Melissa Charles woke with her heart pounding, covered in a 
fine sheen of sweat.  She took several deep, calming breaths, 
and scrubbed her palms on the fabric of the bed sheets. Try 
as she might, though, she couldn't remember the nightmare.  
Returning to sleep was never an option when she woke in this 
fashion, so she fingered the control on her bedside table, 
bringing the lights up at half intensity.  Might as well get 
up.  Her face in the bedroom mirror looked haggard from lack 
of sleep, and puffy, although it didn't really reflect her 
age.  Her youthful appearance was sometimes a problem for 
her, and was one of the reasons for her cold persona.  It 
generated respect.  She ran her fingers through her hair, and 
considered the amount of gray showing in it.  She thought 
about touching it up, but decided to leave it as it was.  

She padded through the quiet house, starting a kettle for a 
first cup of tea.  While the water heated, she cut open a 
cantaloupe that she'd pulled from her garden the day before, 
filled one half with cottage cheese, and stood at her sink to 
eat.  As she savored the sweet orange flesh, she gazed out 
the window at the sunrise. Her sometime visitor, a stray 
brown tabby cat, appeared at the back door, giving her its 
best forlorn look.  She retrieved a saucer, filled it with a 
few leftovers from her dinner the night before, and set it 
outside, giving the cat a few perfunctory scratches behind 
the ear as she did so.  The cat purred, but she presumed it 
had more to do with the baked fish than with her caress.  Her 
association with the cat was mainly an act of charity to 
another solitary earth creature.  She'd long ago given up on 
the affection of pets, having outlived a few too many to bear 
getting reattached.

She had been relieved when the first break arrived, when she 
could retreat to her home for a week, and not have to deal 
with being on campus.  Over the years she had become 
accustomed to a solitary existence, and readjusting to 
teaching had been a bit of a strain.  It was going about as 
well as she had expected, so far.  A fifth of the class had 
dropped, the rest were scattered in their standings.  No one 
stood out.  In the end it wouldn't matter for her purposes 
whether there was a real talent in this group or not.  
Eventually she would pass on her scientific legacy the same 
way it had been passed on to her.  It would have been nice to 
have someone rise to her challenge, though.  Her research 
could use fresh eyes.  

The break had afforded her the opportunity to return to her 
research for a few days; the well-equipped laboratory that 
consumed the rear half of her house had been underutilized 
recently. 

Science, she reflected, like all the nobler pursuits, had 
been slow to be rejoined after the war, but most of the chaos 
had been relieved by about 2045, which was the date most 
people accepted as the end of the reconstruction, and marked 
the resumption of the keeping of history.  What remained of 
the population after the war had been relocated and 
concentrated toward the coasts of the various continents, to 
better utilize the most abundant source of power -- an 
extraordinarily efficient system of mining energy from the 
ocean, both from its tides and from the immense temperature 
and pressure differentials that could be exploited.  It was 
one of the few outright gifts of technology that had been 
given by the Grays. 

But concentrating the population had had beneficial side 
effects, and among these was the synergy produced when 
remaining scientists, engineers, artists, and educators began 
to find one another.  The first University was reopened, and 
the most ambitious scientific pursuit from before the war, 
the mapping of the human genome, was revived.  It was almost 
an act of defiance, a proof that mankind had survived, a 
celebration of mankind's design.  It was nearly necessary to 
start from scratch, so much data and equipment, so many 
techniques had been lost.  And so many of those who would 
lead or teach were already at an advanced age.

Still, they prevailed, and in less than 20 years, had a 
complete map, and a generation of eager students.  Within 60 
years, a majority of the functional variations for each gene 
were understood.  Gradually, a high level language of human 
genetics evolved, that filtered out the common denominators 
of the chemistry, and allowed those with the training to 
understand it, to describe and model the effect of a genetic 
change to the human organism.  Medicine became a wholly 
different field.  There was still symptomatic treatment, and 
aspirin remained as constant as the speed of light -- 
medicine's universal invariant -- but serious illnesses were 
treated uniquely for each individual.  The Doctor became a 
detective, searching for the bug in the code, devising the 
right fix.

Dr. Charles was trying to do it all over again, this time, to 
understand the new residents come so recently to share the 
planet with humanity.  Her task was both easier and harder 
than that of her heroic forbears.  Easier, because the 
machinery to analyze a sample of DNA and spit out the 
chemical base pairs was ubiquitous now.  Harder, much harder, 
because she lacked a meaningful point of reference.  The raw 
data of the alien genomes was available on the nets, if you 
knew where to look, but there was no elaboration beyond the 
nucleotide sequence itself.  And it was occasionally possible 
to obtain a bit of alien cellular material, by following 
where they had recently visited -- their dermis sloughed just 
like ours.  But it was impossible to get any of them to 
submit to any physiological study.  No exams, external or 
internal.  No family studies.  Nothing.  She was forced to 
compare against the human genome, looking for matches against 
the grossest similarities -- bipedal, oxygen breathing, bi-
ocular -- and from that deduce the rest.  And she was one of 
a very small group of people working on the problem.  Most 
saw no practical application.

After an hour in the spotless and carefully organized lab, 
she realized her reflections were taking her only backward, 
not forward, and sighing, retired from her pursuit for the 
rest of the day.  The house was already impeccably neat, 
testimony to her current impasse, as well as her natural 
habits.  Even the vegetable garden she kept in the back yard 
was ordinarily tidy, and usually provided most of the produce 
she would use during a year.  The garden had necessarily 
suffered a bit of neglect while she was busy with teaching, 
and she considered spending the remainder of her last free 
day tending it.  She often found that physical labor helped 
her thought process.  It wasn't the exercise she would most 
have preferred, but that would require either another person 
with the right skills, or equipment that wasn't handy at the 
moment.  

