Second Nature

Chapter 11

11 

Cade wrapped the wool blanket around the strange young woman's muscular body. Coils of dark hair hung to her waist, dripping. Her hair could be called magnificent, but that adjective wasn't strong enough to describe her eyes: intensely violet-blue, like radiant sapphires; the most beautiful eyes-jewels-he had ever seen. Her smooth skin shone with a rich cinnamon tone that facial cream models would envy. 

Yet in spite of those lovely features, she was shockingly ugly. The poor woman's face was horrifically deformed. A birth defect, Cade guessed. When he'd first seen her up close in the water, his impulse had been to avert his eyes, but he had made himself look into her face calmly and smile. Now he did the same.  

"My name is Cade," he said, offering his hand. "Cade Seaborne." Her slender hand was strong and unusually warm. "This is Dr. Jimi MacGregor," he said, "and this is my daughter, Haven." 

She nodded at each introduction and gave a ghastly smile. Her mouth was too wide, her lips thin lines, her teeth oddly shaped, almost conical. 

Jimi seemed to be overly focused on steering the boat, perhaps to keep himself from gawking. Haven looked crestfallen; she sat on a bench near the stern, studying the molded fiberglass deck at her feet. No doubt, she had expected the woman to be as pretty as Ariel, the Little Mermaid. And to have a tail fin covered with glittery scales. 

Cade felt a knot of pity ball up in his gut, but he kept up his smile. "What's your name?"  

When she didn't answer, he wondered if she had internal deformities as well. 

He'd seen people who might be called "horse-faced," but that didn't begin to describe the malformed shape of the woman's skull. Her forehead and jaw pushed forward in an oblong curve like a football. Her mouth sliced through the lower part of the curve, but on the upper half, where a nose would normally poke out, flat slits marked her nostrils.  

"Can you talk, Miss?" 

She worked her jaw, and a garbled sound escaped her throat. One hand reached up to her face and explored its shape. Her brow knitted in confusion, her eyes flashed fear.  

"It's okay, its all right." Cade said soothingly, as he would talk to one of the island's wild horses. "We're not going to hurt you." 

* * * 

Gen didn't need to look at herself in a mirror to understand what had happened, what she'd become. She had remained a dolphin too long. Intent on preserving both her identities-woman and dolphin-The Abundance had compromised when it restored her to human form.  

Gen had hesitated to give up her dolphin identity and The Abundance had responded by building a brain-the locus of identity-that blended both sets of genes. To accommodate the hybrid brain, her skull and face also became a mix of human and dolphin features. 

She sensed she had the power to transform further, to become wholly human, by concentrating exclusively on her human mind, her human identity. The Abundance would rebuild her accordingly. But how could she do that now? Three people had already seen her in this grotesque, in-between shape. If she changed into a woman, she would reveal her secret. First, she must get away from them; then she could change the rest of the way into a woman. 

One part of her felt horrified at what had happened; touching her face with her fingertips, she could tell she looked gruesome. On the other hand, maybe it was a good thing-for now, anyway. Such a radically new appearance offered disguise. The way she figured, Eberhard was already searching for her. 

Knowing Toshi, she felt certain he hadn't allowed himself to be captured by a man as ruthless as Eberhard. Toshi would have crashed the Cessna jet into the sea. And knowing Eberhard, she did not doubt that he had already searched the aircraft's wreckage. Had he found the transponder? Did he know she had survived?