy. He'd welcomed the sensations and even 
tolerated the morning sickness as inevitable. Barry 
wondered how he would feel, though, without the 
knowledge that Valerie would be returning to her body 
before the delivery. She would be the one whose belly 
slowly distended, the one with the back aches, the one 
eventually getting contractions and experiencing labor 
pain. 

Normally, a pregnant person had no escape mechanism, 
and knew the customary end to a pregnancy was several 
hours of hell. Knowing that, a normal woman might be 
more apprehensive, but Barry was aware that his days of 
pregnancy were truly numbered. It wouldn't be his 
problem once the daily nausea ended, and Valerie un-
swapped their minds.

He brushed his teeth and used mouthwash to rinse away 
the acid taste from the vomiting that morning. He took 
a few of the vitamins that were in the medicine 
cabinet, too.

He stepped back into the bedroom and slipped under the 
warm covers next to his sleeping wife. Valerie was 
breathing slowly, and lying on her back. Barry gingerly 
reached between her legs and traced the outlines of her 
erection through the covers. He remembered the 
countless mornings so long ago, when he awakened with 
his manhood proudly projecting from his groin. Since 
puberty he'd fantasized that his girlfriend or wife 
would wake up aroused and would couple with him before 
he was fully awake. 

He now knew from personal experience that women 
virtually never awoke already turned on. It took a lot 
of careful stimulation to bring a female to a level of 
arousal similar to an awakening male. The odds that a 
woman would wake up horny and ready for action were on 
the low side of slim to none.

As he thought about Valerie lying there, he sensed his 
nipples swelling and stiffening against the sheets. He 
cupped a hand over one of his breasts and gently 
kneaded the tender protrusion of his nipple. The touch 
of his fingers was nice and gentle, as he slowly 
caressed himself. He could tell that the engorged 
tissues of his labia were beginning to spread as his 
vagina was preparing for penetration, encouraged by his 
fingering of his breast. Barry cast another glance at 
the tented blanket where Valerie's legs met. 

She might never have fulfilled his adolescent fantasy, 
but perhaps he could enjoy giving her the experience. 
Barry gently pulled the covers off Valerie and slid the 
sheet away from her. She was wearing nothing, as was 
normal, and now her cock pointed upward from among dark 
wiry pubic hair. Barry carefully straddled her body 
facing her head and avoided touching any part of her 
for as long as he could. His knees were astride her 
lower ribs, and his abdomen was poised over hers. He 
reached underneath himself and gently lifted her pecker 
into a more upright position before sinking down upon 
her. Valerie's rigid member slid effortlessly into his 
very slick pussy.

"Ooooh!" he more breathed than spoke, as the last of 
her cock entered him, and his labia were crushed 
against the tickly hairs surrounding her genitalia. He 
looked down at his abdomen and could see a slight bulge 
below his navel where the rock-hard column inside him 
attempted to poke through his pelvis. Barry slowly 
dropped his weight upon Valerie's body and began 
rocking gently against her to stimulate himself. As he 
did this, Valerie's eyes slitted open.

"Enjoying yourself?" she asked in a tone of groggy 
sarcasm.

"You bet!" he softly but emphatically replied, with a 
pleased smile. "Good morning, dear, and happy 
Valentine's Day." He leaned down and gently kissed her 
on the lips. He kissed quickly to avoid the itchy 
whisker stubble on her chin and upper lip.

When the kiss ended and Barry had resumed his upright 
posture, he shimmied so that Valerie penetrated even 
further. She grinned at her husband's randy antics and 
asked, "is this something new, or have I been sleeping 
through these encounters the last few months?"

Barry smiled down at her and replied, "consider this a 
Valentine treat, dear. I will. Maybe we can send you 
off to the labs with a smile on your face, today."

"Just loving you makes me smile, Barry." Valerie 
grinned, and she began tilting her pelvis to add 
another element to their motion. "You were asleep last 
night... or I guess you'd say early this morning... 
when I finally got home."

"I know I'm usually awake to greet you, but I was at 
the accountant most of the day yesterday preparing our 
taxes and got really tuckered out," he told her.

Valerie raised her hands to Barry's breasts and 
sensually massaged them as she continued. "I wanted to 
talk to you last night. Yesterday, a bit of an 
emergency came up at the institute."

"Emergency?"

Valerie took a deep breath. "Roger Larkspur, the 
institute liaison to the National Energy Commission, 
injured his back on a skiing trip and I got tagged to 
present the grant review material in front of the 
Commission."

Barry stopped his slow rocking motion and concentrated 
his gaze on Valerie. "What does that mean?"

Valerie moistened her lips. "Well, honey, it means I 
have to fly to Washington for two or three days of 
hearings."

Barry frowned. "Val!"

"I couldn't help it, Bar'," she apologized. "I was the 
only full-time staff researcher who wasn't already 
committed to be somewhere else this week. I have to be 
at the airport before ten this morning."

"Today? On Valentine's Day?"

"I'm sorry, dear," Valerie replied. 

Barry leaned forward and off of his wife. He was no 
longer focused on making love, and from the obvious 
shriveling of Valerie's penis, neither was she. Barry 
curled up on his side of the mattress.

Valerie stretched and yawned as she looked at Barry, 
huddled up on the other side of the bed. "Barry? Are 
you okay?" she asked, quietly.

"Yes," his muffled voice replied. Valerie could tell by 
the tone of his answer and the gentle sniffling sound 
that followed, that he was not okay. She crawled up 
behind him and gently rubbed his shoulder.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

Barry turned to face her. "It's our first Valentine's 
Day as husband and wife," he explained. The teardrops 
were clearly gathering along his lower lids.

"I know," she answered in a deep whisper. "I'll make it 
up to you. I promise. I'll even bring you something 
nice from Washington."

"Hmmmph!" Barry snorted and turned away from her again. 
He stayed in bed until Valerie had showered, dressed, 
packed, and left in an airport taxi. He didn't even 
kiss her goodbye. 

Barry lifted the telephone on the third ring. "Hello?" 
he asked warily. The telemarketers were becoming more 
and more aggressive, and he was in no mood to deal with 
them now that the monthly cramps and bloating had 
descended with a vengeance. Besides, he simply didn't 
have a very commanding voice to intimidate them right 
back. 

"Hey, there!" a male voice shouted on the other end of 
the line. 

"Valerie. Am I right?" 

Barry recognized the voice as Warren Pease. "Er... 
yes."

"Hi! Listen, kitten. Is Barry around? This is Warren, 
Barry's agent. I really need to talk with him."

Warren never called unless there was something that 
needed Barry's attention urgently. "Er...he's not here 
right now," Barry fibbed, "but I might be able to get a 
message to him." Close associate or not, pigs would fly 
before Barry would ever tell him about the mind-swap.

Warren paused and eventually responded. "Okay, here's 
the message. Tell him I have an educators conference in 
Detroit looking for a scientific banquet speaker. I was 
hoping he could fly out there and give his usual 
astronomy talk, show his slides, and charm the hell out 
of them."

Barry swallowed, realizing that it might be weeks 
before Valerie would be ready to give him back his 
body. Maybe this speaking engagement was far enough in 
the future. 

Barry cleared his throat. "Tell me, Warren: when would 
you want m... er... Barry in Detroit?"

"That's the problem, honey," Warren replied. "It seems 
that some television science program host canceled at 
the last minute. The conference organizers are 
desperate, and willing to pay top dollar: twenty grand, 
airfare, overnight lodging, and a rubber chicken dinner 
for a one hour talk. They want someone for their 
banquet tonight."

Barry could feel the color drain from his face. Twenty 
grand was more than twice his normal speaking fee. But, 
tonight? There was no way that Valerie could get home 
from Washington and restore him to his body in time to 
catch a flight to Detroit. She was probably still in 
the air on the way to Washington. Barry had no choice 
but to turn Warren and the money down. "Tonight? 
Er...Warren? I'm sorry, but Barry is already out of 
town on business and not availa..."

"I'm frantic," Warren interrupted. "I don't get offers 
like this for my clients every day. Look... Do you know 
if Barry has any astronomer buddies at that institute 
he comes from? Somebody I could get that might hold the 
interest of a bunch of teachers and community college 
professors with a one-hour science speech?"

Barry took a deep breath and silently said a prayer 
before replying. "Well, Warren, I have a doctorate from 
the institute. I know where Barry keeps the tray of 
slides and I worked on the talk he normally gives. I 
even know just how he delivers it. I could fill in for 
him... if that's all right."

"All right?" Warren enthused. "It's perfect! Sweetie-
pie, you just made my day! Let me get things together. 
You get packed and to the airport before noon. The 
flight is at twelve thirty. Barnes Air. The tickets 
will be waiting in your name, and I'll have a courier 
meet you at the ticket counter with the contract. 
Deal?"

"Deal," Barry said emphatically.

"Hi Barry!" Valerie exclaimed a few days later as she 
came in the front door. She dropped her luggage as her 
husband hugged her and quickly kissed her. "I missed 
you. Did you miss me?" she asked, as she hugged him 
tightly in return. It felt so nice to be home again and 
to feel his soft curves pressing against her.

"To be totally honest, I didn't miss you as much as I 
thought I would," Barry replied, lingering in her 
embrace.

Valerie pulled back from him and frowned. "You're not 
still mad at me for missing Valentines Day, are you? I 
brought you a few things from the Smithsonian gift 
shop."

Barry gave her an enigmatic smile. "No. It's just that 
I got so busy in Detroit that I lost all track of 
time."

"Detroit? What were you doing in Detroit?" she asked, 
now curious.

"Warren... my agent, called and wanted an astronomy 
speaker at a banquet. You weren't here to fill the 
engagement in my place or to un-swap us, so I did my 
vintage Barry Owens stars and comets speech, in a 
slightly different package." Barry extended his arms in 
a dramatic flourish.

Valerie laughed. "If anyone could give that talk, it 
would be you."

"I borrowed a few of your business outfits for the 
trip. I hope you don't mind."

Valerie grinned in admiration of his pluck. "No 
problem. You found some that still fit? Even with 
your...?" She gestured at her own abdomen.

"They were tight, and I had to suck in my gut a lot," 
Barry admitted, "but they fit. Besides, I'm not that 
huge, yet."

"Did you get your regular speaking fee?"

"No," Barry told her. "Since this was a scheduling 
crisis, they needed someone in a hurry. They paid even 
more. Twenty grand, minus Warren's ten percent. And, 
they paid the airfare, my hotel and gave me dinner at 
the banquet. But that's not all that happened on the 
trip."

"Let me guess," Valerie said with an amused expression. 
"You had to single-handedly land the airliner yourself 
when the entire flight crew was overcome by poison 
gas."

"No," Barry smirked at her attempt at one-upsmanship. 
"But several women educators heard my talk and I ended 
up staying a few more days in Detroit to speak to girl 
scout troops, high-school assemblies and women's 
engineering societies. I was even on a five minute 
segment on a Detroit television morning show. I heard 
the term 'female role model' more than once."

"Barry," Valerie chided, "wasn't that a little 
dishonest? After all, you're not really a woman."

"Am too," he said thrusting out his breasts at her.

"You are not!" Valerie countered. "You're only female 
temporarily. It's not the same! You didn't have to 
battle the inequities that women have to. You had it 
easy as a man. We women have to dig and scratch for 
years and work harder than any of the guys."

Barry reached over to the table and held up a plaque 
for Valerie to read. He intoned: "It says here: 'In 
recognition of achievements as an inspiration to women 
in science.'"

Valerie's eyes scanned past the part Barry had spoken, 
and she read aloud: "This honor is conferred upon Dr. 
Valerie Owens, Ph. D."

Barry smiled at his wife as a perplexed smile came to 
her lips. 

"That's your name," Barry told her. "This was awarded 
to you."

"What?" Valerie asked, in stunned amazement.

"Except for the banquet speech which is the same old 
astronomy talk I've given a zillion times before, I 
represented myself as you. When I went to the scout 
troops and the meetings of the female engineers, I was 
Doctor Valerie Owens, engineering researcher. I 
discussed the challenges of women in engineering and 
science careers. I based what I told them on the things 
you've told me, and my own experiences of the last few 
months. So the award is for your achievements. Not 
mine." Barry handed the plaque to her.

Valerie re-read the inscription and when she looked up 
she had tears in her eyes. She hugged her husband 
again. "How do you do this?" she asked with obvious 
admiration. "Every time I get upset with you, you turn 
my resentment back on me and make me ashamed of my 
outburst." Valerie read the plaque one more time to be 
certain it was not a dream. She hugged Barry. "You're 
incredible. I love you for your unselfish kindness and 
patience."

"I love you, too, Val," Barry told her. "I missed you 
while you were gone." He cupped his hand over the bulge 
in her groin, and felt the familiar stirrings of a male 
sexual response against his hand. "Why don't we get out 
of these clothes so I can show you just how much I 
missed you?"

Barry dug through the boxes in the garage, looking for 
the Corvette service manuals. He'd put most of the 
automotive stuff out here rather than in the bookcases 
in the library or den. In one of the cartons he found a 
stack of old Playboy magazines from the subscription 
he'd had as a bachelor. He hadn't remembered that he'd 
kept these issues, and apparently Val hadn't discovered 
them during one of her cleaning expeditions either.

He opened one of the magazines and flipped immediately 
to the gatefold. Barry turned the magazine sideways and 
let the pages unfold to the full length. The woman 
pictured there was facing the camera, and displaying 
those elements of her anatomy that made her undeniably 
female. Barry looked at the picture for a long time and 
waited for his body to react with arousal. 

The woman was a gorgeous brunette with a tiny waist and 
the trademark ample bosom so many centerfolds 
possessed. Her expression, like most of the models, 
seemed to be one of quiet pride in her nakedness rather 
than shame or disgust. Barry thought he'd heard once 
that the Playmates got a nice five figure fee for 
posing in that prestigious part of the magazine. No 
wonder they were smiling.

He flipped to other pages with more airbrushed photos 
of nude or nearly-nude models. He kept waiting for his 
nipples to stiffen or for the telltale moistening of 
his vaginal slit, but those responses never came.

"Maybe standing in a cold dark garage is the wrong 
environment," Barry told himself. "That's it."

He brought the a few of the magazines inside the house, 
and looked through them as he brewed a cup of coffee. 
Most of the pictures were a little silly, if you took 
time to analyze them. What woman would run around 
outdoors wearing nothing while she washed her car? 
Barry had never met a woman who wanted to be in public 
without clothes, and yet, here were women in hammocks, 
or among redwoods, wearing little more than a smile or 
an occasional diaphanous scarf. Even the interior shots 
were preposterous. 

Women were draped over various pieces of furniture in 
contrived poses obviously designed to emphasize their 
bustline or expose their genitalia. All he could think 
of while looking at the pictures was how uncomfortable 
the models must have been to be photographed like that.

Barry carried the cup of steaming coffee to the living 
room and set it on the coffee table. He sat on the 
floor and spread the magazines out around him. He found 
a few pictures that eventually began to stir his lust, 
so he spent more time looking at those. Those that 
affected him most had men in the scenes with the women. 
There were photos of women in showers with men and 
cuddling with guys next to a fire. 

The men were always discreetly positioned behind the 
women so that there was no explicit photography of the 
male organs, but the photos suggested that the men were 
completely nude. The women in those pictures were 
visibly naked, and always had expressions of pleasure 
on their faces, as if the men were saying and doing 
things that stimulated each woman's libido.

Barry had been looking at one set of pictures for a 
while before he caught himself with his hand between 
his own legs, lightly stroking himself. He snatched his 
hand away and guiltily closed the magazines. Before 
long, he had buried them back in the carton in the 
garage.

The first sensations were so gentle, that Barry wasn't 
sure exactly what they were. It wasn't until he was 
lying on his back in bed with his hand resting below 
his navel, that he felt the movement against his palm 
and from inside himself simultaneously. He immediately 
knew what it was and felt his heart soar. He was 
feeling the baby moving!

Barry was ecstatic. Finally, there was proof beyond the 
hormonal evidence that he really was pregnant! Twice 
more that day, Barry felt the tiny thump of movement 
against his tummy wall. He wanted to call Valerie at 
the lab and tell her the news, but decided to wait 
until the movement was stronger and he was sure she 
would be able to feel it for herself. Perhaps in a day 
or two he would tell her.

***

The next obstetrician visit was a week later, and after 
the examination, Barry told Doctor Homann that he could 
already feel some movement.

"Zat is goot!" she exclaimed. "Zat means ze baby is 
active." She paused for a moment. "Lie back on ze table 
a moment," she suggested.

Barry did as she directed, and Doctor Homann brought 
something to his side that looked like one of those 
stereos that joggers wear. She asked Barry to bare his 
pelvis, so Barry squirmed on the examination table to 
lower his waistband and pulled his blouse up under his 
breasts. Doctor Homann placed a thin disc wired to the 
'stereo' over the same area where Barry had felt the 
movement. She adjusted a few controls on the electronic 
gadget and moved the disc slightly to the left and 
right. After a moment or two, a rapid fluid surging 
sound issued from a speaker on the device.

"Zat is ze baby's heartbeat," Doctor Homann pronounced 
with a broad smile.

Barry's smile mirrored hers. "The baby?"

"Ja!" Doctor Homann confirmed. "Even so early, zat is a 
good strong heartbeat."

Barry felt the tears of happiness flowing down his 
face. 


CHAPTER 19
HOMESICK

Another teardrop silently splashed into the carpet near 
where Barry's feet were completely sheathed in the 
material of the long trouser legs. His hands were 
similarly swaddled in the cuffs of the oversize dress 
shirt as he grappled with the enormous waistband of the 
pants. Even in his pregnant condition, the pants that 
fit his male frame were loose about his middle. 

Barry looked up at his reflection in the full length 
mirror. His red, swollen eyes stared back from a face 
that, even devoid of makeup, looked too feminine and 
delicate for his liking. Barry's long blond tresses 
were pulled back into a ponytail that was gathered at 
his neck. From the front, his austere hairline appeared 
more manly, but not manly enough. The necktie looked 
almost comical fastened under the starched collar that 
loosely ringed his slender neck. The voluminous shirt 
hung on his slight frame, the bulges of his breasts 
unable to adequately fill the chest of the garment, 
while his slightly swollen belly was hidden by the 
excess fabric of shirt and baggy pants.

He couldn't even remember why he'd thought trying on 
his old clothes was a good idea. It served only to 
remind him of the difference between this female body 
and his considerably larger male one.

"You look adorable," came a deep voice from the bedroom 
doorway.

Barry turned quickly to face Valerie who'd been 
silently observing him. "I didn't hear you come in," he 
told her. He blushed, knowing that Valerie could easily 
see that he was upset and had been crying. He wiped the 
tears from his cheek with the heel of his palm.

Valerie came to Barry and wrapped her muscular arms 
around him. As he returned the hug, the loose trousers 
he'd been holding up fell to a heap around his ankles. 
"Why the tears, honey?" she asked.

"I'm homesick for my old body, Val," he explained with 
a slight catch in his voice. He was trying hard not to 
let his emotions overwhelm him. "I thought that trying 
on my male clothes might help me cope, but..."

Valerie looked down at the way the shirt fit on him, 
virtually obscuring his curves and the loose sleeves 
extending nearly to the end of his fingers. She glanced 
floorward to the pants fallen into a crumpled pile on 
the carpet, and chuckled slightly. "Hey, mister, your 
trousers seem a little loose," she joked.

Barry looked up into her smile. "Do you really think 
so?" he half sniffled, and half giggled. "How about 
this, then?" he asked, raising the hem of the shirt to 
breast-level.

Valerie stepped back to look at his middle and saw that 
he was wearing a pair of white cotton male briefs. In 
spite of the increase in his girth from the advance of 
pregnancy, he'd been forced to use paperclips to gather 
the waistband of the underwear to keep them from 
sliding off his slender hips. She tried not to laugh, 
as she gestured at the crotch of the underwear and 
asked, "Do you get much support from those?" 

Barry released the shirt and pulled Valerie close, He 
answered softly and seductively, "I get all the support 
I need." Then he kissed her. He stepped out of the 
fallen trousers and backed toward the bed, towing 
Valerie with him. She realized what was happening, 
quickly kicked off her loafers, unfastened her own 
pants and let them fall to the floor just as she and 
her husband toppled onto the bed.

Val lowered her hand to the juncture of Barry's legs 
and pressed the fabric of the briefs against his labia. 
She felt Barry respond by tilting his pelvis against 
her fingers. He reached into the fly of Valerie's 
briefs and pulled at the gradually stiffening organ he 
found there. Val inhaled deeply and moaned slightly as 
she slowly released the breath. The feel of his fingers 
manipulating her cock was electric. Barry eased her 
lengthening member through the flap at the front of her 
briefs as he continued to encourage her into 
tumescence.

Valerie removed her hand from the underwear obscuring 
Barry's pussy and applied her fingertips to the area of 
the pocket on the front of his too-huge shirt. 
Underneath, Barry's left nipple was already swelling 
and becoming firm in anticipation of her touch. As she 
gently massaged his mammary through the starched shirt 
fabric, his face was an expression of pure bliss. 
Barry's hands slowly went to his groin as she put both 
of her hands to the task of kneading his breasts. Every 
few seconds, Barry would pause in stimulating himself 
to maintain her erection by gently stroking her cock.

Valerie continued her attention to his breasts until 
she recognized that it would take very little 
additional stimulation from Barry to bring on her 
ejaculation. She gently but firmly pulled his hands 
away from her pecker, a signal he recognized. She 
slipped one of her fingers into the leg band of Barry's 
underwear and slid her fingertip along the moist length 
of his genital slit. It was obvious from the warm and 
dewy tissues she found that he was ready for her, too.