Gardening it would be, then.  She finished her tea and toast, 
changed out of her lightweight blue pajamas and into a pair 
of worn hemp pants and a gray heather shirt, donned a wide 
brimmed hat to protect her fair skin, and headed outside.  By 
the time the sweet peas were free of weeds, she'd long 
forgotten her anxious awakening.

-------------------------------------------------------------

A week after returning from first break, David Mitchell had 
also forgotten much of the excitement of his camping trip, 
buried by the effort of his renewed dedication to his single 
remaining class.  Only the occasional itch of the scars on 
his forearms, where he had struggled in the broken glass, 
reminded him that there had been more to the trip than 
glorious sunrises and clean, thin air.  He pushed the sleeves 
of his Henley up past his elbows and scratched absent 
mindedly.

Jerry had faded quietly into the background as David's focus 
narrowed, taking over the day to day maintenance of their 
small campus apartment, and disturbing him only to remind him 
to eat.

Today, though, he had something of more direct value to 
offer.

"What's this?" David asked, when Jerry dropped the data tab 
onto the desk where he was working.

"Read it and see."

The data tab was a small, rigid rectangle, about an inch 
long, half as wide, and only a few millimeters thick.  David 
inserted it into the reader slot on his organizer, and tapped 
the icons that would reveal its content.

He whistled appreciatively.  "You've been digging."

"That is the sum total of every scientific thing written by 
one Dr. Melissa Charles, including her undergraduate student 
work.  Not just the famous monographs available on the major 
library directories.   Some of these existed only in old 
grading archives at her alma maters.  My access to those 
files was -- unorthodox."

David scrolled eagerly through the listing, back to the 
earliest writings.  "Well, I'm sure it will boost my self-
esteem to nit-pick her early efforts.  Everyone has to start 
somewhere, right?" he joked.

"More interesting, I think, is this."  He selected a group of 
lab reports from the middle of the listing.  "Look.  See 
here?  Does this appear familiar?"

After a few moments study, David made the connection.  "Yeah, 
it does.  The class drills, the seat-of-the-pants application 
of concepts she loves so much.  She's following the pattern 
of her own research.  Although..." he studied the dates on 
several of the articles.  "She's doing it at a much 
accelerated pace."

Jerry considered.  "It took your Newton much longer to invent 
Calculus than it takes to teach it," he finally responded.

"So now she's Newton?" David scoffed.  "Jerry, I think you 
give her too much credit."

"Go ahead and nit-pick her early work, then.  You may change 
your mind."  

David stared thoughtfully after Jerry as he left, wondering 
what had gotten into his friend, that he held this woman in 
such regard.  Since physical attraction wasn't likely given 
their differing species, it had to be something deeper.  And 
though he rarely discounted Jerry's opinion outright, he just 
couldn't see it.  He'd been doing better since he'd dropped 
his other classes, but he hadn't given up on his original 
assessment of Dr. Charles.  He still thought she was a 
hardass.  He bent back to the organizer.  Well, whatever it 
was she was driving the class toward, he would get there 
faster if he knew where she'd been.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Charles regarded her student's smug expression for an 
extra few seconds before speaking.  Just long enough to 
unsettle him.  Perhaps she was finally getting a nibble, 
although David Mitchell hadn't been in the top third of the 
students she expected to rise to her challenge.  "Wrong 
again, Mel," she thought to herself.  Her feminine intuition 
was definitely rusty.  Not at all the caliber of her 
namesake.  To be completely honest with herself, she supposed 
she had pushed this student harder than the others.  She'd 
never gotten over the eerie sense of familiarity that had 
possessed her on the first day of class, and something about 
him made her want to provoke him, get him to react.  At first 
it had just made him sullen, and she always felt a little bit 
of guilt at the end of the day over it.  But not much.  Now, 
in the past several weeks, he had suddenly surged ahead of 
the rest of the class in his understanding of the topics she 
was presenting.  She had a suspicion that she knew the reason 
why.

"That is correct, Mr. Mitchell.  Please broadcast that 
solution.  Class, please study the derivation from protein 
sequence to base-pair location in Mr. Mitchell's solution.  
We'll cover that technique in more depth tomorrow.  Mr. 
Mitchell, I expect to see you in my office this afternoon at 
2PM.  Don't be late.  Class dismissed."  She had to turn her 
back to the class as they left.  She couldn't afford to let 
them see the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, it 
just wouldn't do for her image.  But the look on that young 
man's face had been priceless.

-------------------------------------------------------------

It was, in fact, seven minutes past 2 PM when Dr. Charles 
heard a hesitant knock on her door.

She schooled her expression carefully.  "Come!" she called.

She deliberately remained focused on the integrated display 
of her desktop, putting the finishing touches on the 
impromptu test.  Without looking up, she addressed him.  
"You've been doing very well recently, Mr. Mitchell.  To what 
do you attribute your recent improvement?"

David's heart skipped a beat.  Did she know?  It hadn't 
occurred to him until this very moment, but he suddenly 
realized she might consider his use of her research a kind of 
cheating.  He was unsure how to answer, so said simply, "I've 
dropped all my other classes."

"And that's not all, is it?" She looked up at him, and 
immediately back at her desk.  Maybe she was playing this 
game a little too hard.  She remembered -- it was a faint 
memory, but still there -- her own university days.  The 
teachers that had pushed her hardest were ultimately those 
she most valued, but they scared the hell out of her at 
first.  David's eyes were very wide, and she spied a faint 
sheen of sweat on his upper lip.  She had to remind herself 
again not to smile.

