by Laer Carroll
After a few minutes of this Sylvia's friend stood up from his leaning against a bulkhead.
"Well, that's the tour. Wish I could spend more time with you, but I can't goof off any more."
Somewhat reluctantly Rickie got up and followed the werecreature and the astronaut out.
Back in the dressing room the two siblings returned their helmets to hooks. Rickie shook the astronaut's hand and thanked him.
"I'll never forget this."
"Glad to oblige Sylvia's family. Ciao ." He kissed Sylvia's cheek and left.
"And now, bro, we go to see the dolphins."
They walked the remaining mile and a half to the south tip of the island on the western verge of the island beside a newly paved road. Halfway there a big pickup truck traveling south slowed and stopped beside them. An adult was driving and there was a teenaged girl and boy in the cab with him. Three more teens rode in back on top of various boxes and loads of lumber .
"Hey, Doc," said the driver, sticking his head a bit out of the truck's window. "Want a ride?"
"Thanks, Giuseppe. Meet my brother Rick."
The two men shook hands and her brother waved at the two teens in the cab. Sylvia nodded at them and they grinned back at her.
Seated on boxes in the cargo area Rickie said to Sylvia, "What's this all about?"
She turned her head toward the three teens with whom he had shaken hands.
The girl said, "It's a school project, working on the dolphin sanctuary. We get credit. And it's a lot of fun."
"Dolphin sanctuary?"
The girl explained the project Prinny had started, to make the water at the island tip more friendly to dolphins.
One of the boys spoke up. "Today we're helping add to the surfer support area. All of this—" he waved a hand at the supplies underneath and around them. "This will make the buildings stronger, and add to them. And improve the outhouses." He grimaced, then grinned. "Not my favorite job."
At the end of the ride Sylvia led Rickie away from the truck toward a row of tents. In one they changed into swim clothes and locked their valuables in lockers. Sylvia's locker was permanently hers. From it she took a snorkel and face mask.
Outside the tent Sylvia pointed out aspects of the shore-side camp. "This started out as just a couple of temporary shelters and a Porta-Potty. It's just sort of growing without any plan. A lot of the work is voluntary. It would have been better if it had been planned, maybe. But maybe not. The kids are learning responsibility and self-discipline.
"A couple of them are sitting in on the planning committee to establish a permanent site here, with power, plumbing, garbage disposal, and so on running down the island spine. That way they'll feel it's their own decision when all this has to be torn down or cannibalized."
"There could be a ton of safety violations here."
"Got it covered. Kids get class credit for studying safety and finding and fixing problems here. ArgenSpace safety inspectors backstop them."
Rickie was sarcastic. "Bet you get a lot of kids working on that."
"Lots more than you think. Especially when they see yours truly here in work clothes getting dirty." She put her nose in the air and put on a noble expression. He pushed her off her feet. She let herself fall, laughing, got up, dusted herself off.
"But I'm not the only one. Remember that spaceship that almost crashed some time back? The pilot who worked miracles to keep it from cracking up works down here as a lifeguard a few days a week when she's onsite. There's the guard area."
She pointed at the prefab building a hundred feet or so away. It had a raised body and a tower with a seat and umbrella atop it.
"Too bad she's not here right now. You should see her in a bikini."
"Don't important people—not people like you—have better things to do?"
"Spending time in free-fall and shut up in an artificial environment takes a toll on you. Exercising in fresh air here helps astronauts recover. And if she didn't volunteer her bosses might order her to do really boring exercise in a gym.
"When kids see their heroes down here working they don't treat it as crap work. Besides, there's peer pressure. Making this place better is the thing to do."
"Yeah. For a few months. "
"Could be. We'll see."
They had been walking toward and now arrived at a mobile home that had been turned into a sales and rental store for surf boards and powered go-boards.
"Josefina, I need a go-board for me and my friend. Is my favorite board available?"
"Right over here, Champ. And I've got a new board that your friend can use. Ah, sir—"
"I'm Rickie, Josefina." They shook hands.
"You do know how to run one of these?"
"My sister taught me." He nodded toward Sylvia.
"Your sister?" Josefina perked up at the news that he was not dating the Champ.
The siblings lugged their boards to a maintenance area beside the mobile home, checked to ensure the boards were indeed in top mechanical condition, and topped off the superbatteries. Josefina, keeping an eye on both to double-check them and to certify the precautions had been properly seen to, extended two clipboards so they could sign the rental papers.
The two donned the orange life jackets that were part of the rental and lugged the go-boards a hundred yards to the water edging the beach, slid them into the water, and waded in beside them. When waist deep they slipped tethers onto their wrists to ensure if they ditched they could not get lost from their board. They donned face masks and snorkels and submerged enough to test that they worked properly.
Satisfied, they mounted the boards. This took a bit of skill. Sylvia, discreetly watching Rickie, saw that he had lost none of that skill. As he mounted he even pivoted the T-shaped control yoke from flat to upright at the end of the mount, locking it in place, all in one smooth controlled motion.
He turned to his sister, face smug. "Thought I'd forgotten how?"
"Just checking. Just checking." She was standing up on her board too.
