(Boss! I keep telling you, I am not a flatworm! I told you a long time ago that the body remembers, and—let's table it; here comes the fuzz.)

"Miss Joan, it's Dr. Garcia and Mr. Salomon."

"Oh. Well, I'm not going to dress; we've still to finish. Grab me a negligee—not that plate-glass job. The London Fog is suitable, don't you think?"

"I guess. Makes you look only half naked instead of bare."

"Who taught me to dress that way, winsome Winnie?" (I did.) (Sure, Eunice—but she thinks she bosses me. I'm her good baby who always does what Mama says... until we get dear Doctor out of our hair.) "Please tell the gentlemen that I will be right out."

Miss Smith stopped to apply lipstick, decided that her face could get along with no other renewals, took a brushcomb and teased her too-short locks into fluffiness, stepped into stilt-high mules, put on the negligee and looked at herself in the long glass.

She decided that the selective opacity of the robe was just right—except that the upper part was a little too modest. So she delayed long enough to apply lipstick to areolae.

Now satisfied with her appearance—(Boss, we look like a high-priced pooka.) (Very high-priced, I hope. Were you criticizing?) (Not at all, I was applauding.)—she went out into her boudoir. "Good morning, Doctor. Hi, Jake dear. Won't you sit down? Coffee? Or we can find some Old Kentucky Rat Poison, bottled in the barn."

"Coffee," agreed Salomon. "You look charming, my dear."

"Snake charming. I've been exercising and smell like a horse."

"Not more than a small pony. I'll turn up the ventilation. Joan Eunice, Dr. Garcia wants to check you over."

"Really? What's wrong? I feel fine. Aside from these cold prison bars all around me, and my head on a pillow of stone."

"Dr. Garcia thinks we can do something about those cold prison bars. Joan Eunice, we agreed that it was not smart to go into court until you were discharged as well in all respects. He thinks it may be possible, now."

"Oh. Oh! How about that platoon of psychiatrists?"

"We'll have them. We may never need them. But we'll be ready to offset their expert witnesses. You will have to put up with long searching interviews; our own experts must go into court prepared." (Prepared to justify their fancy fees. Don't worry, Boss; I'll hide under a rock whenever a shrink is around.)

"That's okay. I'm delighted that Dr. Garcia thinks I'm well. Shall we step into my dressing room, Doctor? Come along, Winnie. Jake, the Wall Street Journal is over there."

Once she was alone with her doctor and nurse Miss Smith said, "Well, Doctor? Shall I stretch out on the massage table?"

"No, this examination is pro forma, to allow me to log that I gave you a physical on the day I discharged you. I'll listen with a stethoscope and make you say ‘Ah!'—things like that. If you'll sit down at your dressing table and drop the top of your robe, please."

"Yes, sir."

She kept quiet while he passed the stethoscope here and there, coughed when she was told to, inhaled sharply and sighed noisily as directed. Once she said, "Wups! Sorry, I'm ticklish," and asked, "What does that tell you?"

"Just palpating for lumps. Again, pro forma—although it's been some time since this was done." (Enjoying it, kiddo?) (Maybe you are, Eunice; I'm not. I'd rather be approached more romantic-like.) (Don't kid your grandmother; you enjoy it.)

The doctor stepped back and looked at her thoughtfully. Joan Eunice said, "Anything more, sir? G-Y-N?"

"Not unless you ask for it. Trouble?"

"Not a bit. I feel healthy enough to whup a grizzly bear."

"And you check out that healthy, too. Nevertheless your case worries me."

"Why, Doctor?"

"Because your case is unique. I know almost as little about it as you do. Joan, when you left this house—as Mr. Smith—I never expected to see you alive again. When you were brought back, I did not expect you to regain consciousness. When you regained consciousness, I felt sorry for you... as I never expected you to be other than paralyzed from the neck down. Yet here you are, well and healthy. Apparently."

"Why only ‘apparently,' Doctor?"

"I don't know. We know little enough about any transplant—and nothing about a brain transplant other than what we have learned from you. Joan, for the past two weeks there has been no reason—other than caution—why you needed more supervision than any other young woman in good health. Say Winifred here, for example."

He shrugged. "Of the two you seem to be somewhat more ruggedly healthy than she is. Nevertheless I would bet that. Winifred, barring accidents, will live out her normal span... whereas you don't fit any curve; you're unique. Please, I'm not trying to frighten you, but only a fool makes predictions based on ignorance; I am not that sort of fool."

"Doctor," she answered calmly, "you're saying that this body could reject the brain—or vice versa, it's the same thing. Or that I could drop dead, heart failure, for no defined reason. I know it; I read a great deal on transplants, while I was still Johann Smith. I am not afraid. If it happens—well, I've had a wonderful vacation from old age, with its pain and boredom." She smiled happily. "It's been like dying and going to Heaven—and even a few weeks of Heaven can be eternity."

"I'm glad you accept it so philosophically."

"Not ‘philosophically,' Doctor. With wonder and joy and reaching out greedily for every golden second!"

"Well...I'm pleased that Winifred is going to stay with you and I hope that you will keep her a long time—"

"As long as she will stay! Always, I hope."

"—because, otherwise, I would worry. But Winnie can do in an emergency anything I could do, and she'll have everything here with which to do it—and she knows and I want you to know that I will get here fast if she sends for me. All right, my dear, let's get that transmitter off you; you won't be monitored any longer. Nurse. Rubbing alcohol, and cotton."

"Yes, Doctor." Winifred went past the massage table, reached into a cupboard.

Dr. Garcia detached the tiny transmitter. "Slight erythema, and a faint circle of mechanical dermatitis. With your amazing repair factor I'm betting you won't be able to find where it's been by tomorrow. But I'm going to miss my morning movie."

"Sir?"

"I don't suppose anyone has told you but I have watched the monitors every morning, while you exercised, waiting for your heart to pound. Or your respiration to warn me. Nothing. Never anything abnormal, I mean; I could tell that you were exercising. Very mild exercise, I concluded."

"Why, yes, I suppose so. Yoga."

"Well! I would not class yoga as ‘mild.' If we mean the same thing."

"I meant that yoga isn't a hundred-yard dash, or weight lifting. But I—well, both of us—have been doing the classic poses. Except the headstands; I'm not foolish, I know I have a Sears-Roebuck skull."

"I wouldn't have let her, Doctor! But she never tried one; truly she didn't."

"Doctor, I haven't been building muscles for show; I am simply trying to get perfect control over my —new—wonderful!—body. Here, let me show you."

Joan stood up, letting the negligee fall, stood on the floor six inches from the exercise mat—shifted her weight onto her left foot, brought her right leg up behind her in perfect extension while she leaned slowly forward... deep… deeper...until she clasped her left ankle with both hands and pressed her cheek against her shin, with her right leg arrow straight above her in a perfect split.

She held it for three controlled breaths, then dropped her hands flat to the floor, slowly lifted her left leg, balancing it against the right, until she was holding a hand stand, legs together, back arched, toes pointed.

Again slowly she let her limbs sink like drooping petals until they touched the mat—let the Arch sink into the Wheel, melted still farther into the Diamond pose, knees and elbows touching mat and floor—held it—let it roll slowly forward into Lotus. "Om Mani Padme Hum." (Om Mani Padme Hum. Pick up your check at the gate, girl; we won't need to shoot this scene over.) (Thanks, Eunice. But I had a good guru, Guru.) (De nada, Chela.)