"You've accessed all my old work.  Even the undergraduate 
papers."  Her face finally under control, she gazed at him 
steadily.  "I know where all my work is kept.  I was able to 
audit the access trail, and even my most obscure reports have 
been downloaded in the last several weeks."

Busted.  David rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, 
and shifted his weight nervously from foot to foot.  One damn 
sequence left and he was going to be expelled.  It was 
unbelievable.  He had to salvage this, somehow.  "Dr. 
Charles, I can explain..." he began.

"Sit down, Mr. Mitchell," she interrupted.  Hesitantly, he 
complied.  

"You seem to be under the impression that I'm angry about 
this.  On the contrary, I think it shows initiative.  And 
formidable network navigation skills."

Irrationally, David felt a sudden need to confess that 
neither the initiative or the skill were his.  "Dr. Charles, 
I should tell you..."

She interrupted him again.  "But what I really want to know 
is if you understood those reports, or simply memorized 
them."  She pulled the printout from the slot on her desk.  
Sometimes, there was still a good reason for paper.  "You 
have until 3PM to complete the following."  She handed him 
the paper, and a simple carbon pencil.  "You may not use your 
organizer."

David took the sheet, stunned.  This was unexpected.  He 
glanced over the 3 questions on the sheet and realized that 
it also was going to be difficult.  "That's not even a full 
hour," he dared to complain.

"Next time, don't be late," she shrugged.  She pointed to the 
large table under the window.  "Sit over there."  She waited 
while he folded his lanky frame into the straight-backed 
chair, and then returned to her own work.

She observed him glancing curiously about the office from 
time to time, taking in the modest collection of antique 
books, the health and variety of the many plants hanging from 
the ceiling and standing in corners.  His eyes paused briefly 
when they lit upon the three baseball bats leaning against a 
bookshelf, and his brows furrowed.  He glanced at her, and 
startled to find her staring back, returned guiltily to the 
test.  He looked around a few more times, but didn't meet her 
eyes again until the hour was up.

"Let's see what you've got."  Dr. Charles held out her hand, 
palm up.  

"I'm not quite done?"  It was really another question:  "Can 
I have more time?"

She flexed her fingers a couple of times, indicating for him 
to hand it over.  Sighing, he returned to the chair in front 
of her desk, and put the sheet into her hand.

The third question was only half completed, but it was clear 
he'd been on the right track with his reasoning.  The first 
two questions, in spite of the smear of carbon in a few 
places, drew the correct conclusions.  She could work with 
this, she thought.

"This is excellent work, Mr. Mitchell," she said, putting the 
page down onto her desk.  She rewarded him with a brief 
smile, along with the praise.  The relief coming off of him 
was palpable.  "And now that I know what you're capable of, 
I'll be expecting more from you than the other students."  
She watched his face fall while he considered the 
implications of that.

"Fear is an excellent motivator, Mr. Mitchell, which is why I 
need you to know that I won't hesitate to lower your grade if 
you fail to meet your potential.  I don't want my best 
student coasting." She looked at him seriously, wondering if 
he had caught the offhand compliment. "It is not, however, 
the only motivator."  No it wasn't.  There was also prestige, 
privilege and position.  All of which had to be earned if 
they were to be appreciated.

"I need a lab assistant.  Not simply to help with the 
laboratory portion of the undergraduate classes I teach, but 
ultimately in my personal research lab as well.  Until today, 
I did not think I would find someone worth the investment of 
time that entails."   She studied him again.  He was 
beginning to look a bit dazed.  She recalled something he had 
said earlier.  "You have no other classes this sequence?"  He 
nodded.  "That's convenient.  You will be on an accelerated 
schedule, but you will not be on your own.  You'll meet me 
daily at 6AM to prepare for the 7 to 9 AM labs.  You will 
continue to attend my 9AM lectures.  And you will reserve the 
hours from 2-4 in the afternoon to meet with me, 
individually, here in my office.  We'll proceed through the 
rest of the work you accessed," she smiled again at the 
guilty glance that elicited, "and I'll be available to answer 
your questions.  That should be enough for now.  Assuming 
you're interested in the position?" she added, as an 
afterthought.

He startled at being given the option.  "Yes ma'am," he 
affirmed, eagerly.

"This won't be easy, David," she said seriously.  The 
unexpected use of his first name got his undivided attention.  
She leaned forward in her seat.  "You have probably never 
worked as hard as I'm going to need you to work.  And you'll 
have to keep up if you want to keep the position."

He nodded soberly.

"All right, then.  You can go.  I'll expect you at the lab at 
six.  Don't be late."  She gave him a final smile as she 
dismissed him, allowing a trace of warmth into it this time.

His step was positively jaunty as he crossed to the door.  
Just before leaving he glanced back over his shoulder with a 
cocky grin, opened his mouth as if to make a witty exit, 
thought better of it, and with a little shake of his head, 
left.

Dr. Charles studied his test responses again, and suddenly 
had an insight into David Mitchell.  The questions hadn't 
been easy, and the fact that he'd nailed them in less than an 
hour indicated both a good deal of burgeoning insight into 
this strange young science, and a significant degree of 
native intelligence.  That cocky grin, even though she'd 
never witnessed it before, was probably his typical 
expression, not the sullen glare she'd become accustomed to.  
Someone that bright had probably always been at the top of 
his class, with little effort.  No doubt a great deal of his 
identity was tied up in that fact, and being in the middle of 
the pack wasn't something he was equipped to deal with.  More 
than likely, he'd be willing to do almost anything in order 
to feel like himself again, including struggle, maybe for the 
first time in his life.   And he would need guidance in that 
struggle, on more than a strictly academic level.