"Do we go see the dolphins now?"
"Most will still be out on the water until a bit later. We're going to practice a little. Come on!"
With that she triggered her motor. It came smoothly to life, as did Rickie's. They gently ramped up the engines to ensure they were running properly at every throttle setting and headed out to sea, their speed increasing more and more until only the tails of the boards and their water-jet engines were below water, the rest canted up at an angle.
Top-notch go boards with very good pilots could top 35 knots. Both Connellys were very good pilots.
Several miles out to sea they circled back toward Space Island and throttled down and down and turned off their motors. The two boards coasted to a halt, settling into the water. Sylvia folded down to sit cross-legged, looking back at the island. The buildings looked like toys in the distance under a blue sky with only wisps of clouds to block the sun.
"You forgot to put on sun block," she said.
"Damn! Your fault, motor-mouth. You distracted me."
"Don't worry about it. I'll fix your burn." She looked down at her hands, consciously stopped them from twisting against each other.
"I'm not human any more, Rick."
Slowly, then with more assurance as her brother listened uncritically, she told of being kidnapped. That brought a reaction, but she soothed him down and continued with waking up, fighting, being knocked out.
"They may have raped me before I died. Or maybe after. Thank God I don't remember any of that. Not just repressed but don't remember. The memories would have started coming up after a few months, in dreams at least."
She told of waking up underwater at her beach house, rented then, owned now. Coming out of the water, getting into her house by pulling a set of iron bars off a window.
"I later calculated the force needed to do that and accidentally throw the bars more than a hundred yards—and they were stopped only because there were trees in the way. I can shot put ov
er a mile, or throw it through a concrete wall. The energy density of my muscles is way beyond human. That's why I eat the way I do."
She smiled wanly at him. "And weigh half again what a human my size would. Remember how heavy I was when I walked on your back? That wasn't just charity. That was the first demonstration to you that I'd changed."
She went on to talk about some of her enhancements. Not all.
"My second demonstration was that run through the grass. Remember it? That was to show you how tough my skin is. It will even stop a knife. I know, because one of the seamen I fought stabbed me in the back."
That got a reaction out of him, an angry one.
"I only felt something like a jab with a fingernail. Then I found out that I could control my skin to simulate a bleeding wound. Which I did. And made sure the photographers got shots of it when the police showed up. If the men ever go on trial I'll have to simulate a wound scar. Or if I go on trial.
"I don't know about bullets. And I don't plan to find out."
"Glad to hear it." He grinned. A slight one, but genuine.
She had first learned she could heal by laying her hands on someone was when she treated her niece Rissa. The thought of other children suffering as Rissa had was what spurred her to look for a general cure in the jungles.
"I can sense inside of people and affect what I sense. I can also read the body at a cellular level, or below, and know how to help by reading their genetic code. At least, I think that's what I'm doing. What it feels like is that I'm remembering knowledge out of a book I read too long ago to recall reading it.
"That's how I could tell which snake or bug bites would heal Juvie Alzheimer's. I also chewed on exotic plants but didn't find a cure there."
She looked down at her hands again. "I've been passing over some stuff. One is that I can change my shape a lot."
"I sort of caught that. Show me something."
She took a deep breath. Then she held up a hand and extruded her claws. He leaned over toward her and overshot, rocking his board. He drew back and she held out her hand so he could see better.
"Retract them. Or just one. Can you do that?"
She had never tried. She found she could, ending up with just her pointing finger claw tipped.
"It looks like you're growing or ungrowing the claws instead of retracting them."
"I used to shapechange my fingernails but it takes a fair amount of energy. One day I just wished for a better system and it happened. I have several theories about that, but I don't know which is right. I'm pretty cautious about experimenting on myself. I could harm myself, or maybe get stuck. You don't want to see me with my fangs out."
Actually she was a little miffed that he was taking everything so calmly. Which was totally stupid, of course.
"Hey. Knock yourself out."
"You asked for it." She let her teeth change so fast they practically exploded into fangs.
"Cool. Lean this way again."
Sylvia secretly laughed at her annoyance at his easy acceptance. What an idiot, to get what she wanted, then not be satisfied .
He snicked a fingernail against the sharp points when she leaned over toward him. When he drew back his hand she straightened and let her teeth return to normal. She said that fast changes took extra energy and the fangs or claws were not as strong as they could be.
"They felt pretty hard. Almost like stone."
"Not that hard when I change them fast. Though they'll cut flesh just fine. But when I take my time they come out as hard as diamond and can penetrate steel.
"I'm going to find those bastards that stole me, then killed me and maybe raped me. I'm going to tear them into bloody bits. Or slice them into bacon. I'm going to find every one they sell women to, and I'm going to kill them all.
"They treated me like a piece of meat. Like meat. Like nothing ..." She found she was weeping, taking in great gulps of air and letting them out as sobs. She leaned over the board, wrapping her arms around her waist, crying, watering the ocean with her tears.
There was a splash and warm wet arms wound themselves around her waist. Her brother was in the water next to her board, his arms atop her arms, hands grasping her hands.