Valerie reached for the waistband of his oversize 
briefs to pull them off him. Barry vehemently shook his 
head and used his hands to spread the fly on his briefs 
wide open to expose the opening to his vagina. The 
invitation was clear: he wanted her to penetrate him 
while he wore the underwear. Valerie's knew that her 
hard-on was protruding stiffly from the fly of her own 
briefs making them all but impossible to remove. She 
knelt between his legs and guided the swollen tip of 
her cock through the underwear flap to his pussy. She 
eased her prick's entire length into his warm, tight 
and very slippery depths, then began the primal in and 
out rhythm of lovemaking.

The sensations were very nice; almost too nice. The 
easy pace and feel of Barry's vagina sliding juicily 
around her cock was pure heaven. Valerie knew from 
recent experience that she would need a distraction to 
ward off her immediately pending orgasm. She began a 
mental inventory of the lab while Barry's arousal 
slowly climbed toward a peak. She had learned to give 
her husband time for his female body to react to her 
stimulation. She settled into an automatic rhythm as 
her mind tried to ignore her senses.

The signal that her husband was nearing climax was when 
his pussy no longer rhythmically gripped her prick. 
That meant his mind was too overloaded to concentrate 
on the finer details of the act. That was when Valerie 
allowed herself to enjoy the moment, and increase not 
only the depth, but the force and speed of her penile 
thrusts.

Barry's pelvis motion blended with hers to achieve 
mutual stimulation and when he suddenly paused then 
resumed his pelvic tilts with a staccato rhythm, 
Valerie knew he had crossed the frontier into his 
orgasm. As usual, her prostate sprung into action a few 
strokes later and jetted a thick wad of her warm semen 
into him. 

She always enjoyed the hormonal rush of that moment, as 
both she and Barry breathed erratically, shrieked and 
grunted with animal passion, spasmed their bodies as 
one, and bathed in the bliss of a short-circuit to 
their respective nervous systems. Valerie thought it 
was wonderful that this exquisite sensation was 
intimately involved with procreation of the human 
species. It was a glorious feeling!

As Valerie started to pull out of Barry, he stopped her 
part way. "As I look down there," Barry told her, 
straining to see beyond the lump from his swollen 
tummy, "it's hard to tell which of us is which."

Valerie followed his gaze, and had to agree, that with 
each wearing identical cotton briefs, and only the 
shaft of an erection visible between the flap in her 
underwear and the same type of flap in Barry's 
undergarment, it was difficult to tell from which end 
the fleshy cylinder originated. Now she knew why Barry 
had insisted on making love while he wore the 
underwear. He could at least dream that he was a male 
again and penetrating her, this way.

She kissed him on the forehead without withdrawing 
further. "Did doing it that way help your homesickness, 
honey?"

He grinned at her and the twinkle in his eye confirmed 
his rising spirits. "Yes. I think it helped a lot. 
Thanks, Val." He tensed his vaginal muscles to give her 
cock a final squeeze as it shrunk enough to slide out 
of him.

Barry climbed off the bed and unknotted the tie he 
still wore. He unbuttoned the upper buttons of the 
shirt and pulled it off himself. 

That left him with only the outsized underwear pinned 
around his waist. Valerie looked over at him and 
started chuckling. "Those briefs do not flatter a 
female body!" she commented.

"How about now?" he asked. Barry pulled the waistband 
of the underwear up to his ribs, snugging the crotch 
panel tightly against his pussy, a display which only 
seemed to amuse Valerie further. He held the briefs 
stretched tightly against himself as he sauntered into 
the bathroom for a shower. His voice shouted from the 
bathroom a few seconds later, "Fun's over, at least as 
far as me wearing boy underwear today, I guess."

"Why's that?" Valerie yelled in return, still lying in 
bed.

"I just leaked a huge puddle of your slimy gunk into 
this pair," he explained, reappearing at the bedroom 
door before dropping the soiled underwear into the 
hamper. 

He returned to the bedroom after his shower, completely 
naked and rubbing a towel over his head. He noticed 
that Valerie had taken off her clothes and was 
reclining on her back in bed. Barry toweled his hair 
into relative dryness and tossed the damp towel near 
the door. He crawled up on the end of the bed and 
scrabbled over to Valerie's side.

"You look like the cat that ate the mouse," he told his 
wife.

"I never could fool you," she answered. "I bought 
something the other day." Valerie reached under her 
pillow and brought out a long rectangular gift-wrapped 
box and handed it to Barry. Barry opened it and 
unwrapped the tissue paper inside to find a missile-
shaped plastic cylinder about nine inches long.

He looked up from the device with a dubious expression 
on his face. "A vibrator?"

"I had one like this a few years back Do you want to 
try it?" she asked expectantly.

"I dunno, Val. I never pictured myself using a..." 
Barry handed the thing to her as if it were a dead 
animal.

"Let me show you," she said. "It's got batteries in it 
already." She pushed a little switch and the device 
began humming gently. She touched the end of the 
quivering shaft to Barry's nipple, and slid the tip 
across the side of his breast.

Barry smiled at her in approval. "Okay. It does feel 
kinda nice," he allowed.

Valerie moved the vibrator to the crease between his 
labia and rested the side of the plastic case against 
Barry's clitoris. Barry gently pushed the device away.

"I'm still a little tender from a few minutes ago, 
Val," he told her. "What if we start a little less 
aggressively?" Barry took the vibrator from her and 
rubbed the trembling cylinder against the periphery of 
his mons veneris. As he lay there, legs spread, sliding 
the vibrator across his skin, Valerie knelt next to 
him, watching his technique. She could imagine the 
things she would be doing with the device if she were 
female again.

Barry indirectly stimulated himself for several 
minutes, and eventually placed the end of the shivering 
rod in contact with his clitoris. Valerie saw his vulva 
swell rapidly and his outer labia part to reveal the 
oily tissues within. She looked at his face and 
realized that he had his eyes closed and lips parted 
just the way he did whenever he was immersed in 
pleasure. At his breasts, the areolas had a region of 
tiny goosebumps surrounding the very stiff nipples. 
Valerie could hear soft whimpers escaping his lips.

Barry pointed the tip of the device at the entrance to 
his vagina and pushed its length into himself in one 
smooth motion. His slender fingers gripped the inch or 
so of the vibrator that was still visible protruding 
from him, and slid the thing in and out using short 
deliberate strokes. "I love it! The only way this could 
be better," he sighed, "is if it was the real thing."

Valerie's cock was at attention from the vision Barry 
presented, as he enjoyed the stimulation from the 
vibrator. She so wanted to feel the vibrator inside her 
own vagina; an impossibility while their minds were 
swapped. The next best thing would be to put her cock 
where the vibrator was. She pulled Barry's hair away 
from his ear and leaned over to softly ask: "how about 
letting me join in?"

Barry slitted open his eyes and blushed. "Oh! Sorry, 
Val, I kinda got lost in the moment...er...sure!" He 
pulled the vibrator from himself and dropped it, 
sopping wet and still humming madly, onto the bed.

Valerie got into position for her cock to enter him and 
had a thought. She picked up the vibrator and shut it 
off, then pressed the tip against Barry's anus.

Barry noticed immediately. "Val? What are you doing?" 
he asked, somewhat crossly.

"Try to relax, dear," she advised. "I know from 
experience that this will fit." She pushed the oil-
slickened point into Barry's rectum and met a momentary 
resistance before she was able to push several more 
inches of the thing into him, eventually sinking all 
but the very end of the device into his colon. She 
immediately insinuated her cock into his vagina and 
slid herself as deeply into him as she could.

Barry scowled at her as she began her reciprocating 
rhythm. "Val, I'm pleased with what you're doing up 
front, but I feel a bit like a shish kebab with that 
plastic fencepost jammed up my ass."

"It feels great to me," Valerie countered, panting and 
pumping harder into him. "I read about this in 'The Joy 
of Sex ' and always wondered what it was like. although 
I'd always pictured myself as female in the fantasy. My 
cock can feel the solid bulk of the vibrator through 
the back wall of your vagina. You wouldn't believe how 
very sexy it feels."

Barry tried to ignore the anal discomfort and 
concentrate on the great job Valerie's prick was doing 
stimulating his cunt. His clitoris was getting lots of 
secondary stimulation as Valerie plunged herself deeper 
and deeper into him. He made an effort to relax his 
sphincter and that seemed to reduce the distraction of 
having his bowels full of plastic and batteries; his 
frown was evidence of his concentration. Barry's mood 
improved suddenly when Valerie reached between her legs 
and switched the vibrator on.

Barry could swear that someone was delivering lightning 
bolts to his system. The combination of Valerie's 
insistent thrusts multiplied the tingle of the vibrator 
to rapidly arouse him. It felt as though Valerie's cock 
was vibrating, too. On each forward thrust, her nuts 
drummed into the end of the vibrator and delivered an 
additional heavy thud to the vibration. Before long, 
his wife's face and body language showed the signs of 
her impending release. 

She began grunting and suddenly she cried out as a 
powerful burst of her semen exploded against Barry's 
cervix. His orgasm arrived immediately without 
preliminaries or any warning, and the strength of his 
climax surprised both of them. His vaginal muscles 
trembled and spasmed around Valerie's member, as his 
hips pushed upward against her pelvis. Fireworks 
detonated in his head and it seemed as if he was 
experiencing such pleasure that he would black out. The 
quivering pulsation from the vibrator magnified the 
effect of the orgasm upon him.

He was still feeling strong aftershocks minutes later 
when Valerie withdrew her limp cock and removed the 
vibrator. Barry was surprised to touch his own clammy 
skin and realize that he'd been sweating profusely from 
the exertion. There had been nothing like this since 
he'd become female.

"I'm going to need another shower, now," he weakly 
joked, as the tingle of his extended climax gradually 
ramped down.

"I think we both will," Valerie replied. Her voice 
underscored the fatigue she was also feeling. She had 
been stimulated by the vibration she felt through 
Barry's body and, of course, her body enjoyed the 
fruits of the intense reaction he had.. She made a 
mental note to remember this technique for a future 
occasion, regardless of whether their minds were still 
swapped at that time or not.


CHAPTER 20
KAREN

Barry wrapped a robe around his nude body and pulled 
the lapels so that his breasts weren't so visible 
before he groggily answered the doorbell. He'd been 
able to nap for almost three hours this time, which was 
much longer than he'd recently been able to average. In 
truth, he had been awake and purging his stomach before 
hearing the doorbell, but wanted a scapegoat upon which 
to blame his bad mood. The little thumps and nudges of 
the baby in his tummy were still indistinct, but enough 
to jostle him from deep sleep. It appeared that he was 
becoming increasingly sensitive to various stimuli from 
inside and outside of his body.

He hoped that the salesperson, or mailman, or meter-
reader could be dismissed quickly and he could return 
to his rest. The door opened to reveal his sister-in-
law, Karen.

"Hi, Sis, can I come in?" the visitor asked as soon as 
the door opened.

Barry opened the door wide and ushered her in, as he 
ineffectively stifled a yawn. "So, what brings you to 
Riverton, Karen?"

The young woman hung her windbreaker on the rack just 
inside the door and hugged Barry before answering. "I 
haven't seen you in a few months, didn't have classes 
at college today, and I wanted to catch up on things." 
She seemed to be studying him as she ended the hug.

Barry excused himself to change out of the robe into a 
loose dress. When he located Karen, she was in the 
kitchen heating a pot of water for tea. She turned to 
face him as he entered. "You were right about the 
itching," she said.

"Itching?" Barry asked, his face indicating his 
confusion.

"You remember! Christmastime," Karen clarified, as she 
pulled a clean cup from the drainer.

Barry blushed from the memory. "I warned you."

"That, you did," she recalled, with a wry smile. "I 
have to shave myself every other day, now, or the itch 
becomes unbearable."

"Tell me about it," Barry replied, indicating his 
commiseration.

Karen produced a teabag from her purse and dropped it 
into the cup. She poured the hot water over the teabag, 
causing wisps of steam to swirl around the teapot. "I 
have a few more teabags in my purse if you'd like 
some," she offered.

Barry graciously accepted the offer. Soon a second cup 
of tea was steeping next to the first.

"I was surprised to find you at home," Karen said, as 
she carried the cups to the table by the window. She 
glanced outside as if looking for something or someone. 
"I stopped off here to ask Barry to bring me over to 
your lab at the institute. Where is he anyway?"

Barry sat across from her, carefully lifted the soggy 
teabag out of his cup and set it on the saucer. Knowing 
that his eyes gave away when he was fibbing, he avoided 
looking at Karen directly. "Er... my darling spouse is 
teaching the classes and doing the research while I'm 
not feeling up to snuff," he told her in an attempt to 
be truthful but vague.

Karen smiled. "He can sub for you? How convenient! You 
and he must be doing some interesting stuff at the 
labs, huh?" 

Barry carefully sipped from his steaming cup before 
answering, noncommittally. "Er...yeah..." Val had kept 
nearly all of the details of her research confidential, 
and Barry knew only what he'd been able to presume from 
the two short visits to the labs after Thanksgiving.

"Don't you ever wish," Karen began, wistfully, "that 
you could come up with a way to change places with 
someone?"

Barry audibly gulped at Karen's question. "Change 
places?"

"Yeah..." Karen replied enthusiastically. "You know. 
like being in disguise, but so perfect that no one 
could tell."

"Er...why do you say that?" he asked, without directly 
answering her.

"Just think how it would be," Karen continued, "to be 
mistaken for someone else for a while. An hour. A day. 
A few weeks. It might even be fun to be a guy if you 
could, don't you think?"

Barry turned away, knowing that his expression was 
registering surprise.

"If I could do that," Karen suggested, without waiting 
for a response, "I'd want to see what it's like to be 
my boyfriend Kevin. Heck! You were the one that was 
always a tomboy! This could be your chance! Wouldn't 
you want to switch places with Barry?"

Barry coughed self-consciously at the scenario Karen 
was describing and turned away. When he had erased the 
look of surprise from his features, he once again faced 
her. 

Karen smiled deviously and giggled. "Then you and Barry 
could make love and you could see what it's like for a 
guy. If you were each other, your mind could go to the 
labs in his body and Barry's mind could stay at home in 
your female body. He would be the one that's pregnant 
and having the morning sickness. Wouldn't that be 
priceless?"

"No. I don't think so," Barry responded, quietly. He 
was trying very hard to mask his amazement at Karen's 
grasp of what had actually transpired between his wife 
and himself.

"Oh, well," Karen said, dropping the subject, "it was 
an interesting thought." She finished her tea in a few 
sips, stood up and looked out the glass doors to the 
enclosed solarium adjacent to the kitchen. "Is the hot 
tub set up?" she asked.

"Yes," Barry answered. The solarium was a glassed-in 
porch attached to the house, with sliding glass doors 
leading to the living room and kitchen. Although the 
exterior walls of the porch were glass from the ground 
to the roofline, there were so many plants standing and 
hanging inside along those walls that no one in the 
yard could see in. Right after moving into the house, 
Barry had installed heating, indirect lighting and a 
hot tub on the enclosed porch so that it could be used 
almost year-round.

He and Val had few opportunities to use the hot-tub 
since her project had absorbed all of her time, and had 
not used it at all since the mind-exchange. Barry could 
still remember the first few nights in the house when 
they would sip wine and cuddle together among the warm 
swirling bubbles. Since Valerie worked late, the 
whirlpool had not gotten much use recently, although 
Barry kept it cleaned and ready for use.

"I've never been in a hot-tub. Do you mind if we soak 
out there for a while?" Karen wanted to know. 

"I guess so," Barry said, finishing his tea. "I have 
some swimsuits that might fit you."

Karen frowned at him. "We don't need swimsuits! It's 
just us girls, right? C'mon!" The young coed stepped 
into the solarium and lifted the cover off the hot tub. 
She twisted the controls to activate the thermal 
transfer unit and water jets. Soon, the water was 
frothing and the slowly climbing digits on the 
thermostat indicated that the water heaters were 
operating. She kicked off her flats and began 
unbuttoning her blouse.

***

Barry stepped into the house and returned with a stack 
of freshly laundered towels. By that time, there was a 
loose pile of clothing next to the whirlpool unit, and 
Karen was sitting breast-deep in the churning foam. It 
was obvious from the bra and panties atop the clothing 
that Karen had taken off everything.

"Come on in," she encouraged, "the water's yummy!"

Barry reluctantly lifted his dress over his head and 
threw it over a nearby chair. His swelling tummy was 
becoming a visible paunch in the fourth month of 
pregnancy, although he was not so pregnant that his 
condition appeared to be more than a bit of accumulated 
fat. He pulled his panties to the floor and kicked them 
up onto the chair, too. He hadn't worn a bra since he 
dressed so quickly less than a half hour earlier.

"You're hardly showing!" Karen said with obvious 
admiration of Barry's trim figure.

Barry turned to display his naked profile. "Seventeen 
weeks along already, and barely needing maternity 
outfits," he boasted. "A woman at the health club the 
other day joked that I look like an Early Pregnancy 
Barbie." He stepped into the shallow pool and settled 
into the warm froth opposite Karen. The water was still 
barely tepid but it could get uncomfortably hot if the 
heaters were allowed to run unchecked long enough. 
Barry wondered how hot the water could be and still be 
safe during pregnancy, and made a note to ask Doctor 
Homann at the scheduled clinic visit next week. In any 
case, the failsafe thermostats on the hot tub would not 
let the water temperature rise over 120 F.

"So," Karen queried, once Barry had reclined against 
the edge of the tub and closed his eyes, "how long have 
you and Val been impersonating each other?"

"Almost four m..." Barry suddenly realized what Karen 
had asked and his eyes snapped open. He backed away 
from her in the tub. "H... h... how did you know?" he 
finally blurted.

Karen shrugged her shoulders. "It wasn't very tough," 
she admitted. "At Christmastime, the person who looked 
like my big sister was being very civil while the one 
who looked like her husband was teasing me right and 
left, calling me Squirt and Sleepyhead. The first tip-
off was Christmas Eve when I came in from skating. Val 
usually gives me a really crushing murder-on-the-boobs 
hug. You didn't, but the person I thought was Barry 
did. 

"Then, all day Christmas, you were really quiet, but my 
folks usually can't shut Val up. There were all sorts 
of little things about Val's hometown and friends that 
you didn't remember, but that your spouse supposedly 
from Texas seemed to know all too well. In the snowball 
fight, even my boyfriend noticed how accurately you 
tossed the snowballs but that my apparent brother-in-
law, in Kevin's words, 'threw like a girl'. How about 
when you played the piano Christmas Eve!? I thought Mom 
was going to faint!"

"I didn't know," Barry offered, weakly. He realized 
belatedly that he should have just denied Karen's guess 
about his identity, but it was too late now. He now had 
a question for her: "When did you realize it?"

"You and Val were already home before I started 
recognizing the pattern," Karen told him. "Improbable 
as it was, I couldn't think of any other reason why 
both my sister and her husband would be acting so 
weird. I thought Mom and Daddy were in on your secret, 
but when I asked if they thought there was anything 
strange, Daddy said he didn't notice anything; men 
never do. Mom told me the pregnancy was making you 
loco. I figure if she knew anything and was just 
covering up, she would have told me it was my 
imagination. Today, when I started dropping hints, I 
could tell by your expression that I was hitting close 
to home. Anyway, back to my first question: how long 
have you two been pretending to be each other?"

Barry took several deep breaths before filling in the 
details. "We've been like this ever since the day after 
Thanksgiving, although Val keeps promising that she'll 
put us back in our rightful bodies any day now," he 
answered.

Karen studied Barry. "Even though you've admitted it, 
and I was certain it was true, it's weird to realize 
that you're actually Barry. How did my sister do this 
to you? You look and sound just like her. Did she use 
some kind of medicine, or surgery? Perhaps a Jekyll and 
Hyde formula?"

"Nothing like that. Your sister stumbled on a process 
and equipment in her lab that somehow can read and 
change the pattern of brain-cell interconnections 
inside someone's head. She won't tell me how it works, 
but the system works on two subjects and goes both 
directions at one time, so two people end up with their 
minds inside each other's body."

Karen paused a moment to absorb that information. "So 
that's still Val's body?"

Barry looked down into the swirling foam. "Every bit of 
it. Physically, hormonally, genetically, I am your 
sister. I have her fingerprints, blood type, DNA. Her 
fillings in these teeth. In essence, I'm Valerie right 
down to the cellular level. All that happened is that 
the pattern of neural interconnections in this head got 
re-arranged to match the pattern from my old head. 
Likewise, Valerie's patterns got copied into the brain 
I used to have. Apparently, the thing we call a 
consciousness is a result of the way the brain is 
wired. Val and I figure that the reflexes and dexterity 
stayed with the original bodies, but our entire memory 
repertoire changed bodies."

"Neat!" Karen enthused. "Did she get pregnant 
beforehand, or did you do it afterward?"

Barry looked downward toward his waistline for several 
seconds before looking up again. "The baby was 
conceived about two weeks before Val swapped our 
consciousnesses. She was getting tired for no apparent 
reason, then she got a positive result from a home 
pregnancy test on Thanksgiving." He pointed at himself. 
"The next day she did this." He began to climb out of 
the hot-tub. "I shouldn't be in here with you."

Karen gently grabbed Barry's arm. "Why not?" she asked.

Barry turned and looked over at his sister-in-law. Her 
long blond tresses ringed her face, and her bangs hung 
down almost to her deep blue eyes. Her breasts were 
surrounded by roiling water and the tops of her nipples 
were just visible over the bubbles. Her expression 
showed she was unconcerned about the identity of the 
naked person in the tub with her.

"Well," Barry began, "you're a woman. A naked woman. 
And I'm... I'm a..."

"You're a what, Barry?" Karen demanded, glaring at him. 
"A man?"

"Yes." Barry replied with conviction.

Karen shook her head. "I saw you take your clothes off 
right here and step into the water. My anatomy books 
are wrong if that's what men are supposed to look 
like."

Barry eased further out of the water. "I'm a man up 
here," he explained, pointing to his head. "at least 
that's what Val says."

Karen gave him a serious stare. "Big deal. As long as 
we both have the same equipment between our legs, I 
say, 'no harm, no foul.' Stay here and let's talk."