She wasn't sure how she felt about that.  Actually finding 
someone like David at this school, or any other, hadn't been 
something she'd realistically expected.  And had this 
happened with anyone other than this oddly compelling young 
man, she probably wouldn't have engaged him so immediately, 
without thinking about it at length, first.   She had hoped 
that by steering the coursework in the direction of her 
current research, and persisting in her fast paced class 
drills, that she might force a flash of intuition out of some 
student that would break down the wall she faced.  Taking 
this boy into her tutelage was a far cry from that, or from 
her distant electronic relationship with her few peers.  She 
would have to get to know him, and allow him to know her.  It 
would be a delicate balance.  There were secrets in her life 
that she'd prefer to keep to herself.

-------------------------------------------------------------

David had barely seen the light of day for six weeks, and he 
had needed to get out.  Even though the day was unusually 
humid, which ordinarily would keep him inside.  Even though 
it meant he wouldn't be entirely prepared for his meeting 
with Dr. Charles tomorrow.  Being cooped up any length of 
time made him restless, but he hadn't felt he had the luxury 
to take time away from his studies.  It was Jerry who finally 
made him realize he needed to take a break, and do something 
physical.  Not in the usual reasonable, cajoling way that was 
his manner, but by the fact that the almost uniformly 
moderate Jerry was showing actual signs of exasperation.  
David realized that he must be becoming a real pain in the 
ass.  So he had put on a pair of lightweight shorts and a 
tank, and headed for the University's athletic fields.  There 
was a track there, and he could run.  It wasn't as good as 
climbing, but the mountains were miles away, and the indoor 
facility the University kept was designed for novices.  It 
was getting dusky when he arrived, not that that had 
decreased the temperature very much, yet.  But it was usually 
slightly better after dark.  The field lights would be on 
until midnight, and he preferred the mosquitoes to the heat.   
He dropped the bag he'd carried with him onto the bleacher 
with a loud clunk, changed from his sandals into running 
shoes, and took a long drink of water.  He did only a few 
perfunctory stretches, even though he knew better.  It had 
been a while since he'd exercised at all, which meant he 
should be stretching out, and warming up slowly.  But it also 
meant he was overeager to get moving.

Soon, he had settled into a comfortable pace, breathing 
deeply and regularly, the cinder oval elapsing behind him 
again and again.  He meant to count his laps, but as he found 
his rhythm, his mind began to wander.

In the six weeks since Dr. Charles had taken him on as her 
assistant, he had worked harder, and learned more, than in 
possibly the combined total of all his graduate studies.  He 
was beginning to discover that although demanding of her 
students during lab sections, and sometimes harsh during 
lectures, when teaching individually Dr. Charles was 
surprisingly patient, and was more generous with her approval 
than he would have imagined.  She seemed to have a natural 
instinct for pacing the presentation of material; fast enough 
to keep him challenged, but not so fast that he couldn't 
succeed.  If he worked like hell, anyway. He wouldn't exactly 
say he liked her, but he wasn't frightened of her anymore.  

In a short six weeks, the undergrads in the 7AM labs had 
practically come to worship him, which he found amusing.  If 
he had found her a daunting taskmaster, they were scared 
speechless.  Which was a problem since they needed to ask 
questions.  For a small woman, she was incredibly imposing.  
So he took on the manner of circulating through the lab, 
offering assistance and advice as the younger students 
practiced and mastered procedures they would use again and 
again, if they stuck to their major.  It was a new experience 
for him, seeing things from the perspective of a teacher, 
where success wasn't in proving you understood a thing, but 
that you could make someone else understand it.  As he got 
better at it, the younger students had warmed to him, and 
some now approached him for help outside of class, usually a 
little bit shyly.  They never approached him if he was with 
Dr. Charles, though.  He wondered how much of their 
admiration was based on the fact that he could appear 
comfortable with someone they found so unnerving.

He hadn't yet seen her personal research facility, as she had 
indicated he would in their first meeting.  He didn't know 
what the delay was -- or even if she meant to follow through.  
But he wasn't ready to press her on it.

The burn in his legs was changing from invigorating to 
painful, and he discovered that he had lost all track of 
time.  It was no longer dusky, but completely dark, and there 
was no one else on the track.  He'd been running a long time.  
Slowing, he jogged over to the bleacher where his bag still 
sat, and bent over, hands braced on his knees, breathing 
heavily through his mouth.  The sweat dripped off his face in 
this position, making a pattern of small dark dots on the 
ground at his feet.  He fished a towel out of his bag and 
mopped his face and neck, then finished the water he had 
brought in one long draught.  His shirt clung to his back 
between his shoulder blades, tacky and uncomfortable.  He 
changed that, too, to a thin, dry navy T-shirt.  More 
comfortable, he slung the bag over his shoulder and began to 
head home.

The path from the track meandered between various outdoor 
facilities, and he thought how strange they looked abandoned 
at this late hour, bathed in the artificial light.  First, 
the tennis courts, then a fenced in paved rectangle, with 
high hoops on each end, gossamer nets hanging beneath them.  
Another grass field, with wide net goals at the far ends.   A 
short distance ahead, he could hear the rhythmic clang of 
someone in the batting cage, hitting the hard polymer balls 
with a metal bat.  He stopped and watched when he reached the 
cage, admiring the skill of the batter.  The machine was set 
for hard fastballs, and he hadn't missed a single pitch since 
David had come into view.  It was mesmerizing, in a way.  The 
soft "thwump" of the machine as it spat out the ball, the 
quick hiss of the ball slicing through the air, the loud 
clang of the bat as the hitter brought it around with grace 
and power, and then the rattling clank of the fencing at the 
far side of the cage.  He could almost understand why it had 
been such a popular game, once, watching this guy.  That 
moment of connection looked satisfying.

