Shapechanger's Birth

by Laer Carroll

  Elizabeth seemed relieved to hear that. "So you'll still be devoting most of your time to helping Dame Edith? Good. She seems to be such a beneficial influence."

  Which reminded Mary. It was about time that she quit impersonating Edith and let the real Edith take over the role of the rich philanthropist with the mysterious but undoubtedly noble past. Most of the documents supporting the role had been forged, artificially aged, and sneaked into the official records. This included an award of the title Dame of the British Empire, the feminine equivalent of a knighthood. It had been (discreetly) purchased and so was authentic rather than fake.

  "Jane. Is the Belle Rive ready?"

  "The captain says it is. All he needs is to top off the coal. That will be done this afternoon."

  "And we have confirmation from Kane for a meeting? When?"

  "Four days from now."

  "Good. Then we leave for Dublin tomorrow morning."

  Before dawn the next day, on the last of August, Mary followed Jane and a serving man out of "Dame" Edith's mansion. She was dressed in a black veiled traveling costume. Jane wore a similar costume, minus the veil. The two women boarded the waiting carriage and left her home on the side of Patrick's Hill, which overlooked Cork City to the south. The trip to nearby Cork City Marina was brief.

  There she and Jane made a brief stop in a public convenience. There they met Edith, a loyal ex-prostitute, now one of the Organizations top managers. Edith was near Mary's own height and body shape, her face and voice not too dissimilar. The similarity had given Mary the idea of using her as a body double. When Mary played Dame Edith, she assumed this Edith's face. She was grooming Edith to take over from Mary when Mary shed her Dame Edith persona.

  Inside the convenience Mary and Edith began to exchange clothing.

  "How have you been, Edith?"

  "Touch of the rheumatiz. Did you bring some good books?"

  Mary said with mock severity, "You do not have rheumatism." She had given Edith a quick probe and found her body perfectly healthy — as she had expected.

  "No, I don't. But 'Dame Edith' does."

  Excellent. Edith was getting into her role quite nicely.

  Her health had certainly not been perfect when Mary first met the woman. Then Edith did have the bone malady, and other ills beside, including venereal disease. Mary had healed her and made changes in her body to ensure she never got sick again. The process had taken some time, mostly the coaxing of Edith's gnarled and twisted bones back into normal shape.

  Weeks later, when she decided to ask Edith to be one of her body doubles and Edith had agreed, Mary had also adapted Edith's body to the acrobatic strength and flexibility which Mary'd had when she was young. Mary had also reshaped Edith's body to more closely match Mary's body. They could now switch clothes with perfect ease.

  Mary laughed. "I'm glad to see you playing the Dame so well. So glad that from now on you are going to be doing it all the time."

  Edith gasped. "But ... I ..."

  "Get used to the idea."

  "I never thought we would do this so soon. My department ..."

  "Your assistant will take it over. When we come back from Dublin I'll give the two of you a week to make the transition. Then you're done. You'll be the Dame."

  Edith was clearly elated and fearful. Then she took a deep breath and, when she let it out, she was the aristocratic Dame Edith.

  Her quick intelligence and adaptability was another reason that Mary had chose Edith for this part. That and the fact that Edith had been an aristocrat before unhappy circumstance had dumped her onto the street. She could play the part without thinking, because it was not an act.

  Mary nodded and smiled, then looked at Jane. Jane nodded and turned to lead the way to a hired lighter waiting for them. They boarded it and it pulled away from the dock, headed east and then south down the Lee toward Queenstown Harbor.

  There Mary as her regular self, Jane, and the "Dame" transferred to her 110-foot two-masted schooner, the Belle Rive , black with yellow trim. In addition to the sails, the schooner had a mildly raked funnel a third of the length of the ship from the stern. This was for the steam engine which drove a single-screw propeller, a custom addition a few years ago.