Barry eased back into the tub slightly. "Are you sure 
you're okay with this? You and me in the same tub, 
naked?"

Karen smiled at him and motioned for him to sit. "I'm 
sure. I used to bathe with my sister all the time when 
we were younger. Besides, you already went heck of a 
lot further when you shaved me on Christmas Eve."

Barry began giggling at the very vivid memory of that 
incident. "I guess I did, didn't I?" He settled back 
into the water, far enough that the bubbles were 
bursting right under his chin.

Karen sloshed over to sit right next to Barry. "So 
what's it like?"

Barry gave her a puzzled expression. "What is what 
like? Being like this? It feels like I'm a woman the 
same as you."

"Just like me?" Karen asked with a skeptical smirk, "I 
like cute guys. Does that mean you get turned on by 
thinking about boys?"

"No," Barry replied, flatly. "I'm a straight guy still 
attracted only to women."

"You're kidding!" Karen shrieked, playfully. "You're 
not attracted to men, but Val is a guy now, so since 
Thanksgiving, you two haven't...?"

Barry blushed at the question. "I make an exception for 
Val." He mentally reviewed the last four months. "And 
what an exception! We've made love about ten times a 
week since then. She really enjoys intercourse with me 
and I have to admit I really have been getting my share 
of pleasure from it too."

Karen squinted as she thought about the implications of 
Barry's statement. "So you've had it both ways. Woman 
to woman, what was it like to be a man before?"

"Woman to...? Karen! I told you: I still consider 
myself a man despite how I look. But, to answer you, 
there's not much difference in day to day life, 
sensation-wise. Sure, sex feels very different from 
before, but everything else is almost the same. Fingers 
are fingers. Toes are toes. For me, I had to get 
accustomed to being smaller, lighter and less strong 
than my partner.

"The distribution of body weight is different, now that 
I have breasts and wider hips, so I had to get used to 
the change in center of gravity. As a boy, I seldom had 
hair more than an inch long, and now I've got a foot or 
more to shampoo, condition, dry and brush. As you can 
imagine, I had to learn to wear a bra, and more than 
once I've had to wear makeup, evening wear and heels.

"The main differences from before are social. For 
example, the Stereo-Barn salesmen at the mall used to 
automatically treat the male version of me like an 
expert on ham radio and hi-fi equipment, although Val 
was the one who knew much more about them. But now, the 
same salespeople act like I have some sort of learning 
disability. I'm still the same Barry inside. All that 
changed was the shape of my skin. Shazam! Instant blond 
bimbo."

"You think people treat women differently?" Karen 
queried. "I don't think I've noticed any bias."

"Maybe because you never were treated any other way. I 
noticed immediately," Barry returned. "That's not all. 
I'm home all of the time and get calls from 
telemarketers almost every day. When my voice was male, 
the people selling insurance, cellular phones and data 
services used a technically-focused pitch: lots of 
numbers and buzzwords. I noticed after the mind swap 
that the sales emphasis suddenly became more 
emotionally and socially targeted, rather than the 
technical angle. Almost no numbers, facts or acronyms, 
now. These days they want me to feel more safe or 
desirable for choosing their product. It's like they 
want to appeal to men's analytical side but to women's 
sympathetic side. As soon as they hear a female voice 
on the line, they switch their tactics."

"I see," Karen said, becoming bored with the story. 
"Tell me: have you missed having sex with women?"

Barry rolled his head to face Karen, sitting next to 
him. He could tell by her expectant look that her 
question was serious. He returned the serious look to 
indicate his answer was equally deliberate. "Yes. Every 
day. I miss sex with women more and more every single 
day."

Karen scooted closer to Barry. "Well, then. How about 
if I play fairy godmother?"

Barry's head tilted quizzically. "What does that mean?"

Karen giggled, and surreptitiously brought her hand 
under one of Barry's breasts. "I mean, you and me. In 
bed."

Barry jumped when Karen's fingers touched his tit. He 
shook his head. "No, Karen. I didn't mean to give you 
any idea that... I didn't know that you were... er..."

Karen frowned. "I'm not gay, if that's what you're 
getting at," she said, with mild irritation.

Barry inched away from her. "Look, Karen, having Val in 
bed with me is one thing, since we're married to each 
other and both our minds as well as bodies are of 
different genders, but you and me would be something 
else entirely."

"Barry!" Karen admonished. "I thought you said you 
wanted to make love to a female!"

Barry coughed. "I meant that I wanted boy-girl sex, and 
I wanted to be the boy this time. I need to feel the 
achingly stiff swollen rod protruding from my groin, 
sliding into Val's snug little pussy. I crave the slap 
of my nuts against Val's backside as I pump in and out. 
I miss the thundering surge of semen flowing through me 
into her at the moment of climax. That's what I'm 
looking for."

Karen sat dumbfounded for a moment as she heard the 
graphic description of sex from a male point of view 
that only served to remind her that this actually 
wasn't her sister soaking next to her in the hot-tub. 
She finally recovered to ask: "has Val given you 
cunnilingus yet?"

Barry closed his eyes and sighed at the happy memory.

Karen continued, "I'll take that contented breath as a 
'yes'." 

She bit her lip, raised one eyebrow and tried another 
approach. "Haven't you been just itching to show a 
woman what you've learned since you've been that way?"

Barry had to admit that Karen was right. He was very 
anxious to take his wife to the heights of female 
arousal to which she'd already taken him. Now that he 
knew exactly what a woman felt, he was in a prime 
position to bring her to ecstasy, all he needed was for 
Val to reverse the mind-swap.

"Then too," Karen added, "you're probably getting a 
little tired of Val poking her ugly old cock into you 
night after night."

"Not at all," Barry replied. "She knows how to be 
extremely tender and sensual in spite of her external 
appearance. She remembers being female."

"Would you call her the perfect lover?" Karen asked, 
confrontationally.

Barry considered his answer before speaking. "I would, 
if she were female and I was male again."

"Why then, hasn't she undone the mind exchange thing?"

Barry sighed. "This started as a harmless lark. A few 
hours of fun in bed in each other's body on 
Thanksgiving weekend. Then Val asked me to stay this 
way so she could catch up on a backlog at work. She 
wanted to use my male body while I gave her female body 
and the fetus some bed rest at home. I agreed, but a 
week later I started getting daily nausea and she 
begged for another extension to the swap. It's March 
now, I'm still female and still barfing my brains out 
when I wake up. As soon as this morning sickness goes 
away and Val can spend all day at work in this body, 
we'll un-swap. Until then, I agree with Val that I'm in 
a better position than her to carry the baby."

"I see," Karen responded, evenly. "You seem the obvious 
choice to carry the baby, especially since you're the 
one with a uterus." Barry noticed that Karen had been 
gradually tracing her fingers along the inside of his 
thigh all the time they had been talking.

Barry giggled at the combination Karen's statement 
about a uterus and from the tickle of her touch. "You 
know what I meant, Karen! But what about you?"

"Me?"

"What's your story? You seem hell-bent on getting into 
bed with another woman. With your sister, in fact. Yet 
you claim you aren't gay." 

"For starters, you are not my sister, Barry," Karen 
deadpanned. "You don't act like her and I don't care 
that you look like her. In fact, the thing about you 
that so intrigues me is that you were once male."

Barry gestured at his body, mostly hidden by bubbles. 
"Just for the record, Karen, I'm your sister in every 
way except mentally. The only part of what you see that 
isn't your sister is a few memories, instincts and 
aptitudes; nothing else."

Karen paused a bit to search Barry's face and to think 
about what he'd just said. "I'm willing to overlook 
your physical body and make love to the inner you. I 
think I had a crush on you from the first time Val 
brought you to Munford to meet the folks. Then, too, I 
always wondered if Kevin would be a more compassionate 
lover if he could experience sex from a woman's point 
of view. Maybe I'll find out. Once I started figuring 
out what was going on with you and Val, and I 
remembered what we did right after you shaved me, I 
started having these fantasies."

Karen stood up directly in front of Barry. The water 
came up to the middle of her thighs, as she straddled 
his legs. As she looked down at him, she asked. "Tell 
me honestly, Barry: do you think I'm attractive?"

Barry looked up at his naked sister-in-law. Her arms 
were crossed under her breasts. The water was beading 
on her lithe nineteen-year-old body, dripping off her 
nipples and from her vulva. Karen's shoulder-length 
blond hair was damp at the very ends and stuck to her 
back. Her slender frame was well-proportioned, with 
narrow hips, a small waist and generous but firm 
breasts. Her shaved pubis was a few inches from his 
face.

Barry swallowed hard. "Yes. I think you are very 
attractive. 

I'd have a cast-iron hard-on a mile long right now if I 
had a cock."

Karen studied Barry. "From the look of your boobs, you 
aren't kidding."

Barry looked down and noticed his breasts were visible 
above the froth and that his nipples were swollen and 
stiff. He was well aware that was his body's way of 
demonstrating that it was very turned on by Karen.

Karen wiggled her hips seductively. "So what's stopping 
you from taking me to bed?"

Barry could not take his eyes off Karen's undulating 
pelvis. 

"I'm... er... it's just that... you know... I'm... 
er..."

Karen sneered. "I know. You're a married man. Look, 
Barry, think of it as harmless fun. It won't hurt and 
who knows? You might even enjoy yourself!"

"I don't know," Barry hedged.

"If you're worried about your marriage vows, unless 
there's a male and a female involved, you can't 
technically call it adultery, can you?" Karen spread 
her hands in a plea. "And try as we might, Barry, you 
won't impregnate me! I promise!"

It didn't matter if Karen or he thought it was 
adultery, because God or no God, Valerie would be his 
main worry. Barry opened his mouth to reply and the 
nonsense of Karen's ludicrous statement about 
impregnation struck him. He was overcome with giggles. 
Soon Karen was giggling too.

Barry stood up and pressed his warm wet body against 
hers. His lips sought out hers and she eagerly 
responded. As their lips met, the giggles disappeared. 
It was so nice to kiss someone without whisker stubble 
for a change! Barry didn't realize how much he had 
missed the soft touch of a woman's face against his. 
Karen's full lips strained urgently against Barry's. 
Her warm slippery wet tits slid against Barry's chest, 
and he could feel the stiff nubs of her nipples as they 
pushed against his tender flesh. These sensations were 
almost like they had been before the swap when he'd 
hugged and kissed Val. The differences here were that 
Karen and he were the same height, both had prominent 
breasts, and although both were aroused, there was not 
an erection in sight.

Barry could feel the warmth spreading across his chest 
and the insistent tingle further south as he became 
turned-on. He pulled Karen's warm, wet and smooth body 
against his and felt more than heard the appreciative 
moan as he held her. Her hands were rubbing his back 
and massaging his derriere, and his hands were doing 
the same to her. 

The prenatal bulge near Barry's waist prevented his 
bare pussy from rubbing against Karen's similarly bald 
region, but he inched back and brought one hand up 
between her legs. Karen slid her feet apart to allow 
him access. He could feel the warmth radiating from her 
even before his fingers found their mark. Before long, 
he felt Karen's fingers returning the favor, gently 
probing and rubbing his swelling clitoris.

The two sank back into the tub and tenderly caressed 
each other. He gave Karen's breasts the attention he 
knew a woman craves, and she similarly pleasured him. 
They sensuously massaged each other for what seemed 
like an eternity. Eventually, they adjourned to the 
bedroom, where Karen not only let Barry demonstrate his 
cunnilingus technique, but she showed him what she knew 
on the subject.

Since Barry was pregnant, they reclined side by side in 
the classic sixty-nine position. As he did things to 
Karen, she copied the same things on his body. Barry's 
tongue sought out Karen's clitoris and almost 
immediately her tongue was flicking his clit. Barry 
reveled in the familiar taste of a woman's sex: a taste 
that he had missed for so long. He coordinated his 
tongue action with his hands rhythmically stroking 
Karen's breasts. He brought her to climax after climax, 
while she did the same to him.

As they proceeded, Barry briefly considered that this 
was a lesbian encounter, particularly for Karen. After 
all, he could use the excuse that he was reclaiming his 
male birthright by giving sexual pleasure to a woman, 
but was Karen's knowledge of his true identity enough 
to assuage the moral dilemma of making love to another 
woman... to her sister?

They finally collapsed from exhaustion after what 
seemed like hours of glorious sensations. They held 
each other for a long time and eventually settled into 
a much needed nap in each other's arms. 

Barry awakened later and saw Karen just beginning to 
stir. A moment later she started giggling 
spontaneously.

"What's so funny?" Barry asked, licking his lips and 
finding the lingering taste of Karen's pussy still 
evident.

"I was just looking at you and thinking that stuffy old 
Val would never do anything like this, girl on girl," 
she replied. "You're a lot more fun than her!"

"You are fun too, and very talented with your tongue," 
Barry complimented her. "Was our little dalliance this 
afternoon all you expected?"

The young woman stared into space for a moment and her 
grin returned. "It was fun enough that anytime you 
asked, I wouldn't hesitate to join you again."

"Hetero sex has lost it's allure, eh?" Barry smirked. 
He hoped that he had phrased the question in a way that 
would let him uncover Karen's true motives.

"Although I had the strongest climax I can remember and 
more of them this afternoon than I've had at any other 
time, I don't think I'll give up on boys just yet," 
Karen confided. "Just watching a pecker go to full 
alert still gets me all wet and tingly."

"I feel the same way when I see Val getting an 
erection," Barry agreed, thinking about the days he 
himself displayed the signature male arousal. He had 
never been curious about any hard-on except his own, 
but now that he depended upon Val's penis being stiff 
before sex was possible, he had gained quite an 
appreciation for the sight of her male organ becoming 
erect.

"You know what else turns me on?" Karen asked.

"No. What?"

"Football players in their tight little uniforms. 
Especially the kickers. They've got the cutest buns!" 
She giggled at the thought. "Olympic weight-lifters. 
The male gymnasts too. I also kinda like the hunks on 
that lifeguard show on TV."

"I like watching that show, too," Barry answered, "but 
I'm not scoping out the guys. I probably get as tingly 
and juicy as you when I'm checking out the women in 
their swimsuits. If I have sexual thoughts during 
football games, I'm thinking about the girl 
cheerleaders."

"You mean, even since you've been...?"

"More so," Barry informed her. "I used to be 
embarrassed if my cock reacted while Val and I watched 
TV. Now, my nipples swell up, my pussy gets juicy and I 
can ride the feel-good sensations with no one the 
wiser."

Karen stood up next to the bed. She smiled fetchingly 
at Barry. "If you had your cock, I could show you some 
very entertaining things I can do with my cunny."

"If I had my cock, I wouldn't have gone to bed with my 
sister-in-law," Barry reminded her.

"That's true. You know, I really liked it when you held 
me and snuggled after we had sex. It was sweet and it 
made me feel special and wanted. Most men's idea of sex 
is pump, squirt, and snore. You really care, Barry. You 
are not like other guys."

Barry looked at her indignantly. "I should say not! 
Just how many pregnant guys do you know?" he asked with 
a giggle.

Karen smiled and wiggled her finger at Barry in mock 
disapproval. "Tell me: were you this much fun and as 
compassionate before you changed bodies?"

"I always thought I was romantic and considerate. I 
guess you'd say compassionate in my own manner. But 
let's put it this way," he continued, "in the last few 
months, I've kind of let my feminine side, what there 
is of it, have free rein. It was the only way I could 
be very convincing in public or around your folks like 
this. It's a survival tactic."

"You deserve some sort of acting award, then," Karen 
replied. 

"You've fooled my parents completely and almost had me 
buffaloed too. If Val wasn't doing such a crummy job 
trying to be a guy, I would have never caught on to the 
charade. Take it from me: your feminine side is serving 
you well. You seem so much like a regular woman to me. 
I mean, we really talked about a lot of things today, 
just like women. I've never been able to get my 
boyfriends to open up like you did."

"As I said," Barry reiterated, "it's a survival 
technique."

Karen glanced at the clock by the bed. "It's almost 
four. I should get dressed and get out of here before 
Val gets home. It might be a little hard for either of 
us to explain what the two of us are doing naked under 
the sheets together."

Barry climbed out of bed and followed Karen to the 
solarium. They each dressed in the clothes they had 
left there by the hot-tub.

"Remember Barry: don't let Val push you around," Karen 
advised, buttoning her blouse and stepping into her 
flats. "She has this knack of making everything she 
suggests sound nice and rational just to get her own 
way. I should know. She has pulled that stuff on me for 
my whole life."

"I'll try to remember that, Karen," Barry replied, "and 
please don't let anyone, especially your folks, know 
about the mind swap."

Karen smiled. "I won't breathe a word. No one would 
believe me, anyway," she said. She picked up her purse 
in the kitchen then walked to the front hallway and 
donned her windbreaker.

"Oooh!" Barry grunted, suddenly interrupting his easy 
stride. "You want to feel something?" He pulled Karen's 
hand quickly to his pelvis. A few seconds later, a tiny 
thump impacted her palm through his thin cotton dress.

"Was that the baby?" Karen asked, grinning and staring 
at Barry's pelvis.

Barry nodded. "Auntie Karen, that's your future nephew 
or niece in there."

He and Karen hugged once more. As they parted, he could 
see by the nascent tears in Karen's eyes that she 
envied his condition.

"Listen, Barry," Karen told him, "if you need someone 
to talk to, about anything, you can call me." She found 
a pencil and a scrap of paper in her purse and 
scratched out the number.

Barry smiled at her offer. "Thanks. It felt great to 
confide in someone besides Val. Keeping this mind-
exchange situation a secret all these months has been 
driving me crazy. I just hope Val and I are un-swapped 
soon and I don't need to call you."

"The offer stands even after you get your male body 
back. I mean it," Karen replied. "You're too good a 
person to be put through this, Barry, no matter how 
compelling the reasons."

Barry was not sure what she meant by that, but 
appreciated the sentiment. It was a scant few minutes 
later that Barry was waving goodbye to the rapidly 
dwindling dot of Karen's car. 


CHAPTER 21
FIRST ANNIVERSARY

Barry uploaded the last of the edited book galleys to 
the publisher and logged off the network just before 
dawn. Barry had finished his revision before the June 
deadline but only by a few days, very unlike the first 
two books he'd completed months earlier than the 
contracted completion date. The combination of his 
extended nausea, fatigue, insomnia, and the general 
problems of being pregnant had slowed him greatly.

More than six months after Valerie forced this 
situation upon him, the daily nausea persisted. This 
daily sickness had gone on much longer than Val, he, or 
the doctor had ever imagined. There were signs that the 
sick feelings were going away, at last, but not quickly 
enough for his liking. At the rate he was recovering, 
Barry knew it was only a matter of days before he could 
survive a morning without vomiting. Then Valerie would 
give him back his body, and she could take the rest of 
the pregnancy off his hands.

Valerie had been away for a several days with some of 
Barry's friends. It was the time of the year when a 
bunch of the guys would go hiking and camping together 
for a week, and Valerie had gone with them. She had 
been curious about what went on during the annual boys-
only outings ever since she'd known Barry, and decided 
that now she would find out for herself.

Barry giggled at the mental image of Valerie roughing 
it. She claimed to have been a tomboy as a little girl, 
but hadn't ever been on a camping trip away from a 
public campsite. He knew she was getting more than her 
share of cuts and bumps, blisters and bruises this 
week. Wilderness camping was quite an experience even 
if you knew what to expect.

Barry looked at himself in the full-length mirror. He 
hadn't dried himself completely after taking a shower, 
enjoying the coolness of the water evaporating off his 
naked body. His tummy was very prominent, now. This was 
the thirtieth week of the pregnancy, well into the 
third and final trimester. 

Depending upon how he stood, his figure looked either 
grotesquely huge or moderately attractive. Directly 
head on, he still had the remainder of an hourglass 
figure. His waist was thin, although the spreading 
belly was beginning to obscure that attribute. Barry's 
navel was stretched and where it had been an 'innee' a 
few months earlier, the bulge of his womb was 
distorting the belly button into an 'outee.' On the 
positive side, his facial features had none of the 
pudginess of the other women he met at the 
obstetrician's office. His arms and legs and even his 
wrists and ankles were still very thin. 

However, from the side, he looked like a snake that had 
just eaten. His breasts were getting larger as they 
prepared for feeding the unborn child, and the swelling 
of his tummy was unmistakable. His weight was only 
fourteen pounds over what it had been in early 
December, meaning that Valerie would return to her pre-
pregnancy weight soon after the baby arrived.

After the baby arrived. Barry chuckled at that term. 
What people meant was when the baby emerged from the 
mother. The baby was already here. It had been here 
since mid-November when a school of his sperm had 
encountered one of Valerie's ova somewhere in the inky 
depths of her Fallopian tubes. The baby was already 
here and very real to Barry even if it wasn't to anyone 
else. He was already learning little things the baby 
liked and didn't like about sharp noises and sleeping 
positions. Barry couldn't rest a newspaper or magazine 
on his abdominal bulge without soon feeling the swift 
kick of his tiny passenger.

A few times a day, the baby would stretch, and push one 
of its feet against Barry's lower rib. There was no 
denying that this was an active fetus. Although the 
doctor had done an amniosynthesis test on fluid she 
withdrew from the uterus with a long hypodermic needle, 
Barry had refused the offer to learn the baby's sex.

Valerie would occasionally use a masculine pronoun to 
refer to the baby, perhaps indicating that she wanted a 
boy. Barry wasn't sure which sex he hoped for. If it 
was a girl, Val would probably want her to be even more 
of a tomboy than she had been. The baby would probably 
be a boy though, just from the statistics. 

Barry slipped into a caftan, vacuumed the house a while 
and thought about the things he would do when Valerie 
gave him his body back. There were many things he had 
put off waiting for the return of his more muscular 
male body. The Corvette engine needed an overhaul, and 
Barry didn't have the strength as a female to loosen 
the engine mounts. He'd wanted to clean out the leaves 
from the rain gutters on the roof, but wasn't about to 
climb a twenty-foot ladder in his current condition.