Evidently, the sequence was finished, because the hum of the 
machine lowered in pitch, and the batter took off his helmet 
and turned around.  "Dr. Charles?" David said, shocked.

She smiled faintly, covering her surprise better than he had.  
"Close your mouth David.  Something will fly in."

He did, with an almost audible pop, then opened it again to 
say, "I, uh, I didn't know you played."

She shrugged in response, but added "I was surprised to find 
that this campus has a cage.  I'm just glad it works."

"Were you on a team once, or something?" he asked, curiosity 
growing.  He realized suddenly that he couldn't recall having 
once seen her in anything other than the dark, conservative 
suits she wore to lecture.  It was why he hadn't recognized 
her, he supposed, in the snug pants and loose, oversized 
jersey.

"Or something," she said, concentrating on pulling off her 
gloves.  

When she didn't continue, David began to feel uncomfortable.  
"I, uh...  Sorry.  I didn't mean to pry."

"It's alright, David, you're not prying.  I'm just out of 
practice answering questions about myself."

He nodded silently, waiting for her to go on.

"I've played in a few informal leagues now and then, but this 
is really something I do for myself.  A friend of mine taught 
me when I much younger.  Sometimes a workout helps clear your 
mind, you know?"  

He nodded again, and she supposed that he did know, judging 
by the way his hair was plastered to his head, in thick 
sweaty strands.

"And it helps me to remember him," she confessed.

"Don't you see him much?" David asked, imagining a childhood 
friend.  Dr. Charles didn't wear a ring, and he really 
couldn't imagine her with a boyfriend -- he didn't think 
anyone could measure up.

"He's dead," she replied.

"Oh."  He felt like a jerk.  "I'm sorry."

"It happened a long time ago."

They were both quiet for a beat, and not sure how else to 
break the silence, Dr. Charles offered "I could teach you 
some time, if you like."

David was unsure how to respond.  His entire academic 
existence revolved around this woman.  He wasn't really eager 
to add her to what little there was of his social life as 
well.  "Uh, well, I'm not really, um...  I climb, you know?  
That's mostly what I do when I can.  Or I run.  I don't think 
this is really something for me.  So, uh, no.  But thanks for 
the offer."

"All right, then."  She ended the awkwardness by returning to 
her professor persona, and the roles they were both 
comfortable in.  "I'll see you at lab in the morning.  Don't 
be late."  And with that, she gathered her equipment and 
walked away, not looking back.

David stayed put a moment longer, thoughtful, then headed for 
home in the balmy night.

-------------------------------------------------------------

For the third weekend in a row, David Mitchell watched the 
day wane out the high window in Dr. Charles's personal 
laboratory.  Although he had sometimes complained about the 
pace with which they were covering the background of her 
life's research (he'd been snide to Jerry on more than one 
occasion when he felt overwhelmed, for his "help" of finding 
it in the first place) he now realized what a luxury it was 
to see the young science unfolding in compressed time.   What 
appeared in retrospect to be a series of brilliant insights 
and intuitive leaps, was based on data that was gathered 
painstakingly, and tediously, over weeks and months, even 
years.

Three weeks ago Dr. Charles had identified a segment of Gray 
genome that she thought would prove to be expressive.  They 
had assembled the base-pair sequence the week she first 
brought him here.  Later that evening, she had given him a 
tour of the old farmhouse she inhabited, and sent him home 
with a bag of tomatoes.  The complex molecules were 
stabilized in a special solution, and their temperature 
gradually lowered in the liquid-nitrogen cooled refrigeration 
unit, to await the next stage.  They were warmed just as 
gradually the following week, and injected into a broad range 
of simple cellular hosts, for incubation.  They'd shared 
lunch in her kitchen that day.  A thick vegetable stew and 
fresh bread.  At first he didn't think anything could 
surprise him more than to discover that she cooked, until she 
bowed her head for a brief moment of grace.  Nobody believed 
in God anymore.

Today, they were harvesting the proteins from the more 
successful colonies, for analysis.  This stage would be the 
longest.  Building the protein was one thing, trying to 
determine its purpose much harder.

"No! David, not that one!"

He snatched his hand back from the incubator door.  He had 
almost opened the wrong unit.  It contained a special group 
of experimental cells.  Temperature sensitive, they needed to 
be gradually adjusted to room temperature before the door 
could be opened safely.  An abrupt temperature change could 
have damaged the work of several weeks.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Charles," he said, scrubbing his face with 
his hands.  "I'm burnt.  Honestly, I don't think you should 
have me in here right now.  Can't we take a break?"

"Hmm," she said, considering him.  Abruptly, she covered the 
sample she had been working on, and put it away.  Reaching 
deep into a cabinet beneath a counter against the wall, she 
pulled out a pair of large brown objects, and tossed one to 
David.

"What's this?" he asked, puzzled by the large glove.

"It's a mitt," she said.  "Come on.  Let's go outside."  She 
walked out of the lab without looking to see if he was 
following.  He trotted after her, still puzzled, but glad to 
be out of the sterile atmosphere of the lab.