  The three women climbed up the ladder from the lighter two hours past sunrise. The captain was waiting for them at the head of the ladder. He saluted Edith and she stepped forward and looked up at him, face smiling through her veil. Of the crew only the captain knew that she was playing a part and that Mary was his true boss and the cat lady.

  In her turn Mary nodded at the black-bearded Italian who looked like a pirate, and had been in his younger years. He was tall and massive, dressed now in a black uniform and black billed stovepipe cap. His clothing was yellow-trimmed like the ship.

  A year and a half ago Mary had begun a reorganization of her prostitution ring and the businesses she had bought or had created to support it. It was getting too complicated for her to control all of it directly. Also, she wanted to eventually leave Cork City, but leave the prostitution organization able to survive without her.

  Enrico had been one of her trusted subordinates. So when he suggested the purchase of a sailing ship she had listened to him carefully. It had always been her policy to allow, even encourage, Organization members to leave it. While he was not yet quite up to that, she had seen the benefits of owning an ocean-going ship and had him select and buy it. The ship was in his name but registered as in the employ of Dame Edith.

  After he had selected a crew and had a shakedown cruise he had welcomed aboard "Dame Edith" — actually Mary in her Dame disguise — for a getting-acquainted trip out of the Harbour onto the ocean and back. Today the real Edith and Enrico re-enacted that meeting — though then it had been raining heavily and thundering and lightning, and he had been urging Mary to postpone the trip. Now a light breeze ruffled the waters and the major noises were that of gulls, bells from a buoy, and occasional raised voices from the docks and nearby ships.

  Edith and Jane entered the cabins assigned to them, Jane carrying a valise and instructing the crewmen carrying the rest of the party's luggage. Mary stayed on deck, as Dame Edith's second-in-command.

  "Good morning, Captain," Mary said, lightly grasping his hand. "You're looking well. Your health has been good, I trust?" Mary knew it was, because she was monitoring his health through their hand contact. And making some minor repairs that his body had not been able to do.

  "Yes, Mistress Mary. Thank you."

  "The bonus for your last trip? Have you made good use of it?"

  He turned and pointed at the island of Cove humping out of the Lee River. The river was very wide at this point, just before it merged with the sea. In the bright sun from this distance the houses crowning the island looked like white toy blocks.

  "I now own a house up there."

  "And do you have a lucky lady in mind to make your life miserable in your new house?"

  He grinned, teeth white against his black beard. "I do."

  "Well, if the woman says Yes, I expect to be invited to the wedding. Now, you're ready to sail?"

  He nodded.

  "Then present me with your crew. Everyone."

  Mary went to stand by the far rail, the sun at her back, her sky-blue traveling clothes caressing her body in the freshening sea breeze. The ship pitched very gradually in the swell, and the odor of salt water and dead fish was strong.

  During the next quarter hour, on a duty rotation system quickly made up by the first mate to ensure the ship was kept working, each crewman shook her hand. This let her probe their bodies and emotional states and fix any problems that had arisen since she last met them.

  Most of them were old hands and trusted, and those whose bodies needed it received a boost from Mary's esoteric powers. A few new men she left as they were since they seemed in good enough health to do their job. She gifted no one she did not trust — or at least intended to make long-term use of — with a long and healthy life.
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  That done, she gave the order to cast off from their anchorage point.

  "Go to anchor at buoy 32."

  Mary watched the water as the steam engine below decks began its thumping and hissing sounds and the screw propeller began to turn, a moan that rose in pitch to a whine as its speed increased. The anchor was drawn up and rattled noisily into its housing and the ship began to move. It began to pitch more as it moved out of the lee of Cove island.

  Inside her cabin Mary swapped her clothes for a gray form-fitting wool suit that covered her from ankles to neck. The suit had no sleeves.

  As she dressed Mary changed her skin tone to grey and her face to an alien look — very wide cheekbones, tiny nose, wide nearly lipless mouth. She quickly braided her hair into a fat pony tail and tied it in three places: at the tip of the braid, in the middle, and close to her head.

