03. Gods at the Well of Souls by Jack L. Chalker

comrades  have vital information for the council and that if they are located, in any  form, and the reengineering stopped, we will not act further against the  organization. We can only hope that this will buy them their lives, or at least  enough time to locate them. 
     
    "May the blessings of all the gods be with you in this endeavor. This message is  at an end. Please bum this cube and do not attempt a replay. The message in it  is already gone, but another attempt will produce nasty consequences. Farewell." "I'm not sure I liked the last of that," Tony commented. "It really sounded like  a rather formal kiss-off. Like she never really expected to hear from us again." "Well, we will just have to surprise her, won't we, dear?" Anne Marie responded,  then looked over at Alowi. "Well! Why so glum? This is what you wanted, isn't  it?" 
     
    Alowi nodded, but slowly and hesitantly. This was what she'd wanted all along,  of course. So why did she feel so little like following up on it? Lori, after all, had saved her life at the start of all this and for a very long  time had been her only friend. 
     
    "I am glad something is happening, of course," she answered lamely, "but, well,  I am just concerned. Concerned about what we might find, where this is all  leading. I will be all right." 
     
    But it was more than that. After the Dillians began their preparations to shut  down their trade operation, leaving her to begin the packing-up process, she  tried to put her finger on it. She really did know at least a part of her  problem, and it was tough trying to get around that. Lori wasn't just a friend,  he was her husband, and the last thing she wanted right now was a husband, now  or ever again. Memories of long conversations, the sharing of intimacy down to  her very soul with him, now seemed distant and colored with an unpleasant veneer  that seemed somehow impossible to remove. 
     
    She certainly wanted Lori liberated, but their relationship couldn't be like it  had been even if by some miracle he was unchanged or could be restored to his  previous form. Particularly not in that case ... A whole litany of things that  had attracted her and turned her on to him in the past now seemed in retrospect  to be the opposite. Even his personality, mannerisms, the way he interacted with  her and with others seemed distant, alien at best, and in some ways downright  repugnant to her. 
     
    Finding him a malformed invalid seemed at least less threatening to her, and she  felt awful for thinking that thought. Even so, she felt no duty toward him, no  real attraction at all. 
     
    She had been happiest right here, with Tony and Anne Marie, free to explore her  own potential without any feelings of repression or any demands she didn't like.  Tony and Anne Marie had remained for her sake, and she loved them for it, and  while she knew deep down that this arrangement could never be permanent, she  didn't want it to end. 
     
    One had to have been on both sides of the sexual boundary to know just how  defining the roles were, how they shaped and misshaped people. Seen from Alowi's  perspective, she hated, despised Julian Beard. He'd been swaggering, loutish,  and self-centered to a fault, committed to his own goals but seeing no  commitment toward others-it was no wonder he couldn't stay married to anybody.  Yet she saw the essence of all that was wrong in him in just about every male  she'd met or could think of, regardless of race. It was almost as if every  quality she valued seemed lacking in every male yet present in the vast majority  of females. Lord-Lori by the end had been no more a former woman than Alowi had  been a former man. Instead he'd become more and more like ... Julian Beard. Here, during this period, she'd also discovered something else. She liked  herself now. First she had struggled to expunge all that was Julian from inside  her, then she'd become someone else, a