He knew his wife might be a little ill at ease getting 
back a body so different than the one she had given him 
in November. Barry couldn't imagine suddenly jumping 
from being male one moment to being a woman more than 
seven months pregnant the next, but that was what Val 
would be doing. She would certainly need comforting and 
a lot of help to become familiar with the changes in 
her body. changes that had happened slowly and 
gradually for Barry, and to which he'd had time to 
become accustomed. He planned to give her the backrubs 
and neck rubs that she would certainly appreciate, and 
if she wanted the more tender and sensuous parts of 
herself massaged, he knew the things she would like. As 
Barry daydreamed, he gently trailed his fingers across 
his tummy.

Her watch read after ten PM as Valerie worked the key 
into the front door and unlocked it. When she'd pushed 
the door open, she turned and signaled to Roger, Mark 
and Tony, who had dropped her off. The car backed out 
of the driveway and sped away into the night as Valerie 
dragged her sleeping bag and knapsack into the foyer.

"Hi, honey!" she called. It wasn't very late, so Barry 
was certainly awake if he wasn't outside at his 
backyard telescope. There was no answer to her 
greeting, but she saw a note taped to the coat-rack 
inside the door that read: "Welcome home, Val! Go to 
the refrigerator before anywhere else."

Valerie was instantly curious. She made her way to the 
kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Inside on one 
shelf was a wine bottle, corkscrew, two glasses and 
another note: "Bring these with you to the bedroom. I'm 
there waiting for you. Love, Barry."

Valerie collected the items and headed for the bedroom. 
What she saw when she reached her destination made her 
smile.

The bedroom was lit by dozens of candles in 
candelabras, and on candlesticks and sconces. The bed 
was covered in black satin sheets and Barry was lying 
atop them in an elegant pose, wearing a filmy negligee. 
His hair had been styled to look fuller and thicker. He 
had makeup that would do credit to a photo model, 
emphasizing his large blue eyes and full lips. 

"Hi, honey," he purred, seductively. "Want to 
celebrate?"

Valerie nearly broke out laughing. "Geez! You must be 
horny as hell to go to all of this trouble! Satin 
sheets, candles, sexy getup... What's the occasion to 
celebrate?"

Barry's features clouded slightly. "Val!"

"What?" she asked defensively. and then her face fell 
as the realization struck her. "Oh, God! Barry! Today 
is our first wedding anniversary! Isn't it?"

He nodded silently.

"Oh honey! I'm sorry!" Valerie set the bottle and 
goblets on the bed and gathered her husband into a hug 
and kiss. She hoped her week of beard-growth wasn't too 
uncomfortable against his face. "I lost all track of 
what day today was out in the woods."

Barry rubbed his lips and chin, itching after kissing 
her. "I understand, dear," he replied with a gentle 
smile. "It's easy to forget. and we were apart all 
week..."

"I don't have a gift. I'll get you something nice 
tomorrow," Valerie offered, profoundly embarrassed to 
have forgotten such an event.

"I got what I wanted, with you home, now," Barry told 
her. He handed her a small box.

Valerie opened the box and retrieved a string of 
pearls. "They're pretty," she said, with appreciation, 
then held the necklace up against her husband's chest 
to see how they would look.

"That's only part of the surprise," Barry said with a 
broad smile. 

"You'll be able to wear those pearls yourself 
tomorrow."

Valerie looked confused for a second and then the 
expression of understanding crossed her features. "Are 
you saying...?"

Barry's face beamed. "I'm saying there's no more 
morning sickness, and the fatigue is moderating, too. I 
also completed my book, so we can celebrate that as 
well as the end of the nausea, not to mention our 
anniversary!"

"Oh, honey!" Valerie exclaimed, again, hugging Barry 
tightly. 

"After all of these months! You must be thrilled!"

"You can swap us back tomorrow, but I want you to give 
me one more night of unbridled passion so I can 
remember for a long time how it was to be female."

"Just try and stop me," she replied. Valerie leaned to 
kiss Barry and suddenly pulled her face back from his. 
"Er... should I shave first?"

Barry considered her offer for a moment. "No," he said, 
after careful consideration. "I can tolerate it for one 
night, if you can stand it after we un-swap."

Valerie handed him one of the empty champagne glasses. 
"So you would keep the beard, hmm? It is scratchy, 
though, to kiss a guy with one, isn't it?"

"A little," Barry allowed. "It won't be so bad after 
the beard gets a little bushier though." He trailed his 
fingers along her cheek, feeling the rough texture.

Valerie was pulling the cork from the bottle of bubbly 
when she paused and gestured with the bottle. "Isn't 
champagne supposed to be bad for the baby?"

Barry pointed to the label on the bottle. "It's 
carbonated cider. No alcohol. The clerk at the wine 
store tells me that otherwise it's very like 
champagne."

"You think of everything, dear," Valerie complimented 
him, as she pulled the cork free and poured a generous 
glass of the fizzy cider for them both.

***

Barry dropped the empty cider bottle into the kitchen 
garbage pail and looked out the window over the sink. 
It was a beautiful June morning outside. The sun was 
shining warmly, the birds were singing, and everything 
was wonderful. Today was going to be a wonderful day. 
Valerie was still asleep. Barry was familiar with the 
exhaustion after a camping trip, and knew she needed 
the rest.

Even before his wife returned from camping, he had 
decided to treat her with breakfast in bed today and 
every morning afterward. Valerie would need her 
strength in the coming weeks as the baby's due date 
approached, and a breakfast each day was the least he 
could do to help her. Now that the book was done, Barry 
could plan his schedule around Valerie's and could help 
her in every way. He could prepare lunches for her to 
brown-bag to the labs, although today was Sunday, and 
Valerie was not going back to work until Monday. Later 
today, she and he could go to the labs, where she could 
get her body back and return Barry's male body to him.

She had been marvelously sexy last night, and had 
brought Barry to orgasm on top of orgasm. The week of 
enforced celibacy had made both Barry and her very 
amorous. She needed almost no recovery time between 
each climax, and it seemed as if her first ejaculation 
of the night could be measured in pints! 

Between the lovemaking sessions, Valerie told Barry 
some of the experiences of the week. She had been 
surprised at the quantities of beer consumed by Barry's 
friends during the hike, and her first dunking in a 
frigid mountain stream was both figuratively and 
literally an eye-opener. Her opinion of Barry's friends 
had been lowered several notches during the trip by 
their crude comments about women in their lives. She 
learned what these guys thought of their current and 
former girlfriends and women in general, and was 
silently appalled at what she heard. She even hinted 
that when she was female again that she might tell the 
girlfriends what the guys had said about them.

Barry started making the eggs and sausage for Valerie's 
breakfast. While the links sizzled and the eggs 
congealed in the pan, he cut a wedge of melon, poured a 
cup of juice and pushed two slices of bread into the 
toaster. He folded a napkin and collected the requisite 
silverware. Soon the eggs and sausage were done, and 
arranged artfully on the plate. Barry searched for the 
breakfast tray, and finally spotted it atop the 
cabinets over the refrigerator. Barry knew that he was 
not tall enough to reach it unaided, so he pulled the 
stepstool over to the counter and climbed up. Even on 
the top step, he was a few inches short of his goal. He 
stretched to reach the tray, and his fingers clawed at 
the edges of the elusive prize.

Barry lifted himself onto his tiptoes and leaned toward 
the tray. He realized too late that the stool was 
sliding out from under him, and as his legs flew to the 
right, his body fell to the left. A sharp knife-edge of 
pain shot through Barry as his back collided with the 
unforgiving linoleum floor.

Overwhelmed by the agony, Barry was able to cry out a 
single word: 

"Val-er-ie!!"

The paramedics arrived quickly and stabilized him. It 
was a short ambulance ride to the hospital emergency 
room. Valerie was at his side for nearly all the time.

Barry was admitted for observation and found himself in 
a semi-private room on the same floor as the maternity 
ward. They did lots of tests, gave him a few pain-
killers and sedatives and urged him to rest. Less than 
an hour after arriving in his room, Doctor Homann 
showed up.

"Zo!" she said, bustling into the room, "an accident, 
ja?"

Barry turned to face her. "I fell off a step-stool."

"Zo I hear!" Doctor Homann replied. "Ze admitting 
doctor called me for your meds. According to the chart, 
nothing zeems broken. Ze baby is okay, too. Zat is 
goot."

Barry and Valerie brightened at that news.

Doctor Homann pulled the curtain around the bed, and 
spoke to Barry. "I want to examine you to zee how bad 
ziss is for myzelf." She shooed Valerie out of the 
curtained enclosure.

Barry rolled onto his side to present his spine to the 
doctor, who pulled the back of his hospital johnny open 
and looked at the injury. "A little bruising," Doctor 
Homann intoned. "No broken skin. No spinal trauma. 
Goot."

"I'd like to go home, if I'm okay," Barry suggested, 
hoping that he and Valerie could still get to the labs 
to re-exchange their minds before the day was out.

"I'm keeping you here a day or two," Doctor Homann told 
him, as she pulled the robe around Barry and opened the 
curtains surrounding the bed. "I want to be sure zat ze 
baby is not in distress. Ve look for uterine bleeding 
and any symptom of premature delivery. There are tests 
we can do in the next few days to be sure. Trust me. It 
is for ze best."

"Can't you just do an x-ray or something?" Valerie 
asked.

"No x-rays," Doctor Homann stated. "Not during 
pregnancy."

Barry looked at Valerie and the disappointment was 
evident in his eyes. Valerie could do nothing to return 
them to the proper bodies while they were in the 
hospital. Valerie's expression showed her helplessness 
at the situation.

Doctor Homann looked at Barry's chart at the foot of 
his bed, and she made a few notations on the pages. 
"I'll be back tomorrow and we'll see how you are doing. 
Get some rest." With that she was gone.

"Gosh, Val!" Barry complained, once the doctor had 
exited. "At this rate, it'll be a week until we get our 
rightful bodies back!"

"Since you're here until at least tomorrow, we'll have 
to wait until next weekend anyway," Valerie said. "The 
labs are busy weekdays now that the grants are running 
out and everyone is trying to get the research 
completed."

"Swell," Barry groaned with the news that he would be 
female another week.

Valerie dug a small book out of her pocket. "I picked 
this up in the waiting room outside the emergency ward. 
It's a list of baby names."

"I hadn't started thinking of names just yet," Barry 
said.

"Maybe we should start," Valerie replied. "two months 
from now the baby will have already been born."

"Do you have any preferences?" Barry asked.

"Not really. I was looking at some of the meanings of 
the names in here. For example, Arnold is a combination 
of the Germanic words 'eagle' and 'power'."

"How about Valerie?" Barry asked. "What does that 
mean?"

Val thumbed through the book almost to the back. 
"Valerie is the feminine form of a Roman family name." 
She flipped back to the front of the book "and Barry 
means 'spear' in Irish."

Barry rubbed his hand across his pubic mound. "The name 
hardly suits me any more. I don't have much of a spear 
down here these days."

Valerie chuckled as she looked at another page. 
"Perhaps something like Beverly would be more apt 
nickname for you. It's Old English for 'beaver 
meadow'."

"Cute, Val. Cute," Barry chided at the obviously sexual 
joke.

Valerie returned her attention to the little book. 
"Here's a pretty name: Kirsten. It's a Norwegian form 
of Christine, which means 'Christian'. I like the sound 
of it."

"I like it too. What if we have a boy?" Barry asked.

"I found the girl's name. Why don't you choose a boys 
name?" Valerie suggested, handing him the book.

"Barry Junior?" he said without opening the little 
volume.

Valerie frowned.

Barry snickered at the way Valerie had disapproved. He 
scanned the list of names for boys and saw a few that 
looked interesting. "Boyd is good. So is Sean. Or Kent. 
Or Grant."

"Those are nice," Valerie agreed. "Which one do you 
want?"

Barry thumbed through the book. "I'm not sure."

Valerie studied Barry. "Do you have any intuition about 
it being a boy or a girl?"

Barry frowned at her. "Intuition? Do you mean feminine 
intuition? I can't be sure, but I think you took it all 
when you swapped our minds. Which do you think we'll 
have?" "I haven't a clue," she replied. "but one of us 
should pick some boy names."

"Let me have a few days to look over the options okay? 
Maybe I'll choose some other boy names. I'll have 
plenty of time to decide. I'm not going anywhere."

Valerie agreed. She stayed until visiting hours were 
over and left her husband to rest and recuperate.

Barry ended up staying in the hospital for almost two 
weeks, and had lots of tests. He got plenty of bed rest 
and except for the lingering back pain, he was fine, as 
was the unborn baby. During the brief exercise walks up 
and down the hallway, he would stop at the nursery and 
look through the windows at the babies in the 
Isolettes. They were so tiny and fragile. Most of them 
would be asleep, but there was always one or two that 
were bawling for one reason or another. Barry thought 
about how he had once been that small, and his parents 
had looked in on him at the nursery in the hospital in 
Houston. Who would have guessed that in twenty-seven 
years that baby boy would ever be pregnant himself!

Not very much happened during those two weeks that 
Barry rested at the hospital, but on his final day of 
the stay, Doctor Homann arranged for Barry to get an 
ultrasound test.

Barry lay on the examination table while a chilly gel 
was rubbed over his bare belly. He felt extremely 
uncomfortable with an overfull bladder. The doctors had 
required that he drink a quart of water two hours 
before the test, and now he had a pressing need to 
urinate. Apparently, the test worked better if his 
bladder was ready to burst.

The test operator positioned a TV screen where Barry 
could see it, then lifted a large stainless-steel wand. 
She slid the end of the wand around on the surface of 
Barry's abdomen in a series of linear motions and a 
soon a picture appeared on the screen. The radiologist 
showed Barry the landmarks inside his body. His spine, 
his liver, his painfully distended bladder, and finally 
the baby inside him. Barry had to take her word, since 
he could not make sense of the fuzzy unfamiliar image. 
She even offered to venture a guess as to the sex of 
the baby, but Barry declined.

When the radiologist had what looked like a reasonable 
image, she commanded the system to spit out one hard 
copy photograph for the records and one for Barry. She 
declared Barry and the baby to be fine. Soon 
thereafter, Barry was dressed and ready to be 
discharged. While Valerie drove him home from the 
hospital, Barry showed her the ultrasound photo. 
Valerie had no better luck understanding what she was 
seeing, but accepted Barry's description of the items 
being depicted.

Valerie had more bad news for Barry. The institute was 
getting anxious for some tangible results from her 
research and had asked that she and Carol put in extra 
hours before the grant ran out. Barry knew what that 
meant. She wanted yet another extension to the already-
too-long exchange of their consciousnesses. As Val 
patiently explained, his backache was incompatible with 
her need to put in long hours on her feet. She pledged 
that she would find some positive results worth 
reporting before much longer, and that they could 
finally bring the adventure to an end.

Barry agreed to the extension, seeing no reason to 
argue about it. He knew that regardless of what 
happened that the project would end by July 15th when 
the grant terminated. The institute would lose the 
authority to bill time to the project and thus would 
lose interest in it. Valerie had not pursued another 
grant, knowing that the baby would be a handful for the 
first year, and that the income from Barry's book would 
easily carry them for eighteen months. That meant she 
wasn't in line for any further grant money until the 
next funding cycle in January.


CHAPTER 22
INDEPENDENCE DAY

Barry slowly waddled across the picnic grounds, 
following his wife at an ever increasing distance. The 
bulge under Barry's maternity smock encouraged slow and 
steady progress in comparison to Valerie's more 
energetic pace. Truth be told, Barry's weight was 
slightly under the minimum target for the thirty-fourth 
week of pregnancy: a gain of less than sixteen pounds. 
Barry was very proud of himself for keeping the weight 
off the body that Valerie would reclaim soon enough, 
even though most of the credit had to go to the 
protracted morning sickness he'd finally beaten. His 
hips and buttocks were still slender, and his arms and 
legs were trim. Still, there was no mistaking the 
prominent swelling below his ribcage.

What had started out as a few hours of innocent fun 
getting his mind exchanged with that of his wife had 
stretched to an incredible seven months full of unique 
sensations. Not that Barry had ever had much say in 
getting into or out of the situation. 

Only that morning, Valerie reported that finally she 
was in the last stages of the lab research and that she 
would un-swap their minds as soon as the paperwork 
phase began. She had apologized dozens of times since 
Thanksgiving for the way the schedule kept changing and 
her workload never slacked off. She'd bought Barry lots 
of little gifts as thanks for his patience: software 
CD's for his computer, a new weatherproof cover for the 
telescope, a set of performance tires for the 'Vette.

In recent weeks Valerie had bought him flowers once or 
twice, saying that she'd always liked receiving flowers 
and hoped he would too. He'd actually come to 
appreciate the gesture and enjoyed the smell of each 
floral arrangement. He was aware that these gifts were 
all manifestations of Valerie's guilt.

All of the pretending and impersonation had not been on 
Barry's shoulders these last seven months. Valerie had 
played the part of Barry in a few phone calls to his 
father. Although she tried hard, it was obvious to 
Barry that she was uncomfortable pretending to be Barry 
for his father. It was evident in the way she acted and 
the things she said. Fortunately her attitude was not 
discernible to Barry's father. For Barry's part, the 
Bergstrom family thought he really was Valerie, even 
when Ann visited and called, she was totally unaware 
that her daughter and son in law had exchanged 
consciousnesses. Karen had kept her word and not told 
anyone the secret.

Over the last seven months, Barry had refined his 
performance, adding new touches that further convinced 
Valerie's parents with his portrayal of her. He'd never 
expected to have to do this at all, but soon turned it 
into a game. He wondered if he could insinuate parts of 
his male personality into his portrayal of Valerie so 
that he was hardly acting beyond responding to his 
wife's name? Could he just simply be himself?

Had he been more assertive at the start, this whole 
situation would never have gotten out of hand. Barry 
considered himself very amenable to Valerie's frequent 
requests for extension of the mind-exchange, stating 
his objection each time but eventually giving in. On 
several occasions, he had considered standing his 
ground and refusing to continue. He reasoned that he 
could exercise his husbandly prerogative and urge her 
to retake control of the pregnancy which was her female 
birthright. He might even appeal to the logic of the 
situation or to the emotional issues. Instead, he took 
the time to listen to her and to appreciate the 
pressure her job had put on her and how the pregnancy 
was a problem in the short term. Her happiness was 
worth each little battle lost, not to mention the 
truckload of sex she was giving him in compensation for 
his trouble.

Even with Valerie's eager participation, sex was 
becoming a bit more uncomfortable than it had been in 
the early months. Besides the huge bulge protruding 
from Barry's abdomen which caused them to invent some 
new positions, there was the foreshortening of his 
vagina as the overstuffed womb settled lower.

The last few nights, the fetus had been very active, 
making it difficult for Barry to work at the telescope. 
The lower back pain from the stepstool accident was an 
intermittent dull ache, now, aggravated from time to 
time by the extra weight Barry carried. The doctor said 
that the backache would permanently disappear soon 
after the weight of the baby was no longer pulling on 
the spine, but until then there would be some 
occasional soreness.

Sleeping was becoming problematical, too. The baby had 
very clear preferences on Barry's sleeping positions, 
registering immediate dissatisfaction if Barry tried 
sleeping on his back. For someone weighing less than 
five pounds, or two kilograms as Doctor Homann 
preferred to say, the baby sure had powerful legs. Its 
kick had knocked the wind out of Barry more than once. 
Barry had taken to snuggling up behind his wife in bed 
and pushing his tummy against her so that the baby 
would kidney punch Valerie. She was not amused.

The rapid fetal development of the second trimester had 
compressed Barry's bladder to the size of a thimble. He 
seemed to urinate a hundred times a day, but with 
considerably reduced volume from when he'd first come 
to this body. A cough, a sneeze, or even hearty giggle 
now was all it took to cause leakage. He was reduced to 
wearing a sanitary pad to prevent accidentally wetting 
himself. 

Barry thought back to how he'd been so adverse to 
having a period and now he was reduced to using 
menstrual aids anyway, as diapers no less. His former 
revulsion at the thought of menstruation now seemed 
silly. Maybe he would take Valerie up on her offer, 
that after she had the baby and her periods returned, 
maybe he could become female again for a month and he 
could experience a woman's normal cycle, bleeding and 
all. It couldn't be all that bad, could it?

The grass felt cool against Barry's bare feet as he 
stepped into the shade of the cherry tree where Valerie 
had spread the picnic blanket. There would be plenty of 
time to have their picnic before the fireworks display 
over the lake at dusk. From the spot under the tree, 
they would have a good view of the pyrotechnics.

Valerie helped lower Barry into a sitting position. She 
was dressed in a sports shirt and Bermuda shorts, with 
sandals and a baseball cap. She looked similar to the 
men relaxing in the park with their families.

Barry wore elastic-waist shorts and a tent-like pastel 
smock. The outfit de-emphasized his lumpy figure. He'd 
heard other patients at the obstetrician's office 
complaining about how big their bodies were although to 
Barry they seemed only slightly chubbier than normal. 
Barry felt as though he too was enormous despite the 
knowledge that few women looked as trim as he did this 
late in their pregnancies. 

Valerie had favorably compared Barry to the actress 
Demi Moore who'd been photographed nude for a magazine 
cover in the final weeks of her pregnancy. All of that 
did nothing to erase his feelings of bloating and 
enormity. At least in a sitting position, the bulge was 
less noticeable.

He put his sandals next to the picnic basket and 
started unpacking the food. He'd prepared a few 
traditional favorites, including sandwiches and potato 
salad. There were baked beans and a pie for dessert. 
The cooler next to Valerie held a few bottles of soda 
and a little container of ice-cream for later. Valerie 
twisted the caps off the bottles and poured the drinks 
into cups as Barry distributed the flatware, napkins 
and paper plates.

