Shapechanger's Progress Read online

  "Pretty much. A few people can't make it."

  "Good." She turned to Daniel. "Have someone get the two guards in here. Have them lock the door. If anyone is late they'll just have to wait."

  "No one will be late," he said. "They're either here or not coming." He turned to a tall young man nearby and nodded his head toward the front door. The man fled the stage to pass the word to the guards.

  "Everyone in their seats," Nora said loudly. A number of the people in the audience quickly made their way to seats earlier vacated. Everyone on the stage except "Maggie" sat. She stood near the front edge of the stage and watched everyone quiet down. They did this quickly.

  Mary was amused that everyone looked so little like whores and pimps. They were dressed conservatively, the women wore no makeup, and their demeanor was subdued. This was according to the rules laid down by the Organization, but she still found it funny.

  Even though the rules had a good reason—to better hide the prostitutes and their managers from interference by the police, over-moralizing busybodies, and the general public.

  Or two good reasons, really. Mary had become a strong believer in having an official and an unofficial reason for policies. The real reason was that Mary knew that it made it easier for these women to retire from prostitution and slip back into the "moral" life.

  She turned to Nora and spoke loudly enough so that everyone in the audience could hear. "This place is used for more than music and plays?"

  "Lectures. They do a lot of lectures here."

  Mary turned to the audience. "You hear that? They do lectures here. Wouldn't they be surprised at some of the subjects that we could lecture about? "

  Various members of the audience spoke up with obscene suggestions. There was general laughter, Mary included.

  She sobered and waited for them to quiet down.

  "The cat lady wanted you all here today to witness the beginning of a new era for the Whores of Ireland.

  "Until now if you got sick or hurt you had to go to an outside doctor. Or wait for the cat lady to get to you. Often she can't, because she's not in the city, or even in Ireland.

  "So she has set up a program to train some of you to be doctors to the rest of us. That's where your three compatriots come in." She waved at the two women and one man sitting at the front of the stage, at audience right.

  "As many of you know, for the past several months about three dozen people, from every city where the Whores are established, have been going to a special school set up in CorkCity. They have been studying modern medicine."

  That had caused a lot of work for Mary and other Organization managers: finding and approving medical books, finding and hiring a few doctors and midwives to teach, and writing a short book of her own that covered medical information which she knew esoterically but which was not yet available to modern medicine. All this had an useful side effect, preparing herself for something that she'd had in mind for two years now.

  More than two years ago the medical faculty at Queen's College Cork had approached her in her persona as Mary McCarthy to accept an honorary doctorate of medicine. They did this, she was sure, because she was assistant to Dame Edith de la Roche and was the one who dispensed the Dame's money to the college for various research programs. They hoped that this would make her more willing to coax money out of her sponsor for them.

  Mary had turned it down, but then a possibility occurred to her. She let herself be persuaded to accept the degree, but only if eventually she could take all the exams for the degree. The medical faculty agreed, thinking that they could pass her even though they were convinced that she would do terribly on the exams, and they would then have their powerful advocate.

  Two years later—this spring—Mary had made a near-perfect score on all tests—including the cadaver dissection. They had been forced to award her a genuine medical degree.

  She was now officially Dr. Mary McCarthy. And she had set in motion the wheels of bureaucracy to give her approval to practice medicine in CorkProvince. No one thought there was a chance in Hell of it being approved—except Mary. Though it might require a little bribery and blackmail. And maybe one or two discreet visits by the Grey Lady, another persona that Mary had recently created for herself, modeled on another Irish myth.

  "What you may not know is that when they graduated they each received several gifts, which the lady calls the Selkie's Gifts. They can heal you by a laying on of hands, and confer sterility for five years. And do a few other things."

  There was a rustle of interest from the audience and several whispered exchanges. There was not a lot of surprise; this was only confirmation of rumors most had heard. Mary waited till the noise died down.

  "Is this magic?" said one of the Whores, loudly enough for others near her to glance at her.

  "The cat lady insists that the gifts are not. She says that they are natural abilities that everyone has. The Selkie simply strengthened them in each graduate." The buzz at that was strong. These people had gotten used to hearing about the cat lady. But this was the first time most of them had heard that selkies were real.

  Mary waved them to quiet. "Yes. The Selkie is real. It was she who attended the graduation of your sisters and brothers. And gave them her gifts.

  "In the next few weeks your three compatriots will be setting up a clinic in the poorest part of town. All of you are expected to give them any assistance that you can. Their official reason will be to help the unfortunate. Their real reason will be to serve you. And your families."

  She told them a little bit more about the clinic, how it was part of a new organization called the Society of Saint Airmid, the patron saint of healing and water. One of its goals was to get pure water to people instead of the oft-tainted water taken from the Shannon or similar rivers.

  "We now know that cholera is caused by shit in water. How many of you have had cholera, or had family or friends get it? Maybe die of it?"

  More than half the people in the room raised a hand, then more and more, until every hand was raised. Mary doubted that everyone was telling the truth, but cholera epidemics were frequent in Irish history, and no one doubted its seriousness.

