Sea Monster's Revenge Page 19

  A "snack" turned out to be four hot-dogs for each of them loaded with condiments, chili and cheese for him, mustard and relish for her. Neither of them thought it strange to classify this amount of food as a snack.

  Prinny certainly did. She ran across the beach and jerked to a halt in front of Sylvia, restraining herself from giving the monster a hug.

  "Oh, are you all right? Did they hurt you? Why didn't they let you out of jail sooner? Oh, you'll spoil your appetite for dinner at our house! "

  Laughing, Sylvia said, "I'm not hurt even one little bit." She gathered Prinny into her arms and they exchanged vigorous hugs.

  "I stayed in jail to take care of a woman who was hurt. And this will not hurt my appetite. But I can't accept an invitation from you, not now I've been in a bar-room brawl. Your parents would be upset to have such a bad example for you and your brother at their table."

  "Oh, no, they wouldn't." She drew a cell-phone from a side-pocket of her jeans, then stopped as she realized that Sylvia was not alone. She looked up the considerable height between her short figure to Rickie's tall one. Her eyes widened at the sight of his muscular body, the definition of his muscles not hidden by the wet Miami Police Academy tee that he wore.

  Sylvia introduced the two of them and they shook hands. Then Prinny called her home. Shortly she was in rapid-fire defense of Sylvia, which did not get far before she handed her cell to the shapechanger.

  If I heard my daughter correctly you're afraid we'll be ashamed to have you for dinner. Let me tell you, we will be very annoyed if you avoid dinner for this reason. Now, you come over here right away .

  Sylvia laughed. "OK. OK. But we can't be there right away. I have to introduce my brother to the dolphins."

  Your brother is here? Then you definitely must come over. Or I'll have to be very severe with you the next time I see you. We'll wait till 8:00 and anyone here who's starving can just have carrot snacks .

  Sylvia agreed to try to be there at 8:00, but said, "The dolphins may delay us. If so, start at 8:00 and we'll call as soon as we can and re-schedule. And—thank you so much."

  She handed the cell back to Prinny who put it to her ear .

  "Aww. Do I have to? I wanted to introduce them to Miranda. Oh! Yes! I'd love that!"

  Prinny closed and pocketed the cell.

  "I'm going to help fix dinner. Now you be sure to come tonight." She shook her finger at Sylvia, laughed, and dashed to get her bike.

  The Connellys finished their food, discarded their trash in a trash barrel, and walked south for a hundred feet or so to the edge of the dolphin rest area.

  They waded into the water but before she donned her mask and snorkel she spoke in a low voice.

  "I'm going to hide my 'quipment underwater and change to sea monster. Don't freak, OK?"

  He grinned at her and answered in a similarly quiet voice.

  "Freak? I'm looking forward to it."

  Underwater the slanting sun was still high enough to give the shallow water a luminous green shade dappled by dancing highlights and shadows. The choppy surface above them stirred long strands of seaweed into motion. Long banners of greenery waved. Some new-grown strips of coral were close enough to the surface to show as crimson and brick red.

  The sea monster extended her esoteric underwater perception. She detected no humans nearby and extended it further. She "saw" first one then three dolphins in the middle distance and extended it still further, to about a mile. That was as far she could see with much detail, though she could detect boats, ships, large boulders, and such several miles away.

  Sylvia swam far enough out that even binoculars could not see the short length of the snorkels which were above water. There she removed the snorkel, face mask, and swim fins and let them loose. The snorkel floated to the surface; the fins began a slow descent to the bottom and the denser mask a faster descent.

  Sylvia turned to face her brother and gulped in water and more water. A momentary feeling of suffocation was displaced by a feeling of cool fullness as the water flushed remaining air out the gills under her ribs. It felt good enough that she would have sighed if she could have done so.

  She pointed a finger at her nose, which had sealed itself, then at her opening and closing mouth as it took in water and forced it further inside her. She then pointed a finger on each hand at the gills. Rickie nodded his head in understanding and gave her a thumbs-up sign.