As they passed food to each other they watched a few 
pre-schoolers playing in the grassy field nearby. 
Valerie watched the children playing with interest.

"A year ago, right after the honeymoon, I wouldn't have 
believed that we would be on our way parenthood," 
Valerie said, as her eyes followed the beach ball that 
the kids were rolling from one to another.

Barry unwrapped a sandwich. He sighed heavily. "A year 
ago, I wouldn't have believed that I'd be the one that 
would be pregnant, either!"

Valerie turned to face Barry, and she could see by his 
expression that his remark was considerably less 
wistful than hers had been. "I'm working as fast as I 
possibly can," she explained. "Have patience, dear. The 
lab phase of the grant runs out in three weeks. We'll 
swap back right after that part is over and then I'll 
do the reports and other paperwork for the project 
while we wait for the baby."

Barry smiled with anticipation. "The sooner the better. 
I've missed some really clear nights for stargazing 
recently, and I can't wait to get a good day's sleep 
for a change."

"You should get shuteye while you can," Valerie 
advised. "Neither of us will sleep much for the next 
twenty years or so after the baby comes."

Barry sighed, acknowledging the truth of Valerie's 
statement. Having one or more children was a full-time 
responsibility. Two-AM feedings and perpetually messy 
diapers are only the start. The onset of childhood 
illnesses, the scraped arms, the bloody noses, the 
falls from bicycles and trees would follow all too 
soon. Later, there would be the trauma of school, the 
pain of social interaction, the heartache as pets die 
and neighborhood friends move away. Then would come the 
teen years with the acne, peer pressure, and dating. 
Eventually, decisions about college, about life, and 
finally: separation anxiety. A million things to cope 
with, to smooth over, and to explain.

Barry gently rubbed his abdominal bulge through the 
smock as he felt the baby becoming restless. Perhaps it 
could sense his worry about the future. Would the child 
be happy? Could he and Valerie make all the right 
choices about raising a child?

Barry closed his eyes, pictured a peaceful place and 
concentrated on slowing his heart-rate. He began 
singing a lullaby softly in the lowest pitch possible 
for his voice. He couldn't remember all of the words to 
the song, but hummed the tune when the lyrics failed 
him. As he alternately sang and hummed, he rubbed his 
abdomen, his open palms making slow circles. Gradually, 
the motion inside him became less frenetic.

He repeated the melody to be sure the fetus was calmed 
down and slowly opened his eyes. Valerie was looking at 
him curiously.

"What's this? Singing before you eat?" she asked.

"It placates the baby," Barry said, placidly. 
"Lullabies seem to work best. You can try it when we 
un-swap."

"I can't sing very well," Valerie commented quietly, 
averting her gaze.

"Sure you can! You'd sound like I did just now. You 
probably just need a little practice, " Barry 
encouraged.

"Are you sure the baby hears anything?" Valerie 
inquired, unwilling to believe that her old body had an 
acceptable singing voice, even after hearing it.

Barry softly replied, "A book I read says that babies 
are immersed in the sounds of their mother's body: the 
thump of the heartbeat, the wheeze of breathing, the 
hiss of urination, and the rumble of digestion and 
elimination. They definitely hear the mother speaking 
or singing. When the conditions are right, they can 
hear sounds from outside like other voices."

Valerie leaned near Barry's navel. "Hello in there! 
Don't listen to your father! He's crazy!"

Barry chuckled. "Try later when my stomach isn't 
drowning you out with it's growling. I'm starved!"

They had a leisurely picnic and rested afterward on the 
blanket as the field became more crowded with people 
arriving to see the fireworks. Valerie told Barry how 
her research had proven no beneficial or detrimental 
effect from intense magnetic scanning. That conclusion 
would be the cornerstone of her report, that magnetic 
energy was harmless other than the ability of the setup 
to produce a mind-exchange. Barry asked if she planned 
to publish the details of the strange side-effect that 
had changed their lives.

"No," Valerie replied. "I'd hate to think what the 
government would do if it had the power to mix and 
match minds of people at will. I think I'll just keep 
this a secret between you and me."

"What about Carol?" Barry asked. "Surely, she's seen 
the way the mice act."

"A day or so after I did the mind exchange between us, 
I changed the experiment a bit to keep the mice from 
being affected," Valerie confided. "Carol never got 
suspicious."

"But, won't someone else stumble onto the effect?"

"No," Valerie answered, shaking her head slowly. "It 
turns out the mind-swap was caused by a combination of 
the method Carol uses for storing patterns in our 
equipment and the fact that we exposed two subjects to 
positive and negative feedback scans.

"Carol's program would collect the information from 
magnetic brain scans on two test subjects. You and I 
for example. The computer could not store the vast 
amount of information from both your scan and mine 
simultaneously, so Carol stored only the differences 
between the two subjects, a considerably smaller amount 
of information. 

"This is made possible because one adult human brain is 
just like another. Brains are even more alike when two 
people have similar intelligence levels, like us. I 
read a few monographs on brain structure and discovered 
a few things that seem to explain how this works. The 
neural interconnections in our brains are nearly 
identical in number and position. What makes you and I 
different are the strengths of each of the 
interconnections.

"When the magnetic pattern was fed back into the 
brains, the signal from my equipment would stimulate or 
suppress the interconnections based on the stored 
pattern of differences. It would strengthen the 
pathways that were too weak compared to the other brain 
and weaken those that were too strong, the end result 
being an interchange of brain patterns. 

"If, by coincidence, Carol had stored the difference 
pattern in reverse polarity, the scan would not 
interchange brain patterns at all, but reinforce the 
patterns already there. The result then would probably 
be that certain facts would become easier to recall and 
others would become more difficult to remember. Strong 
personality traits would probably be enhanced and weak 
traits would likely diminish."

Barry listened intently to Valerie's explanation. He'd 
had a computer programming exercise in an undergraduate 
course that similarly had used a stored difference to 
simultaneously exchange the contents of two databases, 
so the concept was not totally alien to him. He had one 
question: "You and I discovered that the scan doesn't 
affect innate reflexes and autonomic motor response. 
The male body you have is still as klutzy as when I had 
it. Why didn't acquired reflexes get swapped from one 
brain to another?"

"My best guess is that the flux energy used in my lab 
was too low to affect any neural connections except 
memories," Valerie opined. "Since the brain has to be 
able to rapidly store memories, those connections are 
more sensitive to chemical and magnetic influences. 
Perhaps the reflexes and instinct and such are wired 
into the brain more solidly than the relatively 
ephemeral connections of memory."

"So my conscious mind is just a pattern of 
interconnections in my neurons?"

"Apparently so," Valerie answered. "The theological 
ramifications are immense. If news of the mind swap 
ever got out, my work would be denounced by every 
religious organization that exists. By virtue of your 
participation in the mind swap, you too would be a 
target. You and I, our parents, even our child would be 
hounded forever. I think it's in everyone's best 
interest to keep this situation of ours under wraps."

Her mention of religious organizations triggered 
another thought. Barry hadn't considered the 
theological aspects of their exchanged psyches. If he 
or Valerie died while their minds were swapped, whose 
soul would go on to judgment? Was his soul here in 
Valerie's body or was it hers? Did the soul follow the 
mind or stay with the body? He quickly recognized that 
he had no way to know or to affect the identity of the 
soul in this body. He just took a long slow breath and 
rubbed his tummy to soothe the fidgeting fetus.

The fireworks began at dusk, exploding in bright multi-
colored streamers over the lake. Barry had always liked 
pyrotechnics, but this night, he was enjoying them from 
a different perspective. The eyes in this body seemed 
to see the colors more clearly and with greater detail. 
His ears seemed more sensitive to the whistles, thumps 
and crackles of the explosions.

Valerie sat with her back against the trunk of the 
cherry tree and her legs apart. Barry sat between her 
legs facing the same direction. He could lean back 
against Valerie and pull her arms around him. Valerie 
rested her hands in his lap and rubbed the front of the 
abdominal bulge.

"If you like touching the baby like this, you'll like 
it even more when we un-swap," he told her. She said 
nothing in reply.

In the last eight months, he'd tried his best to keep 
up appearances when they were in public. Valerie had 
done an admirable job, too, holding doors and chairs 
for him. Each of them discreetly cued the other on rare 
occasions when something out of character happened. 
They were a pretty good team. Valerie often took the 
game into the bedroom. Her parody of a studly male was 
certain to bring a fit of giggles to her husband. Barry 
admitted that he sometime used feminine strategies when 
they made love, but only when it improved the moment. 

Except for the names they used in private, no one would 
realize they were not the people they appeared to be.

Barry could feel tiny spasms as a few of the louder 
fireworks shells startled the fetus. Barry placed 
Valerie's hand on his tummy so that she could feel the 
baby jump at the loud reports.

"See?" Barry whispered. "They can hear things just fine 
in there." He rubbed his abdomen in long strokes and 
began to hum a soft lullaby to calm the baby.


CHAPTER 23
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS

Barry chuckled at the thought that Valerie had one of 
her plans backfire. She had found out about her mother 
planning a baby shower. Of course her mother didn't 
realize that she wasn't speaking to her son-in-law when 
she called the house one weekend. Valerie pledged that 
she wouldn't tell 'Val' about the party, and would 
arrange to get the guests into the house before the 
'surprise' party. She intended to have her mind back in 
her female body by the party and to pretend to be 
surprised when her husband brought her home to the 
party, but the demands of the lab project and Barry's 
chronic backache foiled those plans.

Instead, Barry was the one that was the guest of honor 
at the party and Valerie was persona non grata. She was 
banished to the institute for the afternoon. When she 
returned, Barry filled her in on the details of the 
party.

The guests had stayed the afternoon and had cake and 
tea. They gave the young couple some nice baby gifts, 
like baby clothes, rattles, pacifiers, and baby toys. 
Valerie's parents gave them a very expensive 
combination baby-carrier and car-seat. The way Barry 
went on and on about the people and the party, it 
seemed that he enjoyed himself, although Valerie knew 
how the parties turned into 'hen-parties' with lots of 
girl-talk and female bonding. A man surely wouldn't 
enjoy himself.

That week, Valerie and Barry bought some baby furniture 
that required assembly. Barry had to content himself 
with reading the directions as Valerie struggled with 
the screwdrivers and other tools. His back was still 
too tender and the pregnancy was too far along for him 
to do any heavy lifting. It took more than a week for 
them to assemble everything, since Val was working at 
the lab every day and was too tired to spend more than 
an hour each night on the furniture. When they were 
done, they had a cradle, a crib, playpen, changing-
table and bureau, as well as a swing, and a stroller.

Valerie did not enjoy the furniture projects, and Barry 
was frustrated at being relegated to the task of merely 
deciphering the directions. He wanted so badly to put 
the things together himself.

"You're putting the baby together in your tummy. That's 
more than enough," was what Valerie told him every time 
he complained about not being able to participate 
directly, though.

Valerie made a Freudian slip one evening while they 
were building the crib, telling Barry he was good at 
being a mother. Barry immediately argued that he was 
the father and that Valerie was the mother regardless 
of the fact that he was currently female and carrying 
the fetus. Valerie apologized, and tried to excuse her 
mistake by explaining that she meant 'nurturer of the 
unborn child' when she used the term 'mother' and did 
not mean the eventual parenting role, or that Barry was 
any less masculine than before. Barry sulked for an 
hour before he eventually cooled off. When he calmed 
down, he even complimented Valerie on how well she had 
been helping him during the pregnancy, although he 
stopped short of calling her a 'father'.

The due-date was only five weeks away.

The parenting instructor, Wendy Miller, R. N., strode 
to the front of the conference room and stood near the 
whiteboard. "Let's get started now, people! We only 
have tonight and next week" she admonished. The young 
couples quieted their chatter and quickly settled into 
their seats.

"This is the third week of the Mercy General pre-natal, 
childbirth, and parenting class. Tonight I have some 
slides about fetal development, and later we'll go 
upstairs for a tour of the maternity floor."

Wendy presented a brief slide show that showed pictures 
from the moment of conception through the middle of the 
third trimester, coincidentally the current point in 
development of Barry and Valerie's child. It seemed 
almost impossible to believe that all of the genetic 
information necessary to uniquely describe a human was 
contained in the microscopic egg and even tinier sperm. 
Barry gently rubbed his abdomen and realized that at 
one point not only had this fetus been that small, but 
so had Valerie and he and everyone else who ever lived.

In earlier weeks of the class, Barry learned how to 
diaper a baby, using a life-size doll as a model. The 
instructor, Wendy, was no help when she suggested that 
the women in the class show their husbands how it was 
done; her rationale being that the women had played 
with baby dolls when they were little girls. Barry had 
never been a little girl, and his wife had spent her 
childhood in tree houses and on soccer teams rather 
than at pretend tea parties and playing with dolls. It 
was the blind leading the blind. After a few pointers 
from Wendy, both he and Valerie did an acceptable job, 
but decided that the best bet for them might be pre-
formed disposable diapers.

Barry ended up having to practice the rhythmic 
breathing exercises for labor and delivery along with 
the other mothers. He felt very silly huffing and 
wheezing like that along with the women in the class. 
He envied the other fathers that simply had to watch 
their wives and encourage them. He was pleased that 
Valerie paid strict attention and even practiced the 
ridiculous-sounding techniques at home with him after 
the class. She would be the one that would need to know 
the details when the time came. Barry learned some 
interesting ways to meditate and calm himself at the 
class. He figured that even though he wouldn't be in 
labor, the meditation might come in handy when the 
stress of parenting got to be too much.

When the final class came, Barry and Valerie were 
singled out as the couple that had been the best 
students. The instructor remarked upon how The Owens 
couple seemed to pay attention to everything, even when 
it was something that applied mostly to their partner, 
and that made them model students, in her eyes.

In bed the night after the last class, Valerie was 
giving Barry a backrub as he sat with his back to her 
reading the newspaper. Barry suddenly put down the 
paper and asked her, "Do you think we're ready to be 
parents?"

"I'm not sure, Bar'," Valerie remarked. It sure seems 
like a lot of responsibility."

"It's a little late to be thinking of that now," Barry 
said. "But I know how you feel. We'll soon have a 
little boy or girl expecting us to do everything for 
them, and calling us Daddy and Mommy."

"It's hard to believe," Valerie agreed. "Do you want a 
boy or a girl?"

Barry paused before answering. "I was kind of hoping 
for a girl, but everyone at the baby shower told me how 
much trouble girls are when they get older."

"Barry!" Valerie complained. "I don't think I was any 
trouble to my parents!"

"All I know is what I heard," he responded with a 
slight giggle.

"You've been both, now, so which way would you want 
your child to be, if you could choose?" Valerie asked 
him.

"Like I said," Barry replied, "I'd probably like a 
girl."

"That's funny," Valerie commented, "because I was 
leaning toward wanting a little boy."

"Little girls are quiet and petite," Barry offered. 
"Sugar and spice..."

"Boys are full of surprises."

Barry frowned, "Surprises are not always good, though. 
Snips and snails and puppy dog tails..."

Valerie continued, "Boys are more rough and tumble than 
girls. You'd have someone to go to ball games with and 
to work on your car. A little girl will expect you to 
pay for her wedding. She'll end up spending a fortune 
on clothes. You'll probably disapprove of every boy she 
dates."

"Boys tend to be more irresponsible. That would worry 
me more."

"I bet," Valerie hooted. "I'd be concerned about a girl 
because they have a hard time getting ahead in the 
world."

"Maybe by the time our child is older that won't be the 
case," Barry argued, "Besides, you'll set her head on 
straight if I know you."

Valerie chuckled. "I think if I could have voted, that 
I would have wanted to be a boy, myself."

"Really?" Barry marveled.

"It's been a lot of fun these last few months," Valerie 
explained. 

"It reinforced some of the things I had always 
suspected about being male. I'll always wonder now how 
things would have been if I'd been born this way."

"I guess I'm more objective," Barry said. "I will admit 
to being curious about being born female, but I don't 
have particular feelings one way or the other. One 
thing hasn't changed though, I still can't imagine 
being sexually attracted to men. I mean, other than to 
you, of course."

Valerie gave him a little hug. "I feel the same way 
about women. I don't see myself romantically involved 
with any of them, but somehow, knowing the man I 
married is inside that female body, I can ignore my 
bias and love you as much as before. I think it's great 
that we can feel so comfortable as each other."

"Speak for yourself about comfort," Barry grunted, 
turning onto his side as the fetus began to become 
active in his tummy. He turned off the light at the 
headboard and the room fell into darkness.

"I meant that we play the opposite sex roles so 
naturally and easily," Valerie explained. "I think that 
makes us special."

"Mmmmm" Barry agreed, wordlessly, as he hunkered 
against his pillow and settled in for another night's 
sleep.

"Are you feeling frisky?" Valerie asked, her hand 
gently trailing along Barry's leg.

"I might be," he purred. "Are you trying to encourage 
me?"

Indeed she was.


CHAPTER 24
STRIKE THREE

Valerie had been dreaming about sex. This had become a 
common theme in her dreams since Barry's fetus had 
settled lower and made intercourse difficult. Recent 
dreams were filled with images of naked men with firmly 
muscled bodies and ever-present erections. More than 
once, she'd awaken to discover her hand gently stroking 
her own firm tumescent shaft. At least her dreams 
hadn't become fantasies about naked women as she'd 
feared they might. The only differences from before the 
swap was that she awoke with a hard-on of her own and 
no longer felt the waking desire to be filled. She 
wondered if she was gradually forgetting what it was 
like to be a woman. It had been more than eight months 
after all.

The alarm clock read a few minutes past three AM, and 
outside the sky was still dark. Valerie wasn't sleeping 
very well, knowing that before the next sunset, she 
would be fulfilling her promise to Barry. The 
experimental phase of her research at the institute was 
complete, and at long last, it was time to undergo the 
flux dot scan again and put their minds back into the 
proper bodies. 

She could write the reports and journal articles at 
home in a female body waiting for the baby as well as 
she could at the Institute in a male body. She'd 
arranged to have someone else conduct her lectures in 
the summer term, with hopes that she'd be able to 
return to her teaching duties by the middle of the Fall 
term. At least the research had been completed before 
the grant ran out.

She felt enormous guilt at the way fate and her 
ambition had conspired to prolong the mind exchange for 
more than eight months. The delay had not totally been 
her fault, she rationalized. Valerie wondered if the 
experience of being pregnant would be very 
uncomfortable, particularly since she would be jumping 
right into the thirty-seventh week with no chance to 
gradually become accustomed to the changes. 

It was difficult to guess what she would feel based on 
observing her husband; he wasn't as vocal about his 
moods or body as a normal female. Barry had not 
complained of any discomfort since recovering from the 
stepstool accident, but Valerie knew he seldom voiced 
his ills to anyone. His reticence to admit minor aches 
and pain was one male trait that had defied the change 
in body shape and new hormones. She surmised that she 
would know about the moods and discomfort firsthand 
soon enough.

Regardless of what happened or how she would feel after 
the un-swapping, she reminded herself that it was her 
duty as a woman, a wife, and a mother to go through 
labor and delivery. Women were supposed to do this, not 
men. That was just the way things were.

Valerie regretted having stomach distress during the 
childbirth videotapes at the pre-natal class. She'd 
heard stories about the pain and mess of delivery and 
she had hoped to get a preview from the videos, but had 
instead spent that time doubled over a toilet in the 
men's room regurgitating her dinner. So what if she 
hadn't seen all of the footage? The birthing experience 
couldn't be too bad, she rationalized. Lots of women 
had babies and they survived. Some mothers even had 
numerous pregnancies knowing firsthand what awaited 
them in the labor and delivery rooms. Valerie wondered 
if she would want more than one child after giving 
birth herself.

Valerie looked at her husband peacefully sleeping next 
to her and admired the way Barry's female body looked. 
Barry had kept his body weight in limits for a 
pregnancy, just as he'd promised the day he first saw 
the doctor. In fact, the obstetrician had indicated 
that his weight was a little on the low side and 
encouraged him to have a few doughnuts or a dish of ice 
cream or two from time to time to get his weight up to 
the normal range. He'd gained barely seventeen pounds 
by the thirty-seventh week, but would ideally have 
gained between nineteen and twenty-three. 

Valerie estimated that after un-swapping their minds 
that she'd probably gain another pound or two in the 
final weeks before delivery and still be below her 
target weight. She wondered if she would have Barry's 
energy. His frequent trips to the health club with 
Valerie had kept the weight off and improved the skin 
tone around his abdomen. The good news was that the 
baby was healthy and no smaller than normal, and that 
Valerie could expect her own weight would rebound to 
normal or maybe lower than normal soon after the birth.

The pre-natal bulge looked huge on Barry's tiny frame, 
but Valerie could not see any stretch marks. The only 
thing that looked out of place was his convex navel 
which had been concave when the pregnancy started. His 
breasts had begun swelling with the preparation for 
milk production, bumping him up to a D-cup from the 
normal B. Valerie had often wished for larger breasts, 
particularly in puberty, and now that the larger tits 
had been delivered, her husband was, incongruously, 
reaping the compliments. She knew that the breasts 
would remain larger as long as the baby nursed and that 
she might yet hear some compliments on the new figure. 
Valerie had not yet decided if she would breast-feed 
the baby, though.

The expanding breasts had made Barry's nipples too 
sensitive for touching, and that along with the unborn 
baby settling left them both horny and frustrated. 
Barry had briefly tried using the vibrator to stimulate 
his vagina, but the buzzing startled the fetus and he 
couldn't concentrate on arousal with someone writhing 
and fidgeting in his uterus. Valerie was aware that he 
often used his fingers to derive some scant 
stimulation. She herself had even jerked off a few 
times in the shower in recent weeks, but was 
disappointed by the guilt and embarrassment she felt 
each time. This was the longest she and Barry had gone 
without sex since they'd begun dating.

