It is safer to let sex-changing time-travellers be

I was taken to a fairly secret location in the South American wilds. At the turn of the century a footprint was found. It was of a woman's shoe, and a shoe from an advanced Western civilisation, after the time that it was found. I was shown the footprint, then shown the shoe it was believed to have come from. I became obsessed with finding out who the person had been, was, or would be.

Somehow I got enough information to go to a children's play. They were doing something that was eerily similar to the events which would have happened at the South American place. I watched closely. The children were wary.

Myself and another person were looking at the children in the play—two girls and two boys—and trying to decide which of the girls was the one who'd grown up to go back in time to South America. We looked at what the youngest girl had been carrying. Large books. Checking them in the library, they were of strange things—morphology, physics, linguistics. We put them back and decided that it must be the young girl.

We went off to our timeline and found the woman we knew had gone back in time, Sarah. I flirted with her. The woman commented that she must have lost her touch if I wasn't being blinded by her smile enough to go away. We went away. This wasn't the youngest girl. Looking over the notes we took from the play and the photographs and newspaper clippings, we were baffled. It could only be the older girl, then, but she didn't fit the proflie. I got an idea. Maybe it was Andrew. They stared at me, then everything fell into place. It was Andrew.

Looking through the newspapers and photographs, we noticed that a number of them had been edited. Information had been hidden. Someone obviously didn't want it getting out that Sarah was once Andrew. Why? It took time, but we found a photo of him with the other three children from the play. He was draped over the other boy. We debated telling the public, but one of the other two people—someone had mysteriously joined us—said no, that outing her as having been a guy would not be politic, no matter what.

So I telephoned without the others' knowledge and when Sarah picked up, said "Hello … Andrew." The telephone was slammed down. So.

We three turned up to a party we knew Sarah and her manager were going to be at. They were standing apprehensively, waiting. As I walked past, I said "Hello … Sarah"—enough of a pause that she got that it was me who'd telephoned before. She looked stricken. I kept on going, but Sarah … who turned back into Andrew … was jittery. He grabbed a gun and was about to shoot me but I grabbed the manager for a shield. He bent down and shot the manager, the other people scattering. I stood up and shakily inspected myself for bullet wounds before thinking that I was silly: if I had anything I would be in pain. Right. Right?

I made for the door, following. A few shots made me duck behind the doorway—as if that would stop a bullet—and I kept going. In the hallway I looked around, but only a man with no resemblance to Andrew was walking towards me and the party. I looked out one door, the one going outside and to the overbridge, but there was only a woman up there, and not Andrew. I opened the second door and peered through. Another woman—holding a gun. Andrew! I ducked back out of the door, but got shot in the leg. I chided myself for my blindness.