  Lastly she extruded the fangs in her mouth and the claws on hands and feet, then grew swim webs between the claws. Now completely in her shallow-water seaform she snatched the snorkel from the surface, upended her body in one sinuous movement, and dove.

  On the way to the bottom she snagged the slowly sinking swim fins and picked up the mask from the bottom. A few yards away was the heavy boulder toward which she had been aiming. Reaching it she grasped an edge with one hand, planted her feet on a firm part of the sea bottom, and lifted the edge up enough to hide her equipment.

  Her brother had followed her down a dozen feet or so and watched. He began to return to the surface when he saw her arrowing upward. She let him extend his snorkel above the surface and begin breathing again. Then she began swimming further into the dolphin retreat, slowly enough that he could keep pace with her.

  After a few minutes the monster's dolphin speech box had completed growing. Sylvia began calling all dolphins in to a conference. She heard several return her call then began to relay the call outward. Then further outward still .

  The rendezvous point was a concrete block with a flat top just a foot or two beneath the water at mid-tide. Miranda used it to watch happenings on or above the water, such as clouds and birds and people who swam or surfed nearby. She also sunned herself.

  Sylvia did not understand this last. Dolphins lived submerged most of the time. They did not have pigment that could darken to protect deeper tissues from the sun, and their skin was damaged if it dried out very much. But younger dolphins all seemed to need or at least enjoy sunning themselves, as Miranda did now.

  The young dolphin's sonar detected their approach from perhaps a hundred feet away. Moments later the sea monster heard the muffled underwater sound of a splash as the young dolphin flexed her body and did a near somersault up off the concrete block to dive into deeper water.

  Shark Eater! You're back! I missed you! Miranda said in dolphinese as she neared them in a rush. At about twenty feet away she suddenly halted. As did Rickie.

  Sylvia slowed, stopped, and twisted back toward her brother, just in time to see the two of them fall in love at the first sight of the other—or at first sonar ping in the case of Miranda.

  It was easy to understand for Rickie. He had always loved animals and it was his greatest regret that their mother's allergies kept them from having pets. Later he had refused to get pets because of his job. He did not want them to be alone while he was on duty, or have them suffer separation from him if he was killed. And Miranda, though twice his size, was still obviously a child and awfully cute.

  But what Miranda saw in Rickie—or painted with sonar—Sylvia could not guess. She just knew that the young dolphin did. Her body language gave it away, a sort of shy nervousness, a turning away from him, then back, then away, then back again.

  Miranda crept closer, if the way she swam could be called creeping. She angled off to the side, passed Sylvia and then Rickie, who was a few yards back from his sister, and curved back behind Rickie.

  Rickie responded by curving off to the side and circling back. For a minute or two they circled a common point between the two of them. It was almost a dance.

  The circle became closer until they were face to snout. Cautiously Rickie took a deep breath from his snorkel and submerged completely. He lowered his head and bumped Miranda's snout with his forehead. She responded with a gentle bump of her own.

  Then she flirted away and rose up far enough above the water to breathe. As did Rickie, who rose higher still, until he could look at the young dolphin with his mask off
, under the blue sky of late afternoon. She looked back at him from above the surface.

  Sylvia approached the two of them. She could not talk with him in her underwater form, but she had briefed him on what she planned to do, in broad outline, and how to behave around Miranda and the other dolphins, including how not to give sexual cues.

  She spoke to Miranda in dolphinese.

  Adopted child of my family, this is a body child of my family, RikKikKi. Which was the closest she could come to "Niece, this is my brother Rickie."

  He likes you very much. I believe he would like to adopt you as his niece. But we have business to discuss. I must tell you and your family about the trick I have played on your enemies. Rickie already knows it and will wait on your sunning place while we talk .

  Shark Killer! He is wonderful! I want to adopt him, too!