As they emerged from the back of the farmhouse, David took a 
closer look at the strange glove.  "Um, Dr. Charles?  I'm not 
sure what this is for, but I'm right handed," he said.

"Of course you are.  That's why the mitt goes on your left.  
It would be in the way on your throwing hand."  At the 
genuinely blank look on his face she relented.  "You can't 
mean to tell me that you've never played catch?"  

"I grew up in the west," he said.  "Nobody plays baseball 
there."

"Well, it's not yet dead in the east, young man.  It's about 
time you got introduced.  Put the mitt on."

Accustomed by now to doing as she instructed, he shoved his 
hand up into the mitt.  It felt awkward and heavy, the 
fingers too far apart.  She took his hand, felt for the 
position of his fingers through the thick leather, and 
adjusted a couple of straps for fit.  Standing so close, 
David realized that he could look right down at the top of 
her head.  It made him feel strange.  His father had once 
told him a story about outgrowing Nana, and how weird it had 
made him feel to be looking down his own mother.  He wondered 
if the feeling were similar.

"Now, this is where the ball goes," she said, placing a 
small, red-stitched white sphere into the pocket of the 
glove.   "When you put your hand up to catch it, try to catch 
it in the pocket.  All you have to do then is close your hand 
to keep if from falling out.  If you catch it in your palm, 
it'll sting."  She slapped the ball into her own glove a few 
times to demonstrate.  "When you see the ball coming at you, 
your first instinct will probably be to get out of the way.  
If you do that, you'll miss."  She smiled to show she was 
joking.  "Just keep the glove up in front of you, and keep 
your eyes open all the way in.  I'll throw you nice easy 
ones.  You go and stand over there."  She pointed to a spot 
not far from the fence.  If he missed, he wouldn't have to go 
far to pick up the ball.  She took her own spot near the edge 
of the garden, by the green beans.

He didn't miss, although his throw had some room for 
improvement.  "Like a girl," is what people would have said, 
once.  They played in silence for a while, the rhythmic slap 
of the ball into the glove their only communication.  
Strangely relaxed by the ritual, David found himself asking 
questions he hadn't dared before.

"Dr. Charles?"

Slap.

Slap.

"Yes."

Slap.

Slap.

"How *did* you find the shape shifting gene on the Smith 
Aliens?  It could have been anywhere, and it doesn't map to 
us..."

Slap.

Slap.

"Still planning a career in cosmetic medicine?"

Slap.

Slap.

Slap.

Slap.

"I don't think so."

Slap.

Slap.

"Glad to hear it."

Slap.

Dr. Charles caught the ball one last time, then pulled her 
mitt off, wrapped the ball inside it, and tucked them both 
under her arm.

"Come on.  I'll show you."  She turned and headed back for 
the house.

-------------------------------------------------------------

It was a room she hadn't shown him before, and it was full of 
paper.  Reams of it.  Stacks and stacks piled on every 
surface, overflowing from shelves, balanced four feet high on 
the floor in the corners.  It was strange to be in the 
presence of so much paper.  It gave the room a peculiar, 
musty smell that reminded him of a field trip he had taken as 
a child to one of the old public library buildings from 
before the war.  It's not that there wasn't still an 
abundance of printed material, it was just that it seemed so 
out of place in someone's *house*.  Almost everything 
contemporary was available on the nets, as well as 
transcriptions of classic texts.  The old libraries were 
maintained by the governments, and open to the public, for 
the preservation of things left from before the war.  They 
weren't used much.  But Dr. Charles stood in the midst of 
this forest of wood pulp and ink as though it were the most 
natural thing in the world.  In spite of the apparent chaos, 
David had no doubt that this room, like every other he had 
seen, followed some precise organizational system.  

His suspicion was confirmed when she unerringly went to a 
rack of shelves third from the corner, bent down to the 
second lowest, and retrieved a thin report from the middle of 
the stack on the left.  Then she stood, gestured for him to 
lead the way out, and shut the door carefully behind her.

The light in her kitchen cast a warm glow, and the first 
crickets could be heard starting up outside the open window.  
David took a seat at the table, and waited patiently while 
she began heating water for tea.  He was beginning to be more 
comfortable in her home, after three weeks, and the kitchen 
seemed to make him more at ease than any other room.  
Finally, she sat down across from him, turned the report so 
it was right side up from his perspective and said, "It 
happened once before, in humans.  A spontaneous mutation that 
allowed for voluntary appearance modification."

David was astonished.  He'd been studying the life sciences 
almost exclusively since secondary school, and had never 
heard of such a thing.  "When?" he asked.

"Near the end of the twentieth century.  A man named Edward 
Van Blundht.  There was a thin layer of striated muscle 
tissue under the surface of every part of his epidermis.  He 
also had an anomalous structure to his hair follicles.  The 
report doesn't state conclusively, but it was presumed the 
mutation allowed him to change the appearance of his hair at 
will, along with his facial features."

David stared at her, disbelieving.

"It was hereditary.  His father also had the anomalous muscle 
tissue, and presumably had the same ability.  They both had 
tails.  Oddly, Edward's children inherited the tail, but not 
the ability to morph."

At the mention of tails, David's expression turned sour.

"What?" Dr. Charles asked, unable to read him.

"This is a joke, right?  Not a very funny one, either.  If 
you don't think I can follow your progression, just say so."  
The story had been a stretch from the first.  The notion of a 
shape shifting human, with a *tail* no less, just capped it.  
Since he couldn't believe it, he concluded she was lying.   
And he couldn't fathom a reason why, unless she didn't think 
him capable of understanding the truth.  Anger and insecurity 
warred within him for the upper hand.  Insecurity that his 
months of effort had been inadequate after all, and that in 
spite of her encouraging words, this challenging, demanding 
woman held him in intellectual contempt.  Anger that she 
would think she had any such right.  