Barry was asleep facing away from her, and covered only 
by a sheet. Underneath the sheet, he wore nothing, for 
comfort in the warmth of late July. Barry slept on his 
side these days, claiming that any other position 
annoyed the fetus and thus kept him awake. His breasts 
were gently rising and falling with his shallow 
breathing.

Valerie ran her fingers over his bare shoulders and 
felt his smooth skin against her comparatively rough 
fingers. Barry moaned appreciatively.

"Are you awake?" Valerie inquired in a whisper to avoid 
waking him unnecessarily. Since they'd exchanged 
consciousnesses, both had difficulty sleeping for one 
reason or another. She figured that if she spoke 
quietly and he was asleep, she would not waken him.

"Yes, I'm awake," he replied. "I'm kind of anxious 
about bringing closure to this odyssey of ours. Just to 
think that in a few hours, it'll all be over. I'll be 
male and you'll be female again. It's hard to believe 
that you and I dragged this out more than eight 
months."

"Have I told you recently how much I appreciated your 
sacrifice?" Valerie asked softly, her voice deep and 
mellow.

"You have," Barry responded seductively, "but I'd like 
to hear it again."

"Okay," she agreed. "I'm sorry for how I procrastinated 
when you wanted to get your body back. I'm sorry for 
making you pretend to be someone you're not. I'm sorry 
for the months of fatigue you endured in my stead. I'm 
sorry for how the baby has pummeled your insides 
recently and made it difficult to sleep. I'm sorry for 
the nausea and heartburn. I'm sorry for the cruel 
threats I made to tell your father about our mind 
exchange. I'm sorry I wasn't home more to be with you 
when you had mood swings and wanted a shoulder to cry 
on or someone to share your joy. I'm sorry for the 
spill that hurt your back..."

"That wasn't your fault at all," Barry replied. "I was 
stupid for standing on my tiptoes on a stepstool in my 
delicate condition."

"No," Valerie insisted, "if I hadn't swapped our 
consciousnesses, you wouldn't have needed the stepstool 
to reach the shelf in the first place."

Barry turned over and quickly gave her a peck of a 
kiss. "I love you." he said, "and I'd love to stay and 
talk, but my pea-sized bladder is full and needs 
draining." He rolled off the side of the bed and stood.

"Oooh!" he groaned as his feet hit the floor. "Have you 
been punching me while I was asleep?"

"No," Valerie answered. Her face showed concern, and 
she hoping he was not getting sick again on the day she 
would restore their minds to the proper bodies. She did 
not relish regaining possession of her body if Barry 
was becoming ill on top of the pregnancy.

"My gut feels all sore," Barry reported with a grimace. 
He rubbed his tender abdomen and winced again.

He hobbled toward the bathroom. Valerie saw that just 
as he entered the lavatory he froze and gripped the 
door frame. "Val!" he shouted, sharply.

"What's wrong?" she asked, jumping out of bed to join 
her husband. The tile floor of the bathroom around 
Barry's feet was puddled with a cloudy amber liquid. 
"What's the matter? What's that stuff on the floor?"

Barry's eyes were glazed with a combination of pain and 
fear as he scanned her face. It took a moment before he 
grunted, "My water broke, Val, and I'm having a whale 
of a contraction."

"A contraction?!" she shouted, her voice filled with 
alarm.

"I'm... I'm in labor!" Barry wailed.

"You can't be!" she countered, "It's not even 
August...the baby isn't due for three weeks!"

"Tell that to the baby," he sobbed with tears welling 
up in his eyes. "It's coming whether we're ready or 
not! We waited too long to un-swap, Val. We waited too 
long!"

Valerie put her hand on his pelvis and could feel the 
knotted uterine muscles. It was clear that something 
was making Barry's uterus tense up. After a few seconds 
she could feel his womb relaxing, and he exhaled 
noisily. As the muscles inside Barry rested, Valerie 
could see a tiny moving lump protruding from his 
swollen abdomen indicating the baby's silent yet 
energetic protest of the squeeze from the contraction.

"Well, this is just great!" Barry cried, with angry 
tears freely flowing now. "I guess there's no way we 
can get un-swapped before I deliver can we?"

Valerie could not bring herself to meet Barry's angry 
stare. "No," she admitted, softly, "there isn't. 
Although the tranquilizer I use at the lab won't affect 
the baby, the process requires that we be motionless 
during the scan. We can't take the chance of the baby 
delivering while both you and I are unconscious."

"Tell me this isn't happening, Val!"

"I'm sorry, Barry," she apologized. "I'm really, really 
sorry!"

He glared at her, his unspoken emotions obvious.

Valerie helped Barry the rest of the way into the 
bathroom, where he sponged the horribly smelling fluid 
off his legs. He grabbed a menstrual pad and held it 
against his vulva, then pulled a pair of panties off 
the shower rod and stepped into them to keep the pad in 
place. He stood at the sink and looked at himself in 
the mirror as he washed his hands and splashed water 
onto his face. He could see as well as feel that he was 
shivering with fright.

Valerie stood behind him and offered the only thing she 
could: moral support. "What is a contraction like, 
Barry? Do they hurt?"

Barry could tell that she was as apprehensive as he 
was, and that her insipid query was as much her way of 
coping as a way to distract him from the gravity of the 
situation. "It doesn't really hurt as much as take your 
breath away," he admitted, "but I bet they'll get 
stronger soon enough. It feels like..." Barry tried to 
put into words the physical sensation he'd felt, but 
there was no way he could describe the massive 
involuntary muscle tension. "The best way to describe 
it is for you to make a fist... the tightest one you 
can. Go ahead... do it."

Valerie gripped her hand into a solid fist and held it, 
her biceps bulging and her arm vibrating from the 
strain.

Barry traced his fingers gently across the bulge in her 
upper arm. "Imagine the same thing you are feeling here 
happening everywhere from your waist down."

Valerie's eyes went wide. "You're kidding!" she 
commented in awe, loosening her fist.

"Nope," Barry confirmed, "and not only that strong but 
it lasts for twenty or thirty seconds."

"You've got to believe me Barry. I never intended for 
you to take it this far." Valerie's eyes were pleading 
for his forgiveness.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't frightened," Barry 
told her, sniffling slightly. "Once or twice the last 
eight months I tried to imagine what you'd be going 
through during labor and delivery, and wondered if I 
would have the guts to endure it myself. I guess I'm 
going to find out."

"Geez Barry, I wish you knew how sorry I am about 
this!"

Barry wiped the tears from his cheeks. "I know you are, 
Val. I know. But there's nothing either of us can do 
about that now, is there?"

Valerie timed Barry's contractions. Before an hour had 
elapsed, the events were ten minutes apart, which was 
the point where it was time to go to the hospital. She 
drove Barry to the emergency room entrance and helped 
him inside. She waited while the administrators 
searched for the necessary paperwork. The admitting 
office had not expected the Owens' for a month. The 
papers had been filed for weeks, but since a mother's 
first baby is usually late instead of early, it took a 
while to get everything together. A nurse took Barry up 
to the labor suite while Valerie signed a few forms.

When Valerie had completed the admission process, she 
headed for the maternity floor. She remembered the 
location of the labor suite from the tour she and Barry 
had taken during the pre-natal classes. She'd expected 
she would be the one brought up in a wheelchair while 
her husband filled out forms in the admitting office. 
Instead, Barry had gotten the wheelchair ride and she 
had to continue portraying the male spouse. 

She rode the elevator to the fifth level and followed 
the green stripe on the floor to the suite of labor and 
delivery rooms. The status board at the nurse's station 
near the elevator had the name V. Owens scribbled in 
the slot for room 527, and another name assigned to a 
room at the other end of the hall. This day, most of 
the labor rooms were empty.

When Valerie entered Barry's labor room, he was already 
wearing a hospital johnny and sitting up in a hospital 
bed. A disposable thermometer strip hung out of his 
mouth and a nurse was inflating a sphygmomanometer cuff 
around his arm. Valerie waved at him, understanding 
that he shouldn't speak while his vitals were being 
taken. The nurse was very efficient and completed the 
tasks quickly, made a few notations on a chart and left 
the room.

"Are you doing okay, Barry?" Valerie asked once they 
were alone.

"I feel okay, I guess, for a guy in labor. I could use 
a few ice chips," Barry replied.

"Where can I get those?" Valerie asked.

Barry gave her a puzzled look. "Weren't you paying 
attention when we had the tour up here a few weeks 
ago?"

"To be honest, I thought I'd be the one in labor and 
you'd be running around getting things for me."

Barry sighed, and gave her directions to the icemaker. 
He told her where to find the cups and how to work the 
machine.

Valerie followed Barry's directions. The ice machine 
was in a small room near the nurse's station. She found 
the cups right where he'd said they'd be, filled the 
cup with the crushed ice and made her way back to 
Barry's room. The curtain was pulled around the bed 
when she returned, and she could see a nurse's legs 
below the curtain. The nurse was offering encouragement 
to Barry.

"A little more... I'm almost done," the nurse advised 
Barry. "There!" Valerie heard the elastic snap of the 
nurse removing latex gloves. The curtains were pulled 
open as Barry adjusted the blanket over himself. The 
nurse addressed Valerie. "Your wife's cervix is 
thinning nicely and she's almost three centimeters 
dilated. You brought her in at just the right time."

Valerie noticed that a wire harness connected Barry to 
a group of electronic devices next to the bed. The 
nurse observed Valerie's gaze and explained. "We've 
hooked up a fetal monitor so we can keep tabs on the 
baby and the progress of Valerie's labor. I'll be 
checking in from time to time, but the baby won't be 
born for an hour or more. You and she can time the 
contractions, and use the call button if you need 
anything." The nurse left.

Valerie stepped closer to watch the fetal monitor. The 
machine was emitting two soft beeping sounds at 
different pitches and rates. Valerie guessed that one 
beep represented Barry's heartbeat and the other beep 
was an echo of the baby's cardiac rhythm. Her 
analytical mind wondered how the system could sense the 
minuscule electrical signal from the baby's heart in 
the presence of Barry's stronger EKG, particularly 
since the device was connected only to the outside of 
her husband's body. 

The screen on the front of the unit displayed several 
greenish-blue lines crawling across the monitor from 
left to right. One showed Barry's EKG, and another 
showed a faster rhythm, obviously the baby. One line 
showed Barry's respiration and a few other lines were 
flat and unmoving. One of the flat lines began a gentle 
ramp upward and a moment later, Barry took a deep 
breath. Both heartbeats sped up slightly.

"Are you having a contraction?" Valerie asked him.

Barry nodded in silent affirmation, as his eyes closed 
and he started breathing noisily through pursed lips. 
His hands were gripping the rails on the side of the 
bed so tightly that his knuckles were white. Valerie 
stood dumbly next to the bed unsure of how to help 
Barry. She could see the strained muscles on his neck 
as he tensed from the exertion. It was clear that he 
was feeling these contractions much more than those 
he'd had at home.

Thirty seconds later the line on the monitor indicated 
that the contraction was ramping down. Barry took a 
deep breath and slowly exhaled.

"They're getting stronger," he moaned, confirming 
Valerie's suspicions. His eyes were wet and there was a 
thin bead of perspiration on his brow. His unhappiness 
at his situation was evident in his features.

Valerie was already overcome with guilt about not being 
the one in labor. She didn't know what to say that 
would convey her contrition. "Here's the ice chips," 
she smiled bravely, holding out the cup to him. Barry 
eagerly slid a small granule of ice under his tongue 
and sucked on it until it had melted entirely away. 
Another piece followed that one. Barry was already 
feeling parched, and he knew that ice chips would not 
quench his thirst but that a lot of talking would only 
further dry his mouth, so he let Valerie do most of the 
talking.

The nurse leaned into the doorway of the labor room. "I 
just spoke to Doctor Homann. She's on her way here. All 
right, Valerie?"

Valerie replied "Sure!" before she realized that the 
nurse was talking to Barry. In eight months she'd tried 
to maintain her identity as well as helping Barry 
maintain his. Around the house and when no one else 
could hear, she was Valerie and he was Barry. The 
drawback was that neither one had grown totally 
comfortable with answering to the other's name.

The clock on the labor room wall read half past five 
AM.

By nine AM, the contractions had become less than three 
minutes apart and lasted almost forty-five seconds 
each. Barry was becoming exhausted from the exertion. 
It seemed that he was just recovering from one 
contraction when another one started. Each contraction 
was becoming more painful than the last as the baby's 
head tried to squeeze from the womb into the birth 
canal.

The nurse did another internal exam and discovered that 
Barry's cervix was dilated to nine centimeters. She 
quickly disconnected the fetal monitor and called for a 
gurney. As Barry was transferred to the rolling bed, 
the nurse advised Valerie to change into surgical 
scrubs for the delivery.

Valerie found the changing room and slipped into the 
green garments that looked and felt like loose pajamas. 
She donned a surgical cap and mask and went to the 
delivery rooms at the end of the hall. A nurse directed 
Valerie into the brightly lit room where Barry was 
already lying atop a surgical table draped in a sheet. 
Barry was whimpering from the pain of another 
contraction as Valerie entered and was pointed toward a 
stool near his head. 

Barry was gripping the pair of handrails tightly and 
gritting his teeth as the contraction crested. Valerie 
could see the veins in his neck as he fought the pain 
wracking his body. Suddenly, he relaxed and began 
panting as the contraction ended.

Doctor Homann entered the delivery room a few moments 
later. She began directing the nurses as they propped 
Barry's legs up on the stirrups on the delivery table. 
This time the stainless steel braces were not for an 
examination but to hold his legs in the proper position 
for the baby to be delivered.

Barry had complained about the stirrups after every 
visit to the gynecologist. Like the majority of women, 
he disliked how exposed the stirrups made him feel. 
Valerie had never cared for them herself. Ironically, 
in the last eight months, Barry had undergone three 
times the intrusive internal exams Valerie had ever 
experienced since puberty. He had joked a few months 
earlier that more people had looked through his pussy 
than had been through the Chunnel.

The surgical nurses moved a huge light into position 
over the table and positioned a large mirror so that 
Valerie and Barry could see the juncture of his legs 
and could watch the progress of the delivery. 

Barry grabbed Valerie's hand and tightly gripped it as 
another contraction hit. He cried out only a little as 
the exertion reached it's peak. Valerie admired Barry's 
ability to endure the pain, and wondered if she would 
be as restrained as he appeared to be.

As the contraction ended, Barry continued his rhythmic 
breathing. His face was drenched in perspiration. From 
the strain Barry was showing, Valerie gathered that the 
term 'labor' was very apt. She dabbed at Barry's face 
with a surgical towel that a nurse provided, and placed 
a few ice chips between his lips.

"Zo!" Doctor Homann loudly interjected, slipping her 
hands into surgical gloves. "Are you ready to haff a 
baby?"

"No!" Barry answered, succinctly.

Doctor Homann laughed. "Come, come, Valerie! Ve vimmen 
are born to do zis, ja? Don't vorry. You are no 
different! You vill do fine!"

Barry looked at Valerie and his face was filled with 
fear. He wanted to tell the doctor just how different 
he was and how unprepared he was for having a baby. He 
looked to his side at Valerie. All he could see of her 
face was her eyes since she, like everyone else in the 
room, wore a mask covering her mouth and nose. He tried 
to read her emotions through her eyes but could not. He 
wondered if she wanted to be in his place or if she was 
secretly pleased that he was experiencing the pain of 
delivery instead of her.

"Okay now Valerie, ve vill be doing the episiotomy here 
in a moment, ja?" Doctor Homann explained. "On zis next 
contraction, I know you vill vant to poosh, but try not 
to, ja?"

Valerie looked at Barry. "Episiotomy?" she whispered in 
his ear.

Barry whispered back to her. "You missed this part of 
the video in the class, didn't you?"

Valerie could see that Barry was not looking forward to 
whatever an episiotomy was.

Barry felt another contraction beginning, and an 
incredible pressure in his pelvis. Not only was the 
contraction stronger, but the pressure was extremely 
painful this time. Barry shrieked with the intense 
searing pain he was feeling.

"Good! Good! Ze baby iss ready for transition!" Doctor 
Homann encouraged, pressing on Barry's abdomen and 
slipping a few fingers into his birth canal to feel the 
progress of the baby. Nurses began turning on the 
heaters on incubators and preparing several nearby 
tables. Barry bellowed loudly as the pain suddenly 
became very intense.

The contraction finally subsided nearly a minute later 
and Doctor Homann immediately picked up a large pair of 
surgical scissors. Barry squinted in anticipation of 
the pain and Valerie's eyes got very wide as she 
watched the doctor cut the notch from the rear of 
Barry's pussy into his perineum. She could not imagine 
the pain of having a huge gash cut into her body in 
that very sensitive spot. Barry was surprised that he 
felt very little pain from the cut. There was an awful 
lot of blood, though.

Doctor Homann finished quickly and announced, "Zee? It 
hardly hurts at all. Now zere is room for ze baby's 
head. Okay, Valerie, ve do a big poosh on zis next 
contraction, ja?"

Barry held Valerie's hand, knowing that in a few 
seconds a baby would be trying to pass through a very 
narrow passage in his body: a passage that up until now 
had only needed to accept a cock, an errant finger or 
the occasional tampon. Doubts that the baby would fit 
through there flickered at the fringes of his mind. 
Although Barry was unsure of his own ability to 
withstand the pain, given that it certainly would be 
worse than what he had endured already, he also felt 
some instinctive need to remain calm and to get through 
the ordeal. Regardless of whether he was prepared or 
not, he felt the contraction starting and took a deep 
breath.

"Ze contraction is beginning?" Doctor Homann asked, 
seeing his reaction. "Sehr Goot! Now poosh!"

Barry needed no further encouragement. He bore down 
with his diaphragm and felt the swelling as the baby's 
head slid out of his uterus and into the birth canal. 
He screamed with the incredible pain of the transition, 
took another breath and bore down again.

"You are doing fine!" the doctor shouted above his 
shrieks of agony. "I can see ze baby's head."

Barry continued bellowing as he felt the doctor pushing 
on his abdomen to speed the delivery. He panted and 
whined as the contraction wound down. The pain and 
pressure in his groin did not disappear with the end of 
the contraction. The baby's head was now situated in 
his vagina but the rest of the fetus was still in the 
womb He whimpered and sobbed as his gut seemed to be 
pried wide open.

"I'm sorry," Valerie apologized quietly.

"You're sorry!?" Barry venomously shouted. "You should 
be here doing this! Do you know that! This is all your 
fault! I never asked for this! This hurts like hell! I 
wish you could fee..."

The next contraction began after only a brief pause and 
Barry found himself unable to speak as he inhaled and 
bore down again.

"Don't worry," a nurse whispered to Valerie. "All 
mothers get really abusive during delivery. They know 
their husbands will never experience labor or delivery 
and so they get a little defensive."

Valerie cringed at the comment, and hoped Barry didn't 
hear the nurse.

"Here ve come!" Doctor Homann shouted. Valerie looked 
into the mirror and saw a bloody baby swiftly squirt 
from Barry's loins to land in the doctor's hands. The 
doctor turned the baby over and announced, 
"Congratulations! You have a beautiful daughter!"

The baby began crying and breathing spontaneously, a 
point at which most of the nurses collectively exhaled. 
One nurse lifted the infant girl from the doctor and 
carried her to Barry's chest. The baby lay cradled 
against Barry's chest near his face, listening to his 
thundering heartbeat still pounding from the delivery 
only seconds ago. The tiny girl calmed down almost 
immediately after being left on Barry. The umbilical 
cord was still attached to the baby, and Barry could 
feel the indistinct tug of the connection to the 
placenta still inside him.

"She's beautiful," Valerie said, pointing to the baby. 
Barry looked up to see the tears in his wife's eyes.

"Have you picked a name?" A nurse asked the proud 
parents.

"Kirsten," Valerie answered immediately.

"Kirsten Elaine" Barry elaborated. Elaine had been his 
Mother's name. Although it was illogical, he somehow 
imagined that his late mother would be proud of him if 
she knew about his recent situation and that her son 
had actually endured childbirth.

Barry felt a sense of relief that most of the work of 
labor and delivery was over. The nurse retrieved the 
baby and helped the doctor sever the umbilical cord. 
The baby was cleaned, weighed and examined as Barry 
expelled the afterbirth with almost as much pain as 
delivering Kirsten. The other nurses assisted the 
doctor and generally were very busy. It seemed no time 
before Doctor Homann had sutured Barry's vulva to it's 
pre-episiotomy dimensions, closing the incision with 
what she euphemistically called a "husband's knot". 
When she'd finished, they wheeled him and the baby out 
of the delivery room.

The nurses took the baby to the nursery to recover 
after the trauma of delivery. Barry was extremely tired 
and sore too. He hadn't really felt much fatigue until 
the delivery was over, but it had descended on him all 
at once, and now all he wanted was a nap. Valerie 
kissed her husband and told him how proud she was 
before they whisked Barry and Kirsten away for a few 
hours of rest.

As she watched the incubator and gurney being rolled 
away, Valerie made a decision that would change her 
life and Barry's.


CHAPTER 25
SEPARATION

Barry sat up in the maternity-ward bed holding his tiny 
newborn daughter. Kirsten had wisps of very fine blond 
hair on her scalp. Her eyes were a deep dark blue when 
she opened them, although she slept a lot. She was 
tiny, pink and adorable, with the most delicate little 
fingers and toes and pudgy little arms and legs. Her 
button nose and pouting lips were so delicate and 
small. Barry could not believe that he'd actually given 
birth only a few hours earlier. Nothing in his boyhood 
had ever prepared him for being a female, much less 
being a mother in labor or undergoing delivery, and yet 
he'd done just fine. Kirsten was living proof of that. 

The nurses encouraged Barry to try nursing. When he 
held Kirsten's tiny face against his bared breast, the 
baby eagerly sought out his nipple, pulling a generous 
portion into her mouth. The speed with which Kirsten 
took Barry's breast startled him, but the lactation 
specialist explained that all newborns had an instinct 
to suckle. Kirsten's suckling was surprisingly powerful 
and Barry noticed a pale liquid beading on his unused 
breast. 

