"Now what?" Miss Twilley asked. She wasn't sure that she liked the idea of being a sixth order focus.
"The mark leaves a small red lesion," Lyf said, "but it won't bother you. However, I should warn you not to attempt to have it removed. That could be quite painful and perhaps fatal." He moved in front of her. "I expect that we'd better start therapy right away. That tumor isn't going to be easy to remove." His eyes were level with her own, twin pools of clear bottomless green with the darker spots of his pupils sharply demarcated from the surrounding iris. With mild surprise she realized that they were oval rather than round, and that their ellipses were growing—and encompassing her in their inner darkness.
Lyf eyed her solicitously from a chair next to her bed. There was a faint proprietory glint in his eyes but his voice was as soft as ever. "It's all done Enid," he said. "How do you like it?"
Miss Twilley didn't like the use of her first name. It sounded entirely too familiar, but she supposed that there was little she could do about it. After all he did have certain rights, even though their full exercise was some years hence. She stirred sleepily. She was in her own bedroom and the bed that she had slept in these past eighteen years was familiar and comforting. Except for the Devi sitting beside her everything was normal down to the last fold of the flannel nightgown that covered her.
She felt oddly alive, and somehow different. There was a fullness to her body and a heaviness to her chest. She looked down and gasped with surprise and pleasure at the jutting rise of the nightgown. She had changed!
"That was the biggest part of the specifications," Lyf said with the faintest hint of amusement in his voice. "Your mental patterns were extraordinarily precise about some things. About others I had to use my own judgment. I hope the overall effect meets with your approval."
Miss Twilley felt as excited as an adolescent on her first date. She slipped out of bed and padded on bare feet over to the vanity in the corner. Eagerly she eyed herself in the big mirror. Even in the nightgown she looked good. Her face was still her own but it had been subtly changed, the features smoothed and rearranged. Her pale blue eyes were now a smoky gray, and her plain mouse-brown hair had reddish glints in it and was much thicker than before. It was a very satisfactory face, smooth and beautiful, and years younger. Why—she looked barely twenty five!
With a quick movement she bent, grasped the hem of her gown, and pulled it over her head.
And gasped!