  Meanwhile the ship had moved out of the harbor, pitching even more when it got into water no longer in the lee of Ireland. Now the wind that struck the Belle Rive came all the way across the Atlantic from America.

  When Mary heard the shouting and then the change of the ship's motion — harsher, with a bit of a roll — that signaled their anchorage at the buoy, Mary opened the porthole. She judged the motion of the ship, then gathered herself and leaped through the porthole, a standing leap from the floor that eeled her body through the porthole with full inches to spare, an action as casual for her in superhuman mode as taking a step the rest of the time. She closed her eyes as she fell toward the water.

  While the ship had traveled from harbor to buoy she had grown protective lenses over her eyes and lengthened her toes by a couple of inches. Changing the bones had taken the longest. They did not flow like skin. She had grown webbed skin between her fingers and toes.

  She had also been hyper-oxygenating her body. She could have grown an organ that would hold oxygen for several hours if she chose, but that was unnecessary. Just as she was now she could stay under water for two hours or more, depending on how active she was.

  Given a few days, she could even have grown gills and changed her lungs to breath water as well as air, but she had never tried this. She knew that it would work but there were too many disadvantages to it.

  Now she struck the water and entered it as cleanly as a dolphin. As the water closed around her she opened her eyes. The water was a green shimmer around her and the cold of the water refreshingly cool to her quickly adapting skin. She began to swim, first deeper by a dozen feet or so, then leveling off and arrowing through the water, her hands and legs sweeping her along and her body wiggling eel-like to further speed her through the water .

  As she came to be home in the water again she called up the esoteric power that let her extra-human hands dissolve matter. She extended it to her physical hands and arms then to her shoulders and head. It swept down until her entire body was encased in a form-fitting dissolution layer less than a millimeter away from her body and clothing. In effect her skin became very slick.

  Her speed in water increased by half again and she sped through the water faster than any dolphin or seal.

  Minutes before her lungs needed more air she angled upward, slowed her rushing body, slowed more and more until her head just barely lifted out of the water.

  She looked all around. The water was open around her. She was miles from shore in the open sea, which was rocking her gently. Perhaps a mile behind her, she saw as she turned her head and body, was the Belle Rive , only its masts and smoke funnel visible from her vantage point.

  She changed her buoyancy so that she rose out of water enough to put her shoulders almost completely above water and looked all around.

  Yes! A half mile closer to shore was a school of dolphins!

  She had seen them on her first short voyage on the Belle Rive . Now she began to swim toward them, automatically hyper-oxygenating her blood.

  A hundred yards away she submerged and swam under the dolphins. Two or three also had submerged and "saw" her with their sonar. They turned toward her.

  Mary accelerated her rush and swept to meet them. She moved much faster than their leisurely pace. She looped in a circle around them and drove toward the deep.

  As she swam down she could feel her blood change as her body was grasped tighter by the ocean. She did not want to go too deep, intuitively understanding the bends that would keep her from coming up as fast as she wanted. Not that the bends could harm her but they did have to be dealt with.

  She flipped over and began accelerating upward, flashing toward the surface. Nearing it, she pointed her arms over head.

  She erupted from the water in a tremendous upward dive, the surface effect on her skin make it momentarily shine like silver until the water flashed into a mist that disappeared instantly. Hardly a splash was left behind in the ocean as she arrowed upward at least fifty feet into the air.

  At the peak she lazily flipped over like a cat and began to fall. Entering the water again, she swam closer to the dolphins, slowing, surfacing. She swam ever more slowly until she stopped only few yards from the nearest.

  She examined the dolphin, noting its silvery skin and hard nose and eyes protected by a streamlined brow ridge. And it examined her. It did more; it squeaked at her.

  She heard the squeaks in her ears, and felt them resonating inside her body. Her body wisdom told her that it was using sound the way she used her esoteric power: to see inside her.