The nurses called the clear fluid colostrum, and told 
him that the actual milk would appear in a few days, 
but the colorless fluid had special nutrients that were 
perfect for a newborn baby. Barry felt a bit of 
discomfort at first from the baby's suction, but after 
a while was enveloped in an aura of emotional well-
being as Kirsten sought nourishment. He suspected the 
euphoric sensation was the result of his body releasing 
endorphins in response to the baby nursing.

Similar to what he felt when Valerie had tongued his 
nipples, he could feel a tugging in his pelvis as 
Kirsten fed. Barry learned from one of the nurses that 
breast feeding helped shrink the uterus back to the 
size it was before the pregnancy, which explained some 
of the reactions he was feeling. All Barry knew was 
that having a baby at his breast felt good on a 
physical, emotional and spiritual level. He knew that 
when Valerie finally un-swapped her mind and his, that 
he would miss these feelings, but that his wife was 
going to enjoy nursing Kirsten immensely.

Kirsten fell asleep before long, letting the saliva-
coated breast-tip ooze out of her limp toothless mouth. 
Barry looked at his sleeping daughter and thought about 
the months that this little person had grown inside 
him. Him! When Valerie had exchanged bodies with Barry, 
Kirsten was probably a tiny bundle a dozen or so cells. 
Now she was a seven pound human being, and an adorable 
one at that. Barry hadn't suspected during that first 
weekend that he would experience any of Valerie's 
pregnancy, much less the entire process and actually go 
through delivery. He was feeling very proud of how he'd 
come through labor and the delivery and the nearly nine 
months of substituting for Valerie.

A nursing aide entered the room to ask if Barry needed 
anything.

"Has my wi...er... my husband... shown up yet?" Barry 
asked softly to avoid waking Kirsten.

"No," the aide replied, smiling at mother and newborn, 
"but when he does, we'll make sure he gets in here 
pronto."

Barry shifted Kirsten to his other arm and pulled the 
telephone onto the bed. He dialed his house and let the 
line ring a dozen times. If Valerie was there, she 
would surely have answered by then. He punched the 
numbers for the Institute labs and heard the line 
ringing. After four or five rings, Carol's voice 
answered.

"Hi, Carol," he began.

"Oh, hi, Doc...I mean Valerie!" she chirped.

"I really need to find...Barry. Is he around?" 

"No," Carol replied. "I haven't seen him all day. If I 
run into him, I'll send him right home."

"Send him to the hospital instead," Barry corrected 
her.

"Is there something wrong?" Carol asked with concern.

"Barry will probably tell you soon enough. Kirsten 
Elaine Owens was born at ten twenty four this morning. 
She is six pounds thirteen ounces, and nineteen inches 
long."

"Oh! You had your baby...a girl!" Carol shouted in 
surprise. 

"Congratulations! How are you feeling?"

"Thank you. Kirsten and I are both doing fine. It was 
an easy delivery, or so they tell me, but I'm still 
tired and very sore. How are things at the labs these 
days?"

"You didn't miss much in the research while you were 
gone," Carol sighed. "We never found any consistent 
effect from the flux energy. I guess we can write a 
couple of quick reports and move on. I can't foresee 
any magazine articles or notoriety from this project."

"Finding nothing is often all that happens. That's the 
way these projects go sometimes," Barry consoled. 
"It'll be better next time."

Carol did not want to discuss work. "So, what does your 
husband think about having a daughter? Did he want a 
girl?"

"I can't say. He took off right after Kirsten was born 
so that's why I called looking for him."

Carol did not speak immediately, apparently trying to 
formulate a reason. "With the experiments done, there's 
not much reason for him to hang around here at the 
labs, he's probably out passing around cigars to all 
his friends. You know how it is: women suffer nine 
months of pregnancy and hours of labor and delivery and 
men take all the credit."

"Yeah," Barry said. "I know how men are."

He ended the call, and after he hung up he began to 
worry. Where could Val be? Could she be somewhere 
injured or dead? Otherwise, why had she not come back 
to the hospital? 

Kirsten's tiny hand clutched at his breast, and 
although her little eyes remained closed, her open 
mouth circled, searching for the nipple. Barry lifted 
her toward his breast. As his baby's lips eagerly 
pulled at the mammary, he felt mounting concern.

Barry and the baby were discharged from the hospital 
two days later, and Valerie never returned. The taxi 
dropped Barry and his daughter at home, where Barry 
noticed that the minivan was gone. Inside the house, 
Valerie's books and all of the male clothes were 
missing, too.

Although Valerie hadn't left a note, Barry could sense 
that there was a lot of pain in her leaving. He put 
Kirsten in the cradle and looked for a clue to why Val 
left. Perhaps it was something he'd said or done. Barry 
searched his recent memory for something that might 
have sent her away. He could recall no watershed event.

As he walked from room to room, his footfalls echoed 
back to his ears. The emptiness of the house and the 
finality of Val's departure hit Barry all at once. His 
tears came freely.


EPILOGUE
CLOSURE

A towheaded kindergartner clutching a few papers 
stepped off the schoolbus and hugged the neatly dressed 
woman standing on the sidewalk. The woman was in her 
early thirties, but looked years younger, with long 
blond hair, a pretty face and an attractive figure.

"I drew a picture in school today, Mommy!" the little 
girl said, bursting with pride. She held out a 
rectangle of paper for her mother to see. The crude 
crayon drawing showed more effort than early artistic 
aptitude.

The woman smiled at the youngster. "It's very pretty, 
Kirsten! We'll put it on the refrigerator."

"There's you, and me," Kirsten explained, pointing to 
the stick figures drawn with circular heads, thick 
yellow arcs astride the heads for hair, and triangular 
skirts between their spine and legs. "That's the house, 
and the sun."

"What's that next to us in the picture?"

"That's your telescope, Mommy! We're looking through 
the telescope." 

The mother and daughter held hands as they crossed the 
front lawn to the house. The mother asked, "If the sun 
is shining in the picture, how can we see the stars?"

"Mommy!" Kirsten groaned. "We're not looking at the 
stars."

"No?"

"No. You told me that we can see far away things in the 
telescope."

"I did. The telescope lets you see things far, far 
away."

Kirsten scrunched up her face with an expression of 
dead seriousness. "So, we're looking for Daddy."

The mother stopped walking, bent down and hugged 
Kirsten. "Oh, Sweetie!" In Kirsten's innocence, she had 
sought to find the missing element in her life using 
the tools she found around her home. The woman she 
called Mommy did not express how unlikely that it would 
be that simple.

Kirsten's mother held the child at arms length and 
whispered: "I never told you this, but a piece of your 
Daddy is right here."

Kirsten gave her mother a suspicious glance. "Where?"

"Here, in our hearts."

Kirsten looked at the front of her school dress. "Is 
the piece of Daddy inside us very big?"

Kirsten's mother smiled before replying. "Let's just 
say there's a very big piece of Daddy inside me."

The little girl absorbed the statement without comment, 
but a flicker of a smile eventually crossed her 
features. "Can I make chocolate milk?" Kirsten asked, 
suddenly changing the subject.

"I guess so. Change out of your school clothes first," 
the woman warned before releasing the precocious tot. 
Kirsten disappeared into the house.

Kirsten's mother was almost inside the front door when 
a loud "Excuse me!" came from the front lawn. It was 
the postman, stepping out of his delivery truck, 
carrying a package and clipboard.

"Got a package for your daughter, Miz Owens," the 
mailman said, rotating the clipboard and indicating 
where to sign. The woman signed Valerie's signature 
very convincingly, with writing that looked very 
feminine in the last several years. The woman had long 
forgotten how to sign a masculine name. No one in five 
years had used the name Barry to refer to Kirsten's 
mother, and the former man had just assumed Valerie's 
identity to avoid revealing the secret of the mind-
swap, even treating Carl and Ann as surrogate parents.

The woman took the package into the house as the 
postman left. It wasn't normal for Kirsten's 
grandparents to send something without calling to warn 
to expect it. There was no return address on the 
package indicating the sender. The address label was 
typed. The postmark was from Worcester, Massachusetts 
and indicated the package was mailed four days ago. Who 
in New England would have occasion to send a gift to 
Kirsten?

Under the brown paper was bright wrapping paper 
obviously for a gift. The outer wrap fell away and an 
envelope dropped to the floor from between the inner 
and outer wrapping. Kirsten's mother bent down to 
retrieve the letter and was chilled to see the single 
word "Barry" on the envelope...in Val's handwriting.

A package from Valerie after all these years, and a 
letter addressed to him!

Barry stared at the envelope a long time. For a time, 
he had resented the way Val disappeared five years ago; 
the way she left him at the hospital in a female body 
to raise the baby by himself. He'd been hurt that she'd 
run off with his body, that she'd simply abandoned him. 
He'd cried every day for months wondering what he'd 
done to make Valerie leave, but his love for her had 
not diminished.

Barry had considered notifying the police, essentially 
reporting his own disappearance, but never did. Val 
left intentionally. If she wanted to come back he would 
welcome her, on her terms, whatever they might be. But 
there had never been a word from her, and no 
explanations. The only way he knew Val was still alive 
was the sporadic appearance of wired fund transfers in 
his bank account. The place from where the money was 
wired was different each time but Barry knew the source 
was Val.

Her return would have been little comfort, anyway, 
after the institute dismantled the setup in the lab. 
Without the fancy lab equipment, even Val could not 
reverse the mind-exchange. She might get another grant 
somewhere and set up the experiment again, but Barry 
discounted that possibility almost immediately. Kirsten 
was three years old before he stopped leaving the porch 
light on every night, should Val decide to come home 
and patch things up.

Barry stood by the bay window in the living room, 
trembling with indecision. Could he open the envelope 
from Val without rekindling the hurt feelings he'd 
worked years to bury? What might the letter hold? Was 
this Val's first salvo in a custody battle for Kirsten? 
Had Val seen his seventh book on the best seller lists 
and written to ask him for a cut of the royalties? Was 
she planning to sue for divorce at long last and ask 
for her split of their assets?

Barry tried to think positively, regardless of the 
depressed mood he'd had from PMS all day. Maybe Val was 
ready to make up and come home. Maybe she wanted to 
smooth things over before simply showing up. Maybe she 
was ready to forgive him and forget the last five 
years. Barry knew that he would forgive her without 
reservation and take her back in an instant. Without 
the mind-swap equipment, he had to live his life as a 
female regardless of whether she came back or not. All 
he knew was that he wanted Val back.

Finally, he opened the envelope and began reading the 
note in Val's elaborate and unmistakable handwriting.



 My Darling Barry,

 I beg you not to rip up this letter before reading it, 
although I could not fault you for doing so.

 As I write this, I am in a hospice, dying. It's ironic 
really. I'm suffering of a disease I could have never 
have gotten with a female body. You see, I developed 
inoperable prostate cancer.

 Just like a guy, I delayed and delayed before seeking 
medical help. By the time I sought treatment, the 
cancer spread to other organs and became terminal. The 
pain is bearable now with all of the sedatives they 
give me, but I know I won't last much longer; they give 
me another day, perhaps two.

 I am writing you at this late date because I don't 
want to make my exit without explaining myself. I 
cannot expect you to forgive me. All I ask is that you 
understand. Please. Just understand.

 It seems that everything I say recently is an apology 
for something or the other. This letter is no 
different. It's taken me five years of soul searching 
to realize why I deserted you and Kirsten the way I 
did, never saying goodbye.

 At first, I thought I was hopelessly addicted to the 
prestige and respect of being male. It was so easy to 
accept the unconditional approval and admiration of 
others. I told myself I ran away to escape the 
possibility of being demoted to a mere female again.

 I've examined my conscience, however, and finally know 
the truth. I wasn't afraid of being female. I was 
ashamed, hurt and frightened. Ashamed of the 
insensitive way that I'd treated you for the entire 
time you carried Kirsten. Hurt because everyone... co-
workers, friends, even my parents, liked your 
impersonation of me better than they liked the real me.

 I was frightened of trying to live up to the ideal 
image you projected. You were not only the perfect 
husband, but the perfect wife and mother. You were the 
better man as well as the better woman in our 
relationship. I couldn't face the inevitable 
comparisons that would ensue when I reclaimed my body.

 On top of it all, I was apprehensive that I was not 
ready as you obviously were to make the commitment to 
parenthood. For my coarse thoughts and insensitive 
behavior, I am deeply sorry. I know these words cannot 
erase the years of hiding and neglect, but I wanted you 
to know why I did what I did. 

 The package with this letter is a gift for Kirsten. 
She should be about five years old now, right? When I 
saw this in the hospital gift shop I thought of you and 
of her. I know that this gift cannot wipe away the 
years of neglect and the pain of abandonment, but I 
never realized how much I needed you both until it was 
too late.

 Love her for both of us, Barry. And tell her goodbye 
for me. 

Regardless of what you may think about me, I never 
stopped loving you.

 Val



Barry brushed a tear from his cheek as he finished the 
letter. He fell into the easy chair and let the sadness 
wash over him. As he quietly sobbed, Kirsten climbed up 
into his lap and hugged him.

"Why are you crying, Mommy?"

Barry took a deep breath and forced a wan smile. "Well, 
Sweetheart, I just read a very sad letter."

"Oh," Kirsten said somberly. "Don't cry. It makes me 
unhappy when you cry." She stuck out her little lower 
lip in a pout.

"Okay," Barry agreed, sniffling slightly, "no more 
crying for now. I promise." He rubbed the teardrops 
from his eyes with a finger and made a mental effort to 
focus on something other than the letter. "There's a 
gift for you here. Why don't you open it?" Barry handed 
his daughter the package from Valerie.

"Who is it from?" Kirsten asked.

"It's from..." Barry swallowed as he pushed the sad 
images from his mind. "It's from Daddy."

"My Daddy!" Kirsten shouted with sparkling eyes and 
expectant optimism. "Is he coming home to be with us?"

"No," the older woman said simply, knowing that to 
explain further would only bring back the tears.

Kirsten fumbled with the wrapping on the gift, but 
she'd had plenty of practice with Christmas and 
birthday presents and soon had the gift open. Inside 
was a book.

"Read it with me, Mommy!" she pleaded.

Kirsten's mother cleared the ribbons and wrapping paper 
from the chair as the toddler cuddled up close for a 
story. The woman pointed to the picture on the book 
jacket. "Look here on the cover. There's an elephant 
and a bird and a nest. The book is called 'Horton 
Hatches an Egg'."

THE END

[But wait! There's more!]

WHAT GOES AROUND

Barry sat up in the hospital bed holding his tiny 
newborn daughter. Kirsten had wisps of very fine blond 
hair on her scalp. Her eyes were a deep dark blue when 
she opened them, although she slept a lot. She was 
tiny, pink and adorable, with the most delicate little 
fingers and toes and pudgy little arms and legs. Her 
button nose and pouting lips were so delicate and 
small. Barry could not believe that he'd actually given 
birth only a few hours earlier. Nothing in his boyhood 
had ever prepared him for being a female, much less 
being a mother in labor or undergoing delivery, and yet 
he'd done just fine. Kirsten was living proof of that. 

The nurses encouraged Barry to try nursing. When he 
held Kirsten's tiny face against his bared breast, the 
baby eagerly sought out his nipple, pulling a generous 
portion into her mouth. The speed with which Kirsten 
took Barry's breast startled him, but the lactation 
specialist explained that all newborns had an instinct 
to suckle. Kirsten's suckling was surprisingly powerful 
and Barry noticed a pale liquid beading on his unused 
breast. The nurses called the clear fluid colostrum, 
and told him that the actual milk would appear in a few 
days, but the colorless fluid had special nutrients 
that were perfect for a newborn baby. Barry felt a bit 
of discomfort at first from the baby's suction, but 
after a while was enveloped in an aura of emotional 
well-being as Kirsten sought nourishment. He suspected 
the euphoric sensation was the result of his body 
releasing endorphins in response to the baby nursing.

Similar to what he felt when Valerie had tongued his 
nipples, he could feel a tugging in his pelvis as 
Kirsten suckled. Barry learned from one of the nurses 
that breast feeding helped shrink the uterus back to 
the size it was before the pregnancy, and that 
explained some of the reactions he was feeling. All 
Barry knew was that having a baby at his breast felt 
good on a physical, emotional and spiritual level. When 
Valerie finally un-swapped her mind and his, she would 
immensely enjoy nursing Kirsten.

Kirsten fell asleep before long, letting the saliva-
coated breast-tip ooze out of her limp toothless mouth. 
Barry looked at his sleeping daughter and thought about 
the months that this little person had grown inside 
him. Him! When Valerie had exchanged bodies with Barry, 
Kirsten was probably a tiny bundle a dozen or so cells. 
Now she was a seven pound human being, and an adorable 
one at that. Barry hadn't suspected during that first 
weekend that he would experience the rest of Valerie's 
pregnancy, much less actually go through delivery. He 
was feeling very proud of how he'd come through labor 
and the delivery and the nine months of substituting 
for Valerie.

A nursing aide entered the room to ask if Barry needed 
anything.

"Has my wi... er... my husband... shown up yet?" Barry 
asked softly to avoid waking Kirsten.

"No," the aide replied, smiling at mother and newborn, 
"but when he does, we'll make sure he gets in here 
pronto."

Barry shifted Kirsten onto his other arm and pulled the 
telephone onto the bed. He dialed his house and let the 
line ring a dozen times. If Valerie was there, she 
would surely have answered by then. He punched the 
numbers for the Institute labs and heard the line 
ringing. After four or five rings, Carol's voice 
answered.

"Hi, Carol," he began.

"Oh, hi, Doc. I mean Valerie!" she chirped.

"I really need to find... Barry. Is he around?" 

"No," Carol replied. "I haven't seen him all day. If I 
run into 

him, I'll send him right home."

"Send him to the hospital instead," Barry corrected 
her.

"Is there something wrong?" Carol asked with concern.

"Barry will probably tell you soon enough. Kirsten 
Elaine Owens was born at ten twenty four this morning. 
She is six pounds thirteen ounces, and nineteen inches 
long."

"Oh! You had your baby...a girl!" Carol shouted in 
surprise. 

"Congratulations! How are you feeling?"

"Kirsten and I are both doing fine. It was an easy 
delivery, or so they tell me, but I'm still tired and 
very sore. How are things at the labs these days?"

"You didn't miss much in the research," Carol sighed. 
"We never found any consistent effect from the flux 
energy. I guess we can write a couple of quick reports 
and move on. I can't foresee any magazine articles or 
notoriety from this project."

"Finding nothing is often all that happens. That's the 
way these projects go sometimes," Barry consoled. 
"It'll be better next time."

Carol did not want to discuss work. "So, what does your 
husband think about having a daughter?"

"I can't say. He took off right after Kirsten was born 
so that's why I called looking for him."

Carol did not speak immediately, apparently trying to 
guess his whereabouts. "With the experiments done, 
there's not much reason for him to hang around here at 
the labs, he's probably out passing around cigars to 
all his friends. You know how it is: women endure nine 
months of pregnancy and hours of labor and delivery and 
men take all the credit."

"Yeah," Barry said. "I know how men are."

He ended the call, and after he hung up he began to 
worry. Where could Val be? Could she be somewhere 
injured or dead? Otherwise, why had she not come back 
to the hospital? 

Kirsten's tiny hand clutched at his breast, and 
although her little eyes remained closed, her open 
mouth circled searching for the nipple. Barry lifted 
her toward his breast. As his baby's lips eagerly 
pulled at the mammary, he felt mounting concern.

***

Two days later, a nurses aide pushed a wheelchair up 
next to Barry's bed. "Well, Mrs. Owens, I called the 
taxi, and it will be downstairs in a few minutes," she 
told Barry. "Doctor Homann signed your discharge 
papers, so you and Kirsten are free to leave, but I 
have to wheel you both down to the hospital entrance. 
Insurance regulations."

Barry carefully stood off the bed and cradled Kirsten 
against his chest. He settled into the wheelchair and 
lifted his feet into the footrests. The baby was asleep 
as always right after a feeding. Barry knew that his 
daughter would sleep for about an hour and would need a 
diaper change not long after she awoke. He was already 
getting into the rhythms of caring for an infant after 
two days.

"It's a shame," the nursing aide commented. "I mean 
what your husband did. Just going away like that. 
Everyone on the floor is talking about it."

Barry didn't know if he should acknowledge her 
statements or not.

The aide continued. "Usually we have to beg the fathers 
not to hang around the maternity ward all day and give 
the mother some rest."

"I can't explain it," Barry responded with resignation, 
as the nurses assistant began pushing the chair toward 
the bank of elevators. Val seemed to have simply 
disappeared. No one with whom Barry had spoken knew 
where she was.

If Val was really gone, gone for good, what then? That 
question had occupied Barry for most of his hospital 
stay. Would he be able to survive as a single mother?

A single mother. Barry had always pictured himself as 
the doting father, and never as the mother, much less 
one without a spouse. But a single mother precisely 
described him. If Val was gone, she was gone. Certainly 
he could enlist Val's parents and sister to help him 
care for the baby. Karen had been sympathetic to Barry 
once she learned his secret, and he knew that Carl and 
Ann would be amenable even if they were never told 
about how their daughter and son-in-law had exchanged 
consciousnesses. after all, they still thought he was 
Valerie. Regardless of the gravity of the situation 
facing him, Barry couldn't focus on anything beyond the 
adorable little bundle dozing in his arms.

With luck, Kirsten would sleep through the ride home, 
and Barry could scrounge up some cash around the house 
to pay the cabbie. He resolved just to take things one 
step at a time and they would sort themselves out. He 
and Kirsten would make it through whatever came 
together. His daughter might not have two parents, but 
Barry was mentally equipped to be her father and 
physically ready to be her mother. Perhaps with time he 
would acquire the proper mindset to act like her mother 
as well. He looked down at the sleeping child in his 
arms and wished that he could simply ignore the 
problems ahead.

