Chapter 8

"Still here, I see."

Mel guiltily jumped at the sound of the approaching voice, nearly dropping the heavy textbook she was thumbing through.

"You don't sound very surprised," she defensively snapped.

The young woman shrugged and moved behind the counter. "Chimes play in the bird room when the front door opens. I didn't hear the chimes." Leaning on the counter across from Mel, she nodded toward the textbook she was still holding. "Find what you were looking for in that? Or may I be of some help?"

"What makes you think I need any help?" Mel retorted, placing the book on top of the stack. "Let alone your help!?"

Silence stretched between them, the young woman's searching gaze holding steady.

"I'm not trying to be your enemy," she finally said.

A bit paranoid aren't we, Porter?

Her defiance curdling into shame, Mel looked away.

"I... I'm sorry..." she stammered in a small voice. "I don't know what's come over me. I don't usually behave this..."

"There's no need for apology," the young woman gently assured her. "It's clear you're very frightened and confused. And in a great deal of pain. All from several sources, I would guess. So you're lashing out. It's a very normal response."

Mel kept her eyes firmly fixed on the floor, studying the patterns made by the pebble-grained floor tiles. It would be a waste of time denying what this young woman somehow seemed to instinctively know and she just couldn't summon the energy for it.

"Can I ... ask you something?" she said after a moment.

"Of course. Please feel free to ask whatever you wish."

Mel hesitated, uncertain of how to phrase it.

"I know this is going to ... sound very dumb to you, but..." she haltingly began. "But I'm trying to understand this. A ... a genome is like that book says, a blueprint. Right? And each species is a species because it has its own unique genome, its own very specific genetic code..."

The young woman raised a startled brow at her, clearly surprised at what she was asking about, but Mel plunged on while she still had the courage. Or the stupidity. She wasn't sure which.

"... So when two different species are bred together, their genomes never precisely align ... Like the blueprints for a Cape Cod won't exactly mesh up with those of a ... ranch or a Tudor or a split level ... Am I understanding this right?"

"Or with a stadium or an art gallery or a skyscraper, as the case may be." The young woman questioningly tilted her head, her expression now troubled. "You're ... not talking about birds, are you?"

"It doesn't matter if I am or not," Mel tightly answered, keeping her eyes averted. She had the sudden superstitious dread that this young woman would be perceptive enough to read the truth in her soul if she obtained a good enough view. "All I want to know is why."

In silence the young woman took a seat on a stool behind the counter, then spent nearly a minute straightening the stack of books Mel had disordered.

"All right," she finally said. "You want to know why what, exactly?"

Mel breathed a sigh of relief that the young woman was being so tolerant with her and refraining from asking any questions.

"I just want to know why it works like that," she explained. "... I mean ... I understand plumbing and wiring ... even entire rooms and things not lining up in different types of buildings but..."

"Ah, I see. You want a crash course in Genetics 101, then?"

"Yeah, I guess. Something like that."

"Okay ... Let's see now..." She paused a moment, apparently considering how to simply state it. "Well, in any two given species, no matter how closely related they are, there's always at least some incompatible gene sequences in the nuclear or mitochondrial DNA. Or both. Then there's the matter of conflicting loci, disparities in the order, number and placements of repetitions, differences in RNA factors, even dissimilar chromosomal and especially microchromosomal counts, not to mention..."

Bewildered, Mel held up a hand. Her perusal of the textbooks hadn't gone that far. She wasn't even certain what all those terms meant.

"Whoops! Guess I've lost you already, huh?"

"Yeah, well ... Sort of." Mel ruefully acknowledged. Maybe she'd have a better grasp of these things if she hadn't wasted so damn much of her education cutting classes and picking up her teachers...

Wait a minute.

Didn't she once admit that to Cole?

"All right. I'll try to keep this very basic. In essence, all you need to know are two things. One, all these elements and more become obvious in the percentage of birth defects and in the fertility of any offspring produced. And two, the more distant the relationship between two species is, the greater these misalignments become, so the less likelihood there is of producing any offspring at all..."

Yeah! She had told Cole that! She'd found herself completely out of her depth as he was trying to explain a theory developed by a Cirronian scientist concerning something called the ... the Pentathonic Scale, was it? ... and how it relates to something else called a String Theory. That Cirronian scientist was...

"... As a simple example, one species might have its gene for eye color on locus 23 of chromosome 14. A different species might have only 18 gene loci on chromosome 14 and its gene for eye color is found on locus 9 of chromosome 32. Things such as these serve as misalignments that..."

Oh ... my ... God...

Dumfounded, Mel could only gawk at the younger woman as she continued to explain.

No wonder she had been so difficult to place. She'd seen her image on the evening news and in the newspapers several times in the past, but she'd only once before seen her in person. And that was months ago and she hadn't exactly been in close proximity to her at the time.

"... Think of it as being rather like an infinitely complex computer program. If you know anything about computer programming, then you know that each command must be precisely written and rigidly follow within a designated format and sequence or it can corrupt part or all of..."

She'd also altered her appearance since then. She was now wearing some makeup and her hair had been cut much shorter and styled very different, its color changed from pale blonde to light golden brown – all to probably help evade the reporters who had hounded her.

And to incidentally make herself look a little older.

"... Even a single minor spelling error, say a transposition of only two letters in the code, can..."

"Lontoria?"