  Her body wisdom, which delivered knowledge as if it were a nearly forgotten memory, seemed to twist and reform, and ancient pre-human knowledge yawned and stretched and dreamed of awakening.

  This was too much for her. She feared it fully awakening and transforming her into a dolphin or something much stranger and more ancient.

  She twisted and plunged beneath the surface and fled, body twisting and arms and legs sweeping, surface effect flashing on and making her more slippery than a soap bubble, speeding arrow-like away from a heritage from before the dawn of man.

  She knew exactly where the ship was and surfaced a hundred feet or so off one side. The homely lines were welcome after the dreaming strangeness behind her, inside her.

  She waved an arm and yelled, "Ahoy the ship! Hello! Hello!"

  She saw a human figure turn and, zooming her telescopic vision on him, read his lips' My god! She swam closer, saw running figures come to the rail. They were halted by the figure of their captain, sending most of them back to their posts.

  When she was near enough she called up, "Captain. May I board?"

  "Yes," he called back loudly. "Dame Edith is awaiting you. I'll get her."

  "No, wait. I'll come aboard first."

  He hesitated, said, "Yes, of course. Wait and we'll get a ladder for you."

  "That's all right. I don't need one. Just get everyone back from the rail. I'll make a bit of a splash."

  Seeing everyone back up, Mary gauged the distance and angle to the ship's rail flipped, dove down and down, flipped again, and flashed upward. Leaving the water she arrived at the top of her leap exactly at the top of the ship's rail and landed there, balancing atop it for a second before hopping down.

  She had turned off the surface effect that kept her body dry. No one but she need know about it. The water on her body and form-fitting suit made a bit of a splash and then began to puddle on the deck.

  "Sorry about that, Captain."

  "Well, always the trouble maker, are you?" Edith, playing Dame Edith and following the loose script that Mary had given her, had come out of the owner's cabin. The veiled woman's words were light, however.

  Mary laughed, turned to the captain. "There are some sea growths on the bottom of your hull. If you allow, I'll go overboard and clean them off."

  The captain looked at "Dame Edith" in pretend request for permission before he nodded. He knew that the selkie was his true boss, the cat lady, in yet another of her guises, but the crew did not. To them the Dame was his boss — and theirs.

  Knowing exactly where the rai
l of the ship was Mary leaped upward and backward, twisted catlike in the air, and fell off the side of the ship in a dive.

  Under the surface the shimmering green depths were cut sharply by the shadow of the ship. In the shadow Mary swept the ship from side to side, working from stem to stern. With her esoteric hands she sliced off barnacles and seaweed and scoured and polished the copper bottom of the ship.

  She also extended her esoteric senses into the ship's hull, looking for defects. She mentally catalogued them to report to the Captain. None of them were serious, and they would not become serious if taken care of the next time the ship was in home port. She had done this inspection before the ship had been bought but from the inside.

  She had to come up for air several times. It took over an hour. Lastly she worked around the waterline to the height of her arms, making sure the above-water part of the ship was OK. The rest of the ship could be pretty much trusted to the Captain and the crew.

  Surfacing one final time she checked that no one was too close to where she wanted to come aboard and repeated her earlier upward leap and splash.

  "Well, Captain, no other ship in all the oceans has a cleaner hull. It's also sound, but there are a few things that need tending."

  He frowned. "I run a taut ship, and solid one."

  "Yes. But I can see inside your hull. Now, here are the items you need to know about ...."

  He wrote down her observations and she went below to the red-painted steam engine. She gave it a thorough going-over, having the engineer open access ports so that she could inspect the interior with her physical eyes. The metal was warm but not hot, for the engine had been shut down once it had done its job, leaving the harbor and reaching station near the buoy. The engine was only for emergencies and for entering and leaving a harbor.

  She also used her esoteric senses to see into the machine. It was harder for her to sense problems the way she could of living or once-living materials, but such conditions as overstressed metal or hairline cracks were visible to her.