“Oh, wow!” she exclaimed. “Hi! Zetta!”

The centaur looked up at the girl and smiled indulgently. “Hello, Nikki,” she responded automatically.

Both Zinder and Yulin were fascinated.

“Nikki, you don’t see anything, er, odd about Zetta?” her father prompted.

The girl shrugged. “Nope. Why? Should I?”

Ben Yulin’s mouth dropped open in honest surprise.

* * *

Over a week passed during which they noted various reactions to the new creature. Just about everyone at the center saw nothing unusual in Zetta Halib being half horse; that is, nothing newly unusual. They knew, of course, that she was a volunteer for the biological scientists attempting to adapt people to different forms. They knew she had been manipulated after conception to grow up as she had, and they remembered when she had arrived and recalled the initial reactions.

Everything checked out, of course, except for the fact that none of what they remembered had actually happened. Reality needed to explain her and had adjusted accordingly. Only two men knew the truth.

Ben Yulin puffed on his curved pipe in his boss’s office, rocking lazily back and forth in a spindly chair.

“So now we know,” he said at last.

The older scientist nodded and sipped some tea. “Yes, we do. We can take any individual, anything, and we can remake it if we can come up with the data Obie needs to make the transformation properly, and nobody will even know. Poor Zetta! A one-of-a-kind freak with a full history and memory of growing up that way. We’ll have to change her back, of course.”

“Of course,” Yulin agreed. “But let’s let her keep her good looks. She’s earned that much from us.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Zinder responded as if that meant little to him.