  Your family must agree to this. We will talk about that later. Now come to the meeting .

  He is not going away?

  No. Just to wait on the sunning place. Now go to the meeting place and I will talk to him .

  The sea monster could not talk verbally, but she could rise out of the water and give Rickie the OK sign. Then she slapped her chest and pointed down and back to show where she was going, and pointed at him and the sunning place to let him know their agreed-on plan was still in effect.

  He replied with an OK sign and a salute before he put his mask back on and swam on toward where he would wait.

  The talk with Miranda and the other dolphins took place near another sunning concrete block around which underwater vegetation danced to the eternal music of the surface waves.

  It began with Sylvia announcing that the human swimming with her was her brother and under her protection. Normally that would not have been necessary to say, but some dolphins were not happy with humans. It was barely possible that they would harm him and other humans who were strangers to them.

  Though not Prinny. She was already an adopted niece of Miranda's family. Besides, in the weeks before almost every dolphin regular had met her and knew her for a dolphin-friend.

  Next Sylvia told them of her fight with the four fishermen. This included some imitation of out-of-the water fighting. Then she told them of biting off the nose of the one man, of which they highly approved. Finally she told them that a great human conference—the closest she could come to court-of-law—would judge her and her fight with the men. That she believed the men would be banished from the island.

  This had a greater emotional impact on them than it would have humans. Banishment from the extended family of a dolphin band usually meant death. Dolphins were vulnerable when they slept and depended on awake band members to keep watch for danger.

  The younger dolphins of the group were happy and considered matters closed. The older dolphins knew it was not. They thanked Sylvia for her efforts but said, basically, that they would wait and see if matters worked out as she believed they would.

  With that the meeting broke up and Sylvia and Miranda raced to "Miranda's" sunning block where Rickie waited. It took a bit of effort to get the two young ones away from each other.

  At 8:00, showered and (in her brother's case) shaved, the two siblings went to dinner. It was a great success.

  Chapter 21 - Reprimands

  Space Island

  Caribbean sea west of Puerto Rico

  "So, now you can go home and tell Mom everything is all right." Sylvia was all tooth-brushed and pajama'd as she sat down on her apartment's living-room sofa.

  "No, I can't leave until the arraignments tomorrow. Even if the perps do skip bail you still have to get through your trial. Mom would never forgive me if I abandoned you." Her brother was already lounging in an easy chair, channel-surfacing the silenced TV.

  He grinned. "Besides, I've got all this vacation coming and I already have an excuse to use it."

  "Fine. I could use the moral support. And it's so hard to get time to spend with you nowadays. But I do have to work."

  "Fine. I can amuse myself. Get to know more about dolphins. See if that cute lifeguard has some spare time."

  "Prinny is pretty knowledgeable about dolphins and is their friend besides. But that lifeguard is a tough Argentine space pilot off the beach. She just may chew you up and spit you out."

  He grinned again. "As long as she chews the right things."

  Work for Sylvia the next day began with a summons to a "fact-finding" meeting with management. Which was really an excuse to give her an official reprimand for unbecoming conduct, fine of a week's pay, and the preparation of a press release which let the world know that their unruly employee had been severely punished. Sylvia offered to resign for the good of the company if it was felt that was the proper course and was informed that was not necessary—this time .

  Her boss had attended the meeting as an observer and a partisan, if she had needed it. She had coffee afterward with him in the company cafeteria. Lunch time was a couple of hours off and they shared the big high-ceilinged room with only a few dozen scattered people.

  "There was no way they were going to kick you out for this. Though they might the next time something like this happens. You came across as the good guy this time. And the publicity is good for the company, since that is so."

  He took a sip of his coffee. "Also, remember we are an Argentine company. What happens here doesn't get a lot of interest from porteńos ." That term was what people of Buenos Aires, the biggest city in Argentina, called themselves. It had a large and thriving port.