  "Very well. That's enough about the Society and why you will give it your support. Now let's get to the fun stuff. Nora."

  Nora stood up and came to stand beside Mary, who took a couple of steps backward so that Nora had everyone's attention.

  "Will our new members come stand by the stairs?" Nora motioned at the corner of the stage where stairs led up to it. Eleven women and one man rose and shuffled out of the rows of Whores and lined up before the stairs.

  Nora said, "The cat lady has changed the adoption ceremony a little. She has added our new healers."

  The three healers rose from their chairs and stood waiting. Daniel rose from his chair, moved it forward a bit and moved to place a box in its seat, then stood beside it. Mary went to stand by the three healers.

  Nora called out the name of the first "adoptee" and she climbed the stairs, her face flushed in embarrassment and excitement.

  Mary felt a pang of sadness at the woman's happiness, because the woman—a very young woman, Mary saw—was still a prostitute despite changing her allegiance from one pimp or madam to the Org as a whole. And she thought that this was a big improvement, that she'd moved up in the world!

  Well, maybe she had.

  Mary quelled her sadness and reached into the purse looped over one shoulder to pull out a small pamphlet containing basic health information, including how to identify different kinds of venereal disease. She handed it to the healer closest to the stairs, who took it and stepped forward to put herself in line with Daniel and Nora.

  When the adoptee neared the healer, that woman handed her the booklet with one hand and grasped the adoptee's empty hand and shook it, saying "Welcome, sister." At the same time the healer was supposed to, under her breath, invoke two of the spells that Mary had given the healers in her guise as the Selkie.

 
The least important part of each spell was the invocation. This was a sentence in Gaelic, such as the one that the healer silently said now: "I invoke the spell of health." This commanded the adoptee's body to bring it up to a healthy state and stay that way. An image of that state of good health was embedded deep in everyone's body in a mysterious "book of wisdom." This book was what kept someone's eyes blue, their hair blond, their height tall, and all the other characteristics with which one was born. It guided the healing of a wound back to a body's proper state.

  The healer then said the second spell—"I invoke the spell of sterility." She dropped the adoptee's hand and stepped back.

  This last "spell" had taken Mary longest to craft, because the sterility was supposed to last five years. Every normal person could turn their fertility on or off, though as far as Mary knew only she knew this. So it was easy for Mary or others with her gift of interfering with someone else's body to cause sterility or fertility. The tricky part was having the body of a patient restore fertility after a set time.

  Mary had mulled over several possibilities, settling finally on creating a way to count heartbeats, then trigger a spell. This had the disadvantage that everyone's heart beat at a slightly different rate, smaller people's—on the average—slightly faster.

  This was complicated by the amount of exertion or excitement in which people normally engaged. Still, it was simple and reliable within a space of three months, give or take, over five years. To ensure no surprises, each Whore who received this spell, from Mary and now the healers, was warned to have it renewed five months before the five years was up, if they wished to.

  The first adoptee walked toward Daniel, Mary and she exchanging nods as she passed the shapechanger. The young woman came close enough to Mary that she could extend her invisible esoteric hands and read the whore's bodily state. Good; the healer's spells had worked properly. Not that Mary was concerned that the healer would fail—she had tested all of them before they graduated from the Org medical school—but this was too important not to double check.

  Coming up to Daniel the adoptee stopped to receive a handshake and a gift from the head enforcer of the Limerick City Whores. This was a double-barreled over-under Derringer from the box on the chair beside him. As he said, "Welcome, Sister" the young woman, as the Whores' training specified, broke open the weapon to ensure that it was indeed loaded.

  Finally the young woman shook hands with Nora, receiving a gold sovereign from her, a large coin worth a pound, and a "Welcome, Sister." At that the adoptee proceeded to the other side of the stage and went down the stairs at that side to return to her seat.

  By then the second adoptee was approaching the healers. This time Mary handed the booklet to the middle healer, whose turn it was now to step forward and greet the second adoptee. And so it went until all twelve adoptees were back in their seats, and all three healers had welcomed at least one adoptee.

  Nora waited for this, taking a piece of paper from Daniel.

  "Now the results of the last self-defense tests." The audience, still talking and congratulating its newest official recruits, quieted quickly. For many this was what they had really been waiting for.

  "The winner of the pistolry trials, 3rd place, is—Lucy Harcourt." Shrieks and yells broke out as an older woman with prematurely grey hair rose from her seat and threaded through the feet blocking her from the stairs.

  Climbing them and approaching Nora she smiled with pride. Nora then shook her hand and presented her with a gold pound coin with a 3 lightly incised into it, enough to be readable but not to keep it from being spent.

  The process repeated for 2nd and 1st place winners, who got five-pound and ten-pound coins respectively. Then Nora passed out awards for knife work, more prestigious than pistolry, and finally for the most prestigious award, hand-to-hand fighting using a form of savate.

  Watching the festivities Mary was wryly amused. When she had started the lessons in self-defense for the Whores she had intended them to be more useful in making the women and the few male prostitutes self-confident. The tests for passing them were very easy and took just a short time.