Dr. Charles watched the conflicting emotions flash across her 
pupil's face, and the brooding flash of anger in his hazel 
eyes triggered a strange sense of deja vu.  She shook it off, 
and went to rescue the tea kettle, whistling with an 
agitation that mirrored that of the young man.  Methodically, 
she prepared the tea and set a cup in front of him, meeting 
his angry glare without reaction.  After a calming pull on 
her own mug, she finally asked "Why would think this is a 
joke?"

"I finished Human Genomics two sequences ago.  No way this is 
possible.  It's taken a fleet of researchers to figure out 
how to engineer this ability on a limited basis.  A 
spontaneous occurrence of the degree you're describing is out 
of the realm of possibility."  He snorted.  "And a tail!"

"Even extreme possibility?" she asked, seriously.

"There's no science to support it," he insisted.

"There's plenty of science to support it.  You just have to 
consider the possibility that there's more to science than 
what's already been discovered, what you've already been 
taught.  It's not static, young man.  There was a time when 
most respected scientists completely denied the possibility 
of extra terrestrial life.  Even the most brilliant minds 
were summarily branded lunatics if they dared to suggest 
otherwise.  Because it was 'out of the realm of possibility.'  
Today, we not only take the presence of alien life for 
granted, we consider those men and women laughably short 
sighted for denying the statistical evidence in support of 
that life."

Dr. Charles gestured to the report.   "Read it.  Try to keep 
an open mind.  If you still think I'm mocking you, you're 
free to go."  The phrase held a tone of finality.  She 
couldn't mentor him without his trust.  If he wasn't willing 
to give it, she'd waste no further time with him.

David looked at the report.  It was dated in 1997, almost 200 
years ago.  The author was a Dr. Dana K. Scully.  The name 
seemed familiar, but he couldn't place it.  Not by any means 
mollified, he still handled the brittle and yellowing paper 
gingerly.

An hour later, his calm had returned, but his puzzlement had 
multiplied.  The report was scholarly, and thorough.  The 
conclusions were reasonable given the science of the day, and 
even showed some remarkable intuitive leaps.  The man had 
been incarcerated for a series of rapes perpetrated by 
disguising himself as someone known to each of the victims.  
Because he was in prison, he was required to submit to blood 
and urine tests on a regular basis.  Dr. Scully had been 
given access to these, and to tissue samples.  Dr. Charles's 
more recent notes were at the end of the file.  The original 
author hadn't the tools to analyze Mr. Van Blundht's DNA to 
any real depth, but there was enough intact DNA remaining in 
the tissue sample that Dr. Charles had been able to do a 
thorough analysis.  With what was known about the human 
genome today, the anomaly was obvious, even to him.  Still, 
finding the analogous gene on DNA that was so radically 
different was an amazing feat.  The Smith mechanism for 
morphing couldn't be assumed to be the same, since little was 
known of their physiology.  And even if it could, the gene 
was long and complex, so the variety of ways that it could be 
coded in the nucleotide base pairs was extremely large.  It 
was quite a feat to have found it, even with the head start 
provided by this report.  But where had the report come from?

The chair creaked loudly in the thick silence of the kitchen, 
as David leaned back from his reading.  He was alone.  
Engrossed in the report, he hadn't noticed Dr. Charles leave.  
Now, he rose and began searching for her, poking his head 
into several empty rooms, feeling a bit like an intruder into 
spaces where he had not been invited.  

He found her at last, in the room at the end of the hall.  It 
was clearly her personal study, and tidy, as was the rest of 
her home.  A single lamp lit the desk where she sat with a 
circle of warm yellow light.  The room was paneled in a dark 
wood, possibly original from the old house, with bookshelves 
built into two of the walls.  As before, he was surprised to 
see many of them filled with actual books, clearly antiques.   
The corners of the room were shrouded in deep shadows.  He 
knocked softly on the slightly open door, and she looked up, 
sitting back from her reading in the high backed leather 
chair.  "So, David, what do you think?" she asked, coming 
directly to the point.

He stepped inside a few paces.  "I don't think you were 
joking," he said solemnly.  Dr. Charles recognized the 
oblique apology, and didn't press him.  

"Come and sit down," she invited, moving to the dark sofa 
along the west wall.  

David sat down carefully at the far end, his back to the 
squared arm, right leg crossed and tucked under the left, 
which rested on the floor.  Dr. Charles mirrored his position 
at the other end, and waited for him to begin.

"Do you believe it?" he finally asked.

"You were planning to base a career on the science that 
evolved from that report," she countered.  "Do *you* believe 
it?"

David conceded the point.  "Where did you find this?  I was 
always taught that there was nothing left from that period 
that survived the destruction of the war."

It had always bothered Dr. Charles that history had a gaping 
quarter-century hole, right where the most significant event 
in mankind's existence fell.  "There's plenty left, if you 
know where to look."

"Is everything in that room as old as this?" he asked.  

"No, not everything.  More than you probably imagine, 
though."

While David contemplated changing a point of view he had 
always taken for granted, Dr. Charles pressed the point.  
"Hasn't it ever bothered you that there's plenty of history 
from before the war, and after the reconstruction, but 
nothing from during those events?"

He shook his head.  "People were moving, relocating.  A lot 
of cities were destroyed.  It was chaotic."  It was what he'd 
been taught, all his life.

