Moving to Lisle’s feet and loosening the wrist straps, Gerlinde decided to do something totally indulgent and devilish.<br/><br/>She glanced at the girl’s face first, wanting to be reasonably certain that the girl would not be conscious while she did it.  As she examined the girl, she used a scalpel to shave the girl’s heel, reducing its prominence by taking off narrow strips of flesh like a deli slicer.<br/><br/>Lisle’s face was fresh snow.  If she was still conscious, she was at least insensate.  Gerlinde decided it was time to indulge herself.<br/><br/>“AMBi.” Gerlinde addressed her music player.  Another glance at Lisle, just to check she was still out of it before continuing.  “Performer: Missing Persons. Album: Missing Persons.”<br/><br/>The music picked up—deep bubbles and zinging washes of sparkly notes.  Gerlinde picked up a bone knife and began to sculpt Lisle’s heel.  She was still nervous, even confident as she was that the girl couldn’t hear.  The notion that anyone would know that she liked this music alarmed her.<br/><br/>Gerlinde could not shake the guilt of her enjoyment of 80s music.  She had gotten over having a pound of male anatomy laced into her body and psyche.  She had come to terms with the fact that, on some level, she had entirely resigned herself to the strange experiments the Reich demanded of her.  Her whipping sessions were now open to the entire camp to see, even though she had guarded that artistry with privacy.  But Missing Persons – and the Tom Tom Club, and Zappa, and Nina Hagen, who some said her voiced resembled – were another matter.  Gerlinde felt compelled to treat her love of them like a young masturbator might treat used wads of Kleenex.<br/><br/>But with Lisle seemingly asleep, Gerlinde was soon humming along.  By the time Destination Unknown (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbHexmNvwYY) was playing, she had picked up the lyrics.<br/><br/>“Life is so strange.  When you don’t know.  Hmm-hmm-hmm.<br/>“How can you be sure…of any situation?  Something can change.<br/>“And then you don’t know.”<br/><br/>She reset the fibula and sliced the buttery strip of the posterior tablofibular ligament to conform to the new placement.  She brushed some hypercortizan on the calcaneofibular ligament to inspire it to grow temporarily.  A spray of nanoguides from their smooth, black plastic container was laid on the ligament, to make that growth permanent.  Before they could fasten, Gerlinde eased the ligament a bit longer and repositioned it for better digitigrade movement.<br/><br/>“I don’t know where to go.<br/>“I don’t know what to do.”<br/><br/>She hum-hummed and swayed her head side to side.  She put her shoulder into a stiff push, forcing the bones into a straighter alignment with the tibula and fibula.<br/><br/>“And I don’t even know the time of day.<br/>“I guess it doesn’t matter any-way.”<br/><br/>A wet, wooden snap confirmed her success.  Gerlinde worked her bone knife around, shearing the glistening white of the joints to the proper fit.<br/><br/>“ Life is so strange…Destination Unknown<br/>“When you don’t know…your destination.<br/>“Something can change…it’s unknown.<br/>“Then you won’t know…Destination Unknown.”<br/><br/>She swabbed the murky blood away.  A spray of nanoguides fixed the bones and ligaments in their shiny mess into a proper alignment.  She hummed with the chorus, made a tiny, high-pitched “Ah” noise.<br/><br/>Gerlinde cut into the tender, long strap of the Achilles tendon and reset it, singing along with the repeat of the chorus.  Another spray of nanoguides fused it, deceived Lisle’s body into having muscle memory that this was the proper configuration of her lower leg.<br/><br/>As the chorus died, Gerlinde picked up the bigger bone saw.<br/><br/>“When will my time come?”<br/><br/>She sliced the tibula and fibula, severing them just above the amputated foot.<br/><br/>“Has it all been said and done?”<br/><br/>She did a shimmy.  She sliced the leg again, to shorten it by the fraction of an inch.  The cylinder of cut-away leg, looking like a chunk of grocery meat, was swept into another plastic pan.<br/><br/>“I know I’ll leave when it’s my time to go.<br/>“Until I’ll carry on with what I know.”<br/><br/>Gerlinde reattached the foot to the shortened leg.  The fit wasn’t exact.  Soon it would be.  With nanoguided osteorepair unguent and scalpels and synth-flesh, she would sculpt the leg to adjust to its new, slightly shorter, now-digitigrade alignment as if Lisle had been born that way.<br/><br/>By “Windows,” Gerlinde had fused the leg—now about an inch shorter—to the realigned foot.  By the metallic guitar and soaring tones of “Walking In LA,” Gerlinde had her mouth scrunched up in a mean little face and was bopping her head fast as she smoothed the calf muscle like clay under her knife.<br/><br/>As “No Secrets” opened its more mellow strains, Gerlinde swapped her gloves, turned to the next leg and set herself to making it perfect.<br/><br/>She finished the girl’s new legs and investigated her work while the weird warbles and whistles of “Joe’s Garage” wove its clumsy opera around her.  Lisle’s sleek, fair legs were seamless and smooth and now vaguely digitigrade.  Synth-skin had already concealed any sign that work had been done at all.  The muscle and bone had been convinced that this was the way they should be set—had always been set.  Gerlinde took a moment to muse how different things had been on the front lines, thinking on the two times when cutlery and an open gas flame had to substitute for nanoguides and synth-skin.<br/><br/>Then she smiled to herself.<br/><br/>“Good work, Doktor Baumann.”  She said.<br/><br/>“Why thank you, Doktor Baumann.  I take a singular pride in my work.”  She said.<br/><br/>Then she went over to Lisle’s face, to see how the girl had weathered the surgery.<br/><br/><br/>