  But the tests had soon evolved into a several-day affair, that pitted something like a fourth of all Whores against each other. The rules had become more elaborate. For instance, 1st -class winners in one category could not compete in the next set of trials. This allowed newcomers more chances of winning.

  Competition had gotten fiercer, forcing the adoption of rules that prevented serious injuries being inflicted—most of the time. Still, Mary had noticed more than one broken bone and sliced arms among the Whores gathered here, and several black eyes and bruises. The new healers had already been busy in the week since they had arrived back home here in Limerick from Cork. After using conventional medical procedures on someone they could use a third spell that focused on a specific problem. This was only for major problems, however, because it put the patient into a deep sleep for up to several days.

  "Now, party time!" Nora announced, and the audience broke up slowly, some leaving right away and others staying to talk. Finally only Nora, Daniel, and Mary were walking toward the exit of the Athenaeum.

  "Are you coming?" Nora said. The largest brothel owned by the Limerick City Whores was closed tonight for a party celebrating the new adoptees and the trial winners.

  "No. You can drop me off at my hotel, however."

  Inside the lobby of Hotel Victoria Mary watched through the windows till she was sure that the carriage carrying her Whore compatriots were out of sight. Then she put up her umbrella again against the lightly falling rain and hailed a hansom. If she hurried she could get to Kendall's Bookstore & Art Gallery on High Street with a good hour and half before they closed....

  A few hours later Mary had bought a few books, returned to the hotel to eat, and changed clothes. This time her outfit was scandalous: a grey wool outfit that fit her body skin-tight from neck to ankle. Her hair was now black. A good many clues, such as the feel of the air in her sinuses, told her that the rain now falling would likely become stronger later in the night.

  The form-fitting clothing was covered in a grey jacket and dress to preserve her modesty. The bottom of the dress was long and flared enough to conceal the fact that she was barefoot. If "barefoot" meant anything. She had changed the skin of her feet so that it was harder than leather though just as flexible. Effectively Mary's feet were boots.

  Mary went out of the front of the hotel to the covered roundabout driveway. As always a few hansom cabs were drawn up waiting for just such a customer as she. She ordered the driver to take her to the RoyalHospital a few streets away from the downtown center.

  That would be a good place to make her first public appearance as the Grey Lady, a persona modeled on an Irish legend.

  She had invented this identity some time ago for a one-time event, the punishment of an enforcer who, she had discovered, had been raping his eleven-year-old daughter since she was five. In front of several dozen Whores and enforcers she had caused him to rot to death.

  He had screamed for most of an hour before she had put him out of his misery. By then the lesson had been made and was sure to be passed around—don't rape children.

  But weeks ago she had decided to use this trip to further protect her Mary McCarthy identity by adding another public persona to those of the cat lady and the selkie, and to show them in other cities besides Cork.

  She also planned to add to the medical knowledge of LimerickCity medical practitioners.

  A short time later Mary used her esoteric skills to enter a locked side door of the LimerickHospital and found a closet. She removed her outer wear, used her esoteric hands to dry it, and stowed the clothing on a top-most shelf .

  Now she padded through the corridors of the hospital, using supersensitive ears and nose to locate the emergency operating rooms. Once found, subdued moans and screams told her that an operation was under way, not surprising on a Saturday night.

  Avoiding the
notice of hurrying hospital personnel she entered the door to an operating room and closed it behind her. The brightly lit center of the room made the unlighted part of the room by the door seem shadowed by comparison. It was a minute before a nurse noticed her and yelled for her to get out.

  Everyone looked at her except the surgeon. Looks of alarm showed on their faces as their eyes adjusted and they got a better view of her. Several people gasped, one woman screamed. At that the surgeon shot the screamer a quelling glance then turned back to his work.

  "Idiots! Shut up! We have a patient here! And, you, get out of here!"

  "I'm here to help, not harm."

  She walked to stand beside him. As she emerged into the brightly lit part of the room, nurses flinched away from her and retreated several feet away. One, opposite the doctor and Mary, kept his hands in the patient's body cavity and pressing an absorbent cloth against seeping blood. The doctor was holding an artery closed with one hand, holding a scalpel with the other.

  Good; Mary would not have to intervene to save the patient, an older man whose teeth bit into a thick strip of leather and who was too delirious from pain to focus on her.

  Mary reached to touch the patient's head but stopped when the doctor moved the scalpel as if to cut her hand.

  "A cannon cannot hurt me, doctor. That certainly won't. I'm only going to touch his head. I promise."

  He hesitated, then jerkily nodded his head. Mary put the patient to sleep with a touch and took her hand away. The patient sighed and relaxed .

  "What did you do!?" The scalpel threatened her again.

  "I put him to sleep. He's perfectly all right—if you'll quit worrying about me and do your job. Speaking of which, why aren't you using chloroform?"

  The doctor snapped at a nurse, "Count his pulse!" To another, "Wipe his face! Turn his head to the side!" That was good; saliva could drown someone unconscious but now it would drain outside the body.

  To Mary he said, "Chloroform has problems—"

  Mary cut him off. "Yes. Too much and his heart and lungs will stop. It's also toxic. But a good anesthesiologist can prevent all that."