"Sylly, Sylly, I'm here. Rickie's here. Cry Sylly. Let it all out. You'll feel better. You'll feel better."
It took a while but eventually her crying tapered off. With a last sniff, she quit.
"Thanks. Here, get back on your board. I need to clean up." When he released her and turned in the water toward his board she rolled off her own. A couple of minutes underwater cleared her tears and runny nose. By the time she came to the surface he was back on his board, sitting cross-legged. Smoothly and easily she re-mounted her own board.
"I'm not sure why I'm so angry sometimes. Everything since I died has been an improvement. Did you get that I can breathe water now? I actually sleep underwater sometimes. I don't get bends, or suffer from cold, even when I go down a mile or more where it's only a few degrees above freezing."
That jolted him. "A mile? That's weird."
"Now that you mention it, it does seem that way. But for me it's just business as usual. I didn't even think about it the first time I went deep. I was just curious about the shape of P'Rico underwater. It drops down into a trench on the southwest side where my house is. I think bottom is about eight miles down but I stopped at a mile because the ocean down there is pretty boring."
"How did you know it was a mile?"
"You know, I don't know. I just knew. Maybe I was sensing the pressure..."
"How could you see anything? It gets dark pretty quick." Rickie and she had both been enthusiastic SCUBA divers off Miami's beaches as kids.
"I have something like sonar, but a lot longer range and more detailed. It doesn't work out of water. Shame. It would be useful."
"You sleep deep underwater? Aren't there predators down there? Big ones?"
"Yeah. But my not-sonar wakes me if something approaches. And it hasn't sunk in to you yet, I can tell. Down there—well, anywhere—I'm the monster. Sharks run away from me. Maybe because I snack on them when I come across them.
"Maybe not, though. Squid and stingrays run away too and I don't eat them. But dolphins and whales don't run. They're cautious when they first meet me, but act like they want to be friends."
She looked closely at him. "You're taking this pretty calmly."
She looked back toward the island toward which a breeze was pushing them, turning the waves choppy and rocking their boards.
"Did you ever see the Creature from the Deeps? No nose, little eyes, grey skin. That's what I look like undersea."
Turned away as she was she could not see his grin but could hear it in his voice. "When I was ten and you were fifteen and turned into a gurr-ull that made me want to throw up. This doesn't. Part of me is still ten and thinks all this sea monster stuff is great. So you can just quit trying to convince me how horrible you are.
"And your plans to kill some scumbags in Columbia or Venezuela or where-ever? Also doesn't bother me. Maybe I'm just not a good enough cop, but it doesn't.
"What I am bothered by, a little, is how intense you are about killing those guys. I'm scared you'll lose caution and go head-to-head to guys with heavy weapons.
"But most of all I'm afraid you'll accidentally kill some innocent people. I've seen how bad it is when somebody accidentally kills some innocent woman or baby by accident during a fight. You really don't want to do that, Sylly."
"Too late. I've already been through that. A tiger attacked me in the jungle and by reflex I treated it as if it were as big a threat as it would have been before I died. I tore it to pieces."
She shook her head. "I still think of it sometimes and feel as bad as if it had been a kitten. And it was, compared to me."
They were silent for long moments, looking toward the island. It was getting closer as the wind pushed them toward it, and at a faster pace than earlier. As the sun sank the wind was picking up, making the wave
s choppier and occasionally whipping up spray that was cool on their backs.
"So. Dolphins. You said something earlier about talking to them? And making a translator to let ordinary humans talk to them? "
Grateful for a subject that was not so much about her she recounted how she had first grown an in-throat translator and created a mechanical translator, with a lot of help from Prinny and ArgenSpace engineers.
"It's still pretty crude, but it works. Prinny was so excited the first time she 'talked' to a dolphin. It was with Miranda, the dolphin shot by those fishermen."
"And just what did happen there? You gave me a quickie briefing on the fight but you left out a lot."
"I had to. I have to be very discreet about revealing my shapechanger nature. That's why Mom knows nothing about it. And I always act as if someone is spying on me. That's why we're way out here where even a shotgun mike can't hear us."
"Someone could have put a tap on these boards."
She grinned. "I already checked that out. Besides ordinary senses I've got some esoteric ones I've not told you about."
"So, give me more on the fight. And dolphins."
Chapter 20 - Dolphins
From her fight their conversation went through dolphins to more personal subjects. When the afternoon neared evening she asked him to give her his hand. It took only a moment for her to send his body a command to heal itself of sunburn damage. Then she let go of his hand.
"There. Sunburn taken care of."
He rotated his shoulder blades. "I don't feel anything."
"I caught it before it got bad enough for you to feel it. Not that you would have felt much. I long ago boosted your body's self-healing abilities."
"You did? Hmm. Is that why I didn't get a cold last year when that Asian variety was going around?"
"Yeah. Hit your On button. It's time we visited the dolphins."
As they turned in their go-boards her brother sniffed the air. "How are the hot-dogs here?"
A silver-sided catering truck had driven down-island while they were on the water.
"Pretty good. Gourmet dogs."
"I'm starving. We got time to eat?"
"Just a snack. Save your appetite for when we get back to the hotel."
