It was a week before Wren and Abi spoke properly.

Their hours together over that time were spent in silence, punctuated only by necessary questions and orders. Even their eyes did not meet and Wren had the feeling that they were managing to avoid each other in spite of their forced companionship. He supposed guilt was a part of it, each for causing punishment for the other, but there was an underlying humiliation, too, that left him unsure exactly how their relationship stood. The sexual part had been very brief, if memorable, so the friendship should have been able to survive its removal. It seemed, though, that there was less something missing in their contact than something in the way.

In the meantime, Wren was fascinated by the rapid blossoming of his body. The suspicion of a swelling in his breasts became a certainty within days and already he was feeling a bra to be a necessity rather than a piece of acting. The sight of his increasingly soft and curvaceous lines in the mirror kept him in constant mental self-examination to watch for signs of changes in his mind. His status as a eunuch occupied his thoughts a lot, making him wary of anything that might signify his retreat from sexual awareness.

To his surprise, his penis was still capable of erecting. Equally puzzling was the times it chose to do so. He was embarrassed to discover a tent forming in his loose skirt one time when he crossed his legs while sitting down, something that felt strange but more comfortable without the sensitivity of his balls to take care of. Similarly, it had a tendency to cause trouble when confined to the snugness of woman's panties or when he checked the growth of a breast with his hand. Purposely attempting to arouse himself with thoughts of rampant sex had no effect, sadly and he was forced to conclude that his drive had been diverted to new paths he would have to learn.

Their first conversation began tentatively, when Wren began to think the barrier between them was growing, and wondered whether Abi's guilt was perhaps stronger than he'd thought. When she came up to him to shift his knee in showing him a better way to move, he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

"Abi, what's wrong with us?" he asked.

She was still avoiding his eyes. "I don't know what you mean," was her answer.

"You do," he said. "We haven't exchanged a real word in days. Can't we let our episode stay a pleasant memory and forget the consequences had anything to do with it? Or is something else bothering you?"

She was silent, her head bowed. Her only concession was to lean slightly on his hand.

"If you think I'm worse off because of you, then just consider how things were going anyway. Imagine, sooner or later Helen would have decided t take me the rest of the way and I would never have had the memory of a last time of intimacy with a woman. I've had time to consider it and I don't regret what we did. What's been bothering me more is how Dawn could have done what she did to you. How could you stand it?"

Abi's head was still down, but Wren thought he detected the ghost of a smile. She muttered something he couldn't quite catch, so he bent his head to hers and asked her to repeat it.

"I said we're used to those situations. I've done it to her before. We thought it might be a bad one this time, so she slipped me some painkillers beforehand, when she fetched me. This belt is a nuisance, but I'm pretty sure she'll let me off it after a while." Tentatively, she looked up. "Are you sure you're all right? I thought you'd be terribly bitter or depressed and I'd be just the wrong person to help."

He sat back on the bed. "I'm more confused than depressed," he confessed. "It's a horrible thought, castration. My worst fear was that I wouldn't mind, that removing my maleness would alter the real me so that I wasn't interested in sex and that would prove she'd changed me. But I find that I don't mind and I don't mind that I don't mind. It's like some deep-down urge has been satisfied, more of a relief than anything. And I catch myself enjoying the freedom to sit down without that subconscious checking that I'm not about to crush my balls, then I get worried all over again. But I'm not bitter."

Abi was watching him almost sadly, he noticed. He was puzzled that he hadn't calmed her worries. "You'll never fancy me again," she said. "I knew it couldn't last, but I did enjoy being liked for my own sake."

"I like you anyway," he said firmly. "Helen may have fixed things so that we can't enjoy our bodies, but she can't change that. You're a better friend than I ever had, I think."

Her expression brought a lump to his throat. She smiled but seemed on the verge of tears. "That's the nicest thing anyone ever said to me, but . . .."

"But what?"

"You're the only man who ever wanted me because I'm me. The ones who come here, I might as well be a dummy. I'm sorry, but to be a friend still seems very second-best. It's not your fault, but I can't help feeling like that."

"I'm sorry too." was all he could say. He looked at her for a moment, helpless to know what to do. Then he pulled her down beside him and they folded into each other, her head on his shoulder. After a minute in which he supported her, he softened without knowing why, noticing freshly the altered contours of his body which already were not too different to hers and the way they melted to each other. When her hand, making its way from the comfort of his, reached the new swelling of his breast and began stroking it, the contradictory feelings she provoked were too much for him. Very gently he separated from her, not ready to submit to a pleasure that seemed too strange to be legitimate, even to please her.

"Abi," he said, taking her face between his hands and looking into her teary eyes. "My mind says I'm still attracted to you and my feelings too. But something's changed in the way I react to that attraction and I'm not sure I can deal with it yet. It's still too new and strange. Please be patient with me and remember that it's not you that's at fault. Please, just for the moment?"

She turned away, removing one hand from her cheek. "I'm selfish, I know," she said. "I will remember, I promise and I'll be ready when you are." She paused, then looked back. "Women don't turn me on. Normally, I mean. It may be too strange for me, too. But I feel like you're an exception and whenever you need some physical comfort or need to explore your new feelings, I'll be there. Helen won't mind, she's hinted to me that she would order me to 'introduce you to feminine sensuality' in her words, if such things were subject to command. I'll be all right, you can let go my hand now."