  "Still, it might be best if you lay low until this blows over." They proceeded to arrange for her to do that and still keep up the slight duties she had in his department.

  When she recounted the meeting with management to her brother Rickie said, "So privately they don't care one way or the other about your fight, but to cover their asses they publicly have to disapprove. And you get an unpaid vacation. Is that a problem?"

  "No. Even if they fired me I still have several incomes."

  "And meanwhile you can spend more time with me!"

  So for most of the week Sylvia spent time with her brother and with Prinny and working with the dolphins, though she had to do that in her airform. The dolphins still recognized her as Shark Eater and treated her with the proper respect. They thus gave their fullest cooperation to her and Prinny and their work with the dolphinese translator.

  Rickie and Miranda spent a lot of time together. Sylvia ruefully decided that even with her great knowledge of biology that she did not understand the relationship of the two.

  On Friday morning she got a phone call from one of her contacts in the Ponce fishing community. She had gotten several from them throughout the week letting her know the brothers were stocking up on supplies for a long voyage. This time, however, they were bringing aboard possessions from the apartments they had rented, such as a big-screen TV. The brothers seemed ready to jump bail rather than leave for their daily fishing trip.

  Sylvia made excuses to Prinny and Rickie, made sure the superbattery in her premium go-board was fully charged, and took off to the west into the sea at a leisurely pace.

  Out of view by those on the island she throttled up the water jet underneath the rear of the board. The board lifted up out of the water, hydroplaning. At the same time she kicked in the SuperSlider option. This forced air out of pores in the bottom of the boat, making even the small amount of surface there very slick. The board seemed to explode out of the water and turn into a rocket.

  The dolphin-killing brothers might be headed to the Dominican Republic, directly to the west of Puerto Rico. Or to Haiti, on the western end of the island shared by the Republic. Or to Jamaica or Cuba, the islands even further to the west. But before they got very far Sylvia wanted to have a talk with them.

  She aimed for the area where she was most likely to intercept their boat. Meanwhile she attempted to craft an airform with the outward appearance of her shallow-water seaform. This would allow her to talk but still swim with ultra-huma
n ability. And to look horribly scary .

  This new form was not one natural to her. Her airform was her own original body, though improved in many ways such as extra-human strength. Her seaforms were two variations of some natural creature not (she guessed) native to Earth. She could consciously switch to a seaform, or her body would automatically switch to it if, for instance, she began to drown.

  But so far she had gained only a small amount of control of seaform specifics such as claws and claw-length. The very complex biology of water breathing and air breathing was out of her control. Now she struggled to gain control while rushing over the waves.

  Slowly, with false starts and jerky progress, she managed. Her skin turned slate grey and slick. Her hands grew claws and webs. So did her feet. Her skull grew longer from front to back and her nose diminished to slits. Her hair shrank and melted away. Her brow ridges grew and grew harder. Her breasts disappeared and her crotch became completely smooth. But inside she remained largely human, unable to effortlessly take the rapid changes in pressure between extreme depths.

  Luckily for her she would not need that facility.

  Ahead. To her left. Just coming over the horizon. A sliver of white, then more. It was the control cabin of...yes, the brothers' big fishing boat.

  Sylvia throttled back the engine, cut the SuperSlider effect, slowed. Her go-board sank back to its usual low-speed two-inch depth. And, good, she still had seventy percent of the battery's charge.

  Slowly she approached the boat, first sitting, then lying on the board to keep her profile low. Finally she turned of the motor, unclipped her ankle tether, and slipped into the water. She began to swim, her eyes zoomed to their limit of about 3 X magnification.

  Two of the fishermen were in the control cabin, looking forward. The other two must be below. Approaching from the rear it was unlikely she would be seen. Even if they looked backward only her grey-skinned head was above the surface and it would likely blend in with the water. Especially so since there was an out-of-season tropical depression behind her which was piling up grey clouds in the sky and kicking up waves with its winds.