"You know about the American Revolution?" she asked.  He 
nodded.  "Columbus?"  Another nod.  "Gallileo,  Copernicus, 
Aristotle, Plato?"  He nodded again.  "That was all written 
history.  If everything were as thoroughly destroyed as you 
say, wouldn't the written history of the distant past be 
destroyed along with it?  Why would you know anything about 
it?"

"Maybe people were too busy surviving to record anything new 
during those years," he proposed.

"Maybe," she conceded.  "Or maybe there was plenty written, 
that's been suppressed in the six generations since it all 
ended."

"Who would do that?" he scoffed.

"Who caused the war?" she challenged.

"You think the Grays are responsible for erasing history?"

She looked at him steadily, without answering.

"But that's nuts.  What would they have to gain?"

"That rather begs the question, don't you think?"  She wanted 
him to reason it out.  Without knowing what was missing, how 
could you know if there was something being hidden?

"A breakaway extremist faction of Gray culture attempted to 
utilize Earth as a base of operation for imperialistic 
intent.  Alien pathogens caused significant destruction 
before the invaders were subdued by the main body of Gray 
society, who then provided immeasurable help in 
reconstructing human culture by concentrating the remaining 
population and providing technological and ecological 
support," he recited.

"Don't quote propaganda," she snapped, exasperated.  "Think."

Propaganda?  David began to wonder if Dr. Charles's 
intellectual persona didn't hide some darker secrets.  "Are 
you specieist?" he demanded.

"Not everyone who challenges your world view is a bigot, Mr. 
Mitchell," she said coldly.  "What you're holding in your 
hand doesn't exist, according to the accepted view of 
history."  He looked down at the report he still clutched.  
"And you've seen a whole room full of history that doesn't 
exist."

"I refuse to believe that the Grays have any dark designs on 
us," he insisted.  "That's the most paranoid thing I've ever 
heard."

"I'm not asking you to believe anything," she said 
forcefully. "Certainly not because I say so," she continued, 
in a calmer tone.  "But you *must* learn to question your 
assumptions.  About science," she gestured again to the 
report on Van Blundht, "about history.  About the world 
around you.  It's the only real path to discovery.  You have 
a fine mind, David, but you've never really used it."

David's anger flared at her assertion, but before he could 
retort, she silenced him.

"Humanity's recent history contains some puzzling 
contradictions.  But no one puzzles over them." She shook her 
head.  "No one even sees them.  I'm not going to trouble you 
with any more of them tonight because it's clear you're not 
ready." She shifted her position on the couch, leaning toward 
him to press home her message.  "If you want to be a great 
scientist, you must examine everything in life with the same 
objectivity that you apply in the lab.  And you must be open 
to the extreme possibility.  The one that fits the facts at 
hand, even when the science that exists so far, or the 
history, doesn't adequately explain it."

She sat back, giving him his space.  "I had to learn that 
too, David.  I wasn't born knowing it.  Few people are."

Her words conjured an image of a younger Melissa Charles.  
He'd never considered her as anything other than the person 
he knew, fully formed, commanding, assured.  It made him 
suddenly curious about the start of her journey.  Made him 
consider for the first time that he might be at the beginning 
of a road that could lead him one day to where she stood, a 
respected leader in her field, and confident that her 
abilities gave her the right to the position.

"Who taught you?" he asked quietly.

She smiled wanly.  "The same person who taught me baseball."

They were silent for a moment, David in his concern at having 
brought up a painful subject, and Dr. Charles in remembrance.  
When he realized she was smiling faintly, he dared to ask, 
"Was he your professor?"

Dr. Charles returned from her moment of reverie.  "No," she 
said.  Coming fully back to the present she offered, "I 
studied mostly with Dr. Luder.  I first met her as a graduate 
student, she was already quite old then.  What I've done with 
you is a cake walk compared to what she did with me," she 
grimaced.  "But I must have measured up.  A lot of the 
material in that room she left to me.  She also taught me how 
to find more."

David's eyebrows climbed into his hairline.  "You studied 
with Dr. Luder?" he asked, incredulous.  "Samantha Luder?" 

"If I see farther than those before me, it is because I stand 
on the shoulders of giants," she quoted in response.

Dr. Luder's text on Comparative Genomics was required reading 
at every university with a biology department.  She was 
renowned for her radical research into the genomics of the 
most obscure and bizarre forms of earth life.  Creatures that 
lived at the ocean bottoms, by sulfurous volcanic vents, 
microbes that could withstand the vacuum and radiation of 
space, bacteria that survived on nothing but rock in the 
earth's depths.  Tiny shrimp that survived prolonged boiling 
in the egg, birthing when the water cools, geese that could 
fly at 30,000 feet, spiders that migrated the world encased 
in balls of ice in the upper atmosphere, frogs that 
dehydrated then came back to life with the addition of rain.   
All of these and more came under her scrutiny.

"Tell me about her?" he asked.

Dr. Charles glanced out the window at the rising moon, and 
said, "Another time, David.  It's getting late."

Disappointed, he nodded, and rose to his feet.

"Take some zucchini on your way out," she said.  "I'll see 
you in lab in the morning.  Don't..."

"be late," he finished with her, smiling.  "Good night, Dr. 
Charles," he said, as he handed back the report.

"Good night, David," she said, taking it and returning to her 
desk.

As he left the study, she was already reabsorbed in the book 
she had been reading when he first entered.  He walked slowly 
back to the campus apartment, enjoying the clear, starry 
night, catching the brief arc of light made by one of the 
Gray's satellites.  It didn't occur to him to wonder why 
humanity had none of their own.