If asked, Monty couldn't have said how he knew. When he was eleven, the proof to Hyzander's theory of cho particles had just popped into his head fully formed. He had known that he was right, even though at a gut level he hadn't dared to believe. His science teacher had tried to help him set it up, but immediately realized she was over her head. She had called the University of Edinburgh and gotten him into the physics lab with a faculty mentor and the rest was history. Four months later, he and the entire physics community had no choice but to believe.
This was fairly similar. It wasn't a matter of putting together the little clues. One day, he just looked at her and knew at some atavistic level in his gut, even if he didn't really believe.
It wasn't the first time the idea had been raised. His gramma had claimed that his grampa was one. When grampa had died, Monty had stood at the coffin and waited for something to happen--some proof of the myth--but it never did. Finally they closed the lid and laid the coffin in the hearse.
It didn't seem the time to question gramma, so he'd asked Ian MacKintock instead. "I thought they turned into sea foam." Ian was in eighth grade. He should know.
"That's mermaids, you dumbass."
"So what happens to selkies, then?"
"They're immortal. They don't die; they just put their fur suits back on and turn back into seals again." Ian didn't really know, but he was in eighth grade and supposed to have the answers, so he just made something up.
"Everything dies; it's just a matter of when," said Monty. They'd covered that in class.
Ian rolled his eyes. "It's just a story, Monty. Don't be such a baby."
Monty was no baby, so he let it go.
He'd only brought it up one other time. He was home from university and gramma had grown so old in the three months since he'd seen her last. Everyone dies, but he didn't have to like it.
He'd sat with her reminiscing. They had shared some wonderful times. They spoke of the old bedtime stories, the trouble he'd gotten into, the things they'd agreed that his parents didn't need to know, they bedtime stories she had told. Finally he asked, "You used to tell me that grampa was a selkie."
"Aye, and the most beautiful one you'll ever see."
"I thought selkies were immortal."
"They are. As seals they can live healthy and beautiful forever. As humans, well, they don't just die in body like we do; they sort of fade away a little bit at a time. That's why they can't ever stay."
"But grampa did. And died."
She coughed a wheezy laugh. "You're old enough to know it now. I meant your real grampa."
Monty blinked.
"Don't look so shocked, boy. I'm talking about love, not some evil thing."
"So…I'm part selkie?"
She shook her head sadly. "It doesn't work that way." All they leave with us is here. " She tapped her head. "And here." She tapped her heart and left her hand in place.
The door opened and a nurse came in. "Time for your hypo, Mrs. Scott."
Monty stood. "Can it wait? I don't get to visit often and we have a lot to talk about."
The nurse smiled kindly and drew the drapes against the sun as it dropped low to window level. She put the hypo back in her pocket. "I'll give you thirty more minutes, if you like, but frankly it would be better if you could come back in the morning. She doesn't do well when her schedule is disrupted and her mind is so much clearer earlier in the day."
Monty paused. "You're right. I don't want to interfere with her care." He kissed her on the forehead. "Goodnight, gramma."
In the morning they had talked of birthday parties, a pair of pet wolverines they had kept for a few months and a family trip to Luna. When he'd broached the subject of his real grampa, she'd said that she had no idea what he meant.
The scientific theory depends on proof and not belief, but sometimes it works backwards. Some things cannot be proven until and unless someone believes.
It didn't make an iota of scientific sense, but given a choice between the two, any good Scotsman will chose heart over brain when a lady is at issue. Some say that is what brought down the Stuarts at Culloden. Monty preferred to think that is why Scotland was still the great, independent state that it was.
His heart told him that Lesa was too important to let her slowly fade away.
It was a long shot, but so was warp drive. Monty waited until she left for class, then he entered their bedroom. He took her old paintbrush from the nightstand. As an afterthought, he took her hairbrush too. He'd dated a girl in a bioscience fellowship. Okay, 'dated' was a stretch, but she had held his hand while she'd told him that he was a great guy and then explained why it wouldn't work. That was closer than he had come with any other woman before now. Her name was Rachel, Rachel Judson. It wasn't hard to find her lab.
Monty would have liked to have thought that Rachel was helping him for the sake of a the handful of good times they had had, but he had to admit that a fellow scientist was more likely to leap at the puzzle that at his looks and charisma. For whatever reason, Rachel took the paintbrush. She looked skeptical, but put it in the sequencer anyway.
"Nope, only keratin left--no DNA." She took it out and changed to another machine. After a few seconds she shook her head "It's been exposed to too many chemicals," she said. "The bonds are too badly broken to establish a curl pattern. That's going to limit the identification." She pressed a couple buttons. "It's probably a pinniped, but I don't think I can narrow it down any more than that. I'm sorry."
Monty reached in to his pocket and unwound a few hairs from the hairbrush. Palming the length of the strands, he broke off a follicle end. "Try this."
She put it in the sequencer and her whole posture changed. She ran it again. "Where did you get this?" she demanded.
"Ya would nae believe me if I told ya."
"Monty, I won't be part of anything illegal. This is a phocid, and they are all endangered and strictly protected. If you've trapped one, or killed it--" Her voice trailed off.
"It's nothing like that," Monty said acutely aware of how close the facts were to that despite the intent. "I promise, it's nothing illegal or immoral, but I can't tell the details; I promised someone else."
Rachel looked at him, doubt written all over her face, but in the end she was a scientist. She returned to the sequencer. " I can't match it exactly, but it is very similar to halicoerus. Whatever it is, it is probably extinct." She removed the hair specimen and put it into the ionic analyzer. "But the curl and bond structure doesn't match. It looks--human."
She looked up. "May I see a full hair?"
Monty crammed his hand back in his pocket. "Sorry that's all I have." He didn't even try to sound convincing. He'd always been a crappy liar.
"Monty--"
"Ye said you didn't want to be too involved--"
"No, I said I wouldn't be a part of anything illegal, and I won't. I love these animals. I will not stand around and let one be exploited or worse." Her eyes flared in a way that only meant trouble from women.
This was an emergency. Monty bent his knees and dropped to her eye level. He took her by the forearms. "Rachel, I swear, I am trying to save one. I canna tell you more except that I need your help and that I would give my life, my soul, anything that is mine to give to save this creature. So, will ya help me, or nae?"
Dampened beyond the critical point, the fire in her eyes went out. She exhaled. "You always were a crappy liar. Okay, I believe you. So what do I do now?"
He squeezed her hand and kissed it. "Bless you, woman. Can you grow me a patch of the fur?"
She double-checked the data. "Sure. The curl-pattern will still be off, though. Will that do?"
Monty gave a rueful snort. "Dammed if I know. How long?"
"How much do you need?"
"Mebee…three meters square?"
"Two weeks, give or take."
"Alright. One more thing--can you put a black streak in it?"
"Sure. That's just coding in more melanin."
He nodded. "Make it noticeable, but not too big."
Like she should know what that meant. Why couldn't men communicate? "Monty." She called him back from his way out. "There are expenses."
There went Kilimanjaro. He'd never been that big on mountains anyway.
"I'll send a credit confirmation to the lab."
"Better make it my private account." She wrote down a code. "They'll be questions if there is an outside donor. They don't ask me what I'm doing as long as I publish regularly." She paused. "Any chance of publishing…something out of this?"
"You know as well as I do that nothing should be completely ruled out in science."
Rachel looked back at the slew of incongruous data. "Ain't that the truth."