Wren did so and was sorry to have her move away a little. They sat side by side, both looking outwards at nothing in particular. He was fairly sure he'd salvaged their friendship, but his pleasure at this was complicated by the difficulties shown up in their changed relationship. He didn't know whether he would have seen Abi in the same light if he'd met her in different circumstances, or if the special nature of his restrictions had bred the only attachment it could. Even so, it seemed cruel that the best chance either of them had had of love was spoiled by the very situation that had brought them together.

"I'm sorry I can't be the person you want," he said at last. "I know you know I can't help that and that it's not my doing and that it doesn't help. All I can say is that sometime, when you're out of here, things will be better for you. If I'm in a position to, I'll remember you then and anything I can do to make it sooner, I'll do."

He gave her a meaningful look, hoping to convey his determination to bring Helen low without words. Abi's gaze was still lost in the distance, though and she missed the subtlety.

"It's a kind thought, but I already know things will be different when I'm free of this place. I've been counting down for years. Besides, we don't know what plans Helen has for you and that's one of the things that bothers me. I've got too tied up with you for my own good, when I don't even know if I'll ever be able to see you again after you become a woman completely."

Wren rested a hand on her knee, feeling more like a counsellor than a patient or pupil. "Please, Abi. Let's leave the future to itself. In the meantime, we'll still be with each other quite a lot and I'd hate to have that time spoiled by undercurrents of bad feeling. I'm sure I learnt better when you were cheerful."

She turned to him with a feeble smile. "Have you been listening to yourself? You haven't slipped into your old male voice all the time we've been talking. All it needs is a heart-to-heart girl's talk and any further lessons are unnecessary."

Wren was not so much shocked by his unconscious shift to feminine speech as shaken. After all, he had been practising for some time.

He spent a large part of his time alone sitting in front of the mirror, trying to make sense of what he found. The difficulty was his lack of control over his own behaviour. He would have been pleased to discover that his work had paid off in a way that allowed him to mimic the person he was meant to become, but it had not worked out like that. The woman looking back at him from the mirror seemed to have sneaked into his head too subtly for him to notice. Just to test his theory, he tried deliberately to give an order to the computer in too masculine a voice for it to obey and was barely surprised to find the task beyond him, just as he had been unable to alter his voice before.

He was almost sure, turning back to the mirror, that he caught a smile on his double's face. He dismissed the idea at once before realising that his own face was just relaxing from the same expression. The unnerving thought that he might be succumbing to mental illness entered his mind, that the stress of changing so entirely could be too much.

He leaned forward and placed his hands on the mirror, meeting those of the image and stared into his own eyes in the new but increasingly familiar face. "Jenny," he mouthed. The name didn't feel like him, but it fitted her.

Her eyes crinkled at the corners and he felt his own doing the same with the weird sensation that he was the reflection responding to her. "Why fight it?" he heard from his own mouth.

The words, whether they had surfaced from his own thoughts or been placed there, unlocked something within him and he relaxed. The strange relief he'd found in being loosed from his male drive with his castration flowed gently across his mind, no longer held rigidly in a corner as an uncomfortably alien emotion. Realising that a female self had been within him all along, only gaining strength and courage from his outward changes, turned his fear to welcome. The passive surrender to this new self - not an outsider after all - struck him as an ironically feminine act to be his last as a male.

This basking in an almost religious awareness was rudely interrupted by the sound of the door opening. The effect was spoiled and it was more his old self than the new that spun round. Seeing Helen in the doorway made him feel slightly silly, as though he'd been caught in a private act - and the elaborate introspection seemed very private, tenuous and irrelevant compared to the hard reality of his jailer.

"Admiring your lovely new body, Jenny?" The words were more mocking than the tone, but even so were enough to send the remnants of Wren's internal agreement into disarray. He glanced back at the mirror as he got up and was relieved to see a spark in his eyes that told him the Jenny within would be back when he wanted.

"You haven't exactly helped my mental adjustments, you know," he told Helen, less worried than before about open criticism. "How did you know I wouldn't have some kind of nervous breakdown with all you've done to me? How do you know I won't even now?"

The irritatingly familiar look of secretive amusement appeared again. "I know you too well," she answered, raising a hand to his shoulder that he shook off. "If you didn't know it, I could see that there was a girly bit inside you that would be only too grateful to be allowed out. It showed in the way you wore those clothes when you came here. And I was pretty sure that the part of your mind you thought was the real you was unconfident enough to be glad to retire. After all, it hadn't done you much good in your relationships, had it? If you'd been really traumatised by your treatment, you'd have fought at every stage, whether you could win or not. Instead, you've justified your meekness with thoughts of revenge later - which is just an excuse for yourself."

Wren was lost for words. His frustration seethed but he couldn't let it out without showing the accuracy of her insight.

Helen glanced down at his clenched fists, still smiling. "You'll ease up and learn to live with it, I can tell you. You'll be happier then. In the meantime, I came to offer you a little walk around the premises with me. Abi seems to think you'll pass now without a second thought from anyone and there's something I'd like to show you. That's if you feel ready."