She was looking defiantly at Hackworth, whose adrenal glands had finally 
jumped into the endocrinological fray. When he saw his daughter in this way, it 
felt as though someone were inexorably sliding a hundred-pound block of ice up 
the length of his spine. When the sensation reached his medulla, he staggered 
and nearly had to sit down. She had somehow flung herself through an unknown 
and unmarked barrier and become supernatural, a naiad rising from the waves 
cloaked in fire and steam. In some rational compartment of his mind that had 
now become irrelevant, Hackworth wondered whether Dramatis Personae (for this 
was the name of the troupe that was running this show) had got some nanosites 
into his system, and if so what exactly they were doing to his mind.