Judith White

Dr. Judith White runs BostonBio’s controlled-breeding population of engineered animals. Smith says she advertised their meat as a cure for world hunger, although eating it could transform people into creatures like White. After a violent confrontation leaves her presumed dead, she regrows a lost arm and escapes.

White returns as a “killer doctor,” using altered identities and a regenerated body. She later appears as Judy Fishbaum, works at Genetic Futures and alters Dr. Emil Kowalski. The characters identify her through the unusual smooth skin of the regrown arm, which links her later appearances to the earlier BostonBio case.

In Boston, White’s engineered animals were presented as a cure for world hunger, but Smith explains that eating their meat could transform people into creatures like her. Years later, White uses Genetic Futures as a base. CURE suspects her or someone following her of responsibility for a contaminated Lubec Springs batch; Smith orders shipments intercepted, tests find other sampled brands clean, and a scientist describes the later changes as temporary. Mark experiences those effects.

White’s plans increasingly involve Remo. She says she used frozen blood and skin from beneath his fingernail, while Smith separately says CURE had once retained frozen semen samples and later reports the samples dead. The novel does not settle White’s stated conception method or establish a biological child. At the end, a sonogram appears to show six or seven fetuses; their birth and later fate are unknown.

White’s later identity as Leon’s “Thena” is exposed by the new skin on her regenerated arm. The discovery confirms her return but does not resolve what happened to the fetuses shown earlier or explain every stage of her movements between identities.