The ride from the maternity floor to the lobby seemed 
to go in slow motion. An older couple in the elevator 
complimented him on how pretty the baby was, and that 
perked Barry up a bit. The man and woman were almost 
old enough to be Barry's parents, which made Barry 
think about how his mother never lived to become a 
grandmother. He smiled a bit knowing she would have 
enjoyed having a grand-daughter to spoil and to help 
raise. At least Kirsten Elaine would carry her name. He 
looked heavenward and hoped his mother was watching 
over him and the baby.

The aide pushed the chair to the huge doors at the 
hospital entrance. A motion sensor automatically swung 
the doors wide and let the chair pass out of the air-
conditioned lobby into the heat of a late July morning. 
A few people were milling about on the sidewalk outside 
the lobby, some smoking cigarettes, and others waiting 
for rides or for someone to emerge from the building. 
The chair was rolled to a position halfway to the curb, 
but still in the shadow of the huge overhang of the 
entrance.

"We'll wait for the taxi here in the shade where it's 
cooler," the aide said. "We'll be able to see it coming 
from here."

As Barry sat and the nursing assistant stood outside 
the door, a few cars pulled up to pick up or discharge 
people. There was even one young woman, barely more 
than a girl, actually... who arrived obviously very 
pregnant and seemingly in labor whose partner anxiously 
helped her from the car and into the hospital. Barry 
noted how the mother seemed to have her mind elsewhere, 
while the guy, probably her young husband, was doing 
his best to help her without becoming completely 
stressed. 

Had it not been for the arrival of Kirsten happening 
while swapped with Valerie, Barry told himself that he 
might well have acted like that young man, and his wife 
in all likelihood would have been the one distracted by 
the contortions of her womb and unborn child. Instead, 
Barry remembered little about what happened from the 
time his water broke until the baby was placed in his 
arms after delivery. A part of him could not remember 
the pain, but another part told him he'd been in agony 
for hours during labor. None of that was important now. 
What was important was Kirsten.

Barry tried to watch for taxis arriving on the long 
road from the main street to the hospital entrance, but 
a big vehicle had pulled adjacent to the curb and was 
blocking his view. He craned his neck, but could not 
see beyond the huge car. 

"Give you a ride, ma'am?" a deep and familiar voice 
asked from his left. Barry immediately looked up to the 
person standing at his side and realized that it was 
Valerie!

"Oh!" he exclaimed, in happy surprise. Tears began 
welling up in his eyes immediately, fuzzing the 
outlines of everything in his line of sight.

"Hi, honey," Val said in greeting, before she kissed 
him. "I'm sorry I'm a little late." She looked like she 
hadn't slept in days. Her clothes were rumpled and her 
hair was unkempt, but she was the sweetest sight Barry 
could have asked for.

The nursing aide entered Barry's blurry field of view. 
"Is this.?" she began suspiciously. Barry could not 
answer verbally with the huge lump in his throat, and 
merely nodded his head vigorously.

"The car's right here, dear," Val offered, stepping to 
the minivan at the curb and opening the back door to 
display the infant seat ready for Kirsten. Barry 
realized that he hadn't noticed that the car blocking 
his view had been Valerie's minivan. The aide helped 
Barry stand out of the wheelchair, wished the couple 
good luck with the baby, then said goodbye and wheeled 
the chair back into the hospital.

Barry and Val buckled their precious cargo into the 
infant seat. Kirsten looked so tiny nestled in the huge 
seat, but she was comfortable and didn't awaken. Once 
the baby was secure, Valerie helped Barry into the 
front passenger seat of the minivan.

After Valerie got into the driver's seat, Barry pulled 
her into a tight hug and a long kiss. "When you didn't 
show up or answer the phone, I thought you'd taken off 
and left me," Barry admitted, tearfully. "You can't 
imagine the horrible things I was thinking about you."

"Serves me right," Valerie responded, as she pulled 
back from the hug. Her self imposed guilt was visible 
in her expression and noticeable in her tone of voice. 
"I did take off. I'd packed all of my books and all of 
the male clothes into the car and driven off. I 
intended to just run away, and actually made it to a 
truck stop about a thousand miles from here."

Barry's face fell. "What?"

She put the car in gear and pulled away from the 
hospital entrance. "I left thinking that I wanted to be 
male more than I wanted to stay married. I had 
convinced myself that I had to be a man. I decided to 
just leave you with the baby. But as I drove, I had 
time to think. I listened to my inner self and 
discovered that I really didn't want to be male at all. 
I was just disappointed."

"Disappointed?" Barry questioned. "Why?"

"I've always been better at things than everyone else. 
Better at school, better at everything. I guess I 
thought I could be a better husband than you could. Not 
that you weren't a great husband, but I thought that I 
could somehow do better. But you want to know 
something? I tried for eight months and couldn't do it. 
I made lots of mistakes you wouldn't have. I was 
disappointed in myself."

Barry lightly ran his fingers over the back of her hand 
on the steering wheel. "I wasn't disappointed in you. I 
thought you did great, Val."

Valerie shrugged. "The worst part was that you not only 
were the better husband, but, dammit, you were a better 
at being a wife and being pregnant than I would have 
been. Geez, Bar' you even went through labor and 
actually had the baby! That took a lot more guts than I 
had. You showed me up, and I couldn't stand to admit 
you were better than me."

Barry studied his wife's features in profile. "You 
don't know how you'd do at this until you try."

"I sure didn't try very hard this time, did I?" she 
groused. "For months, people kept telling me how much 
they thought my 'wife' had changed since the holidays. 
How 'she' seemed to be so different in a positive way. 
They liked you better as a woman than they liked me 
before. You were a better me than me. even my parents 
said so."

Barry giggled a little. "Your parents said that?"

"Not in so many words, but it was obvious. Then, to top 
it off, you just gritted your teeth, stuck out your 
chin and delivered the baby with more aplomb than some 
of the women I've heard about. That was the last straw. 
You did everything so damn perfectly! I was feeling 
pretty sorry for myself. I took the coward's way out 
and ran away from my problems. Anyway, I was in line 
for gas at the pumps at the truck stop halfway to 
nowhere when this fell out of the sunvisor." Valerie 
held out the photo from the ultrasound test.

"When I saw it," she explained. "I realized that our 
situation wasn't about me or you, but about us... the 
three of us: you, me and Kirsten. It seemed I held this 
picture for hours and thought about what you and the 
baby mean to me. I realized how much I love you and 
could finally feel that same love for Kirsten, too. It 
was like someone was filling me up with sunshine. I 
couldn't just leave you to raise her alone. I decided 
there and then to head home and try to patch things 
up... if you'd have me... after the way I treated you."

Valerie drove a while in silence.

"I forgive you," Barry told her, quietly.

Valerie looked at him, and saw that the teardrops had 
returned to his red and puffy eyes. Her husband had 
that half-smiling expression that one might associate 
with the Mona Lisa. She wondered if Barry had any 
limits to his compassion.

Valerie turned the steering wheel, and pointed the 
minivan down a side street. Her eyes showed contrition 
as she spoke. "I know I took longer to do this than I 
promised, but..."

Barry recognized the route as one that led to the 
institute. His smile widened immediately. "You mean 
that you're finally going to..."

"Better late than never," Valerie confirmed, solemnly.

Less than five minutes later, the minivan pulled into a 
parking space near the institute labs. Valerie helped 
Barry alight from the car and gathered the infant seat 
into the baby carrier configuration. She toted the seat 
holding her daughter as she led the way into the 
building.

The lab buildings were not very busy, since few 
students attended the summer session at the institute, 
and most research was either just ended or not yet 
fully engaged. Valerie and Barry made their way to the 
secluded lab on the second floor. Valerie pushed the 
door open and gestured for Barry to enter.

The room was not at all as Barry remembered it. The 
complicated security lock on the door had been removed, 
and the room was considerably less cluttered. A few of 
the cabinets of electronic systems remained, but most 
had been taken away. There were a few pieces of office 
furniture scattered about the mostly empty room. The 
lab mice and their cages were gone. There were wires 
hanging from the ceiling and assorted pieces of 
instrumentation and lab furniture were piled against 
the walls.

"I left just enough equipment set up to do the brain 
swap," Valerie told Barry.

"It looks like a tornado swept through here," Barry 
opined.

"When the grant ran out, the leased equipment went 
back, and the university redistributed some of the 
systems they'd already paid for to other projects."

Valerie set the baby carrier on the floor near the 
experiment table. She turned on the equipment and began 
readying the computers.

"I guess I owe you a belated compliment, too, Barry," 
she said as she typed in a few parameters for the 
program.

"What kind of compliment?" he asked, watching her type 
but unable to follow the coded sequences she was using.

"There was another way you bested me. I'm no closer to 
being 'officially' a man than I ever was, but you 
passed the test I joked about. You are now an official 
woman."

Barry at first did not remember the conversation from 
almost eight months earlier. Finally he recalled how he 
and Val had once discussed the criteria for becoming a 
bona fide member of the opposite sex. The labor and 
delivery leading to Kirsten's birth was the event that 
gained him the pseudo-title of 'official woman.' 
Somehow, the title didn't seem very satisfying to Barry 
now that he had accomplished it. Official or not, and 
regardless of his birth gender, he already considered 
himself as much a woman as any other female.

"Okay," Val sighed, "we're all set here. Bring a couple 
of chairs over near this table."

Barry rolled two chairs to the table where Valerie 
stood studying the data on the monitor. Valerie lifted 
a strange device that looked like a cross between 
bicycle helmet and a colander. The surface was covered 
with dozens of devices that Barry recognized as 
magnetic lenses. So this was the way her system copied 
neural patterns! Valerie set the contraption on his 
head and fastened it in place with a strip of duct tape 
she looped under his chin. Valerie was careful not to 
bring the gummy tape near his long hair. She gestured 
for him to sit. She went to the small refrigerator in 
the lab and withdrew a carton of orange juice. A bottle 
of something was extracted from one of the drawers in 
the cabinet near the door.

Valerie carefully mixed a few eyedroppers worth of the 
stuff from the bottle with the orange juice. She 
divided the juice into two paper cups and handed one to 
Barry. "When I tell you to, drink it all as fast as you 
can. It's a sedative so that we will be relatively 
motionless during the brain scan. The less we move the 
faster the computer can interchange our neural 
patterns. This is the stuff I put in the coffee last 
time. It acts pretty fast, so you'll pass out not too 
long after you drink it. We should be unconscious only 
about twenty minutes. Do you think Kirsten will be okay 
for that long?"

Barry glanced over at his daughter in the baby carrier 
near his feet. She was still sleeping soundly. Her 
little chest was gently rising and falling with her 
shallow breathing. "She'll be fine," he announced.

Valerie strapped a duplicate of the apparatus on 
Barry's head to her own skull. She typed a bit more on 
the computer. "Ready?" she asked.

A brief feeling of loss passed over Barry. For eight 
months he had focused on getting his former body back, 
and now that the moment was upon him, he wasn't 
positive that he'd appreciate having the body that 
matched his mind again. Sure, there had been things he 
didn't care for while he was a pregnant female, things 
like the nausea and the inability to sleep on his 
stomach. The tenderness of his breasts and the 
inconvenience of women's clothing were unexpected 
nuisances, too, even without the pregnancy. 

The things he'd thought would be the worst: the feeling 
of the baby in his tummy, the swelling of his belly and 
breasts, the mood swings... none of that mattered very 
much now that he'd experienced life as an expectant 
mother. In fact, those were the things he already 
missed; most of all, the feeling of having the baby 
inside him. In compensation Barry looked forward to 
seeing her angelic little face every day.

After eight months, this adult female body was the one 
Barry called his own now; not the male body he'd 
occupied the first twenty seven years of his life. If 
the stuff in this lab somehow couldn't undo the mind-
exchange, Barry decided it would be okay, too. He could 
accept being female for the rest of his life, as long 
as Valerie were here with him.

Still, he hoped that the computers and other systems 
would work properly, and that he would resume being 
male. That was where his mind rightfully belonged. 
Valerie deserved to have her proper body returned to 
her, regardless of how he felt on the issue.

"I said... are you ready?" Valerie impatiently 
reiterated, jolting Barry out of his daydream.

Barry took a deep breath, and surreptitiously rubbed 
his fingers across his milk-filled breast one last 
time. "Ready," he whispered, and nodded his head.

Valerie instructed Barry to swallow his glass of juice 
and she did the same. There was no taste other than the 
orange juice, although Barry could detect a slightly 
oily texture to the liquid that felt odd against his 
tongue. As promised, he could feel the lethargy coming 
upon him rapidly, so he relaxed in a reclining position 
just before his eyelids closed and blackness descended.

Valerie was able to press the final key only a moment 
or two before she too collapsed. The computers began 
their task even as all three people in the room slept.

Before he knew it, Barry realized he was becoming 
conscious again. He slowly opened his eyes and looked 
around. He could see the slight disarray of the lab 
around him: the jumbled collection of tables and chairs 
piled in the corner, the wires dangling from the 
overhead conduits and strewn across the floor. In front 
of him a computer monitor flashed a message: scan 
complete. He could tell instantly that the scan had 
been a success and returned his mind to a male body. 
The thick rough fingers, the beefy arms and legs, his 
now muscular body, all testament to the restoration. 

Barry looked to his right and saw the baby carrier near 
the chair where Valerie, once again female, was slumped 
in unconsciousness. Kirsten was still asleep in the 
baby carrier, but starting to fidget slightly in her 
dreams. Otherwise, the baby looked placid and serene, 
as did Valerie. These were the girls in his life, and 
Barry knew he loved them both deeper than he had ever 
loved anyone. 

Barry carefully peeled the tape off his chin and lifted 
the helmet-like device off and set it on the table. He 
stood and tested his equilibrium before going to help 
Valerie. The residue of the drugs still fading from his 
system was enough to make walking a tricky proposition. 
Valerie was reclining in the same position Barry had 
assumed before the drug took effect, but she did not 
seem to be recovering. Barry stood at her side and 
tried to revive her.

"Val?!" Barry asked urgently, as he hovered over her, 
unsure of how to go about the task of resuscitation. 
"C'mon honey, wake up!" Her breathing was shallow and 
her pulse was so weak that Barry could not find it as 
he felt her dainty wrist. It seemed odd to realize that 
only a few minutes earlier that slender mass of flesh 
and bone was part of his body.

"Don't go on me now, Val!" Barry pleaded. "Not after 
all that's happened!"

"Mmmm?" Valerie weakly groaned, and began to move 
slightly.

"Honey? Are you okay?" Barry asked, eagerly.

"Wha...?" Valerie mumbled as her eyes fluttered open. 
"Bar'... you're..."

"That's right Val," Barry replied. "The scan worked 
just like you said! I'm a guy again and you're a woman, 
now."

Valerie quickly regained her senses and after a moment, 
helped Barry loosen the scanning array from her head. 
"Kirsten?" she asked, with a bit of worry.

Barry lifted Valerie's scanner array to the table and 
smiled at her. He gestured to the floor by her chair. 
"Our daughter slept through it all. She's right at your 
feet."

Valerie bent over in her chair and studied her 
daughter. "Well, Sweetie, your mother and father are 
back to being themselves again," she said softly.

"And more in love now than when you were conceived," 
Barry added.

Valerie looked at Barry skeptically. "Even after all of 
the things I did?"

Barry leaned down and planted a kiss on Valerie's lips. 
After holding his face to hers a moment, they 
separated.

"Does that answer your question?" he asked. Valerie's 
features spread into a broad grin realizing that Barry 
had forgiven her yet again, and knowing that she loved 
him more now than ever.

Valerie slid her chair over to the computer monitor and 
typed a bit. Her finger hovered over the return key. 
"Say goodbye to the mind-exchange program," she warned.

"Why?" Barry asked with a mix of disappointment and 
curiosity.

"You and I are proof that the world isn't ready for 
this yet," 

Valerie replied, her finger still above the key that 
would delete the program.

Barry retorted, "Regardless of how you feel, I think we 
did just fine. Look what came out of it. We have a 
beautiful daughter, a really strong marriage, and I for 
one have a lot of respect for my wife and women in 
general. I think we're both better persons for the 
experience."

"On second thought, the feeling is mutual," Valerie 
agreed. "Men may have a few things easier, but there 
are advantages to being female that I didn't understand 
or appreciate until I wasn't one. Seeing that you feel 
that way about our mind-exchange, I have a compromise."

"A compromise?"

Valerie typed a bit on the computer before turning it 
off. "I'll 

keep the backup floppies of the mind-swap program 
locked away, but I deleted the online copies. That way 
no one will stumble upon it accidentally. Besides...I 
have an idea for interchanging neural patterns in small 
segments rather than storing the entire brain map 
before writing it into another person's head."

"What good would that do?" Barry asked.

"Although it would lengthen the time to actually 
perform the scan, it would cut the cost and the sheer 
volume of equipment needed to do a consciousness 
exchange. If I get another research project on magnetic 
flux dots, I'd probably be able rig up something so you 
and I could..."

Barry's stony expression spoke volumes. By his look, 
she knew he was anticipating her train of thought. 
Valerie realized that her husband might not be so 
complacent about another outing as a female, 
particularly if he had any part of the decision.

Valerie backpedaled. "Er...I mean...we could be each 
other...but only if you wanted to, that is. You were 
amazing as a woman, Barry. Heck! Maybe I could impose 
on you to handle the other pregnancies for me, too."

Barry began chuckling self-consciously at her brazen 
suggestion and gave her a sidelong glance. "Other 
pregnancies? Just how many kids do you want?"

Valerie giggled. "Did I ever tell you about my 
grandmother Nana?"

Karen had told Barry about Nana; the one with seven 
children. He paused and considered the emotions of the 
past months. "Pregnant again? 

You know," Barry mused, pleasantly, "it might be fun."

Valerie began laughing out loud at his implied offer. 
"Really? You'd do it again?"

"I might, if, next time, I wasn't deeply embroiled in 
writing a book, and I had some say about when it 
happens rather than the sneaky trick you pulled with 
the drugged coffee."

Valerie considered his conditions to the offer. "We'll 
talk." She told him coyly.

Barry interjected, "I had a thought. Maybe we could 
plan really far ahead and exchange consciousnesses 
before Kirsten's little brother or sister is 
conceived," Barry suggested. "That way you can 
impregnate me and get that Official Manhood status you 
wanted so badly. How about that?"

Valerie was laughing at Barry's new suggestion as she 
pulled the lab door shut and led the way toward the 
stairs.

"I want to hear how you'll answer Kirsten when she gets 
older and asks you what it was like to be pregnant with 
her," Barry told her.

Valerie shrugged and replied, "Simple. I'll tell her to 
go and ask her father."

Barry chuckled in wry appreciation of Val's humor. 
"Just for that, I'm going to demand a percentage of 
your Mother's Day gifts."

Valerie wrapped an arm around his waist and hugged him 
as they walked. "You deserve them," she said earnestly.

"Who's not walking very much like a woman now?" Barry 
asked, nodding toward her legs, and the forceful manly 
stride she displayed in her female body.

Valerie blushed as she added a pronounced feminine 
swish to her hips. "I guess it'll take a while to 
remember just who I am, again. But I wouldn't get too 
cocky. I bet I'll catch you mincing your steps more 
than once or twice in the coming days."

Barry consciously modified his body language to appear 
more masculine and hoped Val was wrong. It was strange 
to be back in his male body again, and to see Valerie 
in the body he'd inhabited since Thanksgiving. But her 
admission let him know she was feeling the same 
disorientation. Who knew how long it would take to get 
their lives back in order? There were lots of little 
things to relearn. He would have to become accustomed 
to his own voice being deep again and to his wife 
speaking with the voice he'd used since Thanksgiving. 

He would have to get used to looking down at his spouse 
again and she would have to tilt her neck back to look 
at him, now. He would have to readjust his sleep cycles 
from the way Valerie had skewed them, but Valerie might 
want to keep the awake-all-night astronomer's sleep 
cycle he had trained into her female body for the next 
few weeks to facilitate the 2AM feedings. Both of them 
would now have to become accustomed to the demands of 
the third member of their family.

Barry carried the infant seat, where Kirsten continued 
to doze, as they came down the stairs. According to his 
watch, the baby would sleep another twenty minutes or 
so and then want a clean diaper. Barry would gladly 
take diaper duty forever now that he was back in his 
proper body. This baby was as much his as Valerie's, 
perhaps Barry felt more connection to his child than 
most fathers due to his unique role in the pregnancy 
and delivery. In any case, he intended to do more to 
raise his child than most men: happily changing dirty 
diapers, burping, handling tantrums, feeding strained 
peas, and all.

Valerie shrugged. "I just have to keep telling myself 
that I'm a woman, now. I'm a woman, now. I'm a woman, 
now."

"You're a woman now. And a mother," Barry emphasized. 
"You will probably feel your milk surge soon and want 
to feed Kirsten in a few hours, and let me assure you 
that will remind you you're a woman in a hurry."

"Don't tell me you are breast feeding her!"

Barry smirked at Valerie. "Not any more. That's your 
department now."

"You'll show me how to do it, won't you?"

"Sure," Barry replied, gently. "There's not much to 
learn other than finding a comfortable way to hold her 
as she suckles. She pretty much knows how to do the 
rest. She's brilliant and beautiful, just like her 
mother." He held the lobby door open and the family 
stepped out into the warmth of the outdoors. It was a 
short walk to the minivan, where Valerie fastened the 
seat belts around the infant seat and let Barry help 
her into the front passenger seat of the car.

Barry climbed into the driver's seat and started the 
engine.

"I'm kind of proud of how we kept our mind exchange a 
secret for eight months, and absolutely no one guessed 
we were swapped," Val gushed.

As he pulled the minivan into traffic, Barry stuttered. 
"Er... 

Val, there's something I should tell you."

THE END

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This story was written as an adult fantasy. The author
does not condone the described behavior in real life.

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Kristen's collection - Directory 50